Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot says millions of Israelis voted for change, tired of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘lies’. In his first public comment after polls closed, Eisenkot warned rival Netanyahu not to use Israel’s security to ‘serve his political interests’.
Published On 28 Oct 202628 Oct 2026
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Despite narrower exit poll figures, opposition leaders insisted the result was a defeat for Netanyahu’s government.
Published On 28 Oct 202628 Oct 2026
Israeli political leaders have traded sharp reactions to exit poll projections showing no clear winner between the country’s main political blocs.
Updated figures broadcast by Israel’s Channel 13 showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition tied at 51 seats with the opposition bloc led by challenger Gadi Eisenkot in the 120-seat Knesset.
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Despite narrower exit poll figures, opposition leaders insisted the result was a defeat for the government.
Eisenkot, head of the Yashar party and a former military chief of staff, told supporters after voting closed that the initial projections showed a “complete lack of confidence in Netanyahu and the October 7 government”, according to the AFP news agency.
“Don’t let anyone confuse you: the Netanyahu bloc has suffered a crushing defeat,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said in a statement. “This is a total collapse and the public has told them to go home.”
Under the updated figures, unaligned Arab parties were expected to hold 18 seats, leaving both major camps 10 seats short of the 61 required for an absolute majority.
Supporters at Eisenkot’s watch party in Tel Aviv cheered projections as voter turnout reached 77.7 percent, according to the Central Elections Committee.
However, senior figures in Netanyahu’s camp pushed back against opposition declarations, saying the final results could shift the balance.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister and a key Netanyahu ally, dismissed opposition statements as “premature”, writing on social media that Likud remained the largest single party in parliament.
Meanwhile, leaders of Arab political factions highlighted their potential role in upcoming coalition negotiations.
“We will transform the mandate we received into a new reality in the country,” Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List (Ra’am), told reporters.
At the Joint List alliance headquarters in Nazareth, candidate Faten Gattas told supporters that high participation among Palestinian citizens of Israel aimed to block the return of Netanyahu’s nationalist coalition.
“We refuse the occupation and racism, and we will remain here,” Gattas said, according to the Reuters news agency.
With neither camp reaching a governing majority, political analysts suggested smaller parties would be key deciders as formal coalition talks begin in the coming days.
The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) tied up in Yokosuka, Japan, on Monday, a week after the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group departed from the same base to participate in exercise Keen Sword 27. Both are reportedly destined for the Middle East, two U.S. officials confirmed to Fox News, which would place three CSGs and two ARGs in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) sometime in November, unless a group leaves before their arrival. More than 10 guided-missile destroyers are also operating independently in the region, as the U.S. beefs up force posture ahead of the possibility of renewed hostilities against the Iranian regime.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the USS Ronald Reagan remotely controlled an MQ-25A Stingray tanker drone thousands of miles away for the first time, and the Navy announced that USS Abraham Lincoln, which just returned from a historic deployment, will conduct a homeport shift to Bremerton, Washington.
Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed CSGs and ARGs, using publicly available open-source information. Check out our last report here.
Surrounded by allied warships, the USS Theodore Roosevelt steamed through the Philippine Sea last week as large-scale combined exercise Keen Sword 27 got underway. Roosevelt and guided-missile cruiser USS Chosin departed Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka, on October 19 following a three-day port call. Roosevelt deployed on September 27 and was the first non-resident American carrier to pull into the vital naval port in over four years.
Three American warships are participating in the exercise, a Navy official confirmed to TWZ. The third participant, Pearl Harbor-based guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur, another element of the five-ship strike group, also called port in Yokosuka and transited out of Tokyo Bay on October 26.
Australian, Canadian, and French warships joined the exercise alongside the U.S. and Japan in a large show of force. Keen Sword 27 runs through October 29, but it’s unclear if Roosevelt and her escorts will remain until the conclusion before heading toward the Middle East via the Strait of Malacca. More than 45,000 Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel and 11,000 U.S. service members are participating.
F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-35Cs launched from Roosevelt and other airbases in Japan to complete a simulated strike against a target in the East Sea/Sea of Japan, which also included land-based launchers, an exercise spokesperson told Stars and Stripes. Japanese destroyers JS Kongo and JS Maya assumed the red team role. The precise location and munitions employed were not disclosed.
The Theodore Roosevelt CSG, which a different Navy official confirmed also includes USS Paul Hamilton and USS Carl M. Levin, will arrive in the Middle East, Fox News reported last week. Both destroyers are disaggregated from the rest of the group. Hamilton, the last ship to deploy, left San Diego on October 10 and most recently pulled out of Pearl Harbor last week. Levin, the first ship to deploy, is already operating in the CENTCOM AOR, based on public images posted on the military’s content platform, DVIDS.
If the CSG and ARG, which also includes amphibious transport docks USS Anchorage and USS John P. Murtha, arrive in the Middle East before the other two carriers on station, USS George H.W. Bush and USS George Washington, and big-deck amphibious assault ship, USS Boxer, depart, that would add roughly 10,000 sailors and Marines to CENTCOM’s arsenal, the most significant force posture in the region since the war began. However, the overlap can only be maintained for a limited time given normal rotation schedules.
Acting Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), Hung Cao, said during a panel at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention that “the Teddy Roosevelt carrier strike group just deployed on October 8 with a medium sized unmanned surface vessel (MUSV). This is the first carrier strike group to ever deploy with a large size unmanned surface vessel.” However, despite multiple requests to comment, the Navy has not confirmed to TWZ that MUSV Seahawk (2) is assigned to the strike group. Seahawk was 10 nautical miles north of Guam, publicly available Automatic Identification System (AIS) data on MarineTraffic showed, as of publication.
Providing a glimpse of the future, the USS Ronald Reagan used her brand-new Unmanned Air Warfare Center (UAWC) to operate a MQ-25A Stingray tanker drone at a Boeing facility in Illinois. “In a historic U.S. naval aviation event, an aircraft carrier connected to, and controlled, an unmanned aerial refueler MQ-25A Stingray more than 2,100 miles away,” the Navy said in a press release.
The UAWC, installed during Reagan’s recently completed 15-month maintenance available, used its MD-5C ground control station to link beyond line-of-sight with the drone while the flattop was underway in the eastern Pacific Ocean. “The MQ-25A Stingray’s carrier-based refueling capabilities enable F/A-18 Super Hornets to fly farther and longer,” the Acting SECNAV said. “The integration of this unmanned aerial refueler demonstrates the transformational change our manned and unmanned asset integration provides the Fleet.”
The test took place during a preliminary sea trial, part of a “series of build-up exercises designed to validate procedures, networks and interfaces,” reads the release. Capt. Daniel Fucito, program manager of the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation Program Office’s (PMA-268), said, “We have redefined naval power projection. This first-ever underway connection between a carrier-based UAWC and an MQ-25A aircraft proves that the Carrier Air Wing of tomorrow is a reality today.”
Reagan is the second Nimitz class carrier equipped with the UAWC. The MQ-25A will eventually take the role held by the F/A-18E/F Super Hornets that are tasked with fueling carrier-based aircraft, freeing up aircraft to take on higher-end combat roles.
Reagan moored at Kilo Pier at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego on October 27 after finishing Fleet Replacement Squadron and Carrier Qualifications.
The USS Abraham Lincoln recently returned from a record-setting deployment. The carrier arrived back home on October 8 after being at sea for 321 days, less than a week short of the longest carrier deployment in the post-Vietnam era.
The Navy has confirmed what TWZ was the first to report: the Lincoln will complete a homeport shift to Bremerton, Washington, to undergo an overhaul following a grueling deployment that left the carrier looking worse for wear. The release did not disclose the length of the availability, but Reagan was out of commission for more than a year, and was not previously involved in combat operations.
“The carrier repeatedly demonstrated unmatched multi-theater combat lethality and safeguarded critical sea lanes across the Indo-Pacific and Middle Eastern theaters. Home port shifts are part of the Navy’s continued commitment to the strategic dispersal of ships,” a statement released from Commander, Naval Air Forces reads.
The move is a permanent change of station for the crew and their families.
Overall, three U.S. carriers are deployed, three are working up in various states of readiness, three are in maintenance availabilities, one is post-deployment, one is being used primarily for training before deactivation, and another will be delivered in 2027. Two amphibious ready groups are deployed, one is forward-deployed, three are working up or in port, and three are in maintenance.
Note: Positions are general approximations. Non-deployed LHA/LHD amphibious warships are not shown.
Contact the author: ian@twz.com or @ianellisjones
Record-breaking voter turnout in Palestinian-Israeli communities around 80 percent, early indications show.
Israel’s Arab parties are projected to win 18 seats in the Israeli parliament, exit polls indicate, after voting among Palestinian citizens of Israel surged to their highest levels in decades.
Exit polling data from Tuesday’s vote suggested that the leading Arab-led parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, are set to hold a record number of seats in the 120-member Knesset. Updated exit polling indicated that the opposition bloc led by former Israeli military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party and the bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party were tied at 51 seats each.
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Early indications put voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel at around 80 percent, historic numbers that break 1999 records, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Tuesday.
The leader of Ra’am, or the United Arab List, Mansour Abbas, said he hopes the final election results will allow the anti-Netanyahu bloc, including his party, to win the 61 seats required to form a government.
“With the numbers we have now, there is no government,” Abbas told Israel’s Channel 12.
Abbas, whose Ra’am party currently holds five seats in the Knesset and joined the coalition that governed Israel from 2021 to 2022, added that both main blocs reached out to his party before and after the election.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, said creating a government might prove difficult for parties such as Eisenkot’s – which earlier exit polls had put narrowly ahead – because they promised not to form coalitions with Arab parties during the campaign.
“There’s a price to pay,” Pinkas said, because the “Arabs can’t be kept outside and only being considered and co-opted when you need their votes”.
He added that the Arab-led lists will make demands that a Jewish-led coalition government may not support.
Netanyahu and his far-right coalition made last-ditch efforts on Tuesday to get their supporters to the polls, warning of surging voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, a tactic Arab politicians denounced as racist and inflammatory.
Cars flying Netanyahu’s Likud party flags drove through Jerusalem blaring the Islamic call to prayer and urging supporters to cast their ballots because “Arabs are voting”, witnesses said.
In social media posts, the embattled prime minister highlighted long queues at polling stations in Arab communities and published an image that he said showed Arab voters, including women wearing the niqab, a veil that covers the lower half of the face, waiting to vote.
“If we don’t wake up now, we’ll find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi,” he said, referring to two leading Palestinian members of the Knesset.
Overall voter turnout was also historic, reaching its highest level since 1999 with 77.7 percent casting ballots in Tuesday’s election, the Central Elections Committee reported. Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 21 percent of the country’s population of 10 million and have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, called the election “an existential moment for Palestinian-Israelis”.
She noted the record turnout among what has emerged as a key voting bloc, which drew “even [voters] who would usually boycott elections, who didn’t believe it would amount to any kind of influence, that it would change their reality, that it would alter the systemic discrimination that they face”.
The Knesset has passed more than 100 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who also face discrimination in receiving state funds, Odeh said.
Given their league positions, form and pedigree there could only have been one winner predicted.
Fleetwood played Arsenal on Tuesday with 83 places separating the teams and most home fans arriving in hope rather than any expectation. But remarkably, it was the hosts who booked their place in the Carabao Cup quarter-final thanks to their penalty shootout win over the Gunners.
For the Cod Army, who won six promotions in 12 years in their impressive journey from non-league, this result will surely be remembered longest of all. Against the reigning Premier League champions, the club from a small seaside town in Lancashire created history in claiming one of the biggest cup upsets ever.
Aaron Loupalo-Bi gave the hosts the lead after 21 minutes but, after the break, Viktor Gyokeres pulled the visitors level.
And from there, they might have been expected to take charge but Fleetwood remained resolute, prospering from a wasteful performance from Arsenal that included Max Dowman being sent off for kicking out after a robust challenge from Harrison Neal.
Fleetwood, who sit 18th in League Two having won just once in their past eight league games, dared to dream and took the game to penalties, with fans spilling on to the pitch in the after Conor Haughey’s decisive spot kick.
“The biggest night in the club’s history in terms of opposition coming to town and we’ve managed to beat the champions,” boss Matt Lawlor told Sky Sports in the aftermath of his side’s stunning victory.
“I’m a big football fan and I watch National League all the way through to the Premier League, Championship. So for me it was a tough game to prepare for, but I’m just so glad that the lads have the feeling the way they are and took that performance in to make that town, the club, everyone proud.”
Al-Bureij, Gaza Strip – A Sack of Flour, an 11-minute documentary by the emerging filmmaker Mona Abu Qass, draws on her personal experience to examine Israel’s use of starvation against Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave.
The film is one of five documentaries by Palestinian women screened Monday at the opening of the second Gaza International Women’s Film Festival, which also marked the official launch of the Gaza Cinema Academy.
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The event took place at the site of the al-Nakheel Hall in al-Bureij, central Gaza, under the slogan “Women Creating Life from Death”. The hall is destroyed, like the majority of buildings in Gaza, after three years of Israel’s war, which has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.
The film captures Palestinians’ struggle to find food in Gaza, the dangers at aid distribution points and the lives lost while trying to obtain flour.
Through Abu Qass’s own experiences, A Sack of Flour explores how the trauma of hunger continues to affect families even after food becomes available again.
Those experiences have renewed relevance as Israeli restrictions on goods entering Gaza and cuts to food assistance have caused shortages and fears of a return to famine.
“The idea for the film stems from a personal experience and a true story,” Abu Qass told Al Jazeera. “It documents daily life in Gaza, weighed down by bombardment, destruction, siege, hunger, and loss.”
“I want to capture details that reveal suffering and people’s determination to hold on to their life,” she added. “I seek to show reality as people experience it and help viewers understand what the war has done to their relationships, dreams, and hopes.”
Another film, Beyond Silence, by emerging filmmaker and journalist Raghda al-Buhaisi, explores wartime struggles in Gaza for people with disabilities through the story of a deaf artist who never learned to read, write or communicate through sign language. His art studio in southern Gaza’s Rafah was destroyed by Israel, and his parents and several family members were killed.
After being displaced to Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, another family took him in and set up a modest studio by the roadside. His paintings reflect loss and displacement, expressing what words cannot through colour and line.
“I want to highlight the additional challenges people with disabilities face during war, including displacement, family loss, and the destruction of livelihoods,” al-Buhaisi told Al Jazeera. “Art can cross barriers of language and silence, turning an individual experience of pain into a visual message that conveys Gaza’s suffering to the world.”
Alongside those films were three others by emerging Palestinian women filmmakers – Soso: The Lifeline, Remnants of Light, and Dandana. The films document life in Gaza and the suffering brought by war.
Soso: The Lifeline follows an orphaned child and his donkey, who help people survive in Gaza. Remnants of Light follows a filmmaker struggling with the loss of her family and home, while Dandana tells the story of a mother whose eight children were killed, and who turns to Palestinian songs with her surviving family to cope with her grief.
The five documentaries were produced through a filmmaking diploma programme that began in March and brought together 25 young Palestinian women.
Festival director Ezzedine Shallah said the films draw on experiences women and girls lived through during the war, offering visual testimony to daily life and giving women space to tell their stories in their own voices.
“Though their subjects differ, the films turn individual pain into broader human stories, revealing war’s psychological and social scars,” he told Al Jazeera. “They preserve stories that might otherwise never reach the screen, transforming suffering into cinematic testimony and bringing Gaza’s stories to audiences beyond its borders.”
The festival, which runs until October 31, features 73 films from 24 countries and offers a broader platform for filmmakers from Gaza and beyond.
But even with events like the festival, filmmaking in Gaza comes with formidable challenges. The destruction of cultural institutions, scarce equipment, limited funding, power and internet outages, and the pressures of war and displacement have severely restricted opportunities for film production. Women filmmakers also struggle to access training, production opportunities and international festivals.
Filmmaker Rima Mahmoud, a co-founder of the festival, said that war and the Israeli siege on Gaza – which predates 2023 – have hindered young women’s filmmaking, pushing some to use simple methods, self-fund projects and document Gaza’s reality even with the difficulties.
“Despite limited resources, these films deserve international exposure,” Mahmoud said. “Their makers need technical and financial support, translation, and partnerships with festivals and platforms.”
Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, based in Lebanon and another co-founder of the festival, said the films help young women tell their own stories, resist erasure and preserve collective memory, while building skills and accessing work in Gaza or through digital platforms.
The academy has also developed a filmmaking diploma in cooperation with al-Quds Open University and accredited by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
Masri said that the academy is also now trying to help directors reach international festivals.
“We are seeking agreements with distributors to screen these films in educational and cultural institutions outside Palestine, and through international platforms and festivals focused on women’s and human rights,” she said.
“This would bring the voices of Palestinian women to a global audience, shed light on their human experiences and artistic creativity, strengthen the presence of Palestinian cinema internationally, and open new horizons for young female directors to reach global screening platforms and film festivals,” Masri added.
The media reports come a day after Supreme Court ordered Bolsonaro hand over passport as part of money laundering probe.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
A senior US State Department official has said that the Trump administration will issue visas to Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro and his family, allowing them to enter the US after news outlets reported that Bolsonaro had fled Brazil following his loss in the country’s presidential election.
The news came on Tuesday, one day after Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Bolsonaro to turn over his passports as part of a probe into alleged money laundering. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and said on Monday that he would stay in the country and lead the opposition.
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has previously accused members of the Bolsonaro family of courting US interference in Brazilian affairs for their political benefit, called the right-wing senator’s actions shameful.
“This is what the Bolsonaro family is like,” Lula said. “Brazil is their second nation, the US is their first.”
Bolsonaro, the son of former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, initially refused to acknowledge the election results and said he would seek their annulment. His party released a statement on Monday saying it accepted the results of the election, which the conservative candidate lost by more than 4.4 million votes.
US President Donald Trump reacted by casting doubt on the election result, telling reporters it “looked like another rigged election”.
No evidence has emerged that the vote was marred by malfeasance. While critics seized on a last-minute decision to extend polling hours, Lula’s eventual victory was commanding, and the extension was unlikely to change the outcome.
Serbia has released the first footage of its TSMB M-25 heavy self-propelled mortar in action, revealing an unusual artillery system that puts a massive 203mm weapon on a comparatively light, six-wheeled truck. The system is designed to hurl projectiles weighing around 220 pounds at targets up to approximately seven-and-a-half miles away, bringing super-heavy firepower to a platform that looks surprisingly modest for the job.
The Serbian Ministry of Defense published the brief footage in a larger video montage, seen immediately below, but has not disclosed when or where the firing tests took place or what they demonstrated. Regardless, the M-25’s configuration alone makes it stand out.
Tehnološki razvoj odbrambene industrije Srbije i doprinos povećanju borbene moći Vojske Srbije
The Teški Samohodni Minobacač (TSMB, translated as heavy self-propelled mortar) M-25 was developed by Serbia’s state-owned Military Technical Institute and first appeared publicly at the Partner 2025 defense exhibition in Belgrade. Its design lineage stretches back to the Yugoslav M-65 155mm howitzer, itself a licensed copy of the widely used American M114, first introduced in World War II.
The M-25 takes that heritage in a different direction, with a 203mm barrel measuring 24 calibers in length and an automated loading mechanism for mortar projectiles. The mortar barrel has an elevation range from 0° to 75°, and the barrel must return to 0° in elevation for the next round to be loaded from the muzzle end.
The standard 203mm mortar bomb weighs around 220 pounds, including approximately 60 pounds of explosive material. This results in a claimed destruction radius of around 250 feet, using impact fuzing.
The system is intended to fire both high-explosive and concrete-piercing ammunition, making it particularly suited to attacking hardened positions and fortifications. Developers have also provided for rocket-assisted projectiles to extend its range and precision guidance kits to improve the accuracy of compatible rounds.
The weapon is mounted on a FAP 2026 three-axle truck in a 6×6 configuration, a general-purpose off-road type made by Serbian vehicle manufacturer Fabrika automobila Priboj. This platform provides a range of 500 miles and a top speed of 50 miles per hour on the road. The vehicle has an armored cab for a crew of four, while its fire-control suite includes an inertial navigation system, a ballistic computer, communications equipment, and a dedicated gunner’s computer. The same truck has also been adapted to mount a 152mm gun/howitzer, under the name NORA B-39.
The wheeled chassis is the defining feature of the M-25. While a weapon of this size would normally be either towed or mounted on a large tracked vehicle, Serbia has opted for a lighter truck-based arrangement. This offers advantages in road mobility and makes the system easier to move between firing positions, using “shoot and scoot” tactics. A general-purpose truck is cheaper to acquire and operate, and easier to maintain. It can also be more easily transported by air, although out-of-area operations are not generally on the Serbian Armed Forces’ agenda. However, its cross-country performance and overall survivability will be reduced compared to a tracked chassis.
The M-25 is intended to deliver heavy fire against targets such as bunkers and other fortified positions, then relocate before an opponent can respond. Its relatively short stated range compared with many modern 155mm howitzers makes it a specialized system rather than a direct replacement for conventional long-range artillery. Its appeal lies instead in combining a very large projectile with a comparatively compact and mobile platform.
Mortars have a long and grim history in the Balkans, particularly during the wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The steep trajectories of mortar rounds made them useful in the region’s mountainous terrain and in fighting around fortified positions and during sieges, while their ability to deliver indirect fire meant crews could engage targets without a direct line of sight.
As far as we know, the M-25 is the only 203mm mortar in current development and/or production. There are a few larger mortars on mobile platforms, notably Russia’s 2S4 Tyulpan, a 240mm self-propelled mortar, but this is on a significantly bigger tracked chassis.
At approximately 19 metric tons, the M-25 is substantially lighter than the 2S4 Tyulpan, which weighs around 27.5 metric tons. Its tracked platform reflects a very different approach to moving super-heavy mortar firepower around the battlefield. The Tyulpan can deliver a 300-pound standard mortar round to a range of around six miles, or up to 11 miles away when using rocket-assisted rounds.
Serbia claims the M-25 has a rate of fire of up to three rounds per minute, thanks to the automated loading mechanism. In contrast, the Tyulpan can hurl a maximum of one round every 62 seconds. Indeed, its sluggish rate of fire is one of the reasons that saw it fall from more widespread Russian use.
There are still important unknowns. The newly released footage does not establish whether the advertised firing rate was achieved, how the weapon performs under sustained fire, or whether the system has entered operational service. Serbia has shown the M-25 at an exhibition and now in live-fire footage, but detailed test results have not been made public.
Still, the concept is striking: a high-mobility wheeled truck carrying a 203mm mortar is a distinctly different take on super-heavy firepower, but one that might just find a niche in the Balkan environment.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com
US president seeks to underscore Latin American military operation, as Iran war causes midterm affordability threat.
United States President Donald Trump has featured a ship he said is carrying Venezuelan oil during a visit to Texas, where he will hold two rallies one after the other in the hopes of boosting Republican chances in a make-or-break Senate race.
Speaking at Corpus Christi on Tuesday on his fourth trip to the state this campaign season, Trump pointed to a ship in the distance.
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“It’s got 1 million barrels of oil on it from Venezuela,” he said, adding the cargo was “thanks to our big victory in our recent war with Venezuela”.
The emphasis on the oil comes as US consumers have wrestled with high fossil fuel prices amid the US-Israel war with Iran, a key issue in the upcoming midterm elections.
“We’re celebrating the greatest oil victory in history,” Trump said.
It was not immediately clear under what pretext the oil had been shipped or whether the details Trump gave were correct. The US had received crude oil shipments from Venezuela before the US abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on January 3, but those transfers have increased this year.
In August, the Trump administration announced a deal giving the Pentagon a 35 percent stake in North America Blue Energy Partners, a new company overseeing 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The White House said in September that the first shipment from the deal would likely hit US reserves in November, although experts have cast doubt on whether the deal will have any short-term impact.
Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Trump referred to the shipment as a “gift” from Venezuela. The country’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, has not commented on the specific shipment.
At the rally, Trump also floated making Venezuela the “51st state”.
Trump’s frequent visits to Texas underscore the state’s significance for Republicans.
Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary over incumbent Senator John Cornyn. The scandal-ridden Paxton now faces a punishing contest against Democrat James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian.
Polls have regularly shown Talarico leading Paxton, although that lead has largely remained within the margin of error. A RealClearPolitics average of polls had Talarico leading Paxton by 1.7 points.
Talarico’s victory would mark a sea change in a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.
It would also represent a major rebuke to Trump, whose Republican Party is fighting to maintain its narrow control of the Senate. Democrats are widely projected to take control of the US House of Representatives in the November 3 vote.
Talarico has used the final stretch of the race to focus on years of corruption allegations against Paxton, while drawing a contrast to voters’ affordability concerns.
“Ken Paxton represents everything that’s wrong with this broken, corrupt system,” he said during an event in Houston last week.
Paxton has sought to portray Talarico as too “radical” for Texas, saying his policies would hurt a state known for its pro-business policies.
Trump and other administration officials, notably Vice President JD Vance, have regularly focused on cultural issues, distorting Talarico’s past comments on transgender rights and border security.
Speaking in Corpus Christi, Trump repeated those attacks and urged his supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot.
“If you go out, and if you all vote, we win in a landslide,” Trump said.
Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. Why does the US keep going to war, and can voters stop it?
The United States is once again at war in the Middle East, and most Americans say it isn’t worth the cost.
Al Jazeera’s Josh Rushing asks why the US keeps fighting: oil, a $2.4 trillion defence industry, lobbyists or a political system that rarely holds anyone to account?
Retired General Mark Kimmitt and journalist Spencer Ackerman debate why, and whether voters can end the forever wars.
Contributors:
Mark Kimmitt – Retired US Army brigadier general and former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs
Spencer Ackerman – Journalist, author and writer of the Forever Wars newsletter
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
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BREAKINGBREAKING,
The official results are due to be published on November 4, more than a week after the vote.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
Exit polls following what many pundits and voters have billed as the most pivotal election in Israel’s history indicate no clear winner in the hard-fought contest.
According to exit polls, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc is projected to secure 50 seats, while the bloc led by opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot is expected to win 52 or 53 seats. Sixty-one seats are needed to form a majority government. Arab parties are projected to collectively win 18 seats.
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Polling stations closed at 10pm (20:00 GMT) local time. Preliminary results are expected on Wednesday, followed by a final tally on Friday. The official results are due to be published on November 4, eight days after the vote.
Exit polls are based on interviews with voters immediately after they have cast their ballots. The interviews help project the election’s outcome and have in previous elections tended to anticipate the results closely.
Voter turnout in the Israeli election reached 74.3 percent as of 8pm (18:00 GMT), according to data released by the Central Elections Committee. By comparison, turnout in the 2022 election was 70.63 percent.
Polls predicted a tight race between incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leading opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Yashar party and a former army chief.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee rejected a request by Netanyahu’s Likud Party to extend voting hours.
The election is the first since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza three years ago, following Hamas-led attacks on the country, and is widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s handling of the events on October 7, 2023 and the conflicts that followed.
Arsenal’s match with Fleetwood Town in the last-16 of the Carabao Cup was delayed for more than eight minutes after a drone was flown above the stadium during the match.
Referee Michael Salisbury stopped play with one minute and 40 seconds on the clock after spotting the drone flying above the pitch while Arsenal waited to take a free-kick at Highbury Stadium.
The game was halted while the referee spoke to the management and staff on both benches with police also investigating.
The match got back underway with 10 minutes on the clock; the commentator on Sky saying police had located the drone operator.
More to follow.
United States Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has sparked uproar with comments he has made denying Arab contributions to mathematics, science and literature.
In a high-voltage rant on Monday, the US health secretary said, “There’s five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
RFK Jr, who has been involved in anti-vaccine campaigns and has promoted a debunked theory linking vaccines to autism, made the comments during a US election campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan while supporting Republican nominee Mike Rogers, who is up against Arab-American Democrat nominee Abdul El-Sayed, in a tightly contested battle for Michigan’s Senate seat in next week’s midterm elections.
Critics said the comments were racist, Islamophobic and factually inaccurate, pointing to modern and historic Arab innovation in multiple fields.
Here’s how Arabs have made vital contributions to the human understanding of maths, science and literature through the centuries.
The period known as the Islamic Golden Age, from around 750 AD to 1258 AD, produced many key Arab contributions to medicine at a time when Europe was said to be in its Dark Ages. During this time, Arabic was the language of science and scholarship.
1st-4th centuries: The numerals 0-9, which originated in ancient India, were adopted by Arab mathematicians who spread them across the world. They displaced Roman numerals as a more advanced number system in mathematics.
8th century: Arab and Persian mathematicians were studying the ancient Indian concept of zero in mathematics in Baghdad, long before the Europeans. The number zero was crucial to the development of mathematics – but was absent from widely used Roman numerals in Europe.
813-833: The Arab mathematician Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi – one of those studying the number 0 – is often referred to as the “father of algebra” as he was the first to treat the method as a separate mathematical discipline in his work, Al-Jabr. This method provided the first linear and quadratic equations, still used as a core part of mathematical study today.
965-1040: Ibn al-Haytham, known as the “father of modern optics”, explained the role that light entering the eye plays in human vision. He was born in Basra in Iraq, but spent most of his working life in Cairo attending to noble families.
936-1013: Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, called “the father of modern surgery”, was considered the greatest surgeon in the Middle Ages. He wrote a 30-volume encyclopaedia detailing medical practices and designed and illustrated many surgical instruments. Born in Azahara, in Andalusia, he was known as Abulcasis in Europe.
9th century: Fatima al-Fihri founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco. It is often cited as the oldest continually operating university.
1213-1288: Ibn al-Nafis described pulmonary circulation – the process by which blood passes through the lungs – several centuries before Europeans understood it. He wrote more than 110 volumes of work on surgery, ophthalmology and philosophy while working as a chief physician in Egypt.
915-965: Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, regarded as the greatest poet in the Arabic language, was Yemeni and grew up immersed in Bedouin Arabic culture. He wrote in classical Arabic and many of his verses became sayings used in everyday Arabic.
1100-1165: Muhammad al-Idrisi was a geographer known for making the Tabula Rogeriana, one of the most accurate and detailed medieval world maps, and a high point of Islamic geography. He was born in Ceuta in Morocco.
In more modern times, RFK Jr’s assertion that Arabs do not win Nobel prizes for science and literature is very far from the truth. Here are some of the highlights:
Peter Medawar won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for work on for work on acquired immune tolerance, which underpins organ transplantation. He was born in Brazil to a Lebanese father.
Michael Atiyah won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award for mathematics, in 1966. He was born in London to a Lebanese father and Scottish mother. Educated in Egypt, he spent much of his childhood in Cairo and Khartoum.
Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work, including the Cairo Trilogy, which the Swedish Academy said formed “an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind”. He is still the only winner of the prize who wrote in Arabic.
Elias James Corey won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing retrosynthetic analysis. He is an American of Lebanese descent.
Egyptian Ahmed Zewail won the Wolf Prize for Chemistry. The Wolf Prize is an international award which has been presented to living scientists and artists every year in Israel by the Wolf Foundation since 1978.
Zewail also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for pioneering femtochemistry, which is the study of chemical reactions on extremely short timescales. He also won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1993.
Egyptian scientist Mohamed ElBaradei shared his Nobel Prize with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he led.
Omar M Yaghi, born in Jordan to a Palestinian refugee family, won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for work on metal-organic frameworks. He shared the prize with Japan’s Makoto Fujita. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) condemned his acceptance of the award because the prize is awarded by an Israeli foundation.
Moungi Bawendi won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. He was born in France to a Tunisian father, but based in the US.
Yaghi also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks. These are crystalline materials with large internal cavities that can capture and store gases, harvest water from air, and trap pollutants. He shared the prize with Susumu Kitagawa from Japan and Richard Robson from Australia.
In a post on X, vaccine scientist Peter Hotez of the Texas Medical Center weighed in on historical Arab scholarship, saying, “It was the Arab scientists of the Middle Ages who kept Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen alive to hand it down in the Renaissance.”
Broadcaster Mehdi Hasan described RFK Jr’s comments as “racist” and, in a post on X, wrote: “One of the men who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last year was a Palestinian-American, Omar Yaghi.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for the US health secretary to be removed. It said: “To stand on a public stage as a sitting US cabinet official and dehumanise half a billion people – and millions of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans – with fabricated, white supremacist talking points is utterly disqualifying for public office. His sweeping erasure of Arab contributions to humanity is not only maliciously false, but it also fans the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate at a time when communities are already vulnerable to bigoted attacks from other public officials nationwide.”
An experienced keeper at a Dutch zoo has died days after being mauled in a leopard enclosure, the safari park has confirmed.
The woman, who had worked at Beekse Bergen park for 40 years, was caring for two Persian leopards in an indoor facility when she was attacked on Saturday.
She sustained injuries to her head and neck but despite undergoing surgery, the park confirmed her death on Tuesday.
An independent investigation will be launched into the incident, it added in a statement.
Announcing her death, Beekse Bergen – in the south of the Netherlands – said the keeper began her career there when she was 17 and had worked there on-and-off for four decades.
“Her passing has deeply affected us all, and our hearts go out to her family, friends, and loved ones. At this moment, our primary focus is on supporting her family and her colleagues,” the statement added.
The two leopards, which are usually kept away from staff, had been brought inside due to bad weather conditions.
It is not clear exactly what happened in the enclosure because there are no CCTV cameras inside.
Local news website NL Times reported that despite her injures she managed to alert colleagues via her walkie-talkie. She was then taken to hospital in a helicopter in a critical condition before she died days later.
A park spokesperson told Omroep Brabant, a local media outlet, that the leopards were behaving naturally and they would not be euthanised.
“They are, and remain, predators.”
Beekse Bergen said it would create a memorial location for guests and staff members to share their condolences.
As Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva celebrated his election victory on Sunday in Sao Paulo, he placed his hand on the head of a man standing beside him and beaming in a green and yellow Brazilian football jersey.
Lula thanked him for his role in the campaign, calling him “our general”.
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Andre Janones, a 42-year-old Brazilian congressman who had spent the final weeks of the presidential run-off building a mass online movement to get Lula re-elected, then embraced the president.
“He played an exponential role in this campaign in lifting the morale of our troops every day, morning, noon and night,” Lula told thousands of supporters who packed Paulista Avenue, the city’s main artery.
Just three weeks earlier, the president seemed to be in trouble. He had finished behind his right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro after the first round of voting, his campaign struggling to keep up with the right’s powerful social media operation.
Janones, who had also helped coordinate Lula’s digital operation in his run-off against Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, was convinced Lula’s campaign needed a change – and that he could help turn things around.
He posted a video declaring, “We are going to win this election. Lula will be re-elected president of Brazil.”
His plan centred on a WhatsApp channel he had launched months earlier.
Called Exercito do Lula, or “Lula’s Army”, it had about 60,000 followers after the first round.
By election day, Lula’s Army had grown to almost 11 million subscribers, with Janones widely credited with helping Lula stage his comeback.
Janones is a lawyer and congressman who grew up in a working-class family in Minas Gerais. He made a name for himself through his social media commentary during Brazil’s 2018 truckers’ strike and was elected to Congress that year.
In 2022, he dropped his own presidential bid to endorse Lula, joining his run-off campaign.
“At the time, he became widely known for employing tactics similar to those used by Bolsonarism, despite operating on the left,” said Viktor Chagas, a professor at Fluminense Federal University who studies digital politics and online campaigning.
Janones coined the term “cultural Janonism” to describe his approach, which relied on urgent messages, memes and calls for supporters to take action, as well as what Chagas described as the occasional use of negative campaigning and “content of questionable origin”.
But the scale of Lula’s Army in 2026 was unprecedented, Chagas said.
In the video declaring that Lula would win, Janones urged supporters to enlist as “soldiers” by posting saluting emojis and joining his WhatsApp channel, where he assigned them what he called “missions”.
The tasks were simple, from recruiting three friends to sharing campaign videos to promoting hashtags.
They came in a relentless stream of messages from Janones himself, often written in capital letters. Supporters couldn’t reply, but they could forward the messages or react with emojis, often doing so in the tens of thousands.
Chagas described the strategy as a form of “electoral gamification”, with Janones setting targets for supporters to reach together.
For Andre Pagliarini, an assistant professor of history and international studies at Louisiana State University and the author of a book on Lula, the appeal of Janones’s approach was giving people something they could actually do to help Lula win.
“It became an organising platform that grew exponentially because it spoke to a desire that many Lula supporters evidently had to do something tangible to defeat Flavio Bolsonaro,” he said.
But the path to victory wasn’t just about mobilising supporters online.
Pagliarini credited the campaign for also finding a more effective way to tell the story of the president’s working-class past.
“The campaign’s mistake in the first round was to present this history as a finished monument, worthy of admiration but distant from the lives of the people it was meant to represent,” he wrote.
After Bolsonaro mocked the president for having nine fingers during the final televised debate, for example, Lula responded by recalling how he lost a finger at 17 while working a night shift at a factory. He then linked his experience to workers injured as a result of employers’ negligence.
“Unlike Flavio, he reminded voters, he knew the world of work because he had lived in it,” said Pagliarini.
After the debate, Janones spread the message online, promoting the hashtag #SomosTodos9Dedos, or “We Are All Nine Fingers”. Supporters shared the slogan, with some posting photographs of their own amputated fingers in solidarity.
Janones had also publicly called for simpler, less polished campaign videos that showed a more relatable side of Lula, drinking coffee, visiting people’s homes and talking to ordinary Brazilians. Around the same time, the campaign started posting more informal, selfie-style videos.
“Lula was looser in his political communication, less mediated,” Pagliarini said.
![Screenshots from Andre Janones’s WhatsApp channel, Exército do Lula, or “Lula’s Army,” show messages urging supporters to gather on São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue to celebrate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s election victory on October 25, 2026 [Exército do Lula]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Untitled-1-21-1793120665.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
It is difficult to establish whether Janones’s digital army actually delivered votes.
“I am not sure there is a way to empirically connect the group to the outcome,” Pagliarini said.
But he believes Janones helped turn the campaign around.
“Janones himself became a kind of character in the campaign, a cheerleading strategist who seemed confident in a plan that had been missing throughout much of the race,” wrote Pagliarini.
Chagas agreed that it was “difficult to imagine the outcome we achieved without Lula’s Army”, adding that the channel brought together left-wing supporters who had previously been scattered across fragmented online communities, and gave them a way to work together.
The challenge now is keeping that momentum going, Chagas said, pointing to the far right’s use of “permanent campaigning”, maintaining the engagement of supporters between elections.
On election night, at least, Janones kept his soldiers busy.
“EVERYONE TO PAULISTA TO CELEBRATE,” he wrote, urging them to gather on Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue. “NOW.”
Later, he asked them not to go to sleep, adding that he’d let them go once he got back from the celebrations.
“Then we’ll discuss a few days off for you,” he joked in a message that drew more than 225,000 reactions.
Two British nationals have appeared in court in connection to an alleged Iran-linked plot at RAF Fairford last month.
Mohmed Abdulkarim, 24, from Westminster, London, has been charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service, which police earlier said they believed to be Iran.
Nouman Essghir, also 24 and from Westminster, has been charged with entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the UK on 22 August – weeks before he was arrested near the airbase in Gloucestershire alongside four other men.
The pair appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
A major incident was declared after three suspicious vans were seen near the US-operated airbase on 27 September.
Dozens of residents were evacuated and a large cordon was put up in the area around the base. No explosive materials were found in the vans by police but a quantity of petrol was seized.
The court heard vans bearing the logo “Fuel2You” were spotted close to the base.
In the early hours, the vans came across a Ministry of Defence Police cordon and re-routed to another location.
Police arrived and arrested five men. They later revealed that one had called 999 and reported what was going on.
During the hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Essghir stood in the dock wearing a grey sweatshirt and confirmed his name and address.
Abdulkarim is charged with helping with the plot.
He appeared in court in a wheelchair wearing a checked shirt, jeans and a baseball cap. He confirmed his name and address.
Both men are charged under the 2023 National Security Act.
Essghir has been remanded in custody, while Abdulkarim has been granted bail with conditions including the surrender of his passport.
The case will be next heard at the Old Bailey on 20 November.
A fire has torn through Guryong Village, Seoul’s last shanty-town, forcing more than 100 people to evacuate, though no injuries have been reported. The shanty-town is vulnerable to fires because of its tightly packed homes and highly flammable building materials.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
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The deportation was the first of its kind since a mass border crossing into the territory from Morocco in July.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
Spain has deported more than a dozen migrants from its North African enclave of Ceuta, prompting criticism from Amnesty International, which said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s left-wing government was endangering their human rights.
It was the first deportation of its kind since a mass border crossing into the territory from Morocco in July.
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The Spanish Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that it had deported the migrants from Ceuta after their asylum applications were rejected, and that Morocco had agreed to receive them.
Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) told the Reuters news agency that 16 people from African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries had been deported.
About 80,000 people entered from Morocco over a 48-hour period in late July. At least 100 people died during the mass crossing into the autonomous city, which covers just 18.5 square kilometres (7.2sq miles) and has a population of about 80,000.
The crisis has evolved into a major political challenge for Sanchez, who is seeking re-election in snap polls scheduled for November 29.
Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered across Spain in recent months to denounce the government’s handling of the situation. Meanwhile, right-wing parties have used the crisis to attack Sanchez.
The leader of the far-right Vox Party, Santiago Abascal, has branded the prime minister a “traitor”.
Amnesty International has warned that the human rights of those deported from Ceuta on Tuesday could be at risk.
“Spain, despite its [progressive] speeches in Europe, is not ensuring that human rights guarantees are met for people who cross its borders in Ceuta and Melilla,” said Virginia Alvarez, an Amnesty International researcher.
“Morocco does not respect many human rights.”
However, Madrid disputes the rights group’s accusations. In a statement, the interior ministry told Reuters that the European Union considers Morocco to be a safe country, adding that deportations are carried out “with all the necessary safeguards”.
Most of those who entered Ceuta in late July left within days. However, about 8,000 migrants still remain. Some are sleeping on the streets, while others are being housed by Spain, charities and civil society groups.
When Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva scored his surprise election victory on Sunday, winning an unprecedented fourth term in office, his supporters were euphoric.
The joy they felt over Lula’s victory has echoed across large parts of the Global South – and could restore some hope to the grouping that has sought to give emerging countries a greater stake on the world stage, the BRICS alliance.
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At a time when United States President Donald Trump is seeking to reassert US power and has cast BRICS as a threat to US interests, Lula’s victory in Brazil offers the alliance a measure of political reassurance, experts say.
A win by his rival, Flavio Bolsonaro, could have threatened Brazil’s commitment to the bloc, given his links to Trump and calls to reconsider the country’s role in BRICS.
Instead, Lula’s return gives the grouping one fewer reason to fear a retreat from within – as it continues to help forge a more multipolar future for a world dominated by the US.
As Esmat Zaidan, professor of public policy at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, told Al Jazeera, “The victory of Lula is important to BRICS’ political continuation in the current climate as it seeks to increase the bloc’s role and make it stronger in global governance.”
It was clear to analysts that Lula’s win would safeguard the continuation of the BRICS alliance, while under Bolsonaro, its future may have floundered.
Lula himself was one of the architects of the bloc when it was founded nearly two decades ago, and has sought to advance its role on the global stage.
According to Zaidan, Bolsonaro’s desire to reconsider Brazil’s participation in BRICS and instead pursue closer alignment with Washington would have weakened the bloc’s political cohesion and potentially slowed cooperation on trade and financial reform.
Bolsonaro had reportedly also promised the US Trade Representative that Brazil’s Pix instant payment system would stay out of non-Western payment schemes, as the US seeks to safeguard global dominance of the dollar, said Imran Khalid, a geostrategic analyst and senior fellow at Foreign Policy in Focus.
“BRICS makes decisions by consensus, so one unwilling founding member can slow everything down from the inside. That was the real risk, more than Brazil walking out,” Khalid told Al Jazeera.
Still, Zaidan cautioned that continuity of the alliance does not amount to total unity within.
“The member countries of BRICS have distinctly different economic interests and geopolitical goals,” he said. “Therefore, while Lula’s victory makes it easier for the BRICS bloc to continue working towards a common agenda, his election did not eliminate these distinct differences.”
Guy Burton, a geopolitical and policy analyst, agreed that the bloc’s differences will remain unchanged with Brazil’s election result.
“BRICS matters because it represents a large share of the world’s population, economy and trade. But it has never really acted as a political unit. Its members are too different,” he said.
“The bloc now includes Iran and the UAE, which sit on opposite sides of the current war. That tells you how limited its cohesion is,” Burton added.
The apparent relief in the Global South to Lula’s win reflects a broader concern among many emerging economies about their exposure to decisions made in Washington, “particularly regarding trade, tariffs and international economic relations,” said Zaidan.
“For these countries, the issue is not necessarily opposition to the US. It is about having greater room to make independent decisions and avoiding excessive dependence on any single global power,” he said.
Khalid pointed to China and Russia’s support for Lula, with Xi Jinping backing him against outside interference, and the Kremlin praising his work for the BRICS alliance.
“Most of these countries do not want a fight with the United States; they want the freedom to say no to Washington without being punished for it,” he explained.
“A strong Brazil inside BRICS helps protect that freedom.”
Lula has long advocated for a more multipolar international system, in which emerging economies have a stronger voice when it comes to shaping international rules and institutions, added Zaidan.
Burton said even countries and regions beyond the Global South are looking to lessen their reliance on Washington, including Europe, which is building its own security against Russia and in support of Ukraine.
“So states, whether in the Western camp or not, have accepted that they must pursue their own interests. That means working with whoever they can. We are moving into a genuinely multipolar world,” he said.
Still, BRICS’ diversity and its member states’ varied interests have meant it has never been a coherent counterweight to the West, experts said.
Many in the alliance maintain strong economic and security relationships with the US, said Zaidan.
“I would see Lula’s victory as strengthening the case for strategic autonomy rather than confrontation with Washington,” said the professor.
“BRICS is potentially more effective when it expands the choices available to its members, rather than defining itself simply through opposition to the United States.”
Burton agreed, pointing to Brazil’s changing ties with Trump over the years.
“Russia and China are the obvious US rivals. But India under Modi long had a close relationship with Washington, and with Trump in particular, even if that has weakened recently,” he said.
“Brazil, too, was close to Trump under Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio Bolsonaro’s father, when he was in office.”
Among the BRICS’ many ambitions is to promote trade in local currencies rather than the US dollar – and Lula’s victory could provide the political foundation to build on these efforts, said Zaidan, given that Brazil is one of the largest trading economies in the bloc.
Khalid said that after the alliance scrapped the idea of a common BRICS currency at its most recent summit in New Delhi in September, its ambition for trade in local currencies has become far more viable.
“If the [BRICS’ New Development Bank] moves towards its goal of 30 percent of lending in member currencies, and Brazil and China settle more trade in reais and yuan as they agreed in 2023, reliance on the dollar falls step by step, without an open confrontation,” he explained.
But Zaidan said that political will alone is not enough.
“Countries also need reliable payment infrastructure, sufficient currency liquidity, appropriate financial regulations, and businesses willing to use these arrangements,” he said.
For now the dollar reigns supreme in foreign exchange transactions, and there may be no tipping point for another decade or so, Burton said.
Ultimately, though, Lula’s victory could help BRICS move from political discussions towards more practical financial cooperation, while reducing dollar dependence will be “gradual, uneven and driven as much by economic feasibility as by geopolitical ambition”, said Zaidan.
How Washington reacts to this is another variable; Trump’s government sits at the contradiction of wanting to remain the world’s superpower, while also retreating to a more protectionist America-first role, said Burton.
“Developments such as Lula’s re-election will only sharpen the pressures already building in the Global North,” said the expert.
Almost 45 percent of Israelis had cast a ballot by mid-afternoon, but questions have been raised about possible voter suppression in Arab towns.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
Almost 45 percent of Israeli voters had cast a ballot by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, according to Israel’s Central Elections Committee, marking the highest election turnout by 2pm (12:00 GMT) in 50 years.
The figure was 6 percent higher than at the same time in the last elections in 2022.
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Mitchell Barak, a pollster and former aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Al Jazeera that voter turnout “is really high and that’s good”.
“I think … it will probably pass its historic peak in ‘73 – when Israel was also involved in a huge war – so draw what conclusion from that you will,” he added.
The election is largely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s handling of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks and the wars that followed, the most intense period of combat for Israel since the 1973 surprise military campaign by Egypt and Syria.
“Those numbers are going to help the incumbent parties,” Barak said, “as the 3.25 percent threshold a party needs to get into the Knesset remains, the number of votes you need to meet that threshold increases dramatically.”
Israeli officials noted that several polling stations had faced exceptionally long lines, which were attributed to high voter turnout despite rainy and blustery weather in parts of the country, and a flood warning in some areas.
In a message more than five hours after polls opened, Netanyahu urged supporters to vote, saying turnout was high among his opponents on the left and among Palestinian citizens of Israel, about a fifth of the population.
“We need it to be high too. You all need to stream to the polls,” he said. “This is a fateful moment.”
Netanyahu had repeatedly warned supporters of the prospect of high turnout among Palestinian citizens in Israel ahead of the vote, seeking to mobilise his base under the slogan “the right or Palestine”.
Those voters were casting ballots in “unprecedented” numbers, Palestinian candidate Ahmed Tibi said.
Netanyahu and his main rival Gadi Eisenkot have ruled out partnering with Arab parties, citing a lack of shared values, although some possible scenarios envision them propping up a minority government to ensure Netanyahu is removed from office.
Meanwhile, an Israeli rights group has filed a complaint with the country’s election commission warning that widespread delays could be suppressing the vote among Israeli Palestinians.
Though delays could be a result of high voter turnout, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in its complaint to the Central Elections Committee that delays had been reported in at least 18 communities. It asked the committee to investigate “whether these delays are deliberate.”
The ACRI also reported “a large presence” of police and National Guard officers at a polling station in the Negev Desert, raising concerns that officers were using crowd control as a pretext to prevent people from entering to vote.
The United Kingdom’s King Charles lll is travelling to the Bahamas on Tuesday, where he will begin a nine-day tour of the Caribbean.
The tour will take him to the Bahamas, Guyana, and Antigua and Barbuda, where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) from November 1-4.
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This comes as demands for reparations over Britain’s notorious role in the slave trade grow louder, and as the monarchy faces questions about its future in the region.
So what is the significance of this tour? And what does the Caribbean want?
Here’s what we know.
King Charles will visit three countries in nine days.
His tour begins on Tuesday with the archipelagic country of the Bahamas, where he will be staying for three days.
Then he will make his way to Guyana, a former British colony that had more than 100,000 slaves when the trade was abolished in 1807.
After two days in Guyana, where he is expected to meet the president and elected leaders of Amerindian villages, he will head to Antigua and Barbuda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
The meeting, from November 1-4, is expected to include discussions about the environment and trade and development, although the question of British reparations for slavery is also likely to feature.
Government officials in the Bahamas and in Antigua and Barbuda – both of which are part of the British Commonwealth with King Charles as their ultimate head of state – have signalled that they want to become republics. Guyana gained independence from the UK in 1966, and has a president as its head of state.
Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali said in an interview with ITV News that while Charles “rightfully” recognised slavery as the “darkest days in human history” during a visit to Barbados in 2021 when he was still the prince of Wales, an apology should be his next step.
“You exploited the region. You destroyed lives. You created underdevelopment,” Ali said, in a reference to the lingering legacy of the British Empire and the slave trade.
In 2023, a Lord Ashcroft Poll revealed that 51 percent of surveyed respondents in the Bahamas wanted to become a republic, while 27 percent preferred to retain the British monarchy as head of state.
Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, chair of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, was critical of the king ahead of his arrival. “Why do we still have a king? What does this person really represent to us? Why is he coming and how will that benefit us?” she asked.
Jamaica, which is not on the itinerary for this trip by King Charles, made its stance clear in September, when it filed a $10bn slavery reparations petition in London, addressing it to the king.
That was the first time a British Commonwealth state has taken legal action pursuing “the cause of reparatory justice”, as the Jamaican delegation called it.
The petition is due to be heard by a UK privy council in March next year. The UK has, so far, refused to formally apologise or pay reparations for slavery.
Also in September, Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) Secretary-General Carla Barnett said reparations are “fundamentally about justice”.
“It is about recognition, accountability and transformation, and about building a just and equitable future for the descendants of those who, as the chattel of colonial owners, endured untold suffering, loss of life and freedom,” she said.
The transatlantic slave trade was recently declared the “gravest crime against humanity” in a United Nations resolution in March this year.
The last time a British royal visited Jamaica was when Prince William and Kate Middleton, then the duke and duchess of Cambridge, toured the island in 2022 during their Caribbean Platinum Jubilee tour.
The more memorable moment of the trip was when the couple was pictured shaking hands with Jamaican children with a fence separating them, which many criticised for being “tone-deaf”.
The meeting in Antigua and Barbuda is expected to cover climate resilience as well as trade and development.
Leaders and representatives of 56 Commonwealth countries will be attending. Many want an apology for slavery from the king, but Buckingham Palace recently announced that will not be happening.
“The visit programme will…not shy away from ‘the darkest days of our past’, as his majesty has described them, but – in keeping with the wishes of our host nations – it will principally be oriented to the vibrant present and promising future of each country,” a palace spokesperson said in a statement.
The palace added that it is “important” to acknowledge the “creative” ways that Charles has tried to right “enduring inequalities”.
The chair of the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Afrikan Reparations, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, said the royal family and the UK government had failed to recognise the demands of those wanting reparations.
“I think it would be wrong to think that we can continue with platitudes. You’ve got ‘atrocity’, ‘deep regret’, ‘sorrow’, and now they’re going to say ‘darkest days’,” she said. “I think the king needs to realise that people wouldn’t keep raising it if what he was doing was anywhere near enough.
“You can tell that the Commonwealth means something to the monarchy, and I’m sure he would not want to be the monarch under which it crumbles.”
Strikes hit a major bridge in the Ukrainian capital as leaders push for ‘direct discussions’ to end the war.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
Russia has attacked transport infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital, targeting a major bridge, as the leaders of Finland and Norway held a rare call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a separate one with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Officials in Kyiv said the South Bridge was hit in overnight attacks on the city that included 16 ballistic missiles and more than 280 drones. Zelenskyy said Russian forces struck again while emergency crews were still dealing with the aftermath of the initial strikes.
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“This is a serious escalation in Russia’s campaign targeting our logistics,” he said.
![A resident walks under a bridge damaged by shrapnel during an overnight Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, October 27, 2026 [Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-10-27T122545Z_927097703_RC2NBOA438GF_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-ATTACK-KYIV-1793104301.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
Russian attacks also caused deaths and injuries in the cities of Kharkiv and Pavlohrad.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Telegram that its forces had targeted transport infrastructure in Kyiv and a logistics hub in the Kharkiv region, along with industrial sites and cargo vessels it said were serving military purposes.
Officials in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region said a drone strike on a bus killed one person and injured 30 others.
One person was also killed and six others were wounded in a drone attack on the Russian city of Bryansk, near the Ukrainian border.
The attacks come as the warring sides prepare for talks. On Friday, Kyiv and Moscow said they had agreed to hold United States-mediated technical meetings in Abu Dhabi in early November.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store called Putin from Helsinki on Tuesday to convey messages on future negotiations ahead of the Abu Dhabi meetings, according to a statement from both governments.
Zelenskyy, who spoke to the pair afterwards, said on X that they had told Putin real steps were needed to de-escalate attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities and infrastructure. He said they also discussed preparations for the November talks.
“There must be peace, de-escalation is needed, and Russia must stop dragging out the war,” he said.
In the Finnish-Norwegian statement, Stubb said the war’s outcome would directly affect the security of Finland and Norway, both of which border Russia, and of Europe more widely.
“Ending the war requires direct discussions,” he said.
Store said the two leaders had stressed the importance of de-escalation during the call.
Both leaders said they spoke for their own countries, not Europe, and that Finnish and Norwegian support for Ukraine would continue.
Most Western European leaders have avoided direct contact with Putin since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
The calls come amid a renewed US push to end the war. The two governments described Tuesday’s call, held in consultation with Ukraine, as a follow-up to talks in Oslo on October 20 with Zelenskyy and US special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff met Putin in St Petersburg the next day, after which the Kremlin said it was ready to resume US-mediated talks with Kyiv that stalled in February.
US President Donald Trump has also credited his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, with securing a localised ceasefire in the southern Kherson region, which took effect on Tuesday to allow aid into the Russian-controlled town of Oleshky.