A crew member was killed in an attack on an Indian cargo vessel off the coast of Oman. MV Cape Dao was heading to India when it was struck twice by a projectile, setting the vessel on fire.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
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From Maddie Lee: Shohei Ohtani’s swing was a little out in front of a slider delivered by Padres left-hander Robbie Ray. But Ohtani held back his hands long enough to extend them to the pitch and shoot it through the right side of the infield.
It wasn’t flashy. But considering it was his first at-bat in more than two weeks, in a tough matchup no less, it was a promising sign.
“It’s been a while since he’s played in a game, but it just felt like he wasn’t sped up at all,” manager Dave Roberts said after the Dodgers’ 5-1 loss to the Padres. “And I think he came out of it pretty well.”
The good news quickly dried up for the Dodgers after that, as they missed a chance to clinch a first-round bye with a win. But Ohtani’s return was still significant, and the success of his end-of-season tune-up will have playoff implications.
Ohtani did not address reporters Wednesday and has only done so once in the last five weeks, despite multiple requests.
The Dodgers activated Ohtani, who went one-for-four Wednesday, from the 15-day IL before the game and optioned rookie Josue De Paula to Triple A. De Paula is still under consideration for the National League Division Series roster as a bat off the bench.
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From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: The Lakers’ longtime public address announcer Lawrence Tanter died Wednesday, the team announced. He was 76.
Remembered for his smooth, baritone voice, Tanter served as the voice of the Lakers for more than four decades. Tanter narrated chapters of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James and now Luka Doncic. After a stroke suffered in March forced him to retire from his game day role, he transitioned to an advisory role in June.
“For 43 years, LT’s voice served as the soundtrack to Lakers games at the arena,” the team said in a statement Wednesday. “He will be remembered as a cherished member of the Lakers family.”
Tanter started with the team in 1982 when the Lakers played in the Forum. His signature calls — “toooo many steps,” “Kobeee Bryant,” “Lllaker Girlsss” — were not boastful or over the top. For a franchise that came to embody old Hollywood glamour, Tanter’s voice became the ideal soundtrack.
Donovan Walton hit a three-run homer and rookie Henry Bolte had his first four-hit game to help the Athletics beat the Angels 7-3 on Wednesday night.
The Angels (60-98) are trying to avoid the first 100-loss season in franchise history.
Lawrence Butler had an RBI single and Walton hit his ninth home run, a two-out shot off rookie Walbert Ureña (9-11) for a 4-0 lead in the first inning.
Bolte went four for five, scored two runs and had an RBI double in the second that put the Athletics (63-95) up 5-0.
From Ryan Kartje: When USC and Oregon meet Saturday at the Coliseum, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Trojans coach Lincoln Riley. A win could catapult USC into serious contention for the College Football Playoff. A loss could send its season into a sudden spiral. And looming over it all are questions about the coach’s future — questions that could be answered, at least in part, by the Trojans’ performance this week.
“It’s definitely an important game,” Riley said Tuesday. “There’s no question about it.”
But ask his star quarterback if there’s any extra motivation this week to beat Oregon, and you won’t exactly get the same sentiment.
“Eh, not really,” Jayden Maiava said. “We’re just kind of attacking it the same every single week.”
Or what about the Trojans starting left tackle?
“It’s the exact same [this week],” senior Elijah Paige said. “We treat every opponent the exact same.”
Why has it been so hard for USC football to compete for a national title after setting the standard in college football during Pete Carroll’s tenure?
Times USC beat reporter Ryan Kartje spent the past four years conducting more than 100 interviews, gaining new insight into the football program’s dramatic rise, fall and difficult push to return to national relevance.
Today, we begin sharing that story with you in “House of Troy,” a new narrative podcast from L.A. Times Studios available now on Spotify and Apple.
Check out Episode 1: “Win Now.”
In the late 1990s, USC football was in desperate need of a revival. The school turned to an unpopular choice: Pete Carroll, a former NFL coach. What happened next would transform USC into a college football powerhouse and Carroll into the face of a modern dynasty. In the first episode of “House of Troy,” Kartje takes us back to the beginning of the Carroll era and the drama that unfolded on and off the field.
Listen to “House of Troy” now on Spotify and Apple.
From Gary Klein: Rams star receiver Puka Nacua remains sidelined because of groin soreness and his status for Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos is unclear, coach Sean McVay said Wednesday.
Nacua was not scheduled to participate in a light team jog-through. Asked if he expected Nacua to play against the Broncos, McVay said, “I’m not sure.”
Will Nacua practice this week?
“I would say it’s more likely than not, but we’ll see,” McVay said.
1930 — The Portsmouth Spartans beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 12-0 in the first NFL game played under floodlights. More than 6,000 fans turn out on an unseasonably warm evening to watch the game at the new University Stadium.
1950 — Philadelphia’s Russ Craft has four interceptions to lead the Eagles in a 45-7 rout of the Chicago Cardinals. Chicago quarterback Jim Hardy sets an NFL record by throwing eight interceptions.
1953 — Rocky Marciano knocks out Rolando La Starza in the 11th round at the Polo Grounds in New York to retain his world heavyweight title.
1967 — Jim Bakken of St. Louis Cardinals kicks an NFL-record seven field goals to give the Cardinals a 28-14 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. His longest field goal is 33 yards.
1971 — The World Hockey Assn. announces its formation with 12 teams to start play in October 1972.
1988 — American heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee sets new world record 7,291 points to win the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics; East Germans Sabine John & Anke Behmer take the minor medals.
1988 — American swimmer Matt Biondi sets world record 22.14 to win the 50m freestyle gold medal at the Seoul Olympics; his fourth of five gold medals for the Games.
1988 — Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson breaks his own 100m world record with a time of 9.79 at the Seoul Olympics; disqualified three days later for use of drug stanozolol; Carl Lewis awarded gold and world record 9.92.
1993 — Juniata’s women’s volleyball team beats Washington of St. Louis to end Washington’s NCAA-record winning streak at 59 matches.
1994 — Washington ends Miami’s NCAA-record home winning streak at 58 with a 38-20 victory against the Hurricanes at the Orange Bowl.
1995 — On the final day of competition, Europe rallies past the U.S. to win the Ryder Cup 14 1/2 to 13 1/2 at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y. Europe takes seven singles matches to win its first Ryder Cup since 1989.
2001 — Green Bay’s 37-0 shutout of Washington ends the Redskins’ NFL record of scoring in 231 consecutive road games.
2006 — The Europeans turn the Ryder Cup into another rout, winning 18 1/2-9 1/2 and becoming the first European team to win three straight times.
2006 — Washington’s Mark Brunell breaks the NFL record for most consecutive passes completed in a game when he connects on his first 22 throws in a 31-15 win over the Houston Texans.
2011 — Dwayne De Rosario scores the quickest hat trick in MLS history, leading D.C. United to a 4-1 victory over Real Salt Lake.
2012 — Russell Wilson throws a disputed 24-yard touchdown to Golden Tate on the final play of the game, and the Seattle Seahawks rally to beat the Green Bay Packers 14-12.
2013 — Skipper Jimmy Spithill and defending champion Oracle Team USA extend their winning streak to seven to force a winner-take-all America’s Cup finale against Emirates Team New Zealand.
2016 — Daniel Carlson kicks six field goals and Auburn beats No. 18 LSU 18-13 after a ruling that Danny Etling’s apparent last-gasp scoring pass comes after time expired.
2017 — Peter Sagan of Slovakia becomes the first man to win three straight road race titles after holding off Norway’s Alexander Kristoff at the World Cycling Championships.
2017 — Diego Valeri scores twice to extend his MLS-record scoring streak to nine straight games and Portland beats Orlando City 3-0. Valeri moves in front of NYCFC’s David Villa for most goals this season with 20.
2017 — Jake Elliott kicks a 61-yard field goal as time expires to give the Philadelphia Eagles a 27-24 victory over the New York Giants. It is the longest by a rookie in NFL history.
2017 — Laver Cup Men’s Tennis, Prague: Roger Federer is unbeaten as Team Europe dominates Team World, 15-9 in the inaugural teams event.
2018 — Real Madrid midfielder & Croatian World Cup captain Luka Modrić is named world’s best male player at the FIFA Awards in London; Brazil & Orlando Pride forward Marta best female player; France’s Didier Deschamps best men’s coach.
Compiled by the Associated Press
1940 — Jimmie Foxx of the Red Sox hit his 500th career home run off Philadelphia’s George Caster in the first game of a doubleheader at Shibe Park. Foxx’s homer came in the sixth inning after Ted Williams homered. Joe Cronin followed with a homer and, later in the inning, Jim Tabor also homered. The four homers in the inning were a first in the AL.
1969 — The New York Mets clinched the NL East title, with Gary Gentry pitching a four-hitter in a 6-0 victory over St. Louis.
1974 — Detroit’s Al Kaline doubled down the right-field line off Dave McNally of Baltimore for his 3,000th career hit. The Orioles beat the Tigers 5-4 at Memorial Stadium.
1977 — Jack Brohamer of the Chicago White Sox had four extra base hits and hit for the cycle in an 8-3 win over the Seattle Mariners at the Kingdome.
1984 — Rick Sutcliffe threw a two-hitter and led the Chicago Cubs to the NL East title with a 4-1 victory over Pittsburgh.
1988 — Dave Stieb of the Toronto Blue Jays, one strike from a no-hitter, gave up a bad-hop single to Julio Franco. Stieb settled for a 1-0, one-hit victory over Cleveland.
1998 — Boston’s Tom Gordon set a major league record for most consecutive saves with his 42nd to preserve the Red Sox’ 9-6 win over the Baltimore Orioles.
2004 — The Atlanta Braves clinched their 13th consecutive division title, winning the NL East with an 8-7 victory over the Florida Marlins. The Braves’ record streak of division championships began with the 1991 NL West title and excludes the 1994 strike-shortened season.
2006 — Trevor Hoffman became baseball’s career saves leader, earning No. 479 to pass Lee Smith and help NL West-leading San Diego beat Pittsburgh 2-1. It was his NL-leading 43rd save in 48 chances.
2008 — Francisco Rodriguez worked the ninth inning of the Angels’ 6-5 victory over the Seattle Mariners to end the season with a major league record 62 saves.
2014 — The New York Yankees were eliminated from postseason contention after losing to the AL East champion Orioles 9-5. The Yankees missed the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time since 1992 and ’93.
2016 — Jose Bautista hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Yankees 3-0 to send New York to its third consecutive shutout defeat — the first time that has happened to New York since 1975.
2022 — The Braves’ Kyle Wright, who had only won two regular season games in four seasons, becomes the first 20-game winner in the majors this year with a 6-3 win over Philadelphia. The win moves Atlanta within one and a half games of the Mets, holders of first place in the NL East.
2025 — Seattle clinches its first AL West division title since 2001 with a 9-2 win over Colorado. Cal Raleigh has a two-homer game for the 12th time this season to become only the seventh player in history to reach the 60 mark.
Compiled by the Associated Press
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.
Acting United States Navy Secretary Hung Cao has confirmed that there have been “eight suicide attempts” by personnel assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group posted in the Middle East – at least two by jumping overboard – during their deployment there.
In a letter to US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Tuesday, Cao wrote about quality of life on the fleet and morale among personnel. He was responding on behalf of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to her questions about reports of crew members attempting to harm themselves.
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While Cao said no service members had died by suicide during the deployment, there had been attempts to jump overboard.
“This includes the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier airwing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons,” the letter read.
Here’s what we know:
It is a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that the Navy has referred to as one of the “largest warships in the world”. Nimitz-class vessels include 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the US arsenal.
The carrier, which set off from California in November 2025 for a routine deployment to the South China Sea, was rerouted in January to the US Central Command (CENTCOM) region in the Middle East because of escalating tensions with Iran.
Since the US-Israel war on Iran broke out at the end of February, the USS Abraham Lincoln has engaged in combat efforts and helped enforce the US naval blockade on Iranian ports.
The roughly 5,000-strong crew on board the Lincoln were at sea for 286 days before finally disembarking in Thailand on September 1, setting a record for the longest deployment. Besides one short port stop last December, the crew had no land breaks in that time.
US media reports have tied ship supply shortages to Iranian attacks on US military sites in the Middle East, notably the heavy damage inflicted on the naval base in Bahrain in the early days of the war. The navy was reportedly forced to use the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia instead as its main supply hub, some 3,540km (2,200 miles) from where the USS Lincoln was operating in the Gulf.
According to its website, Naval Support Activity Bahrain provided “services and support to ships at sea, remote sites throughout the region, and military and civilian personnel living in Bahrain”.
Last month, experts told Al Jazeera that the lack of port stops during the ongoing conflict was a major issue for the carrier.
“Ships need maintenance, particularly ships that are extremely complicated with very advanced weapon systems such as nuclear-powered carriers with very advanced systems, and there are things that you cannot do in terms of maintenance under way,” Harlan Ullman, a retired senior naval officer and chairman of the strategic advisory firm Killowen Group, said.
Extended deployments “erode the readiness and capability of that ship the longer it’s at sea, and it lacks the ability to repair and extend maintenance”, he added.
Following media reports of poor levels of morale on board, the USS George Washington was diverted from the Pacific to replace the carrier last month.
“Since the beginning of Lincoln’s deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group,” Cao wrote.
In particular, he said one sailor assigned to the air wing jumped overboard in early August but was “quickly recovered”, treated by the medical department and “transferred off ship for follow-on care”.
“Additionally, one sailor attempted to go overboard in March and was stopped by his shipmates. That sailor was also provided with immediate medical care and subsequently returned to homeport,” the letter added.
Cao said the carrier had been deployed with various mental health resources, including one psychologist, three behavioural health technicians, one clinical social worker, one embedded integrated prevention counsellor, one facility dog, and five chaplains.
Cao also acknowledged resupply limitations, however, as the vessel was participating in “major combat operations”, which meant that the number of main course options served during meal times was reduced from two to one.
He said the Navy prioritised the delivery of “hygiene products, fresh provisions and critical repair parts”, adding that while the ship experienced plumbing issues earlier in its deployment, the shipboard engineering team had completed repairs and “portable water supply remains safe and tested daily”.
The Navy chief added that a biparitsan Congressional Delegation was in the “planning stages” of an on-board visit to the carrier once it returns to the US.
Yes.
Before Cao’s letter, a crew member on board the carrier told CNN that morale on the vessel was very low, with suicidal ideation repeatedly heard among crew members.
Last month, the Navy Times, which covers US military news, spoke to the wife of a sailor who, she said, had attempted to jump off the vessel, saying he was “burnt out”.
According to the US news outlet, MSNOW, families of sailors had also attended a meeting with Cao the same month to express their concerns over the sailors’ mental health, exhaustion, and safety on board.
It also reported separately that families told it, on condition of anonymity, that their relatives and spouses on board had described mouldy showers and no hot water for showering for weeks.
Stars and Stripes, a US military news organisation, also reported last month that a spouse told the meeting with Cao that she had received a message from her husband saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.”
The same month – and following that reporting – the Pentagon fired the Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief and its Middle East reporter.
Since beginning his second term in January 2025, US President Donald Trump has accused news outlets of publishing and broadcasting “fake news”.
Last week, he announced that CNN, Politico and MSNOW would be banned from reporting from the White House.
On Thursday, US federal judge Timothy Kelly ordered the Trump administration to reinstate press passes after finding that the revocation was done without “constitutionally adequate due process”.
Following reports of burnout and struggling mental health on the USS Abraham Lincoln, CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper visited the sailors on the ship last month.
Cooper said in a statement afterwards that the team were “standing tall with immense, justified pride”, adding that “history will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era.”
Last month, Hegseth said reports about low morale and poor conditions on the ship had been “completely misrepresented”.
“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody,” Hegseth told reporters during a visit to Panama.
Trump also dismissed reports and said last month that the ship was “beautifully maintained”, saying reports of poor conditions were a “CNN fake news report”.
In a statement on Wednesday to CNN following the letter from Cao, Gillibrand said that what Trump and Hegseth had dismissed as “fake news” was in fact “serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members”.
“Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect. That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms, and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable.”
Australian authorities have raised the alarm after OpenAI-powered models hacked into a government health data system in June, slipping past its digital defences and accessing files without authorisation.
This is the first publicly known case of artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” – AI-powered software systems that can carry out tasks autonomously – breaking into a government website, and the latest of several AI breaches of external systems.
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The disclosure comes as top AI firms warn of the risk of humans losing control of AI, calling for its development to slow to a pace that allows it to be safely regulated. Global powers must cooperate to ensure this, they have said.
A research scientist at AI firm Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, went so far as to say he believes there is a greater than 10 percent chance AI could “kill all humans” within a decade.
Addressing the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said there is a risk of AI moving “so fast that people can no longer follow what’s happening or intervene when needed”.
“This would obviously be terrible,” he said. “And we should not train models that we cannot make an extremely strong case that we will be able to keep under human control.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the breach on Wednesday, saying an OpenAI agent had made its way into the public-facing medical statistics portal of Medicare, the country’s universal health insurance system, on July 18.
When OpenAI accessed the government portal while conducting research on public medical spending, Albanese said the AI agent circumvented “blocks” that should have prevented it from breaking into the portal.
“The AI agent found a way around those blocks – didn’t accept no for an answer,” said Albanese.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the information the OpenAI agent accessed was “not particularly sensitive” and was later publicly released.
Still, Albanese called the situation “obviously unacceptable” and said Australia had relayed its “extreme concern” to OpenAI, which had failed to notify the government of the breach until September 10.
Albanese also said several other government websites may have been affected by rogue OpenAI agents, though he did not confirm any other breaches.
He added that an inquiry into the breach would look at how Australian security agencies missed it initially and whether criminal charges could be brought against OpenAI.
In a statement, OpenAI said it had “identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers” and “took actions we did not intend”.
The company said the incident occurred as its models searched for statistics on medical spending, and that they are not believed to have obtained personal medical records.
OpenAI learned of the incident in August only as it conducted a review of “misaligned model activity”, it added.
Last week, OpenAI said it had put in place a new system to monitor, probe and disclose cases of “misalignment”. That includes instances of AI models that operate “without authorisation, coordinate with other models, or evade oversight”, it said.
Yes. The Australia data breach is the latest of several instances in which AI agents belonging to OpenAI, Google or Anthropic have accessed external systems without authorisation.
In July, OpenAI reported that two of its most advanced AI models had broken out of a controlled test and hacked another AI company, Hugging Face. OpenAI later said it had detected its AI models communicating with each other and gaining internet access without authorisation months before that hack occurred.
In August, rival Meta AI said its AI model had hacked another company during cybersecurity testing. It said the model made changes to the internal systems of the hacked company, which it did not name, after accessing the public internet because of an error in the setup of its testing environment.
Maurice Chiodo, an Australian mathematician who works at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, told the Reuters news agency the breach appeared to be “a significant escalation in seriousness from similar incidents we have seen in recent months”.
Experts say the Australia data breach highlights the growing dangers AI poses to cybersecurity as well as possible gaps in monitoring and disclosure capabilities.
“The important matter here is not what OpenAI says its agent can do, it is what the agent actually does when it hits a barrier,” Niusha Shafiabady, a professor of computational intelligence and head of the IT discipline at the Australian Catholic University, said in comments published by science news portal Scimex.
“The deeper technical risk is that autonomous AI does not always know when it is wrong, and humans may not be able to see why it made a decision,” added Shafiabady. “Without strong verification and hard boundaries, probabilistic errors can quietly become operational failures.”
Raffaele Fabio Ciriello, a senior lecturer in business information systems at the University of Sydney Business School, said OpenAI’s delay in reporting the breach was “concerning”.
“The incident occurred in June and only came to light months later,” said Ciriello. “Even if OpenAI did not detect the activity immediately, that still points to weaknesses in detection, escalation, and external notification.”
Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez took to the stage yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City to deliver a rather bland speech, in which she thanked United States President Donald Trump for resuming “diplomatic relations and cooperation” with Venezuela.
This was a different vibe, to be sure, than the one she opted for at the same venue in September 2019, when, as vice president under Nicolas Maduro, she accused the US of perpetrating “economic terrorism” that did not require the use of bombs “but rather through banks and insurance companies”.
Denouncing the global superpower’s militarisation of international relations and punishment of millions of innocent people “in order to apply regime change doctrines and steal other nations’ resources”, the Rodriguez of 2019 went on to cite Venezuelan economic losses to the tune of $130bn between 2015 and 2018 alone on account of US sanctions.
She additionally offered her opinion that the domination of the US political system by “plutocratic minorities” made the country unqualified to impose its model on other countries.
Seven years later, US plutocracy is going strong with Trump at the helm – the same Trump alongside whom a grinning Rodriguez appeared in a photograph taken in New York on Tuesday, less than nine months after he oversaw regime change in Venezuela by kidnapping Maduro.
The kidnapped president is now also in New York, albeit in jail, and is scheduled to stand trial in June 2027. This despite his attempts to remind everyone that, as a sitting head of state, his prosecution in a foreign court contravenes international law.
Then again, abducting other countries’ presidents is also pretty glaringly illegal. But Trump has made it clear that he alone is in charge of deciding what is and is not permissible on any given day.
The abduction took place on January 3, when the US military launched air attacks on Venezuela, killing some 100 people and whisking Maduro and his wife away.
He is accused of an array of misdeeds, including being the leader of the “Cartel of the Suns” – which, mind you, does not actually exist – and engaging in “conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices”.
This is quite the accusation coming from the country that just used all manner of destructive devices to bomb Venezuela and kill a bunch of people.
Anyway, bald-faced hypocrisy is nothing new in the land of the “plutocratic minorities”.
Now, the waning corporate media interest in Maduro’s fate amounts to another coup for US impunity, as folks go about more or less forgetting that there is a foreign head of state sitting in a Brooklyn prison.
But Maduro’s disappearance works out well for Rodriguez, as she goes about enabling the very theft of resources she once decried.
Rodriguez took the stage at the UN the day after Trump, who used the platform to pat himself on the back for the trampling of Venezuelan sovereignty that conveniently culminated in last month’s announcement from the White House of the “biggest oil deal in world history”, securing US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves.
Speaking to his international audience, Trump boasted: “To the victor belong the spoils. You’ve all heard that.”
Never mind that you’re not technically supposed to admit that you attacked a country just to get its oil. (You’re also not, in polite company, supposed to threaten to annihilate Iran – another of Trump’s UN talking points.)
Since January, the US has lifted many coercive economic measures against Venezuela (including against Rodriguez herself), easing the brutal sanctions regime that as of 2020 was estimated to have already killed 100,000 Venezuelans, according to former UN independent expert Alfred-Maurice de Zayas.
But trading sanctions for de facto colonialism isn’t a great deal, either.
Meanwhile, Trump’s continued manic bombing of vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, which a recent UN report warned may constitute crimes against humanity, suggests the US is nowhere near to kicking its old habit of terrorism – and is all the more reason that Rodriguez might have refrained from thanking the US leader for his “cooperation”.
As Gregory Wilpert, founder of the Venezuelanalysis website and author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power, diplomatically put it to me: “One cannot help but wonder whether Delcy Rodriguez is over-complying with Trump in some aspects of her negotiations with him.”
Noting that Rodriguez is “in a highly vulnerable position”, Wilpert ran through a few of the options she faces, such as “the possibility that the Trump administration could treat her as it treated Maduro – by attempting to kidnap her – or as it treated Iran, by targeting the country’s highest levels of government”.
Or, Wilpert said, there is always the Cuba approach, which would entail “the kind of economic siege” that is undertaken “with the aim of starving an entire country”.
In her UN address, Rodriguez promised that Venezuela would hold elections at some unspecified point in time – not that the US, for its part, really cares about democracy as long as the right people are in power.
And although it’s still too early to tell, Rodriguez might just be one of those people.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes to his feet at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York later on Thursday, he does so at a critical point in both his political career and in his country’s long and fractious relationship with the international body.
Israel has faced repeated accusations of genocide at the UN, as well as systematic war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Those criticisms continue to shape the country’s fractious relationship with the body.
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For Netanyahu, appearing in front of the UNGA for the 15th time, the stakes have rarely been higher. Addressing a domestic Israeli audience that polls show to be losing faith in him and his Likud party ahead of crucial elections later this year, Netanyahu has already pitched himself as Israel’s primary voice on the international stage.
Nevertheless, analysts say Netanyahu’s address could prove a pivotal moment domestically, amplified by international criticism of Israel and expected to dominate headlines and be carried live across the country’s television networks.
“This is a regular fixture for him,” former Israeli consul general in New York and ex-government adviser Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera. “It’s his way of being seen in Israel as standing up against the world and of telling members that he will never give up or surrender. He’s also turned the event into some kind of national holiday in Israel, with everyone sitting down to watch the address on television. He’s brainwashed people in Israel into believing his speech is somehow an announcement of policy, stated in defiance of the [rest of the world] who don’t believe a word he says.”
Israeli leaders have long framed their stance towards the UN as one of defiance in the face of hostility. The UN has long been a platform for critics of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land and repeated attacks on its neighbours. It has included attempts to censure Israel over what UN investigators have described as apartheid in the West Bank, as well as accusations of genocide and pogroms across the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2023.
There have been numerous UNGA resolutions criticising Israel’s conduct — nearly all dismissed by Israeli lawmakers as evidence of institutional bias — culminating in Israel declaring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres persona non grata and severely restricting the operations of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
![Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN Danny Danon at a United Nations Security Council meeting at UN headquarters in New York [File: AFP]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/afp_69a425a45f04-1772365220.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
“Generally speaking, many Israelis tend to see the UN as anti-Israeli,” Nimrod Goren, the president of the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policy, Mitvim, said.
Against that background, criticism from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — already cast as anti-Israel in the Israeli press — has drawn greater public attention to the event. Underscoring the sense of hostility towards Israel are stories within the country’s media suggesting that Netanyahu’s visit to New York has been curtailed due to unspecified security concerns, with the Israeli premier expected to fly out of New York on the same day as his arrival.
In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, who has repeatedly accused the organisation of waging “diplomatic terrorism” against the state called for Mamdani’s arrest for what he said was the mayor’s incitement against New York’s Jewish community ahead of Netanyahu’s visit.
“Netanyahu is going into his UNGA speech with not one but both eyes focused firmly on the upcoming Israeli election,” Goren said. “The speech is usually treated in Israel as a major event, receiving broad coverage and dominating the news cycle. Netanyahu will likely try to leverage this to bolster his image as a close ally of the US and to talk up the threat posed by Iran.”
Some have interpreted US President Donald Trump’s apparent lack of availability to meet Netanyahu during this trip as a sign of waning support. But US backing for Israel at the UN has remained steadfast since the October 7 attack and has contributed to growing frustration within the UN over what they see as Israel’s ability to resist international censure.
Alongside the creation of the Board of Peace, which shifted significant responsibility for Gaza’s future from the UN to the Trump-founded organisation, Washington has repeatedly used its veto at the UN Security Council to shield Israel from resolutions it opposes. The US has vetoed at least six UN Security Council resolutions on Gaza since October 2023, most of them demanding an immediate ceasefire.
“There seems to be genuine frustration within the UN General Assembly over the body’s failure to play a significant political role in Gaza and the West Bank, but also in its failure to protect its own staff and agencies,” Chatham House Associate Fellow Zizette Darkazally, who previously worked with the UN, said.
“However, it’s worth remembering the context the UN operates within in the occupied territories and the important humanitarian role it plays. The UN continues to get aid and medical support into Gaza and the West Bank, which are both areas where Israel has absolute control over access,” she said. “It’s also worth remembering that the UN is only as strong as the commitment of its member states.”
“That, combined with a system of veto that’s more than 80 years old, has left the organisation weaker now than it had ever been,” she said of the confrontations between the UN and Israel. “And we’re seeing the effects of that, not just in Palestine, but in Yemen, Sudan and Iran, where the UN is playing next to no political role.”
United States President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping are set to meet in Washington, DC on Thursday for a summit that is expected to cover trade, artificial intelligence (AI), Taiwan and the US-Israel war on Iran.
In advance of the talks, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington had proposed an AI “notification mechanism” with China – effectively a hotline to alert each other when AI incidents threaten national security.
The meeting comes as leading AI companies warn about the technology’s risks, while both superpowers push to accelerate their AI race. In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera compares the US and China’s AI strength in computing power, AI models, spending and research.
Training and running AI requires enormous amounts of computing power. The more powerful chips and computers a country has, the faster it can build and improve AI models, making computing power one of the biggest advantages in the AI race.
Computing power is measured in FLOP/s (floating-point operations per second) – or how many calculations a computer can perform in one second.
Adding up the computing power of all the AI chips a country has gives a sense of its total AI capacity. By that measure, the US is well ahead, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the world’s total AI computing power, while China holds just more than 14 percent, according to Epoch AI, an AI research institute.
The US lead comes largely from its access to the most advanced chips. US company Nvidia accounts for more than 60 percent of global AI computing capacity among major chip designers, while China’s Huawei holds a much smaller, but growing share, according to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index.
Those chips also need somewhere to run. The US has more than 5,400 data centres – the large buildings which house thousands of computers – about 10 times as many as any other country. It also leads in dedicated AI data centres, with 84, more than the next eight countries combined.
Frontier models are the most advanced AI systems, such as OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek’s models in China. They are trained using vast amounts of data and computing power to write, reason and code.
The US has led the development of these models, but Chinese models are gaining ground.
As of March 2026, US and Chinese AI models were closely matched on Arena, a leaderboard where users compare two anonymous models and vote for the better answer. US companies Anthropic, xAI, Google and OpenAI ranked near the top, alongside China’s Alibaba and DeepSeek.
On OpenRouter, a platform that ranks AI models by real-world use, Chinese models dominate the leaderboard. Models from Chinese companies DeepSeek, Z.ai and Tencent hold the top three spots on OpenRouter by tokens processed, the units of text that AI models read and generate.
This is partly because Chinese models are cheaper to use. Many are also open-weight, meaning developers can download, adapt and run them themselves.
Chinese models can now compete with US ones in many real-world tasks, with Chinese AI models “months, not years, behind US frontier models”, according to a July analysis by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
In May, the US government’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) estimated that DeepSeek V4 Pro, released in April, was about eight months behind leading US models.
The US is spending far more than China on the infrastructure needed to build AI, giving its tech companies a significant advantage in the race for computing power.
Goldman Sachs estimates that US hyperscalers, the giant tech companies that run large-scale cloud computing and data centres, will spend about $764bn in 2026. That includes Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle. By comparison, China’s Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance are expected to spend $102bn.
But China’s spending is increasing faster. TrendForce, a market research firm, expects China’s four hyperscalers’ capital expenditure to rise by more than 80 percent in 2026, compared with a projected growth of 76 percent for US hyperscalers, according to the news agency Reuters.
The spending gap reflects the scale of the US tech sector, whose companies have larger revenues to reinvest in chips, data centres and talent.
China is producing more AI research and training more technical talent, but the US remains a magnet for the world’s top AI researchers.
China accounted for more than 27 percent of global AI publications in 2024, including journal articles, conference papers, working papers and preprints compared with 12 percent from the US, according to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The figures only cover publications with an English-language title or abstract.
China also trains more top researchers. According to a study by MacroPolo, 47 percent of the world’s top 20 percent of AI researchers completed their undergraduate studies in China in 2022, up from 29 percent in 2019. The study also found that 72 percent of the top AI researchers educated in China were working in the US.
Taiwan has provided the first public look at its new 105mm 8×8 mobile gun system in action, with the domestically developed vehicle engaging moving and stationary targets during a live-fire demonstration in southern Taiwan. The vehicle is being developed as Taiwan continues to modernize its ground forces in response to the growing capabilities and increasingly frequent military activity of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around the island.
Defense ministry showcases 105mm mobile gun system
During the demonstration, held by the Republic of China Army (ROCA) at a training area in Tainan today, the vehicle reportedly engaged a moving target at approximately 0.75 miles and a stationary target at around 0.6 miles. It also fired against targets positioned 90 degrees to the side of the vehicle while operating on a gentle slope, demonstrating the gun system’s ability to engage targets while the vehicle is positioned on uneven terrain.
The vehicle subsequently fired its 7.62mm coaxial machine gun simultaneously with its main gun as part of a scenario intended to demonstrate engagement of multiple targets, including simulated amphibious assault vehicles.
An apparent weapon malfunction was also recorded during the demonstration. One of the 105mm rounds initially failed to fire, according to reports. The crew waited approximately two minutes in accordance with safety procedures before reloading the weapon, after which the vehicle fired normally. Maj. Gen. Chen Chien-chung, head of Taiwan’s Arsenal 202, the Production and Manufacturing Center of the Armament Bureau, said an investigation would be conducted into the misfire.
Despite the incident, the demonstration provided an important look at a vehicle that Taiwan is developing specifically around the country’s geography and battlefield requirements, including a potential amphibious invasion by the Chinese PLA.
A new direct fire support variant of the Clouded Leopard 8×8 infantry fighting vehicle was first publicly displayed at the Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in 2023. It passed initial combat readiness testing with the ROCA in October 2023, and it was authorized for mass production in April 2024.
The production configuration has undergone significant changes since then.
Its height has been reduced by approximately 12 inches, bringing the overall vehicle height to below 9 feet 10 inches. Its turning radius has also been reduced from 36 feet to 26 feet. The reduction in turning radius was achieved by providing steering to three pairs of wheels, rather than two pairs on the earlier configuration.
Those changes are especially relevant to Taiwan, where large sections of the island feature restrictive terrain, dense urban development, narrow roads, drainage channels, and other obstacles that can limit the movement of heavy armored vehicles.
Taiwanese officials specifically highlighted the system’s suitability for culverts and urban areas, as well as the challenging terrain of Hualien and Taitung on the island’s mountainous east coast.
The vehicle’s principal weapon is a 105mm gun. The weapon can fire the general-purpose ammunition already developed for tank guns, in addition to ammunition developed specifically for the new system. The ROCA displayed armor-piercing, anti-personnel, and training ammunition during the demonstration. The gun also offers useful ammunition commonality with Taiwan’s older, but sill active M60A3 and CM11 tanks.
That compatibility potentially gives the vehicle access to an existing ammunition ecosystem while allowing Taiwan to develop specialized rounds for its particular requirements.
Against a PLA assault, the 105mm system would provide mobile direct firepower against amphibious vehicles, armored personnel carriers, fortifications, and other ground targets, complementing Taiwan’s heavier tanks and other anti-armor weapons. Its wheeled configuration also allows the vehicle to rapidly reposition along Taiwan’s road network, giving commanders a mobile source of direct firepower that could respond to amphibious landings and reinforce threatened sectors.
The system falls into the same broad category as other modern 8×8 mobile gun systems, including Italy’s Centauro family and Japan’s Type 16 Mobile Combat Vehicle.
Less successful was a mobile gun system version of the U.S. Army Stryker, also with a 105mm gun, but the service divested that in 2021 because of problems with its dated cannon and autoloader. The U.S. Army then received the M10 Booker Combat Vehicle. Armed with a 105mm main gun, the Booker is a tracked vehicle with a much higher degree of armor protection and off-road mobility, but this, too, was canceled in 2025, amid cost and weight increases.
A wheeled 105mm gun system can provide substantial direct-fire capability while offering advantages in road mobility and potentially lower logistical demands. It also lacks the combination of protection, cross-country mobility, and heavy armament associated with a tracked main battle tank.
For Taiwan, this kind of vehicle provides a comparatively compact armored platform able to move rapidly between positions and bring heavy direct firepower to areas where larger vehicles could face mobility constraints.
If fighting reaches Taiwan’s cities, the ROCA regularly trains for the challenges of urban warfare. The service has also demonstrated unusual measures to conceal and protect its armored vehicles, including disguising tanks and other vehicles as scrap piles or civilian construction equipment to complicate PLA targeting.
The vehicle’s development is also being influenced by the threat of battlefield drones. Taiwanese military officials say the system is expected to receive additional counter-drone capabilities before entering mass production. One planned modification is an anti-drone cage around the vehicle.
More ambitious changes could involve the installation of a larger-caliber automatic weapon. Reportedly, the vehicle could eventually receive another machine gun or larger-caliber automatic cannon, with the 30mm M230 chain gun identified as one possible option. The proposed weapon could use canister-type ammunition designed to disperse numerous fragments against small drones.
Adding dedicated counter-drone equipment to the mobile gun system would therefore give the vehicle another role beyond direct engagement of conventional ground targets.
The prominence of counter-drone measures in the planning of the vehicle also reflects the increasingly contested environment in which Taiwan’s armored forces would have to operate. In a conflict with China, armored units have to operate under the threat of persistent surveillance and attacks from a wide range of uncrewed systems, making concealment, mobility, dispersion, and organic counter-drone capabilities very important to any change of survival. Questioning just how long any armor would last in a full-on invasion scenario is absolutely relevant. As we have seen in Ukraine, the drone threat alone has sidelined even the most capable armor. At the same time, Taiwan is working toward its own drone-heavy battlefield doctrine, part of a broader plan to turn the island into a “hellscape” for any invading force.
Overall, the September 23 demonstration offered a useful glimpse into the thinking behind Taiwan’s indigenous armored vehicle program.
As part of a wider modernization of ROCA armor, the service has also received 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, broadly equivalent to the M1A2 SEPv3 version — or System Enhancement Package version 3 — which you can read more about here.
With production of 178 series examples of the new vehicle scheduled to begin in 2027, Taiwan’s new 105mm mobile gun system is moving toward becoming a significant component of the island’s domestically produced armored fleet.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com
What’s better than two Taylor Lautners?
On Wednesday, Taylor Lautner and his wife Tay Lautner (née Dome) announced the arrival of their first child in a shared Instagram post, a baby girl they named … drumroll please … Lennon Taylor Lautner.
“One week loving our sweet little Lenny,” the couple wrote in the Instagram caption. Lennon arrived Sept. 16, according to the social media post, which showed a partial image of the infant.
The new parents have been married since 2022 and met through the 34-year-old “Twilight” actor’s younger sister, Makena Moore.
They announced the pregnancy in March on their Instagram accounts, hinting that the future baby could share a matching name, with the photo carousel’s caption: “What’s better than two Taylor Lautners?”
A “weight lifted” off her shoulders when she shared the news, Tay said in April on her podcast “The Squeeze.” She was afraid the news would leak when she went among the public.
“It was really exciting that Taylor and I got to do that on our own terms,” Tay continued.
In June, the two revealed the baby‘s sex in an emotional Instagram Reel, with the “Twilight” actor later writing on his personal Instagram stories that his dream “has always been to become a girl dad,” according to People.
“All I wanted was a healthy baby but deep down this moment is what I was dreaming of. The weight that was lifted off my shoulders in this moment knowing that dream came true was unlike anything I’ve felt,” the actor wrote.
In her third trimester, Tay, a 29-year-old registered nurse who has been open about mental health, expressed her thoughts and feelings about pregnancy, sharing in an Aug. 12 episode of “The Squeeze” that she gained 50 pounds, experienced swelling and had stretch marks.
“Women don’t get enough credit for what we put our bodies through because it is truly just insane,” she said in the podcast. “Let the pregnant women live a little more. We need to just applaud them, praise them and give them a little more respect.”
Media reports say US withholds army chief’s visa to pressure him into accepting a 90-day truce in Sudan’s civil war.
Sudanese activists and journalists have criticised the United States over reports that Washington has withheld a visa from army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan before the United Nations General Assembly in an apparent bid to pressure him into accepting a ceasefire proposal.
Activists took to social media on Wednesday to slam the reported move as “political pressure”, arguing that access to the UN should not be used to influence Khartoum’s position on Sudan’s three-year civil war.
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Neither the Sudanese government nor the US Department of State has commented on the reports.
General al-Burhan, whose army has been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, was scheduled to address the General Assembly on Thursday in New York. The army chief has spoken at the assembly twice since the war began.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and caused the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
The Reuters news agency, citing Sudanese sources, reported on Tuesday that the US was withholding al-Burhan’s visa and had made its issuance contingent on him agreeing to a 90-day ceasefire proposed by Massad Boulos, US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs.
The AFP news agency, quoting two diplomatic sources, also reported that Washington refused to issue the visa. One source called the move a “clear violation of the UN’s agreement with the US” while another said the visa had been “conditioned” on al-Burhan accepting the three-month truce.
Sudan’s UN ambassador, Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith, wrote to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to request the UN’s “immediate intervention” with US authorities, according to Reuters.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for Guterres, said the UN chief was “deeply concerned” that the visa had reportedly not been issued. He told the AFP that the UN Secretariat has urged the US, as host country, to ensure visas were issued in accordance with its obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement and in time for al-Burhan to participate in the General Assembly.
Sudanese activist Mamoun al-Sheikh denounced the US move in a post on Facebook, saying: “Even if the visa is withheld, it will not silence Sudan’s voice.”
Another activist, Sayed Al-Mazaj, described linking the visa to a proposed 90-day ceasefire as “a tool for political pressure”. And in a video posted on X, Sudanese journalist Diaa Al-Din Bilal said barring al-Burhan from New York would not force him to accept the US position and could instead boost his popularity and rally support around him.
Another X user, @Atifazhri, also denounced the US move, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza, had been granted a visa.
“The issue is double standards – when visas become instruments of political coercion against a sovereign state while far more serious cases are treated differently. International law and justice cannot be applied selectively,” the user wrote.
The State Department issued a statement on Tuesday that did not directly address al-Burhan’s visa but called into question his legitimacy. Its spokesman Tommy Pigott said neither the Sudanese army nor the RSF “nor their respective leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan”.
He added the US would “seek to raise the cost of continued conflict on all belligerents”.
Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hit back on Wednesday, calling on the US to engage positively with the country’s government. Any peace initiative, it said, must “be grounded in respect for Sudan’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and legitimate national institutions”.
“It must also address the root causes of the war’s continuation — foremost among them, negative foreign interference,” the ministry added.
Al-Burhan has been Sudan’s de facto leader since 2019 although the African Union and Western powers withdrew recognition after a 2021 coup that he led with Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF’s leader, against the civilian leadership.
He has rejected externally imposed ceasefires, arguing that earlier pauses in the fighting benefitted the paramilitary group.
The US has also refused visas to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and some members of Iran’s delegation to the UN.
The last A-10 Thunderbolt II assigned to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, left the installation on September 22. The departure marks the end of nearly five decades of Warthog operations, including tactics development and testing, at the Air Force’s most high-profile fighter base. It also reflects a broader shift in which close air support expertise and some associated missions are supposedly being distributed among the F-15, F-16, and F-35 communities, although the move is controversial, to say the least.
Nearly 70 airmen assigned to Nellis gathered along the flight line to salute the aircraft as it departed. The final takeoff closes a chapter that began in 1977, when the first A-10 arrived at the base, which subsequently became a major center for developing and refining the aircraft’s operational employment.
Over the decades, Nellis-based units worked on the A-10’s software, avionics, and precision weapons capabilities, while the U.S. Air Force Weapons School’s 66th Weapons Squadron trained more than 300 A-10 weapons officers through approximately 100 classes. Many of the tactics in the A-10’s playbook emanated from the base.
The A-10’s departure consequently represents more than the retirement of another aircraft from a Nellis ramp. It also marks the end of a dedicated training and institutional ecosystem that developed around an aircraft specifically designed for close air support.
Earlier this year, Jamie Hunter of TWZ visited the U.S. Air Force A-10 Weapons Instructor Course as it was in the process of closing down, as documented in these exclusive videos:
A-10 Cockpit And Walk-Around Tour With A Warthog Weapons Instructor
The Last Days Of The A-10 Warthog Weapons School
The Air Force is now attempting to carry at least some of that expertise into a force built around multirole fourth- and fifth-generation fighters.
“We are maintaining the culture of the A-10 by involving as many other fighter communities involved in the close air support mission,” Lt. Col. Ridge Flick, commander of the 66th Weapons Squadron, said. “We are also training F-15 Eagle, F-35 Lightning II and F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots to take on some roles we have had in combat search and rescue.”
The A-10 was developed specifically for close air support, with its design emphasizing survivability at relatively low altitude, weapons employment against ground targets, and the ability to persist in the vicinity of friendly forces. In contrast, the F-16C/D and F-15E/EX were developed primarily as multirole fighters, while the F-35 combines strike, air-to-air, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and networking capabilities with a low-observable design.
Rather than replacing the A-10 with a single successor, the Air Force is therefore distributing elements of its former mission set across several aircraft and communities. The service insists its close air-support capability is not being reduced as the Warthog fleet retires, but at the very least the transition does represent a significant change in how that capability is generated and employed.
Regardless, the USAF’s claim that the impact of losing the heart of the A-10’s braintrust will not dramatically impact key mission sets in a negative manner has been viewed with extreme skepticism by some. It’s not uncommon for subject matter experts to believe the close air support and ‘Sandy’ aircrew recovery mission braintrust that the Warthog community represents is a far bigger loss than the aircraft itself, and that the USAF is not prepared to preserve this critical expertise, regardless of the service’s stated intentions.
The end of A-10 operations at Nellis also put what may be the final nail in the A-10’s coffin, as reconstituting these operations would be very challenging and costly. All this points to the Warthog being on its final glide path to retirement, once and for all.
You can read all about this controversy in our past special feature linked here.
Beyond the redistribution of Nellis’s A-10 pilots, the transition is also affecting the maintainers who supported the base’s A-10 fleet. Airmen assigned to the 757th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron’s Thunder Aircraft Maintenance Unit are being reassigned to other squadrons and airframes, including the F-35 and F-16. The Air Force is consequently moving not only personnel, but also decades of experience maintaining an aging and structurally demanding aircraft into programs supporting newer fighters.
For Staff Sgt. Eva Kehn, a weapons load crew chief with the 757th AMXS, the end of the A-10 era has an especially personal dimension because of her family’s connection to the aircraft and to aviation.
“Working on the A-10 is meaningful to me because that is something that I share with my grandfather,” Kehn said. “I’m very excited to have that new chapter and bond over that again with my grandfather.”
Kehn is transferring to an F-35 unit at Nellis, where that connection will continue in a different form. Her grandfather is now a civilian F-35 instructor, giving the two an opportunity to remain professionally connected even as the A-10 disappears from the installation.
Master Sgt. Aaron Edmonds, an aircraft section chief with the 757th AMXS, is also moving on from the Warthog after spending the past five years maintaining the aircraft. Edmonds previously worked on the F-16 earlier in his career and will now return to the Viper community.
“It’s a bittersweet moment,” Edmonds said. “I enjoyed my time with the A-10, but I’m excited because this departure marks the closing of one chapter and the start of another.”
Edmonds said the experience gained on the A-10 should be carried into the next aircraft rather than left behind with the airframe. “The advice I would give airmen who are transitioning from one airframe to another is to be open-minded, willing to learn and carry on the great work ethic from your previous aircraft over to your new one,” he said.
With the A-10 no longer present at Nellis, at least some of the expertise attached to it is being incorporated into a fighter force in which other aircraft types can contribute to the close air support mission in very different ways. An F-35, for example, can use its sensors and networking capabilities to identify and share information about targets and the battlespace, and it can go where other fighters can’t. An F-15 can contribute heavier weapons and longer endurance, among other capabilities, depending on the mission. This is not exactly new, either, as all types of aircraft provided CAS during the Global War on Terror-era, although the masters of exactly how to do it and how to execute the critical airborne forward air control (FAC-A) mission existed in the A-10 community. Still, the resulting force will be considerably different from the one centered on the Warthog, even where the underlying requirement to support troops on the ground remains.
As noted, the A-10’s retirement now looks to be gathering pace, despite repeated efforts to keep the A-10 in service and recent employment in combat operations in the Middle East. The Pentagon has granted three Warthog squadrons a reprieve to continue operating through 2030. In July, a bipartisan group of Congressmen introduced a bill that, if passed and signed into law, would require the Air Force to keep flying the jets through Fiscal Year 2033. Still, the aircraft’s eventual fate appears increasingly clear, with growing numbers heading to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) boneyard in Arizona for storage, including the last one from Nellis.
The ongoing retirement of the A-10 is bringing a fundamental change in how the Air Force organizes and executes the missions for which the Warthog became synonymous. Nellis will remain an important center for developing those capabilities, even though the aircraft around which that expertise was built is no longer part of the equation.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com
WASHINGTON — A federal judge early Thursday temporarily blocked President Trump’s move to ban three news outlets from the White House grounds and said CNN, MS NOW and Politico must have their access restored.
It’s the latest development in an escalating showdown between Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes. The president announced he was banning the outlets Sept. 18, assailing what he called “fake news.” More recently, Trump has said negative coverage is dangerous for the country.
The outlets argued that they were singled out because of the content of their coverage — in other words, viewpoint discrimination — and called the ban a “blatant violation” of the 1st Amendment.
In an order posted shortly after midnight Eastern time, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said the media outlets had met the legal thresholds needed to obtain a temporary restraining order, which include the likelihood of succeeding on the merits of the case and of suffering irreparable harm without an order.
“This is a high bar, but Plaintiffs have met it,” he wrote.
Kelly — whom Trump nominated in 2017 and who ordered a CNN journalist’s access restored in a similar case in 2018 — heard arguments Wednesday and ended the hearing without ruling.
On Thursday, he issued the temporary restraining order, which will be in effect for 14 days. Such orders are typically designed to preserve the status quo pending a closer review of the case by the court.
During the hearing, Kelly questioned whether the administration had met its legal responsibilities and provided CNN, MS NOW and Politico with adequate due process before banning them.
The rulings in two prior cases over press access, including one that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, made it clear that journalists are entitled to an opportunity to be heard before they have their press passes revoked.
Justice Department attorney Michael Velchik argued that the rulings in the earlier cases were wrong.
The judge noted that his decision would be guided by prior rulings in comparable 1st Amendment cases, even if the government disagrees with them.
Strikes carried out in southeastern province of Khost cause no casualties, governor’s office says.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
Pakistan says it has carried out air strikes on 10 locations in Afghanistan used to store and launch drones, some of which were used in cross-border attacks.
The air strikes on Thursday were carried out as tensions grow between the former allies over attacks by armed groups in Pakistan, which triggered their worst fighting in years in February.
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Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters who stage cross-border attacks, but Afghanistan’s Taliban government denies harbouring anti-Pakistani armed groups and says the attacks are Pakistan’s internal problem.
The air strikes were “deliberate, precise, calibrated, and proportionate, and strictly limited to identified military objectives directly linked to the attempted attacks against Pakistan”, Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X.
He condemned a “deliberate and unlawful incursion into Pakistan by drones” on Wednesday.
“This constitutes a blatant violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and is a grave and unacceptable act of aggression,” he said.
The Pakistani air strikes were conducted in several areas of Khost province in southeastern Afghanistan, Mustaghfir Gurbaz, spokesperson for the Khost governor, said.
There were no casualties, he said.
An attack on a police facility in northwestern Pakistan last week that killed at least 21 people has reignited fighting between the countries after nearly three months of relative calm. A Pakistan Taliban faction claimed responsibility for the blast and subsequent gun battle.
On Monday, air strikes targeting three locations in northeastern Afghanistan killed three civilians in the Nurgal district of Kunar province, Afghan officials said. Islamabad said it killed 28 “terrorists”.
The escalation threatens mediation efforts by China, Turkiye, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to broker a lasting peace between the two neighbours.
Relations between the former allies have been strained since the fighting in February, the worst for years.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says Russia ‘doesn’t have the forces to really invade NATO.’ Sikorski was speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
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Many of the front pages focus on the Conservative party’s promise to prevent long-term jobless benefit claimants from spending their welfare payments on alcohol, cigarettes and betting. The Daily Mail’s headline is “Kemi’s ruthless crackdown on benefits street”, external. The Daily Telegraph says the Tories want to stop joblessness being what is referred to as a “lifestyle choice for those who can’t be bothered”, external.
The front page of the Daily Mirror carries a photograph of the moment two RAF pilots ejected from a jet before it crashed on Anglesey in North Wales, external. They were taking part in a training exercise when they were forced to parachute from the plane – which, the paper reports, then “plummeted nose-first into a field” and caused a “huge fireball”. The paper’s headline is “Miracle no one was killed”.
According to the Daily Telegraph, talks about the future of the Elgin marbles have collapsed, external. Greece reopened negotiations with the British Museum in 2021 as part of efforts to repatriate the ancient sculptures. But the paper says “it is understood negotiations are effectively over” as Greek representatives are frustrated by a lack of progress.
The Times says mounted cavalry might have an advantage in modern warfare, external, a century on after tanks replaced horses on the battlefield. Last year, a Ukrainian infantry company in Donetsk reported that Russian forces had started to use horses and donkeys to carry soldiers and supplies to avoid detection by drones. And the paper says the UK’s Household Mounted Cavalry regiment conducted trials over the summer, with officials saying in some situations, such as woodland, there’s a better chance of getting from A to B with a horse, than with a Challenger 2 tank.
And the boss of Timpsons says his company has seen a 680% increase in people asking for extra holes in their belts this year,, external reports the Daily Mail. He believes the demand is down to the popularity of weight loss jabs.
Israeli bulldozers uprooted olive groves near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank weeks before the annual harvest.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
Israeli army bulldozers have ploughed through rows of olive trees in a village near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, just as Palestinian farmers were preparing to begin their annual harvest, residents told the Reuters news agency.
Palestinian farmer and landowner Abd Alfattah Tamimi said the army had destroyed the olive trees planted on his family’s land as well as his neighbours’.
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The demolition in the village of Deir Nidham started on Monday and continued on Tuesday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
“They don’t care about anyone, but God is up there, and we are steadfast here with our souls,” he said. “They are uprooting, and we will plant again with the help of God,” he said.
Another farmer, Nather Tamimi, told Reuters the timing of the demolition was designed to inflict maximum damage ahead of harvest season, which traditionally begins in October.
He said that his family produced about 120 drums of olive oil from the land each year.
The Israeli army also “uprooted all kinds of trees even from between the houses”, Nather Tamimi said.
![Israeli military machinery uproots olive trees near the Palestinian village of Deir Nizam near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, September 23, 2026 [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2026-09-23T080030Z_1529122039_RC2VONAGXX8I_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-WEST-BANK-OLIVE-TREES-17902.webp?w=640&ssl=1)
Israel’s military said it was checking Reuters’ request for comment but had not responded by Wednesday evening.
In the past, Israel has cited the need to clear land of olive trees to prevent security threats or ambushes on troops.
Palestinian human rights groups reject this, saying the destruction in effect deprives Palestinian farmers of income from the sale of olives and olive oil, while uprooting trees they view as a symbol of their connection to the land.
The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said Israeli attacks on agricultural land in August affected 21,508 trees, including 19,375 olive trees.
They estimated this year’s olive production at 21,000 tonnes, compared with local demand of about 15,000 tonnes.
Chester County public health officials did not wait long to launch a response to the growing measles outbreak in their community, which shares a border with Lancaster County, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Jeanne Franklin, the director of the health department, said officials have been using some of the strategies they employed during the Covid pandemic – knocking on doors in the community to let them know about the outbreak and offering private settings, like people’s homes, for immunisations.
Since the outbreak started, the county has given 538 MMR vaccines, 340 of which they administered in private settings.
“People have called up and said, ‘I can’t get to your clinic, or, I don’t want people to know I’ve changed my mind,” Franklin said. “‘If you can come to us, that’s a lot easier.'”
The boots-on-the-ground approach has helped the health department dispel misinformation and build trust with the community, local health officials said.
In recent years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across the country as false theories about the safety of the measles vaccine have proliferated on social media.
Those theories have found roots even in an insulated community with limited access to computers, Weiser said. She has heard people ask if there are heavy metals in the vaccine that could make them magnetic, or if the shot has a computer chip in it.
“You’re clearly getting information from that hard-core group that is promoting that misinformation and disinformation,” she said.
People in this “hard-core group”, who are staunchly against vaccines, are unlikely to be swayed, experts and officials themselves said.
But now, local health officials said, many affected by the Pennsylvania outbreak are seeing their neighbours fall seriously ill and asking thoughtful questions. Weiser said many are parents who are unfamiliar with the shots and are scared to make the wrong choice for their children.
“There is the classically-defined anti-vaxer, versus people who are unaware or their culture feels differently,” Franklin said. “The thinking and the willingness to discuss and possibly change your mind is different between those two bookends.”
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed a security breach of a government website containing Australians’ health data by an “AI agent”, less than a day after signing a joint appeal for “urgent global guardrails” around artificial intelligence.
Albanese co-signed the “A Call for Control of Frontier AI Models” statement on Tuesday together with 21 signatories including Canada, Spain and Germany, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting in New York.
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Addressing reporters on Wednesday, Albanese said the agent, developed by OpenAI, accessed public and non-public data on the government’s Medicare portal in June.
Australia’s Labor government is tightening tech regulations with new online safety laws, age bans and proposed digital duty of care frameworks.
Albanese said he had spoken to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to express Canberra’s “extreme concern” about the hack and disappointment that the company took three months to admit the breach.
OpenAI responded in the hours after the news conference, stating that while it was still investigating, there was no evidence patient records were accessed.
The company’s review had identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as its “models attempted to look up answers”, it said.
![OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addresses the United Nations Security Council during a session on Artificial Intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly, at UN Headquarters in New York City, US, September 23, 2026 [Brendan McDermid/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2026-09-23T193910Z_1511611083_RC27PNAQNEYE_RTRMADP_3_AI-UN-1790203991.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
The leaders of artificial intelligence companies warned of the risks of unregulated AI development before a 15-member UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
One of them, Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian considered one of the ‘Godfathers of AI’ and co-chair of the Independent International Scientific Panel, spoke of the “unprecedented threat” and the “real and imminent” dangers of the technology.
China’s UN ambassador Fu Cong told the meeting that Beijing believed continuous improvement of regulatory frameworks, emergency response and cross-border cooperation on AI was needed.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the United Kingdom was ready to lead an international effort to establish AI standards.
“We’ve all heard the warnings which we must heed… so we have to rise to this moment,” he said, but added he also wanted the UK to pursue the benefits of AI.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned against allowing the United States and China to dominate decision-making around AI during his speech to the assembly on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump is at odds with many of his counterparts, comparing the dangers of AI to climate change, which he has called a hoax.
He also proposed rebranding the term AI to SI, or “super intelligence”, during his address to the UNGA on Tuesday, and earlier said he planned to appoint an AI adviser.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said the US was leading the AI race over China, that he was “not going to stifle Growth”, but added that the US would be careful.
White House science and technology adviser Michael Kratsios echoed Trump in remarks to the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
“You cannot govern technology you do not understand. This body and others like it should focus on sharing best practices to build domestic capacity, not establishing a global regulatory scheme,” he said.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has said that eight crew members who were assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during their lengthy deployment.
The disclosure was made in a letter to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York on Tuesday in response to questions from the Democrat on the well-being of sailors onboard following mounting concerns.
Family members of sailors had raised alarm about deteriorating mental health and grim conditions during a prolonged mission in the Middle East as part of the US war in Iran.
The carrier, which had been deployed since last November, is now returning to the US. The BBC has contacted the US Navy for comment.
In his letter, Cao said that there were five chaplains and multiple mental health professionals available on board to meet the “spiritual and emotional needs of the crew”.
He said the eight sailors included “the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier airwing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons”.
While the US Navy has previously acknowledged supply challenges on the carrier, it denied that a mental health crisis was taking place on the Lincoln, which had some 5,000 crew aboard.
Cao’s letter also denied widespread concerns about broken plumbing and shortages of fresh food, but acknowledged temporary “localized piping failures” and problems with the reverse osmosis desalination units, and some meal options were reduced for a “short time”.
Senator Gillibrand, a member of the Senate’s armed services committee, criticised the Trump administration’s previous responses to reports of grim conditions, calling the treatment of service members “completely unacceptable”.
“What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as ‘fake news’ turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members,” she said in a statement to the BBC on Wednesday.
“Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect,” she added.
The carrier left California in November for the South China Sea and was sent to the Middle East ahead of attacks on Iran in February. The deployment, which was originally set to end in May, was repeatedly extended.
In August, the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier, was sent to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln following a nine-month deployment.
US sailors stopped in Thailand on their way home, hitting bars, malls and beach areas in their first time on land before continuing on to the US.
Suicide remains a leading cause of death in the US Navy and Marines, according to an analysis of military data by USNI News, while veterans have higher rates of suicide than Americans who have not served in the military, according to the Veterans Administration.
A study, external of 956 sailors released in January 2025 found that troops aboard US Navy ships suffer the highest rates of “serious psychological distress” compared to other branches of the US military.
The study cited “unique stressors, such as poor habitability, noise and demanding schedules that leave inadequate time for sleep and rest”.
If you or anyone you know has been affected by the issues raised in this article, details of organisations offering information are available at BBC Action Line or you can call the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988.
Excluding Ra’am and the Joint List leaves Palestinian citizens in Israel without major Knesset representation options.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
Israel’s Central Elections Committee has voted to bar both main Arab electoral lists from next month’s election, putting the political representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel before the Supreme Court weeks before voters go to the polls.
The committee voted on Wednesday to disqualify the United Arab List, or Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, and the Joint List, an alliance of the Arab-led Hadash, Ta’al and Balad parties. It also voted separately to bar Hadash legislator Ofer Cassif and Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh. The election is scheduled for October 27.
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The bans are not final. Decisions against individual candidates require Supreme Court approval, while lists can appeal their exclusion. Adalah, the legal centre representing the parties and candidates, says it will challenge the votes when the court hears the cases next week.
Ra’am called its exclusion “political and unacceptable”, saying the decision was intended to prevent it from influencing the balance of power and changing the government.
The Joint List said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir were trying to discourage Arab citizens from voting “because they fear our ability to bring down the government of genocide and racism”. Its leader, Yousef Jabareen, questioned how the committee could bar parties representing more than 1.25 million voters.
Abu Shehadeh told Al Jazeera that his exclusion was an attempt to silence criticism of government policy and said the decisions would be challenged in court and through public protest. Rejecting the allegation that he supports violence, he told The Times of Israel: “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle.”
The petitions invoke Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset, which allows a list or candidate to be excluded for denying Israel’s existence as a “Jewish and democratic state”, inciting racism or supporting armed struggle against Israel by an enemy state or an organisation designated as terrorist.
Netanyahu’s Likud party sought to disqualify the Joint List and Cassif, and was among the groups that filed against Ra’am. Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party also sought to bar Abu Shehadeh. Adalah disputes the allegations. It says the case against Ra’am presents no evidence that the party supports armed struggle, while the Joint List petition relies heavily on old material, including bills proposed in previous Knessets.
Abu Shehadeh’s case has drawn a different response. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara found no legal basis to exclude the other targeted parties and candidates but said an article he published on October 8, 2023, which she said may constitute support for armed struggle, warranted serious examination. The committee voted 31-4 to bar him. Adalah says the article contains no such call.
The push to bar Abu Shehadeh drew support from parties outside Netanyahu’s coalition. According to The Times of Israel, opposition parties voted to disqualify him, as did Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the elections committee. The vote broke with decades of precedent in which committee chairs abstained from disqualification votes. Abu Shehadeh’s exclusion still requires approval from the full Supreme Court.
Ra’am joined the coalition government formed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in 2021, helping end Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in office in 2021, although Abbas had previously discussed cooperation with Netanyahu as well. Now Likud itself has filed petitions against Arab representation, while Ben-Gvir’s party has pursued separate exclusions.
A Channel 12 poll published on Tuesday projected seven seats for the Joint List and five for Ra’am, against 50 for Netanyahu’s current coalition bloc. The 12 projected Arab seats would not automatically back Netanyahu’s opponents, as mainstream opposition parties remain divided over whether to govern with Arab support. But removing both lists would change the possible routes to the 61-seat majority needed to form a government.
The Supreme Court has overturned previous committee bans on Arab lists and candidates, including Balad’s exclusion in 2022. It must now decide whether the evidence meets the legal threshold for barring the two principal lists seeking to represent Palestinian citizens of Israel. The ruling will determine who can appear on the October ballot.
And other companies are trying to address privacy concerns in different ways – without getting rid of the camera.
The Taiwanese firm HTC recently launched Vive Eagle glasses, which cost less than a quarter of Snap’s.
Thomas Dexmier, a vice president at HTC Vive, says that if anyone near an Eagle specs wearer says “stop filming” or “stop recording”, and it is picked up by one of the four microphones, the camera will deactivate.
And he adds that all recordings captured by the glasses are encrypted, and the firm itself cannot see them – though this also means HTC cannot flag harmful content.
“We acknowledge that there are some challenges, potentially becoming a real problem, especially for women,” he said.
He said HTC Vive was working to make it as difficult as possible for the tech to be misused but said it was “too early to comment” on whether the firm would consider a version without cameras.
Ultimately, Wood thinks that camera-enabled glasses are “not going away”.
He says the current moment reminds him of the 2000s, when some people said that mobile phone companies couldn’t install cameras in their devices because of similar concerns over privacy. “There’s an inevitability there,” he says.
“We will have to find a societal norm, a framework for the use of these products.”
Top image credit: Getty.
Iraqi Prime Minister al-Zaidi and Turkish President Erdogan pledged deeper security cooperation at UNGA.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
Turkiye and Iraq have agreed to a gradual transfer of Ankara’s military base in Bashiqa to Baghdad, according to a statement released by the Iraqi prime minister’s office.
The announcement followed a meeting on Wednesday between Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
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“Within this framework, they reached an agreement on fully establishing state authority in Sinjar and ending the presence of outlawed foreign armed elements,” Iraq’s prime minister’s office announced, in an apparent reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has maintained a presence in the mountainous Sinjar region of northern Iraq.
“The two sides also agreed to expand the volume of bilateral trade and investment, to implement signed agreements immediately, and to accelerate joint strategic projects, particularly the Development Road project,” the office added.
The decision to transfer the facility addresses a longstanding flashpoint between the two neighbours.
Turkiye first established the base in Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul, in December 2015 through an agreement with the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government to train local forces fighting the ISIL (ISIS) group.
The deployment of up to 600 Turkish soldiers drew criticism from Baghdad, which viewed the presence as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
The Sinjar region has long been a focal point for Turkish military operations targeting fighters from the PKK.
Cross-border operations in Sinjar had eased following a landmark peace process between Ankara and the PKK in 2025, paving the way for federal authorities to assert control over the border zone.
Wednesday’s accord caps months of efforts by Baghdad to consolidate state authority over northern flashpoints, while aligning with Ankara on trade corridors and security coordination along their shared frontier.