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BREAKINGBREAKING,

Comey, who was fired during Trump’s first term, has been accused of unlawfully divulging national security information

James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is facing a third set of criminal charges under the administration of United States President Donald Trump.

On Monday, sealed documents came to light showing that the Trump administration accused Comey of two counts related to the unlawful dissemination of “information related to national defence”.

Comey, a high-profile Trump critic, has not been indicted in the case. He has denied any wrongdoing.

But it is the third time the Trump administration has sought to level a criminal case against the former FBI director since the president returned to office in January 2025.

In a video on the online platform Substack, Comey once again denounced the Trump administration’s attempts to prosecute him as a campaign of political retribution.

“Well, now they’re back again. it would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to,” Comey said.

“Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent, and I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”

He also noted that Trump is only midway through his second term, and he hinted that he expects more criminal charges to come.

“The next couple years are going to be hard for all of us,” Comey added. “It’s really important that we stand straight and keep the faith in America.”

More details to come.

No single Argentine capability shaped British planning during the 1982 South Atlantic conflict more than the pairing of the Dassault Super Étendard strike fighter and its deadly AM39 Exocet anti-ship missile. Against that threat, the British launched a series of special forces operations, all with the same objective: kill the Argentine pilots and destroy their aircraft and missiles before they could be used again. Together, the strike fighter and missile pairing had proven to be the biggest threat to the Royal Navy task force that had been sent to recapture the islands.

Five Super Étendard aircraft and five AM39 Exocet missiles had been delivered to Argentina before a French embargo took hold. The jets were flown by the Argentine Navy’s 2nd Naval Fighter and Attack Squadron out of Río Grande, on Tierra del Fuego, a region at South America’s southernmost tip, shared by Chile and Argentina. The Super Étendard/Exocet combination had already cost the British the destroyer HMS Sheffield on May 4 and the container ship Atlantic Conveyor on May 25.

The special forces operations were broken down into four phases — named PLUM DUFF, MIKADO, KETTLEDRUM, and IMPI — the last of which is the least well-documented, and the focus of this article.

PLUM DUFF was the insertion phase and was a reconnaissance mission. On May 16, an RAF Hercules airdropped eight special forces troops onto RFA Fort Austin to form a recce party. On the night of May 17/18, a Sea King HC4, ZA290, lifted off from the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible for a one-way flight to Tierra del Fuego, where the men were to observe Río Grande and report back. The patrol was set down far from the objective and never completed the reconnaissance; the helicopter crew flew on into Chile, where the aircraft was deliberately burnt to try and hide the evidence, while they tried to evade capture.

MIKADO was the planned attack phase, and it depended on that missing intelligence. Two Hercules were to air-land up to 70 men of B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service (SAS), directly on Río Grande — the air operation order of May 19 also named Río Gallegos, further up the Argentine coast, as an alternative. The men would destroy the Super Étendards and their Exocets on the ground, kill the pilots, and then withdraw overland into Chile. Commander Task Force 317, at Northwood, accepted from the outset that the mission could well cost both Hercules.

The aircrew did not refuse the task, but they were blunt about what it demanded: formation landing by two heavy transports on a possibly heavily defended, icy military runway, with a probable 20-knot tailwind, at night and on passive night-vision goggles in minimum light levels, with intelligence that was inadequate to support any air-land option at all. The RAF planning team recommended an airdrop as the better way to maintain a covert posture, and the Senior Air Staff Officer at Headquarters 38 Group warned the Air Commander to watch for overambitious schemes coming out of the SAS.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense formally cancelled MIKADO on June 4.

KETTLEDRUM was planned as the third of the set. It was aimed at Puerto Deseado, Santa Cruz Province of Argentina, and would have inserted a Special Boat Service party (SBS, the Royal Marines’ special forces unit) from the submarine HMS Onyx — a boat that will reappear before the end of this story.

None of the three was executed as planned.

Less well-known is that the cancellation of MIKADO produced a fourth project: Operation IMPI, named after a Zulu fighting force.

Cancelling MIKADO did not mean the wider operation was over. Also on June 4, the U.K. Ministry of Defense tasked CTF 317 to produce a new plan for special forces to destroy the combat effectiveness of the Super Étendards.

CTF 317’s staff went to work on what became IMPI. The planning document, Ops 1/3, is dated June 14 — the day of the Argentine surrender in the islands. In broad terms, the objective was to be attacked by special forces arriving both by air and by sea.

That much has been known, in fragments.

What has not been published until now is the fact that the operation had already been resourced.

At 2240Z on June 12, Maj. Gen. Jeremy Moore, commanding the land forces as CTG 317.1, signalled Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward’s battle group (CTG 317.8), with Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse at Northwood (CTF 317) and Commodore Michael Clapp’s amphibious group (CTG 317.0) as information addressees. The message called for B Squadron, 22 SAS, to be made available for operations as soon as possible: cover was needed against rapid developments of an unfavorable nature in West Falkland (Gran Malvina), and the theatre’s existing special forces assets were fully absorbed supporting the battle for Stanley — and IMPI. Operation IMPI, Moore noted in passing, was by then self-sufficient.

Examining two lines of routine signal traffic settles several things at once. Forty-eight hours before the surrender, IMPI was not a staff study but an operation that had been resourced, and that was enough to consume the theatre’s special forces and justify calling a fresh SAS squadron forward. It is also the only contemporary, operational-level reference to IMPI released so far: everything else comes from a narrative written years afterwards.

As that later narrative describes it, the concept behind IMPI was much leaner than MIKADO. Against two Hercules and 70 men, the air element of IMPI rested on a single RAF Hercules.

The aircraft was to fly from Ascension Island, refuel in flight, and then track east of the Falkland Islands and south of Cape Horn before making a low-level approach below Argentine radar cover for a night landing of special forces at the airfields codenamed San Jose and Arco Iris. Other special forces would have been inserted by sea. That air element, as will be seen, is the most questionable part of the entire file.

The routing is worth attention, because it rules out the intuitive picture of a direct run south from Ascension. Instead, the aircraft would have entered from the least-covered and least-expected direction, coming around the bottom of the continent rather than from the northeast.

The precise identities of San Jose and Arco Iris are not established in the declassified record.

The most likely reading is that they stand for Río Grande and Río Gallegos — the airfields at which the planned navigation ended, and the two named in MIKADO’s air operation order a month earlier. For a document circulating through restricted channels, encrypting the names of the two targets was an elementary precaution, although it should be noted that an operational order would more commonly have designated them simply as Target One and Target Two.

None of this rules out Chilean participation in other phases of the operation; if anything, it suggests it’s more likely. The narrative survives inside a folder classified Top Secret and restricted to the Chief of the Air Staff, whose declared subject is cooperation with Chile. That setting contrasts with the earlier stage of the planning, when mounting and recovering a special forces insertion from a Chilean airfield was considered and expressly discounted on political grounds — much as the use of an Antarctic strip was discounted after the New Zealand High Commission advised that the Antarctic winter precluded safe trans-polar flight.

The maritime half of IMPI can be traced in the records of those who were there.

Navigational support for the final phase was to come from the nuclear attack submarine HMS Conqueror. On June 9, 1982, Conqueror was off Bahía Camarones, working as an advanced picket and hunting targets of opportunity that ventured outside the 12-nautical-mile limit of Argentine territorial waters, with authority to sink any civilian vessel judged to be running to the Falklands/Malvinas; that same morning the sub had in fact entered Argentine territorial waters trying to locate the Argentine Navy’s Task Group 79.2.

That day, Conqueror received preparatory information on IMPI. The sub’s task was to come to periscope depth and act as a radio beacon, giving the Hercules a radio reference against which to refine a navigation that, low and at night, allowed no error. The resulting picture is an odd one: a nuclear submarine deployed on interdiction off the Patagonian coast, turned into a navigation aid for a transport aircraft.

The insertion itself fell to HMS Onyx, the Oberon class diesel-electric boat that had already taken part in Operation KETTLEDRUM and the only conventional submarine Britain deployed to the South Atlantic. On June 14, at 0815Z, lying in San Carlos Water, Onyx embarked a party of 10 men from B Squadron, 22 SAS and the SBS for the mission. The timing matches Moore’s signal of two days earlier almost exactly.

The plan called for the submarine to surface some two nautical miles offshore at night. The troops would close the beach in Gemini inflatables and destroy the objective — aircraft and missiles, if any were there — using anti-tank weapons and demolition charges.

What happened next illustrates the inertia of military machinery. The Argentine surrender in the islands came on that same June 14, hours after the party had gone aboard Onyx. Even so, preparations did not stop at once: on June 15 the embarked troops carried out practice landings from a Gemini. That does not mean IMPI was ever executed — it was not — but it does show that with the strategic outcome already settled, the machine was still rehearsing.

The British record closes the matter with administrative dryness: the surrender of the Argentine forces in the Falkland Islands and the cessation of hostile activity by Argentine aircraft resulted in the operation being cancelled.

The air part of the mission is another matter entirely and is where IMPI becomes more uncertain.

The only link between IMPI and an aircraft is a single paragraph in an RAF historical narrative. The folder that holds it was opened on April 18, 1986 — four years after the war — as an eyes-only briefing file for the Chief of the Air Staff, and the pages appear to be a working draft rather than a finished submission, carrying pencil amendments throughout.

Had a Hercules been earmarked, there is no doubt which unit would have provided it. The Special Forces Flight that runs through the whole chapter — five crews, commanded by a squadron leader, exercising regularly with SAS and SBS Sections — appears with its squadron number blanked out, yet the number surfaces a few paragraphs later, where two of its crews are described training on the probe-fitted Hercules C1P. The unit was No. 47 Squadron, RAF, home-based at Lyneham, and it would keep the special forces air support role for decades afterward.

The men who were at Ascension with that detachment, however, say they had nothing to do with it. Reliable sources with direct knowledge of the flight’s activity state that they never saw the codeword at the time, had never heard of the operation until this file surfaced, and consider it inconceivable that a special forces Hercules and crew could have been earmarked for a mission of this kind without the flight — a community of five crews that has stayed in touch ever since — learning of it at some point in the intervening four decades. By June 14, at most one aerial-refueling-qualified special forces crew was at Wideawake.

That skepticism is reinforced by the way the same narrative handles events those crews lived through. Its account of their own work-up does not survive contact with their logbooks.

For example, a practice infiltration into RAF Laarbruch in Germany that the narrative describes as successful had in fact been detected; the Hercules was notionally shot down about two miles out on the approach. The ramp toes (attachable extension plates located at the very end of the rear cargo ramp) it describes as droppable at 20 to 30 knots were never meant to be lowered with the aircraft moving, which would have been unsafe and risked the airframe. There are other anomalies, too.

A document that misstates the squadron’s own exercises is thin evidence on which to place that squadron over Tierra del Fuego.

What is not in question is what the Special Forces Flight could have done, had it been asked.

By mid-May the flight had two crews qualified in air-to-air refueling — one deployed to Ascension, the other held in the United Kingdom to train the others — flying Hercules C1s fitted with probes and, where the task required it, additional fuel tanks in the fuselage. It had rehearsed stream landings and rapid offloads, parachute insertion below radar cover to a pinpoint coastal feature, as well as flying on ANVIS goggles at 250 feet over sea and land. The goggles themselves were fitted to the crews’ helmets by RAE Farnborough specialists in a single day in mid-April. The reach was demonstrated on May 16, when the sortie that dropped the PLUM DUFF party stayed airborne for 24 hours and five minutes, with Victor tankers refueling some 1,800 miles from Ascension. Almost none of it was routine: nearly everything the force did during the conflict was improvised, at speed, in a matter of weeks.

What never had an answer — not for MIKADO, and not for whatever IMPI intended — was the other end of the problem. Putting men ashore deep inside Argentine territory was the solvable half. Getting an aircraft and its passengers out again after a direct action, from a strip in range of the Argentine Air Force, was not.

All of the above is reconstructed from lateral references: the RAF’s narrative in file AIR 20/13036 at the National Archives, unit records, submarine logs, operational signal traffic, and the accounts of participants.

The specific file — the one holding the complete plan with its annexes, the identification of the airfields and the execution sequence — remains closed. It is DEFE 71/980, titled Operation Corporate (Falklands Conflict): Operation IMPI, retained at the National Archives at Kew with no announced opening date. Until it is released, the air element of IMPI cannot be settled either way.

Forty-four years after the conflict, the last British special operation of the war is still, in essence, a document the British state is not prepared to show. That is not a trivial detail: the files touching on cooperation with Chile have consistently been the most reluctantly opened of all.

What remains is an operation of two halves. One of them is solid: a resourced plan, declared self-sufficient on June 12, with a nuclear submarine briefed to act as a beacon, 10 men of the SAS and the SBS embarked in a conventional submarine in San Carlos on the morning of the surrender, and rehearsals continuing the following day. The other half — a lone Hercules coming round Cape Horn to land on a codenamed strip — rests on one paragraph of a flawed staff narrative and is rejected by the only men who could have flown it.

Either way, the obsession is the same.

Between June 4 and June 14, 1982, while the final battle for Port Stanley/Puerto Argentino was being fought and the Argentine land campaign was collapsing, part of the British planning effort was still revolving around five French-built aircraft, their 10 aircrew, and their missiles. That the plan carries the date of the surrender itself, that it was still being rehearsed the following day, and that it remains classified today says a good deal about how far the British were prepared to go to destroy the Super Étendards and their Exocets.

Contact the editor: thomas@thewarzone.com

Mariano Sciaroni holds a master’s degree in Strategy and Geopolitics as well as a postgraduate diploma in Contemporary Military History, both earned at the Argentine Army’s Military Academy. Sciaroni has published five books and numerous articles on military and naval history. He is also an active member of the Argentine Institute of Military History and serves as a sub-lieutenant in the Argentine Army Reserve (Army Aviation Reserve Squadron). You can find out more about his books here.

El-Sayed’s opponents have sought to link him to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation that was founded in Egypt. Trump designated certain chapters of it as Foreign Terrorist Organisations earlier this year.

Some of the scrutiny of the affiliations of El-Sayed and his family members relates to their writings from more than a decade ago.

A social media post, external in 2012 by El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, appeared to refer to the movement, saying “my family has long been MB”. El-Sayed’s team have previously distanced him from other comments by Abdelhadi.

Critics have also pointed to an opinion piece El-Sayed wrote in Huffington Post in 2011, external about pro-democracy protesters in Egypt. In it, he acknowledged concerns that “supporting democracy in Egypt might allow the country to fall to the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood”.

A year later he also allegedly signed an open letter by Egyptian Americans. In it, the group urged Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to “purge the media and police” following the toppling of the authoritarian regime in the Arab Spring. This letter has not been discussed by El-Sayed.

El-Sayed has previously denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood and has stressed his loyalty to the United States. Asked recently at a town hall event whether he would disavow the organisation, he responded: “Absolutely.”

Also in 2012, El-Sayed’s current opponent Rogers, who was then a US representative and chairing the House Intelligence Committee, appeared to call for cautious engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, telling Reuters, external: “Do I think there are moderate Muslim Brotherhood individuals we are going to have to reach out to and talk to? Yes but we are going to have to watch it carefully.”

HA Hellyer, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and an expert on Egypt, says the row has more to do with Islamophobia on the political right in the US than with the Trump administration’s actual position on the Muslim Brotherhood.

“If the accusation is to be taken sincerely, then [Trump] should surely have a problem with engaging with any government that has engaged positively with the Brotherhood or with groups that are even more to the right of the Brotherhood,” Hellyer told the BBC. “He clearly has not done that.”

The Democratic candidate for the US Senate has been the subject of Islamophobic attacks from Trump.

Detroit, Michigan – Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks against him, saying that they are an attempt to move the attention away from the president’s own record.

At a news conference in Detroit on Monday, El-Sayed said Trump is trying to distract from issues that matter to Americans – including petrol prices and the war on Iran – by accusing the Democratic candidate of being a “jihadist”.

El-Sayed called the attacks “deflections and deceptions based on no evidence”.

“They have nothing to say about solving the problems in your life. They’re not talking about you,” the Democratic candidate said of Republicans.

“They’re not talking about your gas or your groceries … They’re not talking about clean air or clean water. They’re not talking about any of the things that the government is actually supposed to solve. Why? Because Donald Trump has created those problems.”

At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Trump unleashed repeated baseless claims against El-Sayed, accusing the Democrat of wanting to impose “Sharia law” on the country.

“He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate,” Trump said. “I want him to have a metal detector.”

El-Sayed laughed off the suggestion that he may personally be a physical threat to Congress. “He knows I got those Wolverine claws,” he said, a reference to the sports teams of his alma mater, the University of Michigan.

The progressive Democrat and former public health official is locked in a close race with former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, a contest that could decide the Senate majority for the next two years.

Rogers has made unfounded allegations linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah a central point of his campaign.

On Monday, El-Sayed said most Americans reject such attacks.

“There are always a few small people who want to make America small like that. You see them; they’re very loud, and they bark,” El-Sayed said.

“The vast majority of folks in this state believe in a big America. They’re open-minded. They’re big-hearted. And the story of America is those who believe in big America, overcoming the deception, the distraction, the sad attempts of the small-minded to make us small.”

He added that “Michiganders are a lot bigger than that”.

El-Sayed also addressed Trump’s statements mocking his name and misrepresenting it as “Mohamed”.

“My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your gas – not the reason you can’t afford your groceries, not the reason you can’t pay your rent, your mortgage, not the reason you can’t see a doctor,” he said.

Rams get nice win over Raiders

From Gary Klein: What happened in Vegas cannot stay in Vegas.

Not if the Rams want to make a run to the playoffs.

Matthew Stafford must continue to flash his 2025 MVP form. Star receiver Puka Nacua and Rams tight ends must keep carrying a Davante Adams-less receiving corps. Kyren Williams and Blake Corum must build on an impressive combo rushing performance.

And the Rams’ defense must negate potential comebacks.

The Rams displayed all those attributes Sunday in a 35-21 victory over the Raiders at Allegiant Stadium.

Stafford became the franchise’s all-time leader in touchdown passes by connecting with tight end Davis Allen for two and with Nacua for another in a victory that improved the Rams’ record to 3-4.

“A good step in the right direction,” coach Sean McVay said.

Williams and Corum each rushed for a touchdown as the Rams bounced back from consecutive defeats by the Buffalo Bills and Arizona Cardinals to keep alive their turnaround from their third poor start in three seasons.

For the first time in the Rams’ last five games, the outcome did not come down to the final play.

Continue reading here

Rams summary

NFL standings

Luka Doncic scores 52 in Lakers victory

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: Luka Doncic raised three fingers toward the Utah crowd. Fans were left counting more than just his points.

Doncic hit three clutch three-pointers late in the fourth quarter and took a momentum-swinging charge to lead the Lakers to a nail-biting 132-123 victory over the Utah Jazz on Sunday at Delta Center. Doncic led the Lakers (3-0) with 52 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds as the team fought back from an 18-point second-quarter deficit.

Guard Austin Reaves hit a dagger three with 34 seconds remaining to give the Lakers a seven-point lead. As Doncic salted the game away from the free-throw line, he was serenaded with chants of “MVP!” Reaves finished with 29 points.

“Getting MVP chants in someone else’s arena is crazy,” center Walker Kessler said. “But, you know, obviously deserving.”

Kessler knows this arena well. It’s where he spent the first four years of his career. But the center was quiet in his return to Salt Lake City. After he joined the Lakers in a massive sign-and-trade deal that cost the Lakers two first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps and a four-year, $130-million contract, Kessler was held to just two points on one-of-two shooting with seven rebounds.

Continue reading here

Lakers box score

NBA standings

UCLA’s start has a big flaw

From Mirjam Swanson: In the most complimentary way, I ask: What the heck was that first half, UCLA?

Yes, really. With Saturday’s 28-10 victory over Michigan State, Bob Chesney has the Bruins football team 7-0 for the first time since 2005. Still undefeated and still the only team in the Big Ten — and SEC — conferences that can say so. Ranked No. 9 in the nation and moving on up.

And so I ask: Two lost fumbles before halftime? Two drops? Two holding penalties? A meager 84 yards through the air and a modest 14-7 halftime lead? Against a majorly depleted Michigan State team fielding a freshman third-stringer at quarterback — that also lost two more of its best players to injury in the first half?

These Bruins are too good to be letting the wounded Spartans (2-6, 0-5 Big Ten) hang with them for even a half.

And yet, for a hot moment, doubt started to creep back in: Was this the day Chesney’s chariot turned back into a pumpkin? Was the last petal from the enchanted rose about to fall, this beauty of a season due to turn ugly? Was the fairy tale almost over?

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Clippers lose to the Thunder

Shai-Gilgeous Alexander scored 34 points, Ajay Mitchell had 18 off the bench, and the Oklahoma City Thunder stayed undefeated with a 108-101 victory over the Clippers on Sunday night.

Isaiah Hartenstein added 12 points and 12 rebounds for Oklahoma City, which won its third straight to start the season but lost three players to injury, including All-Star guard Jalen Williams, who went down hard on a drive to the basket with 1:14 left. Williams left the court on a stretcher with towels covering his left leg.

Guard Cason Wallace (left shoulder soreness) and forward Jaylin Williams (right wrist soreness) left the game in the first quarter and did not return. Mitchell was eight-for-14 shooting with six rebounds, four assists and three steals in 28 minutes.

Continue reading here

Clippers box score

NBA standings

LAFC and Galaxy play to a draw

Leo Walta scored the tying goal in the 62nd minute, and LAFC clinched a playoff spot by rallying from two goals down in the second half for a 2-2 draw with the Galaxy on Sunday night.

Joseph Paintsil scored his first two goals since August as the Galaxy hung on impressively for a point, but endangered their own playoff hopes by blowing the lead in another thrilling El Tráfico derby.

The final seconds of injury time were breathtaking: Galaxy goalkeeper JT Marcinkowski and defender Justin Haak both made spectacular stops on LAFC chances before Denis Bouanga scored on a redirection of Tyler Boyd‘s bicycle kick — only for the play to be ruled offside.

Continue reading here

LAFC-Galaxy summary

MLS standings

World Series results, schedule

All games at 5 p.m. PT
All game on FOX/FOX Deportes/FOX One

No. 1 Milwaukee vs. No. 1 Tampa Bay
at Milwaukee 3, Tampa Bay 2 (box score)
at Milwaukee 5, Tampa Bay 4 (box score)
Monday at Tampa Bay
Tuesday at Tampa Bay
*Wednesday at Tampa Bay
*Friday at Milwaukee
*Saturday at Milwaukee

* if necessary

This day in sports history

1907 — Jim Thorpe makes his Carlisle (Pa.) debut dazzling a crowd of 22,800 in a 26-6 defeat of No. 4 Penn at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field. Thorpe rushes, returns kicks and does all the kicking in putting on a one-man show.

1951 — Joe Louis loses his last fight, an eighth-round TKO to Rocky Marciano at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Marciano knocks Louis down with a left hook in the eighth round. Louis gets to one knee at the count of three and takes an eight-count before getting up. Marciano ends the fight with a right that sends Louis through the ropes and onto the ring apron. Louis’ career record is 66-3 with 52 knockouts.

1968 — Brooks Dawson of Texas El Paso completes 17 of 24 passes for 304 yards in the final 10:21 of the fourth quarter as the Miners beat Brigham Young 31-25.

1968 — Boxer George Foreman beats Ionas Chepulis of the Soviet Union for the gold medal in the heavyweight division at the Mexico Olympic Games.

1970 — Muhammad Ali returns to the ring after a 2 1/2-year layoff due to his refusal to be drafted into the United States Army. Fighting in Atlanta, Ali opened a cut over Jerry Quarry’s left eye with a right hand in the third round, causing the fight to be stopped before the start of the fourth round.

1980 — The St. Louis Cardinals sack quarterback Baltimore quarterback Bert Jones 12 times in a 17-10 victory.

1982 — Philadelphia Phillies Steve Carlton became the first pitcher to win four Cy Young Awards

1990 — Wayne Gretzky becomes the NHL first player to reach the 2,000-point plateau when he helps set up a goal by Tomas Sandstrom at 14:32 of the first period of the Kings’ game at Winnipeg.

2000 — The New York Yankees become the first team in more than a quarter-century to win three straight World Series titles, beating the New York Mets 4-2. The Yankees match the Oakland Athletics’ three in a row from 1972-74, and win their fourth title in five years.

2002 — Volponi, a 43-1 long shot, finds room along the rail and blows past the fading Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner War Emblem to take the Breeders’ Cup Classic by 6½ lengths ahead of Medaglia d’Oro.

2006 — Ryan Miller stops 29 shots as Buffalo beats the New York Islanders 3-0 to win its 10th straight game. The win matches the best start in NHL history, tying the 1993-94 Toronto Maple Leafs.

2012 — The NHL cancels all its games through the end of November because of the labor dispute between owners and players.

2013 — Octavias McKoy runs for 455 yards, setting an NCAA record for all-divisions, as Division III Western Connecticut State beats Worcester State 55-35. McKoy scores five touchdowns in the game and breaks the rushing record previously held by Dante Brown of Marietta College. Brown ran for 441 on Oct. 5, 1996 against Baldwin-Wallace.

2014 — Serena Williams wins the WTA Tour Finals for the third straight year and fifth time overall, beating Simona Halep 6-3, 6-0. Williams joins Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf as the only players to have won five titles in the season-ending championship.

2014 — Ben Roethlisberger is 40 for 49 for 522 yards and six touchdown passes in Pittsburgh’s 51-34 win over Indianapolis. Roethlisberger became the first player in NFL history with two 500-yard passing games — 503 yards vs. Green Bay on Dec. 20, 2009.

2014 — Abby Wambach scores four goals and the World Cup-bound United States beat Costa Rica 6-0 for its fifth CONCACAF women’s title.

2018 — The longest World Series game by innings and time; Dodgers beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 in the 18th inning (7 hours, 20 minutes) in Game 3 at Dodger Stadium with a Max Muncy walk-off home run.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Investors react to Lula’s election victory with a sharp decline in the Brazilian real and concerns over increased spending and fiscal challenges.

Brazil’s real dropped against the United States dollar on the heels of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s unexpected re-election after right-wing Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, led in the first round of voting earlier this month.

Brazil’s currency dropped against the dollar by 12 percent in spot trading. Bovespa stock index futures tumbled nearly 15 percent on Monday.

“I’m not surprised the real is sinking sharply; traders are covering their bets that assume a Bolsonaro victory and tighter fiscal policy,” Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera.

Brazil’s stock exchange halted trading for 30 minutes. The Bovespa index fell 10 percent from its previous close, triggering a circuit-breaker safety mechanism and reversing a rally earlier this month amid expectations of a shift to the right after Bolsonaro won the first round.

Ziemba says Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede the election has driven some financial uncertainty.

“The market pressure is also amplified by the objections raised by Bolsonaro, but the scale of the victory suggests that the result will stand,” she said.

Interest rate futures had also reflected expectations that tighter fiscal policy under Bolsonaro would allow borrowing costs to decline.

“They [investors] assume more domestic spending and higher rates in Brazil. However, the real is still likely to be supported by strong commodity revenues,” Ziemba noted.

Stocks closed on Friday almost 7 percent above their level before the first round, while the Brazilian real was nearly 5 percent stronger against the US dollar.

Interest rate futures are up 3.1 percent, rising sharply after President Lula’s win. Interest rate futures had previously reflected a tighter fiscal policy amid expectations that Bolsonaro would oust the incumbent and that he would allow borrowing costs to decline.

Lula faces an increase in Brazil’s debt and will be challenged with protecting both social programmes and investment, with investors looking for signs of whether his gradual fiscal approach can bring borrowing costs down.

Lula’s team aims to produce a budget surplus of about 1.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. That would leave money to cover part of the interest bill, reducing the need for fresh borrowing. But public debt already exceeds 82 percent of GDP, while pensions and other legally required spending limit where savings can come from.

“Lula’s policies have talked about spending cuts, but he has not gone into the details of how that is going to look,” said Divya Singaravelu, head of research at Meridian 1305 Capital.

Attention will now turn to Lula’s choice of finance minister and what it signals about his fiscal approach.

The plaintiffs argue they are losing access to vital information media outlets covering Trump used to provide.

A group of private citizens has sued the administration of United States President Donald Trump over its restrictions on news outlets covering the White House.

“All of the Plaintiffs rely on the White House press corps for independent reporting about the president and his administration, and all of them use that reporting in a variety of ways in their scholarship, teaching, journalism, or advocacy,” says the lawsuit, filed on Monday in a federal court in New York.

The lawsuit is the first lodged not by the news outlets being banned, but by those who consume the news and rely on it for their work.

The plaintiffs include a human rights advocate, a media watchdog, a university history professor, a high school teacher, a legal journalist and a student journalist.

Each argues they need unbiased, diverse media reporting from the White House to do their work.

“I’m gravely concerned that the Trump administration’s restrictions on White House reporters are cutting off access to crucial information,” Peter Schmidt-Nowara, a high school social studies teacher in New York City, said in a statement.

“I joined this lawsuit because my students deserve to know what’s happening in their government and to hear from a free and independent press.”

Trump already faces several legal challenges to his practice of banning journalists from outlets he dislikes from accessing the White House.

Last month, he banned journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from attending news conferences at the White House. A federal judge later ruled the order was unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press, and ordered access be restored. However, the Trump administration continues to fight the ruling.

Last week, Trump dismissed reporting that he planned to evict journalists from the White House press briefing room and restore a swimming pool that was housed there starting in 1933. But he said he is still considering moving the press out of the briefing room.

“I am thinking about moving the Press, and putting them in a different location, but I will use that location for very badly needed space,” Trump said in a social media post.

Kenneth Roth, a senior fellow at Yale University and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the restrictions on press access were familiar postmarks in countries whose leaders have become authoritarian.

“Worldwide, I have seen how governmental leaders’ efforts to penalise independent journalists are a prelude to the rise of autocracy,” he said in a statement.

Niger requested troops to secure shared energy interests in what would be Algeria’s first deployment abroad since 1973.

Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has ordered troops to neighbouring Niger to protect energy and economic interests shared by both countries.

The decision, announced by Algeria’s presidency on Monday, came after both chambers of parliament approved the deployment in an emergency session on Sunday.

The presidency said authorities in Niger had requested military assistance.

If carried out, it would be Algeria’s first overseas military deployment since 1973, when it sent soldiers to support Egypt during the Arab-Israeli war.

The move marks a departure from Algeria’s longstanding reluctance to intervene militarily beyond its borders.

A 2020 constitutional reform allows the president to authorise overseas deployments with the approval of at least two-thirds of legislators in each parliamentary chamber.

Algeria sent fighter jets and support aircraft to Niger in August after what Algerian officials described as an attempt to destabilise its military government.

The presidency said the deployment decision was made under provisions of Algeria’s constitution allowing the military to operate abroad with parliamentary approval.

It has not been announced how many soldiers will be sent or when.

Algerian Senator Belkacem Boulghiti told reporters after Sunday’s parliamentary vote that the soldiers would protect economic infrastructure, particularly Algerian oil facilities in Niger.

He said Algeria was “not sending our soldiers to wage war in Niger”, describing the mission as a response to changing security conditions in the Sahel region.

Algeria’s state-owned energy company, Sonatrach, has been working with Niger on the proposed Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline. It would carry natural gas from Nigeria through Niger to Algeria for export to European markets.

Niger and neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have faced years of attacks by armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

All three countries are governed by military leaders who seized power in coups and subsequently formed the Alliance of Sahel States, a regional political and security bloc.

The deployment follows an improvement in relations between Algeria and Niger, which has been led by General Abdourahamane Tiani since a 2023 military coup that Algeria initially condemned.

Tensions deepened in April last year after Algerian forces shot down a Malian drone near the border, prompting the three alliance members to recall their ambassadors from Algiers.

The UCLA football team produced its worst quarter of the season Saturday.

After fumbling twice in Michigan State territory, halting offensive momentum, the Bruins were trailing going into the second quarter and tied 7-7 with three minutes left in the second quarter.

But for the third consecutive week, the defense shifted the momentum and ignited the offense.

Powered by a defensive unit that tallied three takeaways, four sacks and limited the opposing offense to 156 yards, UCLA earned its seventh win of the season Saturday afternoon at the Rose Bowl, trouncing Michigan State 28-10.

It is the first time the Bruins have gone 7-0 since 2005. The team moved up to No. 7 in the Associated Press top 25 poll Sunday.

Let’s take a look at the three takeaways from the Bruins’ fifth conference win. UCLA sits atop the Big Ten standings, with its last nonconference game against 3-4 Nevada on Saturday.

Are the Bruins aggressive enough?

The final score did not reflect the Bruins’ dominance over the Spartans.

UCLA ran the ball 48 times compared to 31 passing attempts. And while the ground game was successful, rushing for 245 yards and three touchdowns on 5.1 yards per carry, the Bruins had the opportunity to blow the doors off the game through the passing game.

The Bruins opted to play a clock management game, running out the entire fourth quarter with a multi-score lead instead of taking shots downfield and manipulating the defense through the air. And Michigan State adjusted accordingly, stacking the box and preparing for the run.

With the Spartans focused on stopping the run, UCLA’s offense had the opportunity to take advantage of an already depleted secondary and give quarterback Ty Dieffenbach more opportunities to get comfortable in the passing game.

Dieffenbach’s one deep shot connected with sophomore wide receiver Brian Rowe Jr. for a 63-yard touchdown. But outside of that, Dieffenbach did not connect for a pass of more than 20 yards. And coach Bob Chesney acknowledged that the offense could have opened up more, but that the Bruins decided to run out the clock.

“There were moments there in the fourth, too, and the late third, where that box got pretty loaded, and we should have taken some shots on the outside,” Chesney said. “But at the same point, you’re trying to run this clock out and get out of here with the win, ultimately, and could have taken a little more risk if we wanted to. But I thought we managed it well enough to get a victory here.”

It doesn’t always have to be Wayne

Wayne Knight has been the star of UCLA’s offense so far.

But the Bruins have proven that the backfield is less of a bell cow system and more of a three-headed beast.

And despite a shaky first half, senior Jaivian Thomas and fifth-year Anthony Woods more than illustrated that they could be the featured back on any given day.

Thomas and Woods fumbled in the first half in Spartan territory — their first of the season on 118 combined carries thus far. But the duo refused to let the mistake define them. Thomas ran for 41 yards and a touchdown in 10 carries while Woods rushed for 112 yards and one score in 14 carries alongside three receptions.

Woods and Thomas’ production in the dying embers of the affair became pertinent when Knight went down with a chest/ribs injury. While Chesney said that the injury is nothing overly serious and that the tailback could have returned to the game, the coaching staff decided to keep him sidelined as a precaution.

“I thought [Anthony] Woods was rolling today. To be able to see some of the holes that he found and be explosive and physical was really good,” Chesney said. “But both of those guys put the ball on the ground early. That’s not what we were looking for, but I love their response.”

Linebacker University

All season, the Bruins’ secondary has earned praise.

Defensive coordinator Colin Hitschler’s unit has not allowed a quarterback to gain more than 160 passing yards during its last four games and has given up fewer than 100 yards in two of those games.

But the entirety of the Bruins inside linebacker department has hounded opposing offenses all season — dominating in all facets of defense, from blitzing the quarterback, to finishing off tackles in open space to blanketing pass catchers when tasked in coverage.

And all of that was on display Saturday.

“They understand the run scheme. They do all of the things right. They relate pre-snap. And then they communicate post-snap extremely well,” Chesney said. “And those are all the things that they have to be able to accomplish. But then they play a very physical brand of football. And when you start to blitz them, they get downhill quick, and they pack a punch when they do.”

Headlining the crew is Sammy Omosigho, who has not missed a beat since coming to Westwood from Oklahoma. He ranks first in the nation in forced fumbles with five through seven games, and ranks first in the Big Ten in sacks with five despite playing inside linebacker.

His linebacker partner — fifth-year Jalen Woods — is playing up to Omosigho’s level, with 2.5 sacks, one interception and 59 tackles, which ranks fourth in the Big Ten. Sophomore Scott Taylor, who has been playing as a hybrid inside/outside linebacker, has three sacks and two forced fumbles.

And senior Donavyn Pellot joined the fun Saturday, recording the first interception of his career and returning it 67 yards, flipping the field, and turning the tide of the game.

UCLA alum Natalie Nakase’s strategy change pays off

Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase reacts on the sideline during Game 4 of the WNBA Finals against the Atlanta Dream at State Farm Arena in Atlanta on Saturday.

(Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)

Former UCLA point guard Natalie Nakase shook up her starting lineup and helped spark the Golden State Valkyries’ Game 4 win over the Atlanta Dream during the WNBA Finals, evening the series 2-2.

Guard Tiffany Hayes and Kaila Charles joined the starting five during Golden State’s 67-62 win Saturday in Atlanta. Nakase tightened her rotation to seven players, bringing Kayla Thornton and Cecilia Zandalasini providing a spark off the bench.

“I just wanted to change it up,” Nakase said. “The best thing about our team is no one cares who starts, no one cares. People coming off the bench, it doesn’t matter … because we have a really selfless team, egoless team. So, yeah, I just wanted to change it, and you definitely saw some energy, better fight.”

Nakase said her players have bought into doing whatever it takes to support each other all season.

“We’re about caring for each other,” she said. “We’re about pouring into each other, and I think what’s really big key is they want to see success in their teammates more than themselves.”

Golden State will host Game 5 of the series Monday at 5 p.m. The remainder of the series schedule is in flux as the WNBA negotiates where Atlanta can play its remaining home games.

Bruins on deck

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

Monday, Oct. 26

Men’s golf at East Lake Cup, All day

Women’s golf at Nanea Invitational, All day

Tuesday, Oct. 27

Men’s golf at East Lake Cup, All day

Women’s golf at Nanea Invitational, All Day

Men’s basketball vs. San Diego (exhibition), 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 28

Men’s golf at East Lake Cup, All day

Women’s golf at Nanea Invitational, All day

Friday, Oct. 30

Men’s and women’s tennis at Dennis Rizza Intercollegiate Classic, All day

Cross country at Big Ten championship, Time TBA

Women’s volleyball vs. Minnesota, 7 p.m.

Men’s soccer vs. Indiana, 7 p.m.

Women’s soccer at USC, 7 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 31

Men’s and women’s tennis at Dennis Rizza Intercollegiate Classic, All day

Men’s water polo at Cal, 1 p.m.

Football vs. Nevada, 1:15 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 1

Men’s and women’s tennis at Dennis Rizza Intercollegiate Classic, All day

Men’s water polo at Stanford, 1 p.m.

Women’s volleyball vs. Wisconsin, 2 p.m.

In case you missed it

Swanson: UCLA’s 7-0 start has one glaring flaw. Bob Chesney is running out of time to fix it

UCLA overwhelms Michigan State as Bruins continue their stunning turnaround season

No. 9 UCLA overcomes sloppy start, improves to 7-0 with win over Michigan State

UCLA star Wayne Knight never lost faith in himself amid a long journey to Westwood

Long frustrated UCLA fans urge others to believe in Bob Chesney

UCLA Unlocked: What we learned from the — bowl-eligible — Bruins’ win over Wisconsin

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.

Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Follow updates from the 2026 Ballon d’Or ceremony as the world’s best male and female footballers are crowned.

As the threat of a new war with the United States looms, the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, a hardline political faction also known as the Paydari Front, has asked the Iranian parliament and the Supreme National Security Council to initiate a withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This move has been interpreted as a call for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, with the Paydari Front saying these military endeavours should happen “as quickly as possible”.

It is the latest bold and defiant message by Iran’s hardliners against Washington, after the US and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28 on the pretext that Tehran was trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The war has seen the Strait of Hormuz largely closed to shipping, massive damage to Iranian and Arab infrastructure in missile and air strikes, and huge disruptions to global energy supplies.

The past eight months have also marked an ongoing existential power struggle between moderates and centrists, such as President Masoud Pezeshkian, who generally favour talks with the US, and hardliners in the Paydari Front who do not.

Ultimately, the moderate camp wants a swift end to the conflict to save Iran’s crumbling economy. Hardliners believe Washington only understands the language of force, so the war should continue until the US capitulates to Iran’s demands.

The domestic rivalry can be seen in the public squares of major Iranian cities, where for the past 200 days supporters of the hardline faction have rallied at night.

Initially, these gatherings were a way for people to express public support for the government and protest the unprovoked US war on Iran. Over time, they have evolved into highly organised political rallies where activists can publicly express their strong opposition to moderates’ efforts to end the war through diplomatic channels.

The hardliners’ slogans include “No compromise, no surrender – the fight against America” and “Negotiating with the enemy is a betrayal of the homeland”.

They also protested against President Pezeshkian’s return to Tehran from the UN General Assembly in September, where he condemned the US war but also extolled the virtues of diplomacy. The pickets were viewed as a way for their “anti-negotiation” message to be heard by the president.

This bloc has considerable power beyond these activist circles. Hardliners have a strong presence in Tehran’s municipal government, the parliament, among religious preachers and eulogists, and academia and the media.

Amirhossein Sabeti, a member of parliament aligned with the Paydari Front, said in a statement that negotiations with the US will not begin unless Washington’s siege on Iran’s southern ports or sanctions end.

“The enemy’s objective of destroying Iran has not changed. It is simply waiting for the right moment to launch another surprise attack. Those who thought negotiations could prevent war, or that the United States would lift sanctions through negotiations, did not understand how the world works and were deluding themselves,” he said. “The only language the world understands is the language of power.”

The political faction to which Sabeti belongs has filed a motion in the Iranian parliament to impeach Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, following his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Iran’s parliament is also considering a law to criminalise interviews with foreign media outlets, which would be another win for hardliners.

But as the impeachment motion against Iran’s foreign minister moves through parliament, the political camp supporting the government continues to advocate for a diplomatic solution to the current conflict.

Davood Heshmati, a journalist considered close to Pezeshkian, said there are signs that US forces have foregone the grand ambition of overthrowing the Iranian government and have instead opted for more modest aims, which makes a diplomatic solution more likely.

“There are several ways to achieve those other goals, one of which is war. But, in any case, to prevent a war, all alternatives to military action must first be tested. Negotiations and a diplomatic agreement are among those alternatives, and they should always take precedence over war,” Heshmati told Al Jazeera.

“Those who say the Strait of Hormuz must not be reopened are people who believe the war must not end. From the perspective of Iran’s anti-negotiation camp, the war between Iran and the United States has no end. What they do not explain is what outcome they expect from this war. They seem to believe that, after several rounds of fighting, the United States will simply walk away from the conflict. But that idea does not appear to be consistent with the logic of what we are witnessing.”

He indicated that for any war to end, there needs to be an understanding with the US that respects Iran’s territorial integrity.

“Those in Iran who support negotiations argue that a balance of power does not necessarily have to be achieved through war, although, given everything that has happened along the diplomatic path, the distrust that exists is understandable,” he said.

Political analyst Negar Mortazavi argues that hardline groups are a powerful domestic force, but they currently have limited influence over Iran’s foreign policy.

“Iran’s hardliners are not a marginal political force. They are a well-organised and deeply entrenched part of [Iran’s] political establishment. Their strength lies in their ability to mobilise supporters, shape political discourse, pressure the government, and raise the political cost of diplomacy,” she said.

“But political influence should not be confused with ultimate decision-making authority. Decisions about war, peace, and negotiations are made at the highest levels of Iran’s leadership and national security establishment.”

Hardliners can continue to confront negotiators, threaten impeachments against those who propose talks with the US, and try to obstruct diplomatic endeavours, she said. But they cannot prevent an agreement being reached if it is backed by the country’s main powerholders, including Supreme Leader Mujtaba Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council.

“The [hardliners] are powerful enough to complicate diplomacy, but not necessarily powerful enough to stop it. [They] are a highly visible and vocal political force, but they are not calling the shots,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

“Throughout the war, Tehran has kept the door open to diplomacy, and the decision at the highest levels of leadership has been to pursue negotiations with the United States and seek an agreement. The hardliners have been unable to stop that. The real test of their power is that they could not stop the JCPOA [nuclear agreement] under [former President Barack] Obama, and they could not stop the more recent MoU [memorandum of understanding] with Trump. Ultimately, the decisions were made above their heads.”

Street rallies and television programmes opposing a peaceful solution to the US-Israeli war against Iran will continue. But the delay in scheduling the foreign minister’s impeachment hearing, alongside continued diplomatic engagement with mediators to end the war, suggests that the moderates are still a force to be reckoned with.

Tehran, Iran – Ministers and senior security officials from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye – the three nations that signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement – are in Tehran to discuss regional security issues amid threats of new US strikes on Iran.

Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, Pakistani military chief Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin met Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and will discuss tensions with security chief Mohsen Rezaei.

The meetings are among the highest-profile dialogues held in Tehran in recent months. While there is still little information on what might be discussed, the meetings come amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to deal with a new escalation between the United States and Iran.

But analysts broadly believe the visit to Tehran by the three signatories of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, a regional defence alliance, will be enough to prevent a new outbreak in violence between the US and Iran.

“The Mecca pact’s 11th-hour visit to Tehran is an attempt to tip the balance in favour of those willing to compromise before the guns start blazing again,” said Ali Vaez, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the International Crisis Group.

“But unless they arrive with a credible formula to bridge the US-Iran divide, they may find themselves with little more than goodwill in a race against the clock.”

The talks are expected to address the waves of missile and drone attacks carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are allied with Tehran, on Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

“I believe that parties to the Mecca agreement lack options of military engagement with the Houthis, but Riyadh is certainly asserting greater pressure for more, and its expectation of its partners has grown in parallel with the offensive from Yemen,” Ayesha Siddiqa, a senior research fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

But despite the collective security arrangement in the Mecca defence pact, Saudi Arabia’s allies Turkiye and Pakistan cannot “afford to commit troops on the ground” in Yemen, said Siddiqa.

The latest diplomatic push is likely linked to visits by Pakistani army chief Asim Munir to Saudi Arabia and Iran last week, Siddiqa said, and coincides with Islamabad’s restrictions on overland border trade with Tehran amid the US blockade on Iran.

Iranian authorities have said they favoured “security originating from within the region” as they prepared for the meetings.

Umer Karim, who researches Saudi foreign policy and its implications for regional security, said the Tehran meetings are unlikely to reduce the risk of a renewed war between Iran and the US, which would likely lead to more regional turmoil.

“Therefore, these talks perhaps are more concerned about the security of Saudi Arabia and involve an attempt by Turkiye and Pakistan to compel Iran to reach a compromise,” he told Al Jazeera.

US President Donald Trump is said to be considering new attacks to break the diplomatic deadlock with Iran, which has refused to agree to any peace agreement with Washington unless several of its demands are met.

The US and regional powers want international shipping and transit through the Strait of Hormuz to resume without impediments or attacks. Washington also wants to rein in Tehran’s nuclear programme and bring in international inspectors to assess Iran’s highly enriched uranium. Israel says it wants to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Tehran wants to lift the US naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports, which has halted crude oil exports and disrupted most trade, and return to a memorandum of understanding agreed between the two countries in June.

The US has refused this, with President Trump saying he is left with a choice to “finish the job” by launching major strikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. This could prompt Iran to lash out at its neighbours, as it did earlier in the war with strikes on US bases in Arab states and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the US Department of State issued an October 21 order for nonemergency US government employees and their family ⁠members to leave Saudi Arabia for their safety’s sake, given the Houthi threat.

As talks involving Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye continue in Iran, analysts say these Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signatories will likely try to minimise the impact on Saudi Arabia if war does break out again.

“However, since little has changed from an Iranian strategic calculus and the actors involved don’t have the kind of leverage needed to affect Iran’s strategic thinking, these negotiations are going to yield little,” Karim said.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. I’m Eric Sondheimer. The high school basketball season begins in two weeks, yet players have been playing non-stop since the summer. Let’s look at top players in the Southland for boys.

Players to watch

The Mission League is so loaded with talent in basketball that five teams — Sierra Canyon, Harvard-Westlake, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, St. Francis and Crespi — are considered among the top 10 teams in the Southland.

Jordan Mize, Josh Lowery and JJ Sati-Grier are returnees from Sierra Canyon’s state championship team, and Houston Rolle transferred from Heritage Christian. That’s an impressive starting four.

St. Francis has twin towers 7-foot-5 Cherif Millogo and 7-0 Yann Kamagate. Harvard-Westlake has returning guards Pierce Thompson and Cole Holden. Notre Dame’s NaVorro Bowman is headed to UConn. Transfer King Rachal is 6-7 and committed to Utah State. Josiah Nance is committed to SMU. Crespi has twins Carter and Isaiah Barnes entering their senior years.

There’s been lots of movement in the Trinity League to Mater Dei. Isaiah Williamson left Los Alamitos, Ryan Doane left JSerra and Ender Berg left Legacy Christian, all ending up at Mater Dei, which could have a starting five of former transfer students.

All-star guard Gene Roebuck, a Cal commit, will have spent four years at La Mirada, which is an achievement itself. Coming off sensational freshman seasons are guards Will Conroy Jr. from Village Christian and Quali Giran from Long Beach Millikan.

Palisades remains the team to beat in the City Section with returnees Phillip Reed, EJ and OJ Popoola and Jack Levey.

Mahamadou Diop, a 6-11 center at San Gabriel Academy, has committed to San Diego State. Nick Welch Jr. is a 6-9 center at Rolling Hills Prep ready to become a big-time player. Chris Sanders is coming off a great junior season at Redondo Union.

Davey Harris at Windward, Ethan Hill at Brentwood, Chris Paul Jr. at Campbell Hall and the trio of Evan Willis, Shalen Sheppard and Van Moczydlowsky of Crossroads are part of a wicked Gold Coast League, which will be the toughest to predict a champion.

The best three-point shooting guard is back at Damien in Zaire Rasshan. Etiwanda has 6-3 junior Devin Mitchell. Grayson Coleman of Milken should have lots of games beyond 30 points. Oaks Christian returns its leading scorer, junior Brady Sullivan. Maxwell Scott from Corona del Mar averaged 21.7 points last season and is headed to Harvard. Guard Earl Bryson is at Crean Lutheran after starring at JSerra.

This is just a refresher of some names before games officially begin Nov. 13 in the City Section and Nov. 16 in the Southern Section. And, if some of your favorite players from last season are now at different schools, welcome to how you try to win a championship in 2026-27.

Carson quarterback Chris Fields III points toward the sky after his 71-yard touchdown run against San Pedro.

(Craig Weston / For The Times)

It’s week 10 and the last chance to seal up playoff spots or league championships.

Carson wrapped up the Marine League championship and the No. 1 seed for the City Section Open Division playoffs with a 35-0 win over San Pedro. Here’s the report.

Compton won its first league championship since 1979 winning the new Hub City League title. Compton finished the regular season 9-1.

San Juan HIlls delivered the biggest upset of the week, knocking off San Clemente, which played without injured quarterback Preston Beck. Here’s the report.

Tru Warrior Casas of Fairfax turned in a great individual performance, rushing for 331 yards and four touchdowns in a loss to Palisades.

Sophomore Asir Nembhard of Mater Dei set a school record with 349 yards rushing in a wild win over Orange Lutheran.

Santa Barbara’s Cade Mault accounted for all 13 of his team’s points in a 13-10 win over Westlake, getting an 85-yard touchdown reception, making the PAT and making field goals from 49 and 43 yards.

Culver City’s Nicholas Hoang passed for 480 yards and six touchdowns in a win over Torrance. Nathaniel Cadet of Marshall had seven touchdown passes in win over L.A. Wilson.

League championships are on the line in Bishop Amat at Sierra Canyon, Valencia vs. Hart at College of the Canyons, San Juan Hills at Mission Viejo. Another good game is unbeaten Mary Star at Carson, not to mention the annual East. L.A. Classic matching Garfield and Roosevelt at East Los Angeles College.

And St. John Bosco plays Mater Dei at Santa Ana Stadium in a game for second place in the Trinity League and a top four playoff berth in Division 1.

Here’s this week’s top 25 rankings by The Times.

Here’s the top individual performances.

Here’s this week’s 10 schedule.

Chemistry vs. talent

Quarterback Ryan Rakowski (left) and receiver Jalen Flowers before a Palos Verdes game praying. They have great chemistry on the football field.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

There’s debate: What’s more important, chemistry or talent?

In regards to quarterbacks and receivers, it’s pretty clear chemistry is a must, with both being able to anticipate and understand each other’s moves.

Here’s a look at some of the top duos this season.

The Southern Section flag football playoffs continue, but there’s still no sign any team can offer competition to unbeaten JSerra (25-0).

Here’s this week’s matchups.

The only upset in the opening round of Division 1 was Lakewood St. Joseph defeating No. 4 Huntington Beach.

Cross country

At the Mt. SAC Invitational, Sabina Cruz of Westlake stamped herself as a CIF title contender with a win in the girls team sweepstakes race in 16:35.1.

Redondo Union’s Mario Montoya ran a scorching 13:43.5 to top the boys races.

Crescenta Valley had the best team score in boys. Great Oak was second in girls.

Power of grandparents

The Reis twins, Christian (left) and Weston, are juniors for Palos Verdes and cheered on by grandparents.

(Nick Koza / For The Times)

Grandparents sitting in the football bleachers offer moments of magic at high school football games.

For a look at their loyalty and impact, here’s a look at the grandparents of Palos Verdes twins Christian and Weston Reis.

Notes . . .

Outfielder Matti Di Maggio of Dos Pueblos has reclassified from class of 2029 to class of 2028. He was on The Times’ all-star baseball team last season as a freshman and won a gold medal playing for the USA 15U national team. Now he’ll be considered a junior this spring….

Tresbien Caraway has resigned after 11 years as basketball coach at New Roads….

Mahamadou Diop, a 6-foot-11 center from San Gabriel Academy, has committed to San Diego State….

Ender Berg, a 6-11 transfer from Legacy Christian, and Ryan Doane, a 6-8 transfer from JSerra, will be eligible at Mater Dei beginning Christmas Day….

Junior center fielder Dane Disney from Oaks Christian has committed to UCLA….

Zain Majeed, a 6-8 senior at Mater Dei, has committed to Princeton….

Long Beach Wilson’s boys’ water polo team did not apply for a Southern Section playoff spot as the program deals with a hazing incident….

UCLA volleyball All-American Brandon Taliaferro, who is a 1996 graduate of San Clemente High, is the Tritons’ new boys volleyball coach. He also served as an assistant coach at UCLA….

Junior pitcher Christian Reis of Palos Verdes has committed to Oregon State….

Mark Wulfemeyer, a legendary high school basketball player for Troy High in the 1970s, has died in Hawaii. He was 70. He held the state scoring record from 1974 through 1979. Here’s a story from 1991 describing his journey in basketball and baseball. His grandson, Warren, is a top baseball player at Santa Margarita….

St. Francis athletic director Matt Luderer has died after a long fight with brain cancer. He was 54. Luderer took over at St. Francis in 2013 after being athletic director at Crespi…..

Joe Kelly, who guided Palos Verdes and Peninsula to cross-country success in the 1980s and 1990s, has died….

Junior quarterback Josiah Boyd of Vista Del Lago has committed to UCLA….

Outfielder/pitcher Jesse Mendoza of Corona Centennial has committed to Cal Baptist….

From the archives: Bryce Young

Quarterback Bryce Young in 2019 when he was selected the Gatorade state player of the year at Mater Dei.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Quarterback Bryce Young has gone from Mater Dei to Heisman Trophy winner at Alabama to No. 1 pick of the Carolina Panthers to star quarterback for the Panthers.

Here’s a story from 2020 about his father discussing the perils of the college recruiting process.

Here’s a story from 2019 how Young became a ground-breaking quarterback at Mater Dei.

Mater Dei unveiled its updated Heisman Lane campus sign that added Bryce Young.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Here’s a story from 2022 when Young came back to Mater Dei to celebrate winning the Heisman Trophy.

Recommendations

From the Star-Telegram, a story on Texas approving the 35-second clock for high school basketball.

From Elevenwarriors, a story on former Mission Viejo quarterback Luke Fahey set to star for Ohio State.

From Chron.com, a story in Texas about coaches getting stipends cut if they don’t get a commercial driver’s license to help with lack of bus drivers.

From NFHS.org, a story about high schools needing emergency action plans and AEDs for sports competitions.

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on the “Marina Brewers” playing in the World Series.

Tweets you might have missed

Until next time….

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Serbia’s long-standing leader Aleksandar Vučić has admitted defeat to a student-led protest movement in snap parliamentary elections.

Celebrations erupted as crowds descended on the centre of Belgrade, Novi Sad and other cities.

The student movement was formed less than two years ago in response to a railway station disaster blamed on corruption and negligence, but fought the election with candidates from a cross-section of Serbian society.

“It is clear we have lost these elections,” right-wing populist leader Vučić said as he conceded. With 97% of polling stations counted, Serbia’s election commission said the students had won 2.24 million votes and the former ruling party 1.67 million.

The students had secured 52.6% of the vote, while Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) was on 39.2%, according to its preliminary figures late on Monday morning.

Vučić had spent two terms as president and could not seek a third term, so was leading his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) with the aim of returning to the post of prime minister, which he left in 2017.

He called the snap elections after two years of protests triggered by the collapse of a canopy in front of Novi Sad station which killed 16 people.

EXPLAINER

Uncertainty remains over key positions after student-led movement deals blow to longtime leader’s political dominance.

A student-led opposition movement has emerged victorious in Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, ending former President Aleksandar Vucic’s long grip on power.

The Student List’s win on Sunday followed nearly two years of youth-led protests triggered by the death of 16 people in a railway station canopy collapse in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.

Demonstrations demanding accountability quickly evolved into a wider political campaign against alleged corruption and capture of democratic institutions. In its electoral programme presented in September, the Student List said fighting corruption and organised crime were among its main priorities. It also pledged to raise living standards, boost employment, improve education, ensure media freedom and the independence of Serbia’s institutions.

After declaring victory on Sunday, the movement also said it would work to improve relations with neighbouring countries following a period of tension during Vucic’s more than decade-long rule.

Here’s what you should know:

What are the latest results?

The Republic Election Commission (RIK) announced on Monday that the Student List had won 52.54 percent of the vote, based on 8,077 processed polling stations out of 8,392.

The figures also showed the United Serbia list, led by Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party, had secured 39.29 percent of ballots cast.

Voter turnout stood at 68.78 percent, a record high in more than 30 years, according to RIK data on Sunday.

What’s next?

While the final election result is not yet known, the figures mean that the Student List will be able to form a majority in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament on its own.

The bloc is projected to win 140 seats, well ahead of the 126 mandates required for a majority, while United Serbia is expected to have 103.

The remaining seats are set to go to the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (three); the Albanian political bloc (two); and the Rasim Ljajc-Ljudski and SDA Sandzak lists, with one each.

Who could be the new prime minister?

Unlike United Serbia, which named Vucic as its candidate for prime minister before the election, the Student List made no such announcement during the campaign.

Since its formal creation, the list has avoided highlighting single candidates, eager to emphasise the collective nature of the movement that brought together academics, doctors and workers.

During the campaign, the movement was led by Ilija Srdanovic, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Novi Sad. The cardiologist is now seen as the most likely candidate to become the next prime minister, but it remains unclear who will take over key ministries, including those of internal affairs, finance and justice.

When will the new government be formed?

This depends on when the final election results will be announced and when parliament convenes.

The new National Assembly must be established within 30 days of the final results being announced.

A government must be formed within 90 days after that – but the Student List’s clear majority removes the need for lengthy coalition talks.

What about the president?

Vucic has dominated Serbia’s politics – first as prime minister and then as president – since 2014.

Following his call for the snap parliamentary vote last month and his resignation as president, the post has been held temporarily by Ana Brnabic, the president of the National Assembly.

Brnabic is obliged to call for an extraordinary presidential election which must be held no later than three months after the end of Vucic’s mandate.

Vucic resigned on September 27 , so the deadline to hold a vote is December 27 .

The president of Serbia is elected directly by the citizens, not by the representatives in the assembly, but the post is largely ceremonial.

Coalition says it destroyed ballistic missile launchers as well as tunnels and a depot used by the Houthis to store missiles.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthis has said it carried out a military operation “aimed at neutralising sources of threat”, as the armed group claimed attacks on infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said on Monday its forces destroyed four ballistic missile launchers and five tunnels used by the Houthis to store missiles.

In a post on X, he also said coalition forces attacked a missile depot, adding that the operation “focused on cutting off Houthi militia supply lines between areas under their control”.

The operation also targeted Houthi “fortifications, gatherings of their members, and their military equipment along the front lines inside Yemen”.

The Houthis – also known as Ansar Allah, Arabic for Supporters of God – have carried out a wave of strikes in recent weeks against Saudi airports and other infrastructure. This follows a major escalation in fighting in Yemen’s war, in which Saudi Arabia is supporting the internationally recognised government fighting the Houthis.

A Houthi attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid international airport this month killed 13 people and wounded more than 300, the deadliest attack on the kingdom in more than a decade.

The attacks led to the airport’s temporary closure, forcing the postponement of Saudi Arabia’s flagship investment conference until 2027 and disrupting travel plans for thousands of passengers.

The airport reopened and flights resumed on Sunday with the Houthis warning travellers to avoid the facility, calling it a “military target.”

Houthis claim new attacks

The Houthis later claimed they attacked the airport “with a ballistic missile, striking the target with precision”, according to a post by Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree on social media on Monday.

Al-Maliki said on Monday that Saudi air defences “intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile launched by the terrorist Houthi militia towards Riyadh.”

Saree also said that the Houthis had struck oil pumping stations in Saudi Arabia with drones.

In a separate statement, Saree also claimed responsibility for more ballistic missile attacks on “enemy” forces and weapons depots in Yemen.

He said the attacks targeted positions in the Salah al-Din area of Aden governorate and the al-Wahat area of Lahij governorate.

Yemen’s war reignited in the summer when the Houthis announced a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia, which intervened in 2015 to lead a coalition aimed at restoring the internationally recognised government that was ousted from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in 2014.

A 2022 truce that had halted most fighting collapsed last month, as the Houthis launched a lightning offensive, seizing much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast from government forces and also attacking Saudi energy facilities and airports.

Yemen’s government forces this month launched the “Operation Yemen Dawn” counteroffensive, aimed at recapturing territory held by the Houthis.

‘Everything is shaking’

As operations resumed at Riyadh airport, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and discussed a key air defence system.

Mitsotakis “responded favourably to the kingdom’s request to keep the Patriot system in Saudi Arabia, given the current challenging circumstances”, his office said, referring to a battery of the US-made air defence system deployed by Greece to Saudi Arabia in 2021, which protects energy infrastructure in Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast.

On Sunday, the Saudi-led military coalition said air defences intercepted at least 10 ballistic missiles.

The kingdom’s civil defence agency said two people were injured in the south by falling debris, also reporting damage to several buildings and vehicles.

Images released by the kingdom’s official press agency showed a building with part of its upper facade destroyed, exposing metal rods. Another image captured large windows shattered, with shards of glass strewn across the pavement and part of the road.

WASHINGTON — At first glance, President Trump’s decision to relax U.S. sanctions on Russia despite its continuing invasion of Ukraine was a dramatic break from principles that guided American foreign policy for most of a century.

Since the end of World War II, U.S.-Russian relations have oscillated between hostility and friendship, but one element was consistent: When Russia tried to take over one if its neighbors, the United States pushed back.

This time, though, the United States appeared to favor the aggressor, not the victim.

“The Trump administration has abandoned any pretense of being an honest broker,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department official under then-President George W. Bush, wrote last week. “It has gone all in on Russia’s side.”

The break from long-standing tradition was real, but it should not have been entirely surprising.

Trump has long expressed admiration for Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin — part of a syndrome one of his former aides, Fiona Hill, has called “autocrat envy.”

“He wants to rule like them,” she said, referring to the president’s bromances with Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and other strongmen.

Meanwhile, Trump often expresses disdain for democratically elected leaders of smaller countries, and he reserves a special loathing for the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

He has repeatedly said Zelensky was foolish to resist Russia’s 2022 invasion because, in his view, the larger country is almost certain to win the war.

“Russia is a massive country,” he said this month. “Even if it loses a million soldiers, it still has a million more. Ukraine doesn’t have that kind of manpower.”

Moreover, Trump has long believed U.S. companies could reap an economic bonanza from Russia’s resource-rich economy. As a real estate magnate, he spent 30 years seeking deals in Moscow; in 2008, his son Donald Jr. said Russians had provided the Trump Organization “a lot of our assets.”

In the short run, the president hopes to boost Republican prospects in next week’s midterm elections by buying diesel fuel from Russia — a move aimed at lowering prices at the cost of bolstering Putin’s war economy. (It hasn’t worked; the price of diesel has risen slightly since Trump’s decision.)

But he has a longer-term goals as well. He has long believed better relations between the United States and Russia would be good for both countries, no matter who’s in power in Moscow. And he has long yearned openly for a Nobel Peace Prize — and one way might be to arrange a durable ceasefire in Ukraine.

All those factors have led Trump to overturn two major elements of traditional U.S. foreign policy.

Instead of supporting Ukraine, the victim of a foreign military invasion, he’s been pressing the Zelensky to accept Putin’s demands for territory.

“President Trump still wants a personal relationship with Putin, and he wants to change the nature of the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship. Ukraine is in the way. So what President Trump is trying to do is get Ukraine out of the way. … President Trump wants Zelensky to capitulate,” Hill said.

“Zelensky has to want to settle this war, and if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” Trump said last week.

As he issued that advice, Ukraine’s army was experiencing interruptions with three forms of U.S. military help: Starlink, the communications system it uses to guide its anti-drone missiles; U.S.-provided early radar warnings of Russian missile attacks; and supplies of Patriot anti-missile weapons. U.S. officials claimed the three incidents were not deliberate — but to Ukrainians, they felt like a warning.

Meanwhile, instead of putting pressure on Putin through the traditional means of economic sanctions, Trump said he was trying to entice the Russian leader to negotiate by giving him preemptive rewards.

“I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he explained on Truth Social. “Great progress is being made.”

But signs of that progress were hard to find. In St. Petersburg last week, Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, presented Putin with a ceasefire proposal that the Americans negotiated with Ukraine and European countries. A top Putin aide dismissed the document, saying it “contained little of real value.”

Instead, the Russian president offered to increase Russian fertilizer exports to U.S. farmers. And he said he hoped Trump would join him at a summit meeting in China with Xi.

Ukraine has not been invited to that meeting, which prompted Haass to resurrect an old diplomatic aphorism: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Haass and other veterans of U.S. negotiations with Russia fear that Putin is merely stalling for time and pocketing Trump’s concessions while he tries to grind Ukraine down with missile attacks on Kyiv and other cities.

“If Trump and Witkoff were serious, they would give Putin 15 days to say yes to their ceasefire proposal — and if he doesn’t, they would impose new and tougher sanctions,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “There are still a lot of things they can do that would put Russia in a corner.”

But that has not been Trump’s inclination so far.

The irony, Hill said, is that even if Trump gets his way, that may not produce the victory he appears to expect.

“Putin and Trump are not the only actors in this,” she said. “Ukraine is not anybody’s to give. Its not Putin’s to have, and it’s not Zelensky’s. … This whole war is about Ukrainians wanting the right to determine their own future. It’s not Putin’s right or anyone else’s. It’s not Donald Trump’s to give away.”

Algeria’s parliament has approved a proposal to deploy troops to neighbouring Niger, in a major shift in the North African nation’s noninterventionist military doctrine.

Algeria’s lower house, the People’s National Assembly, ratified the deployment on Sunday after the upper house, the Council of the Nation, unanimously approved the proposal earlier in the day.

Details about the number of soldiers and when they will be deployed have yet to be made public.

It comes nearly two months after Algeria dispatched four Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 jets, a transport aircraft and an aerial refuelling aircraft to Niamey, following what Algerian authorities described as an attempt to destabilise Niger’s military-led government.

The step comes amid a thawing of relations between Algiers and Niamey as Niger’s President Abdourahamane Tchiani visited Algeria in February and, months later, his defence minister, Salifou Mody, ⁠⁠travelled to Algiers to discuss security cooperation.

The shooting down of a Malian drone by the Algerian army last April triggered a diplomatic crisis after Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso recalled their ambassadors from Algiers. The condemnation of the 2023 coup in Niger by Algeria had also strained ties.

The troop deployment is reportedly intended to protect oil installations belonging to Algeria’s state-owned energy company, Sonatrach. Troops would be sent “to protect Algeria’s economic and strategic interests, particularly its oil facilities in Niger”, The Associated Press news agency reported, quoting Algerian Senator Belkacem Boulghiti.

It also comes as Algiers seeks to deepen security cooperation in the Sahel, a vast belt of territory stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, including several countries along Algeria’s southern frontier.

Why does this matter?

Algeria has historically been reluctant to deploy its armed forces beyond its borders, reflecting a longstanding foreign policy built around sovereignty, noninterference and opposition to foreign military intervention.

But that does not mean it has never done so.

Algerian forces participated in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, although overseas military deployments have remained exceptionally rare in the decades since.

A constitutional revision in 2020 formalised the conditions under which Algerian troops could be sent abroad.

Under Article 91, the president may authorise such deployments, provided they receive the backing of at least two-thirds of the members of each chamber of parliament.

The constitution also provides for Algerian participation in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League.

The move is particularly significant given Algeria’s military capabilities. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the country spent more than $25bn on its armed forces in 2025, making it Africa’s largest military spender.

But the decision also comes against a backdrop of growing diplomatic tensions and shifting regional alliances.

In September, Algeria severed diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, accusing Abu Dhabi of repeated “hostile” and “provocative actions” without publicly detailing the incidents behind the decision.

The two countries have long disagreed over several regional issues, including Western Sahara and the UAE’s alleged interference in North African and Sahelian affairs.

Taken together, these developments suggest that Algeria is becoming increasingly willing to assert its security interests beyond its borders, even as it continues to emphasise the principles of sovereignty and noninterference.

Why the Sahel?

For Algeria, instability in the Sahel is not a distant security concern.

The country shares thousands of kilometres of borders with Mali, Niger and Libya, making developments in its southern neighbourhood particularly consequential.

The roots of the current security crisis can be traced, in part, to the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya in 2011.

At the height of the Arab Spring uprisings, Algeria took a firm stance against foreign military intervention and warned that the disintegration of the Libyan state could destabilise neighbouring countries.

Those concerns were not unfounded.

Following Gaddafi’s overthrow, weapons and armed fighters, including Tuareg who had served in Libya, spread into neighbouring countries.

Their return helped fuel a rebellion in northern Mali in 2012, contributing to a security crisis that preceded the military overthrow of President Amadou Toumani Toure that March.

Over the following decade, armed rebellion expanded across parts of the Sahel, particularly Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Since 2012, those three countries alone have experienced six military coups: three in Mali, two in Burkina Faso and one in Niger.

Many of the coups unfolded against a backdrop of deteriorating security, with military leaders accusing civilian governments of failing to contain increasingly powerful armed groups.

But insecurity was not the only factor. Political grievances, governance failures and rivalries within armed forces also contributed to the coups.

Who else is operating in the Sahel?

Another factor shaping Algeria’s calculations is the changing presence of foreign military forces across the region.

For more than a decade, France was a central player in counterterrorism operations in the Sahel, deploying thousands of troops to combat armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

But that military presence has largely unravelled.

Following successive coups and deteriorating diplomatic relations, France withdrew its troops from Mali in August 2022, Burkina Faso in February 2023 and Niger in December 2023.

The withdrawals were accompanied by growing anti-French sentiment and demands from military governments for greater control over their security policies.

Niger demanded the departure of approximately 1,500 French soldiers following its July 2023 coup.

Just months later, in April 2024, approximately 100 Russian military personnel arrived in Niamey, bringing equipment and providing training to Nigerien forces.

The personnel were associated with Africa Corps, a Russian paramilitary group close to the Kremlin.

Moscow has also expanded its military cooperation with Mali and Burkina Faso, where Russian personnel have undertaken training, advisory and security roles, including combat support in Mali.

The United States has also seen its military footprint shrink.

In 2024, Washington withdrew approximately 1,000 soldiers from Niger after the military government terminated their security cooperation agreement. The withdrawal included personnel stationed at an important US drone base near Agadez.

The result has been a significant realignment of the Sahel’s security partnerships, with Western military forces departing and Russia assuming a more prominent role.

What does Algeria stand to gain?

For Algiers, the proposed deployment to Niger carries immediate security and wider strategic implications.

At the most practical level, protecting Algerian energy investments would help safeguard the country’s economic interests in a region affected by armed rebellions and political instability, including the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP), which would transport Nigerian gas to Europe and traverse Niger and Algeria.

It could also deepen cooperation with Niger, whose military government has sought new security partners since taking power in 2023.

More broadly, the move would allow Algeria to establish a direct military presence in a neighbouring country at a time when the Sahel’s security architecture is being reshaped.

“We are not sending our soldiers to wage war in Niger, but for a mission to secure economic infrastructure,” Senator Boulghiti told reporters after the vote. “It is simply an adaptation of our doctrine to evolving circumstances so we can rise to the new challenges imposed by the situation in the Sahel region.”