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The plans, which fall short of a full invasion, could involve raids by special operations and conventional infantry troops, The Washington Post reported.

The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of limited ground operations in Iran, potentially including raids on Kharg Island and coastal sites near the Strait of Hormuz, according to United States officials quoted by The Washington Post newspaper.

The plans, which fall short of a full invasion, could involve raids by special operations and conventional infantry troops, the Post reported on Saturday, exposing US personnel to Iranian drones and missiles, ground fire, and improvised explosives.

Whether President Donald Trump would approve any of those plans remains uncertain, according to the report.

“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the Commander in Chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the president has made a decision,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, responding to questions over the Post report.

The Trump administration has deployed US Marines to the Middle East as the war in Iran stretches into its fifth week, and has also been planning to send thousands of soldiers from the army’s 82nd Airborne to the region.

On Saturday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said about 3,500 additional soldiers arrived in the Middle East on board the USS Tripoli.

The sailors and marines are with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and arrived in the region on March 27, along with “transport and strike fighter aircraft, as well as amphibious assault and tactical assets”, according to CENTCOM.

Officials speaking to The Washington Post said discussions within the administration over the past month have touched upon the possible seizure of Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil export hub in the Gulf, and raids into other coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz to find and destroy weapons that can target commercial and military shipping.

According to the report, one person said the objectives under consideration would probably take “weeks, not months” to complete, while another put the potential timeline at “a couple of months”.

The Pentagon had not responded on Saturday to the Post’s requests for comment. Iran has yet to respond to the report.

The report comes as Pakistan, which shares a 900km-long (559-mile) border with Iran, mediates between Washington ‌and Tehran, hosting two days of talks starting on Sunday with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Egypt.

Iranian threats

The Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Sunday the “enemy openly sends messages of negotiation and dialogue and secretly plans a ground attack”.

“Unaware that our men are waiting for the arrival of American soldiers on the ground to set fire to them and punish their regional partners forever. Our firing continues. Our missiles are in place,” the Tasnim news agency reported, quoting Ghalibaf.

“Our determination and faith have increased. We are aware of the enemy’s weaknesses, and we clearly see the effects of fear and terror in the enemy’s army.”

It was not clear whether Ghalibaf was responding to the Post report.

On Wednesday, Ghalibaf had warned that intelligence reports suggested that “Iran’s enemies” ⁠were planning to occupy an Iranian island with support ‌from an unnamed country in the region.

He said any such attempt would be met with targeted attacks on the “vital infrastructure” of the regional country – which he did not name – that assists in the operation.

Tasnim quoted an unnamed military source as saying on Wednesday that Iran could open a new front at the mouth of the Red Sea if military action takes place on “Iranian islands or anywhere else in our lands”.

The source told Tasnim that Iran can pose a “credible threat” in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, ⁠which lies between Yemen and Djibouti.

Tasnim later quoted an “informed source” claiming that Yemen’s Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, are prepared to play a role “if there is a need to control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to further punish the enemy”.

Police in Tel Aviv dispersed hundreds of protesters on Saturday opposing Israel’s operation with the US against Iran, now in its second month. Up to 18 people have been arrested so far, according to local media, as wartime restrictions on gatherings remain in place.

Talks are under way in Islamabad, as the Pakistani government acts as mediator between the US and Iran.

Top diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkiye have gathered in Islamabad for two-day talks with their Pakistani counterpart on the US-Israel war on Iran, seeking to de-escalate the conflict.

The talks on Sunday and Monday are being led by Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who announced late on Saturday that Iran had allowed “20 more ships” under the Pakistani flag, or two ships daily, to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said on Saturday that he had a “detailed telephone conversation with my brother President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran earlier today, lasting over one hour”, as part of preparations for the Islamabad talks.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Kyder, reporting from Islamabad, said Pakistan has been acting as “a key interlocutor” between the United States and Iran, passing messages between the two sides as part of the mediation efforts.

“The gathering in Islamabad, what many people say, is the beginning of a critical process that includes the only viable option: diplomacy and dialogue,” he said.

“A difficult process, given the escalation, so all eyes will be on Islamabad – what consensus can be reached here, and whether that will be acceptable to the US, whether it is looking for a way out of this war or whether it is trying to buy time,” he added.

Pezeshkian hailed Islamabad’s efforts and “thanked Pakistan for its mediation efforts to stop the aggression against the Islamic republic”, according to his office.

The pair have spoken previously in recent weeks about the conflict and Pakistan’s commitment to bringing it to an end.

Islamabad has longstanding links with Tehran and close contacts in the Gulf, while Sharif and the army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, have struck up a personal rapport with US President Donald Trump.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said earlier on Friday he expected a direct US-Iran meeting in Pakistan “very soon”, without revealing his source.

The risk of an expanded Iran war grew on Saturday as Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels launched their first attacks on Israel since the start of the conflict, after the first of the two contingents of the thousands of additional US forces dispatched to the Middle East arrived on Friday on an amphibious assault ship.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Every morning, Abdel Karim Salman begins his routine by heading out carrying his own phone and his wife’s phone, both completely drained of charge. He walks to a nearby charging point to plug them in and recharge them again.

Throughout the night, Abdel Karim relies entirely on the torches from the phones to light the inside of the tent he lives in with his family in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.

Abdel Karim, 28, a former civil engineer at the Beit Lahiya municipality in northern Gaza, was displaced to Deir el-Balah a year and a half ago with his wife and two children, along with about  30 members of his extended family.

His family home was completely destroyed on October 9, 2023, in the first few days of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Abdel Karim and his family have been on a difficult journey of displacement since then, with little in the way of normality, and in particular, a regular source of electricity for a bulb in his tent.

So he looks for alternatives to light up the structure, namely the phones, despite the rapid battery drain caused by keeping the torch function on.

“I charge my phone and my wife’s phone, and we use them for lighting at night, especially since my children are under five years old and they get scared if they wake up in the dark,” he says.

Abdel Karim says that the suffering caused by electricity shortages in Gaza is one of the largest “silent” forms of suffering that receives little attention.

For Abdel Karim, the charging process itself has turned into a daily, exhausting burden.

He walks between 150 and 200 metres every day to reach a charging point, paying between two and four shekels ($0.65 to $1.30) per charging session, twice a day.

“That means about eight to 10 shekels ($2.55 to $3.20) per day just for charging phones,” Abdel Karim explains, equivalent to approximately 270 to 300 shekels ($86 to $95) per month, a large amount given the lack of income among displaced families in Gaza amid the territory’s war-driven economic crisis.

“Many days and nights we sleep in darkness inside our tent. When we can’t charge the phones, they turn off, and we are unable to recharge them.”

Few options

With municipality-supplied electricity absent for two years in Gaza, several temporary alternatives have emerged, such as solar-powered lamps, but they remain unaffordable for most residents, having increased tenfold to about 300 shekels ($95) during the war.

As for solar energy systems, they are even more expensive, reaching $420 per panel, and with the additional cost of a battery – about $1,200 – and an inverter. All these items are also scarce due to severe Israeli restrictions on their entry into the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.

For Abdel Karim, who lost his job soon after the war began, those sums are out of his reach.

Among the alternative solutions introduced during the war are private generator-based electricity systems operating on diesel fuel.

However, those are also unaffordable for many, and their services have fluctuated due to irregular fuel supplies through the crossings.

And so, with most options simply too expensive, that leaves many in Gaza in the same boat as Abdel Karim.

The impact of the power cuts is not limited to lighting or charging, but extends to every detail of daily life, especially for families with children.

“There is no refrigerator, no washing machine … even baby milk cannot be stored for more than two or three hours,” Abdel Karim explains, as he remembers his previous life, when his home was filled with electrical appliances and reliable power.

“The phone charging socket used to be right beside my bed. I could plug it in whenever I wanted. Today, that has become a dream inside this tent,” Abdel Karim adds.

He also says his children have been psychologically affected, especially his eldest son, due to the lack of any means of electronic entertainment or distraction from his grim surroundings.

“There is no TV or screen. He keeps asking for the phone all the time just to calm down, but that also needs charging. Everything is dependent on electricity.”

According to Abdel Karim, his suffering is not an exception. He believes almost all of the people in Gaza are living the same reality, noting that even families in nearby camps who tried to pool resources to buy energy systems have been unable to afford them.

“We hope God brings relief … because we are truly left without any solutions, as if we were abandoned in the desert.”

Longstanding problem

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, and Israel then began its war on Gaza.

More than two years on, Gaza has been decimated by Israeli attacks – on top of the more than 75,000 Palestinians killed.

But even before the war, Gaza faced daily rolling blackouts due to limited power imports from Israel and fuel shortages.

Israel, despite withdrawing its illegal settlements from Gaza in 2005, continued to control access into and out of the Palestinian enclave, and repeatedly attacked it.

And so, even in normal conditions, most households only received a few hours of electricity per day, relying on a fragile mix of imported supply and Gaza’s one power plant.

The situation escalated sharply after October 7, when Israel declared a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting electricity supply and blocking fuel imports.

Within days, Gaza’s power plant shut down due to fuel depletion, and by October 11, 2023, the territory entered a full electricity blackout, according to United Nations agencies.

With no fuel entering and transmission lines cut, homes, hospitals, water systems and communication networks lost reliable access to power, shifting to limited and increasingly unsustainable generator use.

Since then, Gaza’s electricity infrastructure has continued to deteriorate due to both fuel shortages and widespread physical destruction of the grid. Generators remain the primary alternative but are severely constrained by fuel scarcity, affecting essential services such as healthcare, water production and telecommunications.

During the time between 2025 and 2026, Gaza’s power system is widely described as effectively non-functional, with electricity access fragmented, inconsistent and largely dependent on emergency solutions rather than a stable grid.

An opportunity

The severe electricity crisis has created an indirect source of income for Jamal Musbah, 50, who runs a mobile phone charging station powered by solar energy and a generator line.

Before the war, Jamal worked as a farmer and owned two agricultural plots on the eastern borders of Deir el-Balah. Today, they have been bulldozed and fall under Israeli control.

His charging station has instead become his main source of income, supporting his eight children.

“I had an energy system consisting of six panels, batteries, and a device, which I used for pumping water and irrigating the remaining land around my house before the war,” Jamal says to Al Jazeera.

As an alternative income source after the war and the electricity blackout in Gaza, Jamal repurposed his solar system to provide basic phone charging services to residents, though this came with major challenges.

“The demand for charging was extremely high, and my batteries were exhausted within the first months, as electricity became very scarce at home,” he adds.

However, things worsened when a neighbouring house was targeted, destroying four of his six solar panels, significantly reducing his capacity and income.

At the beginning of the service, Jamal also offered food refrigeration services alongside phone and battery charging, but after the damage and battery depletion, he had to stop those services.

“We used to charge about 100 to 200 phones daily. Now we only manage 50 to 60 at most due to reduced efficiency of the solar panels,” Jamal says, attributing this also to weather conditions, clouds and the winter season, when solar efficiency drops significantly.

“In winter, you look for alternatives to solar panels and turn to generators that barely work … the electricity crisis makes you feel like you are running in a never-ending cycle of suffering.”

His charging station now operates with a small system of two panels and one battery.

People from nearby areas, including university students and displaced families, rely on it due to a lack of alternatives and the inability to afford generator-based electricity subscriptions.

“My sons are university graduates and earn their living from this station. We charge 1 to 2 shekels per phone.”

Even though Jamal is able to make some money out of the crisis, he ultimately faces the same hardships as others in Gaza do.

“Economic hardship has affected all of us … even basic services like phone charging have become a heavy burden. There are no local solutions to this crisis.”

“The only real and lasting solution is the official restoration of electricity to the Gaza Strip.”

The 19-year-old Mercedes driver’s historic championship accomplishment came after he won his second F1 race in a row.

Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes won the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday for his second straight victory as the 19-year-old Italian became the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the world championship standings.

Antonelli took advantage of a mid-race safety car to leapfrog into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position at Suzuka and eventually led home McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

He whooped with delight as he crossed the line, telling his team, “The pace was unbelievable today.”

He leads the championship after three races, building on the first Grand Prix win of his career two weeks ago in China.

George Russell of Mercedes, who started the day on top of the championship standings, finished fourth.

Russell battled Piastri for the lead over the first half of the race but pitted just before the safety car to drop back out of contention for the win.

McLaren’s world champion Lando Norris was fifth ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

Red Bull’s four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who had won in Japan for the past four years, was eighth after starting from 11th on the grid.

Antonelli recovers from poor start

Antonelli was in pole position for the second straight race, having become the youngest pole-sitter in F1 history in China.

But the Italian had a shocking start, sinking to sixth by the first corner.

Piastri took the early lead ahead of Leclerc, with Norris, Russell and Hamilton all overtaking Antonelli.

Russell moved up the field to sit on Piastri’s tail as the game of cat and mouse began.

Antonelli also made up lost ground, but a crash from Haas driver Ollie Bearman brought out the safety car midway through the race.

Bearman was limping badly as race marshals helped him off the track, and his team later said he had “a right knee contusion”.

Antonelli dived into the pits moments after the safety car was deployed, a stroke of good luck that won him the race as he emerged at the head of the pack.

Russell slid out of contention, first being overtaken by Hamilton before watching Leclerc go past.

Antonelli increased his lead while Russell recovered, but Piastri held on to deny Mercedes a third successive one-two Grand Prix finish.

Haas said initial X-rays showed Bearman had no fractures after his crash, which saw him hit the barrier at high speed.

The 20-year-old had moved up the field after starting from 18th on the grid.

Formula One now takes an extended break until the Miami Grand Prix on May 3.

The Bahrain and Saudi Arabia races scheduled for April have been cancelled because of the war in the Middle East. The 19-year-old Mercedes driver’s historic championship accomplishment came after he won his second F1 race in a row.

World number one Aryna Sabalenka edges Coco Gauff in a tense three-set final to claim the ‘Sunshine Double’ in Florida.

Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka beat hometown favourite Coco Gauff 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 in the Miami Open final on Saturday to ⁠join an exclusive club by completing the coveted “Sunshine Double”.

Top-seeded Sabalenka, who reached the final without dropping a set, won 73 percent of her first-serve points and faced just two break points en ⁠route to victory in a rematch of the 2025 French Open final won by Gauff.

Sabalenka is only the fifth woman to win the Indian Wells and Miami titles back-to-back, a feat known as the “Sunshine Double”, given the tournaments’ respective locations in California and Florida.

“I want to start with [Coco]. You’re a fighter, and you also ‌push me so hard to be a better player, and I like our rivalry,” Sabalenka, who improved to 7-6 all-time versus Gauff, said during the trophy ceremony.

Sabalenka raced out to a 2-0 lead, but Gauff, from nearby Delray Beach and appearing in her first Miami final, got on the board with a love hold and then repelled three break points in her next service game to get within 3-2.

But Sabalenka did not lose focus and eventually went up a double break ⁠on the world number four before closing out a dominant opening on her ⁠serve.

There was very little to separate the two players in the middle set, which remained on serve until Gauff broke Sabalenka for the only time in the match to force a third set. Sabalenka broke Gauff to open the decider, held ⁠at love in two consecutive service games to go 5-3 up and then sealed the victory with her fourth break of the match when Gauff ⁠sent a backhand wide.

Sabalenka is the first player to win back-to-back ⁠Miami titles since Ash Barty in 2019 and 2021. The 2020 edition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Belarusian joins Iga Swiatek (2022), Victoria Azarenka (2016), Kim Clijsters (2005) and Steffi Graf (1994, 1996) as the only women to complete the Sunshine Double.

She also improved to 23-1 on the ‌year, her only loss coming in the Australian Open final at the hands of Elena Rybakina, whom she went on to beat in the Indian Wells final and Miami semifinals.

“Aryna, congratulations. We’ve had many ‌battles, ‌many finals and, yeah, I think you push me to be a better player,” said Gauff. “You’re a great fighter, and hopefully we can play many more. I think we will.”

Former two-time champion loses his fourth straight bout after being stopped by Pyfer in the second round.

Joe Pyfer sent former Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight champion ‌Israel Adesanya back to the drawing board in Saturday’s UFC Fight Night headliner in ⁠Seattle, stopping Adesanya ⁠at 4:18 of the second round to cap the night.

Before the technical knockout (TKO) finish, both fighters exchanged their best punches in a stand-up battle until a Pyfer (16-3 MMA) takedown signalled the beginning ⁠of the end.

“I just have this mentality where I don’t care; I’m going to search and destroy,” Pyfer said, following the stoppage, securing the finish in top control.

Adesanya (24-6 MMA), fighting out of New Zealand, has not won a ⁠bout since regaining middleweight gold in April 2023 at UFC 287, and confirmed he has no plans to retire.

“I’m just going to keep going and going and going,” Adesanya said.

Grasso dominates Barber in rematch

A rematch five years in the making commenced at flyweight as former champion Alexa Grasso made short work of Maycee Barber with a TKO stoppage at 2:42 of the ‌opening round. The Mexican used a left hook to down Barber before jumping on top of her immediately as the referee stepped in.

The two first met in February 2021, with Grasso earning a decision. Grasso (17-5-1 MMA) snapped a two-fight losing skid, whereas Barber (15-3 MMA) had not lost since the first meeting with Grasso, having won her previous seven fights.

In his final MMA fight, welterweight Michael Chiesa (20-7 MMA) had a hometown send-off as he submitted Niko Price (16-11 MMA) with a first-round rear-naked choke. Chiesa needed just 63 seconds ⁠to put a bow on his UFC career, one that spanned a decade-plus ⁠and included winning the 15th season of The Ultimate Fighter in June 2012.

Chiesa ended his UFC career at 15-7, while Price, who has been in the promotion for over a decade himself, now sits at 8-11, with two no contests in the Octagon and has ⁠dropped four straight fights.

The finishes were a theme on the night, as featherweight Lerryan Douglas (14-5 MMA) of Brazil needed 3:33 of the opening round to deliver ⁠a devastating TKO against Julian Erosa (31-13 MMA). Douglas has now won his ⁠last six in a row while Erosa continues to struggle at 9-9 in the UFC.

At middleweight, Yousri Belgaroui of the Netherlands scored a third-round TKO stoppage against Mansur Abdul-Malik by landing a perfectly timed knee to end the fight in a back-and-forth battle. Belgaroui (10-3 MMA) has ‌won five straight and remains undefeated in the UFC. Conversely, it was Abdul-Malik’s (9-1-1 MMA) first professional loss, as he had won seven of his 11 outings by KO/TKO.

The main card got under way in emphatic fashion in the ‌opener, ‌with lightweight Terrance McKinney needing just 24 seconds to dispatch Canadian Kyle Nelson with a series of punches following a head kick. McKinney (18-8 MMA) has won three of his last four, while Nelson (17-7-1 MMA) has lost two of his last three.

However, as the sport continues to grow and reach new audiences, we are seeing differing takes on what it is to be fan.

There are many who support a top-tier side and also a local team further down the footballing pyramid.

Many fans also keep a close eye on a chosen team from another major European league. Then there are those who prefer certain players to clubs and so might switch who they support based on a transfer. This could be compared to those who might follow a Formula 1 driver and so would focus on whichever team they were currently driving for.

Yet for those who consider themselves football purists there can only ever be space in their heart for one team.

But ironically for Manchester United fan Steve it is a full heart that is central to why he turned his back on the club he had supported for decades – Manchester United.

“My first game was in 1978, at home against Spurs. Most of my family are [Manchester] City fans but all my friends supported United, so I had to choose between being popular at home or at school,” he says.

“In the end I choose school because I didn’t want to be bullied.”

Steve eventually became a season ticket holder and says he did not miss a match for 47 years. All that changed on 24 May 2017 when Manchester United beat Ajax 2-0 in Stockholm.

“We were so lucky as United fans going through the [Sir Alex] Ferguson era, chasing titles and then building on that and trying to get to the next level of winning European trophies,” Steve says.

“I’d seen them win every single trophy, FA Cups in the 70s and 80s, the Cup Winners Cup in ’91, Premier League titles and, of course, the Champions League in 1999.

“I always said that if United won the Europa League – the only trophy I’d never seen them win – I’d pack it in. So when they did that night in Sweden, it felt like the last piece of the jigsaw had been completed.

“When you finish a jigsaw you can either look at it and enjoy, or you can smash it up and start again. I didn’t want to start again.”

With fielding of the Army’s highly anticipated MV-75 Future Long Range Assault tiltrotor aircraft not set to begin until next year under an incredibly aggressive schedule, the service is already building plans for the aircraft into training for mid-grade officers and putting soldiers through recently installed full-size simulators, officials said Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at the Association of the United States Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, Gen. David Hodne, head of U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command, said that while some soldiers with special operations backgrounds had already experienced V-22 Osprey operations through work with other services, the Army Aviation Center of Excellence (AVCOE) was working to further socialize what the service is promoting as a radically different capability.

“[AVCOE Commander Maj. Gen. Claire Gill is] already introducing MV-75 planning factors into the Captains Career Course,” Hodne said, referring to a 21-week professional training program designed for officers with between four and seven years of service and split between general leadership principles and technical proficiency. “[You have] twice the range, twice the speed. So getting officers talking about that capability is the start.”

Army officials took delivery of two MV-75 FLRAA “virtual prototypes (VPs)” in June and July of last year at Redstone Arsenal and Fort Rucker, Alabama. Based on digital twins of the aircraft, the simulators highlight “the transformational power of digital engineering,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, Program Executive Officer for Army Aviation, said last year.

“The VP replicates the cockpit design, mission software, and flight dynamics models of the MV-75; it allows RTC XPs to continue developing tiltrotor experience to prepare for future flight test activities,” Army officials said in a February release. “Additionally, the RTC team actively uses the VP to expose aviators to tiltrotor unique considerations, whether in the context of training and tactics development, Special User Evaluations (SUEs) or VIP demonstrations.”

With Gill at the helm for MV-75 integration, Mohan said the simulators will be a valuable familiarization tool.

“In terms of developing the right instructor base that can integrate this capability, he already has the capability to start that, with one of the simulators that’s already at Fort Rucker,” Mohan said.

Brent Ingraham, assistant secretary of the Army, described these early-delivery digital prototypes as critical to the service’s modernized fielding approach.

“That allows soldiers to get in, start the training, do a lot of the stuff up front, figure out all of the procedures and how they will execute the mission, right?” he said. “A lot of the stuff is being done now ahead of the first flight even occurring.”

Additional training on advanced composites is also beginning, according to Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, head of U.S. Army Materiel Command, so soldiers can become proficient at skin and structural repair, “as well as all the digital engineering that goes into the integration end of a truly digitally engineered platform.”

During the roundtable, Army Under Secretary Mike Obadal pushed back on a reporter’s question about the service having to contend with the reputation of tiltrotor aircraft for “catching fire and falling out of the sky” as it sought to make its new tiltrotor a keystone for future Army aviation operations. The question referred to the V-22 Osprey, which entered service in 2007 and has sustained multiple deadly mishaps unique to its design, such as the ability of the prop-rotors to churn up brownout conditions during landing; “vortex ring state,” a condition in which the Osprey faces rapid descent into its own downwash; and most recently, a gearbox issue linked to a fatal 2022 crash that led to widespread flight restrictions.

But the Army has maintained that MV-75 is entirely a different aircraft and that the “1980s technology” that bedeviled the Osprey is nowhere to be found in the new Valor.

“I think we have to be very careful about making sweeping statements about tiltrotor technology, and especially when you look at what [manufacturers] Bell-Textron and the Army are doing, because it is the most advanced manufacturing and digital backbone that exists,” Obadal said. “So General Electric creates the digital backbone for all of the intercontinental airliners that Boeing makes, the 777 [and] 787, and they’re applying that experience and technology to our MV-75.”

The MV-75 design has the rotors rotate between forward and vertical flight modes independent of the engine nacelles, rather than the entire nacelles rotating, which occurs on the V-22, “dramatically reduces the technical complexity” of the plane, he said, while the digital systems and controls give it cutting-edge reliability.

“From a technical perspective, it’s far more advanced than anything that exists in the military inventory, because of its fly-by-wire systems and its digital backbone,” Obadal said.

Regarding cultural comfort-building with a tiltrotor aircraft given the V-22’s mixed reputation, Obadal said it was a nonissue.

“When I talk to [soldiers] about it, they say they want to fly it, and so do I,” he said.

In January, the Army confirmed to The War Zone that it planned to accelerate its timeline for the MV-75 by multiple years, fielding the first planes in 2027 versus 2031. The impetus came from Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who emphasized that the service needed the MV-75’s speed and range “very quickly,” especially due to the operational demands of the vast Pacific, and couldn’t wait until the next decade to integrate it.

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

Yemen’s Houthis have attacked Israel for the first time, a month after US and Israeli forces began striking Iran, opening up a new front in a rapidly escalating conflict that has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and rattled the global economy.

The Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, entered the fray on Saturday with two missile and drone attacks on Israel in the space of fewer than 24 hours. The Israeli army said the attacks were intercepted, but the Iran-aligned group pledged to continue fighting in support of “resistance fronts in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran”.

The Houthis had sat out of the hostilities until now, in contrast with their stance during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, when their attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea upended commercial traffic worth about $1 trillion a year.

Their widely anticipated involvement in the latest conflict comes just as Iran has throttled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint for about a fifth of the world’s oil, raising fears that the Yemeni group will again disrupt Red Sea traffic by blocking the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Reporting from Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry described Bab al-Mandeb as the group’s “ace”.

“They want to make Israel pay economically. They want to disrupt their trade routes. They want to disrupt the imports and exports in and out of Israel,” he said.

‘Civilians bearing brunt of war’

The Houthi attacks came after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington expected to conclude its military operations against Iran within weeks, even as a new deployment of US Marines has begun to arrive in the region, so US President Donald Trump would have “maximum” flexibility to adjust the strategy as needed.

With no immediate diplomatic breakthrough in sight as both the US and Iran harden their positions, many fear that the US-Israel war on Iran, which started on February 28 and has since engulfed the region, will spiral out of control.

The US and Israel continued their bombardment over the past 24 hours, with the Israeli military claiming it had struck an Iranian research facility for naval weapons, while a series of loud explosions rattled Tehran as night fell on Saturday.

Iranian media said at least five people were killed in a US-Israeli attack on a residential unit in the northwestern city of Zanjan. In Tehran, authorities said the University of Science and Technology was the latest educational facility to be struck, prompting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to issue a threat against Israeli and US universities in the region.

Separately, Iran’s Fars news agency said a water reservoir in the city of Haftgel, located in western Khuzestan province, had also been attacked.

The Iranian Ministry of Health announced that 1,937 people have been killed since the start of the conflict, including 230 children. Iran’s Red Crescent Society said US-Israeli strikes had damaged more than 93,000 civilian properties.

“Civilians are bearing the brunt of this war,” Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, said.

Devastation in Lebanon

Meanwhile, Israel’s devastation of Lebanon continued apace, as the Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 1,189 people had been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2.

The death toll has been mounting as Israeli troops have pushed further into the south, advancing towards the Litani River in their stated bid to wipe out Hezbollah and carve out a buffer zone along the lines of the “Gaza model”.

Among Saturday’s killings, an Israeli strike killed three journalists in southern Lebanon. In parallel, the Health Ministry announced that Israel had also killed nine paramedics, bringing the death toll among healthcare workers in the latest war to 51.

Lebanon’s Public Health Emergency Operations Centre said an Israeli attack on the town of al-Haniyah, in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, killed at least seven people, including one child.

An Israeli air raid on the southern Lebanese town of Deir al-Zahrani killed a Lebanese soldier, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.

Hezbollah, which attacked Israel amid a ceasefire that Israel kept violating in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, claimed dozens of operations against Israeli forces in the past 24 hours.

Mixed messages

Trump has threatened to hit Iranian power stations and other energy infrastructure if Tehran does not fully open the Strait of Hormuz. But he has extended the deadline he had imposed for this week, giving Iran another 10 days to respond.

With the US midterm elections coming up in November, the increasingly unpopular war is weighing heavily on the president’s Republican Party.

Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Friday that he believed Tehran would hold talks with Washington in the coming days. “We have a 15-point plan on the table. We expect the Iranians to respond. It could solve it all,” Witkoff said.

Pakistan, which has been a go-between between US and Iranian officials, will host foreign ministers from regional powers Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Egypt in Islamabad for talks on the crisis.

Pakistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ishaq Dar spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, late on Saturday, urging “an end to all attacks and hostilities” in the region.

In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Dar had told Araghchi that Pakistan remains committed to supporting efforts aimed at restoring regional peace and stability.

Dar also announced that Iran had agreed to allow 20 Pakistani-flagged vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz, calling it a meaningful step towards easing one of the worst energy crises in modern history.

Ex-paramilitary group, set up to fight ISIL, but now integrated in Iraqi forces, blames US and Israel.

Air strikes targeting Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) have killed three fighters and two Iraqi police, as the US-Israeli war on Iran continued to spill over Iraq’s eastern border.

An Iraqi security source told Al Jazeera that Saturday’s double-bombing of the PMF’s headquarters near northern Iraq’s Kirkuk Airport also wounded two other fighters and six Iraqi soldiers.

A statement from the ex-paramilitary coalition, which is now integrated into the regular Iraqi army, blamed the United States and Israel, saying that those killed had been “subjected to a treacherous Zionist-American” attack.

Separately, the Reuters news agency quoted security sources as saying that two members of the Iraqi police were killed in an air strike targeting the PMF in Mosul, about 105 miles (170km) northwest of Kirkuk.

Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque said that Iraq was turning into an “expanding battleground” in the crisis, which began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran and now threatens to engulf the region in a protracted conflict.

Since the war broke out, pro-Iran armed groups within the PMF, which was formed on the orders of Najaf-based Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in 2014 to fight ISIL (ISIS), have claimed responsibility for attacks on US interests in Iraq and beyond and have themselves been targeted.

Haque said the PMF takes its orders from Baghdad, but some factions are loyal to Tehran.

“That makes it very difficult for Baghdad to hold all of this together. Up until the war, the government successfully brought everybody around the table [and] was able to manage the different factions,” he said.

But as the war expands into Iraq, Baghdad has found itself “on a tightrope” between the US and Iran, said Haque.

“They can’t afford to turn their back on their biggest neighbour, Iran. Nor can they afford to turn their back on the United States,” he said, noting the economic and security ties between Baghdad and both countries.

Saturday also saw two drones targeting an airbase serving as a hub for US and coalition forces near Erbil airport in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Haque said the US C-RAM air defence system was activated and intercepted the drones.

Iraq attacks ‘a worrying development’: Macron

In parallel, Kurdish news outlet Rudaw reported a drone attack on the house of Nechirvan Barzani, president of the Kurdish region, in the western town of Duhok.

Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, condemned “in the strongest terms” the assault.

“Once again, we call on the federal government to act on its responsibility, bring these outlaw criminals to justice, and curb the continued terrorist attacks carried out by these groups,” he said in a statement.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on X that he had spoken to Barzani, calling increased attacks in Iraq a “worrying development”.

In other developments, the Iraqi Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that a drone had crashed into the southern Majnoon oilfield “without detonating, causing no damage or injuries”.

Antiwar protesters rally in Tel Aviv and US cities, as attacks kill a family of four in Iran’s Bushehr province and damage a water facility in Khuzestan.

For the second year in a row, United States Vice President JD Vance has topped the straw poll at the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the biggest right-wing gatherings in the country.

The poll is a bellwether – albeit, not necessarily an accurate one – for who might ultimately become the Republican nominee for the next presidential race.

During this year’s four-day conference, attendees were asked which candidate they would prefer at the top of the Republican Party ticket for the 2028 election.

The results were revealed on stage Saturday. Vance had swept up 53 percent of the votes cast by nearly 1,600 attendees.

But rising up the ranks was another senior official under US President Donald Trump: his top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A former senator from Florida, Rubio notched 35 percent of the vote.

It was a markedly improved standing for Rubio, who tied for fourth place at last year’s CPAC straw poll.

That poll, taken within weeks of Trump starting his second term, showed Vance with 61 percent support, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon with 12 percent, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 7 percent. Rubio and Representative Elise Stefanik both earned 3 percent.

Attendance at CPAC, an annual conference, tends to skew away from the political centre and farther to the right.

Speakers at this year’s conference included Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi, and Eduardo and Flavio Bolsonaro, the sons of Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who was imprisoned last September for attempting to subvert his country’s democracy.

But this year’s straw poll comes at a critical time for the Republican Party.

Less than eight months remain until November’s midterm elections in the US, and Republicans are hoping to defend their congressional majorities at the ballot box.

Trump, long the standard-bearer for his party, has seen his approval numbers sink since his return to office in 2025. Earlier this week, a survey from the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos found that only 36 percent of US citizens approved of his job performance, a new low.

The ongoing war in Iran and economic frustrations, including rising gas prices linked to the conflict, are among the factors contributing to the slump.

While Trump has teased he may seek a third term, US law prevents modern presidents from serving more than two. His second presidency is set to expire in 2028.

That leaves an open question as to who may succeed the 79-year-old Republican.

Vance, a veteran and former single-term senator from Ohio, is seen to represent a more isolationist branch of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) base. He has generally been opposed to US involvement in foreign conflicts, though he has defended Trump’s decision to join Israel in joint strikes on Iran.

Rubio, meanwhile, has a longer political resume than Vance and is seen to be more hawkish towards regime change, particularly in his family’s ancestral home of Cuba. He served as a senator for Florida from 2011 until his unanimous confirmation as secretary of state in 2025.

Both men had been critical of Trump before joining his administration. Vance once called Trump “unfit” for office, and Rubio derided Trump as a “con artist” and an “embarrassment” when he was a rival candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

CPAC tends not to survey participants about who should be president when a Republican is already in the Oval Office.

But the straw polls it held before and after Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, have shown a noticeable realignment in the Republican Party.

In the decade leading up to the 2016 election – Trump’s first successful campaign for office – moderate Republican Mitt Romney and libertarian Rand Paul consistently topped the CPAC straw polls.

Ever since his first term, however, Trump has trounced the competition.

Despite his 2020 election defeat, he still topped the straw poll in 2021, with 55 percent support, and his numbers climbed each successive year, through to his re-election in 2024.

Experts have noted that the Republican Party has largely consolidated around Trump’s politics, with the few remaining moderate and critical voices increasingly marginalised.

The CPAC straw poll, however, is not always accurate. Ahead of Trump’s victory in 2016, the majority of straw poll participants backed Senator Cruz of Texas to be the next president. Trump came in third place with 15 percent support, trailing Rubio at 30 percent.

Iranian opposition leader calls on Trump administration to ‘stay the course’ as the US and Israel continue to wage war on Iran.

Amid questions about the future of Iran’s government, the son of the former shah has pitched himself to a right-wing summit in the United States and received a raucous welcome.

Reza Pahlavi spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas on Saturday, urging US President Donald Trump not to cut a deal with Iran and instead seek regime change.

“Can you imagine Iran going from ‘Death to America’ to ‘God Bless America’?” the self-styled crown prince asked his audience in Grapevine, Texas.

“President Trump is making America great again. I intend to make Iran great again,” he added, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

His remarks came on the one-month anniversary of the US and Israel’s decision to launch a war against Iran. As the conflict enters its second month, at least 1,937 people in Iran have been killed, and tens of thousands more injured, with no end to the fighting in sight.

Pahlavi has become a central opposition figure in the Iranian diaspora, with a loyal base of supporters who often carry his image, along with Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag, at protests around the world.

During his speech, some in the audience chanted, “Long live the king!”

While some in the Iranian diaspora have expressed reservations about the US-Israeli attacks and their effect on the future of Iran, Pahlavi has emerged as an outspoken supporter of Trump, aligned with the administration’s most hawkish figures.

“This regime in its entirety must go,” he said on Saturday.

Analysts have warned that the Iranian government is not likely to collapse and could emerge from the conflict more hardened than before. Some exiles, meanwhile, have been criticised for lending their voices to support the US-Israeli war despite the heavy toll on Iranian civilians.

Trump has himself previously downplayed the possibility that the son of the former shah, who was expelled from Iran during the country’s 1979 revolution, could play a central role in Iran if the current government were to collapse.

Earlier this month, Trump said that Pahlavi “looks like a very nice person“, but indicated that the shah’s son lacks popularity in Iran.

“It would seem to me that somebody from within, maybe, would be more appropriate,” Trump had said.

Divides within the US right over the war in Iran were also in evidence at CPAC. Polls suggest that, while the war is widely unpopular among US voters, Republicans support it by large margins.

In a Pew Research Center poll, for instance, 71 percent of Republican voters felt the US had made the right decision to attack Iran. Overall, among voters regardless of party, 59 percent opposed the initial strikes.

Still, a handful of influential voices on the US right, such as Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, have emerged as vocal critics of the war. Younger activists have also expressed frustration with what they see as a betrayal of Trump’s promise to avoid military adventures overseas.

“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America First policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty, told The Associated Press. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”

Arrests come days after force announced U-turn, saying that despite High Court ruling, ‘terror’ ban remains in place.

London’s Metropolitan Police have arrested 18 supporters of Palestine Action, days after the force promised to resume arrests in a reversal of policy.

The protesters had sat on the steps of New Scotland Yard, the Met’s headquarters, on Saturday, holding signs that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Officers made the arrests under “terrorism” legislation.

Following the High Court’s ruling in February that banning Palestine Action as a “terrorist group” was unlawful, the force had said it would adopt a “proportionate approach” and stop arresting the group’s supporters and focus instead on gathering evidence.

But on Wednesday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Harman said that since any “impact of that judgement will not take effect until the government’s appeal has been considered, which could take many months”, it would resume arrests. “We must enforce the law as it is at the time, not as it might be at a future date,” he said.

As she was led away by two officers on Saturday, one woman, in footage posted to social media, can be heard saying: “I’m being arrested for holding a cardboard sign, whereas our government feels the need to sell weapons and use our airbases to commit genocide in Palestine.”

Critics say the Met’s U-turn defies the court ruling.

Palestine Action is a direct action campaign group which has targeted weapons manufacturers linked to Israel and an RAF base.

The government proscribed it as a “terrorist organisation” in July 2025, placing it alongside groups including al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. The High Court called the move “disproportionate” and in breach of freedom of expression.

The government was granted a stay pending an appeal, meaning the ban technically remains in force.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who said she would fight the High Court ruling in the Court of Appeal, said in February that supporting Palestine Action was not the same as supporting the Palestinian cause.

Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring has since ordered that hundreds of related prosecutions be paused until after that appeal is heard.

Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested for holding signs in support of the group, contributing to a 660 percent rise in UK “terrorism” arrests in the year to September 2025, Defend Our Juries said.

On the day of the High Court ruling, about 150 people held the same placards outside the court and not a single person was arrested.

The scale of the crackdown has drawn sharp international criticism, including from the UN.

When the ban was first imposed, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said it appeared “disproportionate and unnecessary”, warning it risked criminalising the legitimate exercise of free expression.

In January, US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers told the news platform Semafor that “censoring that speech does more harm than good”.

Amnesty International, which intervened in the court case, said thousands had been “arrested for something that should never have been a crime.”

Eight activists linked to the group staged a lengthy hunger strike in prison, with four held on remand for 15 months before being bailed in February. Four others remain imprisoned.

Earlier this week, Al Jazeera reported that released detainees are now pursuing legal action against the prisons over alleged mistreatment.

Defend Our Juries has called a mass sign-holding event, titled Everyone Day, at Trafalgar Square on April 11, as the government’s appeal heads to court.

Saturday’s arrests took place as the rest of the city was filled with demonstrators who came out to march against the far right.

The B-2 Spirit has done what no other asset can do during the war with Iran — flying into dangerous airspace to release heavy weapons capable of penetrating even the most hardened targets. While B-1Bs and B-52Hs have forward deployed to the United Kingdom for their missions over and near Iran, the B-2s have flown smaller numbers of missions from their home at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. At this time, there is no evidence that B-2s are operating out of Diego Garcia or anywhere else for the war effort. Still, they are delivering punishing blows, as represented in art on at least one of their gear doors. Beyond mission markings, some new features that just appeared along the aircraft’s huge leading edges are puzzling to say the least.

We spotted these white rectangles with black borders that are sealed onto the B-2’s leading edges in images released today by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), showing a pair of the stealth bombers about to launch from Whiteman on another global airpower mission to Iran on March 17, 2026. The rectangles mirror themselves near the upper and lower leading edges and appear to use the typical tape method of sealing to keep the jet’s radar cross-section as low as possible.

The white squares are very loosely reminiscent of test marks the B-2 has worn at different times during its first decade of flying, when it was deep in trials. Why anything like that would be present on a combat mission, and on two separate aircraft, is puzzling. The possibility that they augment and mask the B-2’s radar signature is also worth bringing up, but the aircraft has other ways of doing that and why would B-2s fly missions without their stealth benefit, especially all the way from the United States, when other platforms are forward deployed for those applications? Delivering the Massive Ordnance Penetrator in permissive airspace is one potential reason, but again, why go through all the trouble when the aircraft can just hit its targets in standard configurations? The threat of losing signature data to threat systems is always a possibility, but whether it would drive such a modification is unclear.

It’s also possible that this is some kind of new sensor or electronic warfare installation, and that these are small apertures for whatever lies beneath. Enhancing the B-2’s ability to sense threats in its combat environment and react in real time to them, including by avoiding, attacking or jamming them, would be very important to its survivability over future battlefields. Also, making the Spirit more capable of communicating with assets even while keeping as stealthy as possible would be key. All these kinds of upgrades are important to making sure the B-2 remains relevant for the rest of its service life.

The byproducts of a new coatings upgrade for the Spirit are another possibility. The B-2’s radar-absorbent material (RAM) coatings are absolutely critical to its success, but are also one of the major drivers of its immense operating costs. Improvements to the coating’s materials and processes of applying them have been constant throughout its life as the USAF seeks to increase its availability rate and lower its cost per flight hour. This has changed the appearance of the B-2 over the decades. New technologies from the B-21 Raider program, for instance, are being applied to the B-2 in order to help address these issues.

So, we just don’t know what these new features are for, or if they will remain a staple on B-2s that receive them going forward.

Also of interest is the aforementioned mission markings on one of the B-2’s nose gear doors. It shows 15 bombs. While we cannot say for certain what exactly this represents, it’s more likely that it denotes combat missions rather than individual weapons dropped. That still seems like way too many long-range strike flights from this operation for this aircraft, especially considering the image was taken a week ago, but it probably includes combat missions from last year, as well.

Another possibility some may raise is that it could denote how many GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP) this B-2 has dropped, but again, this number seems like far too many. In fact, it is not even clear if any MOPs have been employed in this campaign, and 15 would equal more than the total dropped by all the B-2s involved during Operation Midnight Hammer last June.

Like so many things Spirit, we just don’t know what we are looking at. The aircraft is an American icon and has now entered the backend of its operational career, with its successor and legacy, the B-21 Raider, waiting in the wings. At the same time, much about the B-2 remains a secret and likely will for years after it finally flies its last operational sortie.

This is also something of an abstract indicator of just how far ahead of their time Northrop’s engineers were when they gave birth to the world’s first stealth bomber, an aircraft that is more prized now as a national asset than anytime in its three-decades-long career.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

Interior minister says ‘vigilance at high level’, after police arrest suspect before setting off explosive device outside US bank’s headquarters.

French authorities have opened an investigation into a foiled ⁠attack targeting Bank of America’s Paris headquarters after police detained one suspect who was allegedly attempting to ignite an explosive device outside the building.

In a social media post on Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the swift intervention by police had “thwarted a violent terrorist attack” in the French capital the previous night.

French newspaper Le Parisien cited a police source as saying the suspect was arrested at about 3:25am local time (02:25 GMT) outside the bank’s local headquarters in the city’s 8th arrondissement as he tried to light a device consisting of a five-litre (1.3-gallon) container filled with an unidentified liquid and an explosive charge made up of about 650 grams (23 ounces) of powder.

The suspect was taken into custody, while a second individual who was present fled the scene and remains at large. The device was taken to the Paris police’s forensics lab for full analysis.

The National Terrorism Prosecution Office told the Reuters news agency the suspected offences included attempted destruction by fire or other dangerous means in connection with a “terrorist plot”, as well as ⁠the making, possession ⁠and transport of an incendiary or explosive device with intent ⁠to carry out dangerous damage.

The probe ⁠also includes a ⁠charge of participation in a “terrorist” criminal association, covering potential ‌links to accomplices or a broader network, it said.

“Vigilance remains at a very high level,” said Nunez on X, thanking “security and intelligence forces, who are fully mobilised under my authority” in what he called the “current international context”, seemingly with reference to the escalating situation in parts of the Middle East amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Earlier in the week, Nunez had said that authorities had stepped up the personal protection of some figures from the Iranian opposition and increased security around sites that risked being targeted, including sites linked to US interests and to the Jewish community.

A spokesperson for Bank of America told Reuters the organisation was “aware of the situation” and “communicating with the authorities”.

Demonstrators are hitting the streets of cities across the United States for the first “No Kings” protest since the joint US and Israeli war against Iran began one month ago.

Saturday’s marches and rallies mark the third round of nationwide “No Kings” protests since President Donald Trump took office for a second term.

According to the “No Kings” website, more than 3,300 events are planned across all 50 states, with large crowds expected in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Parallel events are happening internationally in cities such as Rome, Paris, and Berlin.

Organisers, however, are aiming to rally voters outside of the US’s major metropolises, in areas that tend to skew conservative. They say that roughly two-thirds of participants are expected to take part in events outside of major city centres.

“The defining story of this Saturday’s mobilisation is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,” said Leah Greenberg, cofounder of the progressive nonprofit Indivisible, which started the “No Kings” movement last year.

The main event, however, is set to take place in the Minneapolis-St Paul area of Minnesota, known as the Twin Cities.

The midwestern state became a focal point for Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown in December, when he launched Operation Metro Surge.

That operation saw more than 3,000 of federal immigration agents descend on the Twin Cities, where they were accused of using excessive force to conduct deportation raids.

In January, agents shot and killed two US citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, prompting nationwide outrage and calls for reform. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed as a result of the operation, which was wound down in February.

Saturday’s protest will commemorate those deaths in Minnesota, with speeches, concerts and appearances from activists, labour leaders and politicians.

Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders is expected to address attendees, and rock icon Bruce Springsteen will perform at the event, along with folk singer Joan Baez.

Already, early on Saturday, marchers in Washington, DC, gathered around landmarks such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, holding signs and waving papier-mache effigies of the Trump administration.

The previous two “No Kings” marches took place in June and October and drew millions of people. Trump responded to the October protest by posting an AI-generated video depicting himself dumping faeces on the protesters.

The US is currently in the midst of campaigns for its pivotal midterm elections in November, which will see Trump’s Republican Party seek to defend its majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Senegal parade AFCON trophy at Stade de France ahead of friendly against Peru, despite being stripped of the title.

Senegal, who won the Africa Cup of Nations title in a controversial final against hosts Morocco in January – only to be stripped of their victory weeks later – have paraded the trophy ahead of a friendly against Peru at the Stade de France in Paris.

Senegal captain Kalidou Koulibaly and his teammates came out onto the pitch with the AFCON trophy on Saturday for a lap of honour after a pre-match concert by Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour.

Koulibaly and goalkeeper Edouard Mendy went up to the stadium’s presidential box to place the trophy there in front of Abdoulaye Fall, the president of the Senegalese Football Federation, among others.

Only hours earlier, Morocco had declared the case for the trophy closed, following the Confederation of African Football (CAF) ruling that Senegal’s 1-0 win in January’s final was to be overturned following the mid-game walk-off by their players.

CAF’s appeals panel awarded Morocco a 3-0 win and with it, the title.

Senegal and Morocco set to remain locked in AFCON dispute

Senegal have said they will take their own appeal back to CAF and to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which could take a year to rule.

The Senegalese government has called for an independent international inquiry into CAF’s decision, alleging corruption should also be looked into.

Senegal’s players left the field in normal time during the final in protest at a penalty awarded to Morocco, which – upon the Senegalese return after a 14-minute delay – was missed.

The match on the day was settled by Pape Gueye’s strike in extra time. Morocco immediately appealed the result, but were initially rebuffed by CAF.

Senegal turn Paris into AFCON trophy celebration

A crowd of 70,000 was expected for the match at 16:00 GMT on Saturday. Thousands of Senegalese supporters, sprinkled with Peruvian fans, were already in the Stade de France by the time the players showed off their trophy.

Earlier, nearly 200 Senegal supporters gathered in front of the nearby Basilica of Saint-Denis before making their way to the Stade de France to the sound of traditional drums and percussion.

Bally Bagayoko, the newly elected mayor of Saint-Denis, briefly joined the procession.

“Welcome to Saint-Denis,” said the mayor. “I wanted to thank everyone who organised this wonderful initiative.

“You are the pride of the residents of working-class neighbourhoods. We have often been discriminated against, often looked down upon.

“You are showing that you are capable, at such an important moment, of coming together. Today, Africa is united. Everyone behind Senegal.”

The friendly against Peru was due to be the Lions of Teranga’s first match since the Africa Cup of Nations final.

They are preparing for the World Cup, where they have been pitted in a group with France, Norway and either Bolivia or Iraq.

Their squad on Saturday was almost identical to the one that competed in the Africa Cup of Nations.