News

Nov. 5 (UPI) — A federal judge was expected to rule Wednesday after he called the conditions at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in a Chicago suburb “disgusting” after hearing more than 6 hours of testimony.

U.S District Judge Robert W. Gettleman on Tuesday reviewed the conditions at the facility in Broadview, Ill., that ICE is using as part of Operation Midway Blitz. He’s ruling on a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois last week over detainee access to lawyers and allegedly inhumane conditions there.

Gettleman told the court that what he heard qualifies for court intervention. He said he will issue a final ruling on Wednesday, and that it will not be “impossible to comply with.”

“I think everybody can admit that we don’t want to treat people the way that I heard people are being treated today,” Gettleman said after hearing testimony from five detainees being held at the facility, calling their descriptions of the facility “disgusting” and “unconstitutional.”

“It’s a disturbing record,” Gettleman said. “People sleeping shoulder to shoulder, next to overflowing toilets and human waste — that’s unacceptable.”

The Justice Department argued in a response to the ACLU’s lawsuit that people at the facility are “adequately provided with food, clothing, shelter and medical care before they are transferred to another detention facility.”

During the hearing on Tuesday, Justice Department attorney Jana Brady suggested that the five detainees may not properly recall their experience at the facility, and questioned whether they understood what was going on there in the first place.

Brady also noted, however, that authorities were working to improve conditions at the facility, which was operating beyond its normal capacity. She said there was “a learning curve” as operations continue.

In its lawsuit, the ACLU alleged that agents at the Broadview facility have treated detainees “abhorrently, depriving them of sleep, privacy, menstrual products and the ability to shower,” as well as denied entry and communication with attorneys, members of Congress, and religious and faith leaders.

The MacArthur Justice Center and Roger Baldwin Foundation, of the ACLU, called Broadview a “black hole, and federal officials are acting with impunity inside its walls.”

During the hearing on Tuesday, Gettleman heard from detainees who said they had to step over bodies at night while people slept on the floor; would wake people up when going to the bathroom because they were sleeping next to the toilet; received just a thin foil blanket or a sweater despite freezing temperatures overnight; and observed poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids and insects in the sinks and the floor.

One detainee told the judge that female detainees at one point used garbage bags to unclog a toilet and that, when they asked for a broom to clean, guards refused.

The facility is a two-story building in an industrial area of the Village of Broadview, about 12 miles west of downtown Chicago, which has long been used by immigration authorities, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In June, the Department of Homeland Security changed its policy to allow detainees to be held there for as long as 72 hours, up from the 12 hours that previously had been the limit.

After hearing from witnesses that detainees have been held there for as long as 12 days, and that the building does not have beds, blankets or pillows, Gettleman said the building has “become a prison” and may be “unconstitutional.”

The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday afternoon said in a post on X that Broadview is not a detention center, but rather a processing center, and that it is processing “the worst of the worst, including pedophiles, gang members and rapists.”

“All detainees are provided with three meals a day, water and have access to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the department said in the post. “No one is denied access to proper medical care.”

“Any claims there are subprime conditions at the Broadview ICE facility are FALSE,” it added.

Noting that the facility is a key part of the department’s immigration enforcement effort in Chicago, Brady said that a temporary restraining order requiring the department to improve the facility, “as it is currently written, would effectively halt the government’s ability to enforce immigration laws in Illinois.”

US President Donald Trump admitted that the federal government shutdown hurt Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, saying it was time for his party to eliminate the Senate filibuster to prevent further losses.

Last night, in one of the most dramatic elections in recent US history, Zahran Mamdani, a Muslim candidate of Indian African descent, achieved a landslide victory. This triumph came despite facing formidable opposition from the forces of Zionism, capitalism, and racialist religious supremacism, which mobilized significant resources in terms of money, muscle, and power against him.

The victory of Zahran Mamdani, the son of renowned intellectual Mahmood Mamdani and Film maker Mira Nair, as a Democratic candidate in New York mayoral elections is far more than a local electoral victory. It signals a deeper undercurrent—a growing rebellion against the entangled machinery of global capitalism, racialised securitisation, Zionist impunity, and Islamophobic silencing.

In the heart of New York, one of the most securitised and capital-rich spaces on the planet, Mamdani’s emergence stands as a critique of the global order. It is an insurgency within the very citadel of imperial liberalism. His campaign foregrounds anti-austerity politics, solidarity with Palestine, and the dismantling of carceral and corporate logics that have defined American life for decades. It is, in essence, a blow to what The Globalisation of World Politics calls “the disciplining power of capitalism.”

For years, the mere act of criticising Israel—even for its brutal siege of Gaza or its apartheid policies—has been enough to trigger political excommunication. The term “antisemite” has often been deployed not to combat real hate, but to securitize dissent. Any moral critique of Zionist settler colonialism was cast as existential threat and thus silenced. In Mamdani’s case, too, this familiar script was attempted: the labels of “Pro-Hamas,” “Antisemitic,” and “extremist” were hurled. But this time, it didn’t work.

READ: Zohran Mamdani elected New York City’s first Muslim mayor: AP projection

The people of New York—multi-ethnic, young, politically awakened—refused to accept this securitisation. The old rhetorical weapons no longer resonate. Zionism’s carefully curated moral immunity, built upon the tragic weight of the Holocaust, is eroding under the real-time horrors of a genocidal siege in Gaza. The shield of historical victimhood has cracked—not because the Holocaust is forgotten, but because it is being morally manipulated to justify colonial violence.

Even prominent Jewish scholars and intellectuals—such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and Ilan Pappé—have long warned about this moral dissonance. Yet, governments have remained complicit. Streets across the West have mobilised in support of Palestine, but policies have not shifted. The disconnect between public sentiment and the actions of the power elite is glaring. The political representation of this street sympathy has been manipulated through manufactured consent and a false victimhood narrative propagated by large, conglomerate-controlled media outlets. Mamdani’s nomination suggests that the public may finally be finding a way to express their views through electoral channels, despite the entrenched media-industrial Zionist consensus.

Yet in India, the silence is deafening.

Despite Zahran’s cultural and familial linkages with India, the so-called liberal intelligentsia and the Hindutva right have found rare unity: in ignoring him. Why? Because he identifies unapologetically as a Muslim. Because he challenges Hindutva and Zionism with equal clarity. Because he doesn’t perform his identity for liberal comfort. While India was quick to celebrate Kamala Harris and Rishi Sunak—symbols of minority success within dominant systems—it refuses to acknowledge Mamdani, who represents defiance, not assimilation.

This is not just the prejudice of the right-wing. It reveals a deep Islamophobia embedded within India’s secular elite—those who pride themselves on defending the social fabric but look away when a Muslim victory doesn’t align with sanitized, capitalist liberalism. Mamdani is inconvenient. He is too political, too Muslim, too critical.

But he is also the embodiment of a long tradition. The son of Mahmood Mamdani—whose work deconstructs the legacies of colonial violence, racial statecraft, and the “good Muslim/bad Muslim” dichotomy—Zahran is the intellectual and political heir to global decolonial thought. His mother, Mira Nair, whose films have captured migration, racial tension, and identity, adds a cultural dimension to this lineage of resistance.

In a world that feels increasingly bleak, Mamdani’s nomination offers a rare moment of clarity: that cracks have begun to appear in the mirror of empire. The hegemon can still silence, still dominate—but not without resistance, and not without fracture. For those who dream of justice—not just electoral wins—Zahran Mamdani’s nomination is a reminder that history is not yet finished.

READ: Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Sharaa’s manoeuvring

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

SEOUL, Nov. 5 (UPI) — Non-ferrous metal giant Korea Zinc said Tuesday it nearly doubled its profit in the third quarter of 2025 overa year ago, driven by strong demand across its product lines.

Korea Zinc reported $2.87 billion in revenue during the July-September period, up 29.7% year-on-year, for an operating income of $189 million, up 82.3%. The company said that it has remained profitable for 103 consecutive quarters since 2000.

The Seoul-based corporation said the strong sales of critical raw materials, including antimony, indium and bismuth, as well as precious metals, boosted performance during the three-month period.

Through its integrated smelting process for zinc, lead and copper, Korea Zinc also recovers about 10 by-products of critical raw materials and precious metals, such as gold and silver.

Korea Zinc said that gold and silver contributed about $2.5 billion to revenue during the first nine months of this year, as metal prices remained strong.

The world’s largest zinc manufacturer has also expanded its portfolio of strategic materials. Antimony, indium and bismuth are classified as “critical minerals” by Washington and Seoul.

Early this year, it started exporting antimony, a vital component in electronic and defense production, to the United States. Its global sales of antimony reached $173 million so far this year.

In August, Korea Zinc signed a memorandum of understanding with Lockheed Martin to supply germanium, another critical mineral, to the U.S.-headquartered defense contractor.

“On the back of proactive investments and a diversified portfolio, our strategic minerals and precious metals business did well. New growth areas such as resource recycling are also on a stable trajectory,” Korea Zinc said in a statement.

Russia’s key Black Sea oil port of Tuapse has suspended all fuel exports after Ukrainian drones struck its infrastructure on November 2, igniting a fire and damaging loading facilities. The attack also forced the nearby Rosneft-operated refinery to halt crude processing, according to industry sources and LSEG ship tracking data.

Tuapse is one of Russia’s major export hubs for refined oil products, including naphtha, diesel, and fuel oil. The port plays a crucial role in supplying markets such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey. The refinery, capable of processing around 240,000 barrels of oil per day, exports most of its production.

Why It Matters

The suspension underscores Ukraine’s ongoing campaign to weaken Russia’s wartime economy by targeting energy infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. These strikes not only disrupt export revenues but also stretch Russia’s military and logistical resources. For Moscow, losing Tuapse an export-oriented refinery on the Black Sea adds pressure to its already strained oil supply chain amid international sanctions and logistical bottlenecks.

The attack also signals Kyiv’s growing drone capabilities, with long-range operations increasingly aimed at strategic Russian energy sites. As the conflict nears its fourth year, energy infrastructure on both sides has become a critical front in the economic war underpinning the battlefield.

The regional administration in Tuapse confirmed the drone strike and subsequent fire but offered few details. State oil company Rosneft and Russia’s port agency did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

According to data reviewed by LSEG, three tankers were docked during the attack, loading naphtha, diesel, and fuel oil. All vessels were later moved offshore to anchor safely near the port. Before the incident, Tuapse had been expected to increase oil product exports in November.

Ukraine has not directly claimed responsibility for the specific attack but reiterated that its drone strikes aim to erode Russia’s capacity to finance its invasion through energy exports.

What’s Next

Repair timelines for the Tuapse refinery and port infrastructure remain unclear, but the temporary halt is expected to disrupt Russia’s short-term fuel exports and trading flows in the Black Sea region. The strike may prompt Moscow to bolster air defenses along its southern coast and diversify export routes to reduce vulnerability.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is expected to continue leveraging drone warfare to target high-value Russian infrastructure as part of its asymmetric strategy to offset Moscow’s battlefield advantages.

With information from an exclusive Reuters report.

Israel has conducted more than 1,000 air strikes and more than 400 ground incursions in Syria since al-Assad overthrow.

Israel’s army has renewed its incursions into Syria, setting up a checkpoint in the southern province of Quneitra, according to local media, as it continues daily attacks, destabilises its neighbours and occupies and assaults Palestine.

State news agency SANA reported that two tanks and four military vehicles entered the town of Jabata al-Khashab in the Quneitra countryside on Wednesday, setting up the military post on the road leading to the village of Ain al-Bayda.

Damascus did not immediately comment but has repeatedly condemned Israel’s repeated violations of its sovereignty, highlighting Israel’s failure to adhere to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement that followed the 1973 war.

In that war, Syria was unable to retake the occupied Golan Heights. The 1974 agreement saw the establishment of a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone, which Israel has violated since the fall of Bashar al-Assad last December

Israel has previously said the 1974 agreement is void since al-Assad fled, breaching Syrian sovereignty with air strikes, ground infiltration operations, reconnaissance overflights, the establishment of checkpoints and the arrests and disappearances of Syrians. Syria has not reciprocated attacks.

Back in September, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa stated that Israel had conducted more than 1,000 air strikes and more than 400 ground incursions in Syria since al-Assad was overthrown, describing the actions as “very dangerous”.

Numerous villages in Quneitra, southern Syria, have experienced Israeli incursions, according to Syrian outlet Enab Baladi.

De-escalation discussions

Syria and Israel are currently in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israel’s air strikes on its territory and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

In the background, the United States has been pushing diplomatic efforts to restore the 1974 deal. On Saturday, Trump’s special envoy Tom Barrack said the two countries are expected to hold a fifth set of de-escalation discussions.

Amid Israel’s continued belligerence and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promotion of his vision for a “Greater Israel“, al-Sharaa has been forging closer ties with the US.

On Monday, he is heading to Washington for talks with President Donald Trump, marking the first visit by a Syrian president to the White House in more than 80 years.

Barrack said on Saturday that Syria is expected to join the US-led anti–ISIL (ISIS) coalition, describing it as “a big step” and “remarkable”.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani said earlier this week that al-Sharaa was also expected to discuss Syria’s reconstruction with Trump.

In 2019, a Sudanese team of jiu-jitsu athletes set out on an extraordinary quest: to travel by land from Sudan to Kenya, despite having no funding and limited resources, to compete in the LionHeart Nairobi Open.

Together members of the Muqatel Training Center for martial arts travelled across three countries, carrying not just their hopes and dreams, but the spirit of a revolution that reshaped Sudan.

Journey to Kenya is a documentary short about resilience, unity and determination — a powerful reminder that dreams can transcend borders.

A film by Ibrahim “Snoopy” Ahmed, produced by In Deep Visions.

Nov. 5 (UPI) — At least 11 people were killed and 30 injured in a blaze at a high-rise retirement home in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Authorities said the fire broke out Tuesday evening at about 8.45 p.m. (2 p.m. EST) on the seventh floor of the facility in Tuzla, the country’s fourth largest city 70 miles northeast of the capital, Sarajevo.

Police said firefighters, police officers, medics, residents and staff at the home were among 20 people taken to the hospital.

Several people received treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning, with three in intensive care, said a spokesman for Tuzla University clinical center.

Images circulating online show the top floor of the building engulfed in flames.

Nermin Niksic, prime minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the country’s bipartite system of government, called the blaze “a disaster of enormous proportions.”

Tuzla is located in FBiH, one of two administrative entities portioning the country between Bosnian Muslims and Catholic Croats in the north and Bosnian-Serbs in central and southern areas born out of the 1995 U.S.-brokered Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian War.

The prime minister of the Srpska entity, Savo Minic, head of the country’s Serb region, said Tuesday night that his government stood ready to assist Tuzla in any way it could following the retirement home fire.

“The Government of the Republic of Srpska stands ready to assist the citizens of Tuzla with any kind of help following tonight’s tragedy. We feel the pain and are always ready to help. Our most sincere condolences to the families,” he said in a post on X.

Authorities said an investigation into the cause of the blaze was underway.

And so another member of the old “war on terror” team has left the world. Dick Cheney, who served as the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States during the two-term administration of George W Bush (2001-2009), died on Monday at the age of 84.

According to a memorial statement issued by his family, Cheney was “a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing”.

And yet many inhabitants of the Earth will remember the late VP for rather less warm and fuzzy things than love and fly fishing. As the chief architect of the “global war on terror” – which was launched in 2001 and enabled the US to terrorise various locations worldwide under the guise of fighting “terrorists” – Cheney died with untold quantities of blood on his hands, particularly in Iraq.

In the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Cheney swore that the “Iraqi regime” had been “very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents” and that the country had continued “to pursue the nuclear programme they began so many years ago”. Per the vice president’s hallucinations, this pursuit of weaponry was “for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale”.

As Foreign Policy magazine charmingly noted in its 2012 compilation of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers”, which included Cheney as well as numerous other characters with objectively dubious credentials in terms of thinking: “If scaring us silly were a religion, Dick Cheney would be its high priest.”

But Cheney’s fearmongering – and repeated lies concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction – worked like a charm in paving the way for the infliction of “death on a massive scale” in the country. It also paved the way for the lining of certain pockets, such as those associated with the US oil and engineering firm Halliburton, where Cheney himself served as CEO from 1995 until 2000 and which just happened to win $7bn in no-bid contracts in post-invasion Iraq.

Anyway, it was business as usual in the land of conflicts of interest and revolving doors.

Until his dying day, Cheney espoused a no-regrets approach to the illegal perpetration of mass slaughter and attendant suffering, telling CNN 12 years after the effective pulverisation of Iraq: “It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then, and I believe it now.” Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the forcible displacement of millions, and the dousing of the country in toxic and radioactive munitions that will continue to impact Iraqi health basically for eternity.

Escalating cancer rates among the population have been attributed in part to the US military’s use of depleted uranium weapons, the traces of which “represent a formidable long-term environmental hazard as they will remain radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years”, as Al Jazeera has observed.

But, hey, I hear the fly fishing is great in Baghdad.

And the Iraq war is hardly Cheney’s only nonregret. In response to the 2014 CIA torture report on the US use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as rectal rehydration and waterboarding to extract information, Cheney stuck by his guns: “I would do it again in a minute.”

Nor is the “war on terror” the sole defining sadistic episode in the legacy of a man who was a fixture on the American political scene for decades. In December 1989, for example, the US military unleashed hell on the impoverished neighbourhood of El Chorrillo in Panama City, Panama, killing potentially several thousand civilians and earning El Chorrillo the nickname “Little Hiroshima”.

The US defence secretary presiding over the operation was none other than Cheney, this time under the leadership of George HW Bush, whose administration was eager to cure the American public of its post-Vietnam War aversion to military combat abroad with an excessive display of high-tech firepower and an easy “victory”. After the bout of devastation, during which many of El Chorrillo’s wooden shacks went up in flames along with their inhabitants, Cheney boasted that the deadly spectacle had “been the most surgical military operation of its size ever conducted”.

The “surgical” stunt in Panama was a test run for Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991, which was also overseen by Cheney in his own sort of test run for the future infliction of mass death in the country.

Now Cheney is no more, joining his former comrades in war crimes Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell in the great beyond. In the wake of his demise, US news agencies and media outlets have restricted themselves to memorialising him as a “polarising” and “controversial” figure who, as The Associated Press diplomatically put it, “was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without losing the conviction he was essentially right”.

As usual, the corporate media can never bring themselves to call a spade a spade – or a war criminal a war criminal. But against the current backdrop of Israel’s US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip and other global calamities, the loss of another mass murderer can hardly be considered bad news.

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

Zohran Mamdani has won the election to be the next mayor of New York City, knocking out political heavyweight Andrew Cuomo. In less than a year, Mamdani has gone from being a little-known state assemblyman to becoming one of the most high-profile politicians in the United States.

How did he do it, and what could happen now? Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains.

This episode features:

Joseph Stepansky | US reporter, Al Jazeera Digital

Christina Greer | associate professor of political science at Fordham University and cohost of the FAQ NYC podcast

Andres Bernal | lecturer at the School of Labor and Urban Studies of the City University of New York

Kyiv, Ukraine – The collective West is scared of Moscow’s new, nuclear-powered cruise missile because it can reach anywhere on Earth, bypassing the most sophisticated air and missile defence systems, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has claimed.

“They’re afraid of what we’ll show to them next,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the RIA Novosti news agency on Sunday.

Days earlier, she said Moscow was “forced” to develop and test the cruise missile, which is named the Burevestnik, meaning storm petrel – a type of seabird, in response to NATO’s hostility towards Russia.

“The development can be characterised as forced and takes place to maintain strategic balance,” she was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying. Russia “has to respond to NATO’s increasingly destabilising actions in the field of missile defence”.

With much pomp, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday handed state awards to Burevestnik’s developers.

Also awarded were the designers of Poseidon, an underwater nuclear-powered torpedo which Putin has also claimed has been successfully tested.

Russia says Poseidon can carry nuclear weapons that cause radioactive tsunamis, wiping out huge coastal areas. The “super torpedo” can move at the speed of 200km/h (120mph) and zigzag its way to avoid interception, it says.

“In terms of flight range, the Burevestnik … has surpassed all known missile systems in the world,” Putin said in his speech at the Kremlin. “Same as any other nuclear power, Russia is developing its nuclear potential, its strategic potential … What we are talking about now is the work announced a long time ago.”

But military and nuclear experts are sceptical about the efficiency and lethality of the new weapons.

It is not unusual for Russia to flaunt its arsenal as its onslaught in Ukraine continues. Analysts say rather than scaring its critics, Moscow’s announcements are merely a scare tactic to dissuade Western powers from supporting Kyiv.

“There’s nothing revolutionary about,” the Burevestnik, said Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project at the the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

“It can fly long and far, and there’s some novelty about it, but there’s nothing to back [Putin’s claim] that it can absolutely change everything,” Podvig told Al Jazeera. “One can’t say that it is invincible and can triumph over everything.”

The Burevestnik’s test is part of Moscow’s media stratagem of intimidating the West when the real situation on the front lines in Ukraine is desperate, according to a former Russian diplomat.

The missile is “not a technical breakthrough but a product of propaganda and desperation”, Boris Bondarev, who quit his Russian Foreign Ministry job to protest against the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, wrote in an opinion piece published by the Moscow Times.

“It symbolises not strength but weakness – the Kremlin’s lack of any tools of political influence other than threats.”

Few details about ‘unique’ missile

The problem is that officials have so far unveiled very little about the Burevestnik, which NATO has dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall – a missile that has a nuclear reactor allegedly capable of keeping it in the air indefinitely.

On October 26, when fatigues-clad Putin announced Burevestnik’s successful test, he was accompanied by his top general Valery Gerasimov.

“This is a unique item; no one else in the world has it,” said Putin, in televised remarks.

Gerasimov said the Burevestnik had flown 14,000km (8,700 miles) in 15 hours during a recent test. It can manoeuvre and loiter midair, and unleash its nuclear load with “guaranteed precision” and at “any distance”.

“There’s a lot of work ahead” before the missile is mass-produced, Putin concluded, adding the test’s “key objectives have been achieved”.

A Ukrainian military expert ridiculed the Kremlin’s claims.

“Much of the news report is fake, the (Burevestnik) missile is subsonic, it can be detected and destroyed by missile defence systems,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces who specialised in air and missile defence, told Al Jazeera.

As for the Poseidon nuclear drone, it is too destructive – and can be used only as a second-strike, retaliatory weapon after the start of a nuclear war, experts warned. As with the Burevestnik, the lack of detailed information about Poseidon casts doubt upon the Kremlin’s claims.

Trump decries ‘inappropriate’ tests

The announcements followed Washington’s scrapping of United States President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary.

Trump has called the Burevestnik’s test “inappropriate” and ordered the Pentagon to resume the testing of nuclear weapons and missiles.

But ahead of next year’s midterm elections, he may seek to show how he forced the Kremlin to stop hostilities in Ukraine.

“Trump will have to play with pressure on Russia,” Romanenko said. “Hopefully, the circumstances will force Trump to act.”

What Putin has not mentioned is that only two of the Burevestnik’s dozen tests, starting in 2019, have been successful.

Its 2019 launch near the White Sea in northwestern Russia killed at least five nuclear experts after a radioactive explosion, Western experts said at the time. Russia’s state nuclear agency acknowledged the deaths, but officials and media reports do not provide video footage, detailed photos or other specifics of the Burevestnik and its testing route – making Putin’s latest claims hard to corroborate or disprove.

Western experts were able to identify the Burevestnik’s probable deployment site in September. Known as Vologda-20 or Chebsara, it is believed to be 475km (295 miles) north of Moscow and has nine launch pads under construction, the Reuters news agency reported last year.

The missile’s capabilities have divided military analysts.

“In operation, the Burevestnik would carry a nuclear warhead (or warheads), circle the globe at low altitude, avoid missile defences, and dodge terrain; and drop the warhead(s) at a difficult-to-predict location (or locations),” the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US nonprofit security group said in a 2019 report after the missile’s first somewhat successful test.

A year later, the US Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center said, if brought into service, Burevestnik would give Moscow a “unique weapon with intercontinental-range capability”.

‘Burevestnik is a mystification’

Others doubt the missile’s functionality.

“Burevestnik is a mystification for the whole seven-and-a-half years since it was first announced,” Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s impossible to create a reactor that is compact and powerful enough to ensure a cruise missile’s movement,” Luzin said. “This is a basic physics textbook.”

Moscow claims that Burevestnik utilises nuclear propulsion instead of turbojet or turbofan engines used in cruise or ballistic missiles.

But Luzin said the smallest nuclear reactors used to power satellites weighed 1 metric tonne, supplying several kilowatts of energy – roughly equal to what a regular household consumes – while emitting some 150kw of thermal energy.

The experimental nuclear reactors developed in the 1950s and the 60s for aircraft weighed many tonnes and were the size of a railway carriage, he said.

An average engine for a cruise missile weighs up to 80kg, generates 4kw for onboard electric and electronic devices, and about 1 megawatt of energy for propelling the missile, he said.

Other analysts think that Burevestnik’s nuclear engine can function, but do not consider the weapon groundbreaking.

Nov. 5 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against eight individuals and two entities accused of laundering proceeds from North Korean cybercrime and information technology worker fraud schemes that help fund Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Tuesday that North Korea has stolen more than $3 billion over the past three years, using sophisticated techniques such as advanced malware and social engineering to breach financial systems and cryptocurrency platforms.

“North Korean state-sponsored hackers steal and launder money to fund the regime’s nuclear weapons program,” Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John K. Hurley said in a statement. “By generating revenue for Pyongyang’s weapons development, these actors directly threaten U.S. and global security.”

Hurley added that the Treasury is “identifying and disrupting the facilitators and enablers behind these schemes to cut off the DPRK’s illicit revenue streams.”

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

Among those sanctioned are Jang Kuk Chol and Ho Jong Son, North Korean bankers who allegedly helped manage illicit funds, including $5.3 million in cryptocurrency — some of it linked to ransomware that has previously targeted U.S. victims.

Korea Mangyongdae Computer Technology Co. and its president U Yong Su were also added to the list. The company allegedly operates IT-worker delegations from the Chinese cities of Shenyang and Dandong.

Ryujong Credit Bank, another target, was accused of laundering foreign-currency earnings and moving funds for sanctioned North Korean entities. Six additional individuals were designated for facilitating money transfers.

Under the sanctions, all property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities within U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally barred from engaging in transactions with them. Financial institutions dealing with the sanctioned parties may also face enforcement actions.

The move builds on earlier U.S. actions this year against North Korean cyber networks. In July, the State Department sanctioned Song Kum Hyok, a member of the Andariel hacking group, for operating remote IT-worker schemes that funneled wages back to Pyongyang.

The Justice Department also filed criminal charges in 16 states against participants in a campaign that placed North Korean IT workers in U.S. companies.

Tuesday’s OFAC statement cited an October report by the 11-country Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, which described North Korea’s cybercrime apparatus as “a full-spectrum, national program operating at a sophistication approaching the cyber programs of China and Russia.”

The report added that “nearly all the DPRK’s malicious cyber activity, cybercrime, laundering and IT work is carried out under the supervision, direction and for the benefit of entities sanctioned by the United Nations for their role in the DPRK’s unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs.”

The sanctions follow President Donald Trump‘s recent visit to South Korea, where a much-anticipated meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un failed to materialize.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers Tuesday that a summit could take place after joint U.S.-South Korean military drills scheduled for March, according to opposition lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun of the People Power Party.

The US government shutdown has now lasted for 36 days, making it the longest on record. Some welfare payments, including those that allow low-income families to buy food, have been halted. The shutdown means more than a million government employees are not being paid.

We now have the first known commercial satellite imagery of the two Chinese sixth-generation stealth fighter designs that emerged nearly a year ago. The aircraft, which are commonly referred to now as the J-36 and the J-XDS, have been spotted in separate images not at their home airfields where they were built, but at a secretive airbase with a massive runway situated near the Lop Nur nuclear test site in northwestern China.

The J-36, readily identifiable by its large modified delta planform and ‘splinter’ camouflage paint scheme, is seen outside the main hangar at the facility’s central apron in an archived satellite image taken on August 27, which The War Zone obtained from Planet Labs. The J-XDS is seen in another Planet Labs image of the airfield taken on September 13. Previously, the J-36 and J-XDS have only been definitively spotted flying in and out of the main airfields associated with their respective manufacturers, Chengdu and Shenyang. Readers can find TWZ‘s very in-depth initial analysis on the J-36 and the J-XDS here.

This particular base near Lop Nur, which has been linked to work on reusable space planes, is also now undergoing a major expansion. It notably already has a runway over 16,400 feet long, or more than 3 miles in total length, making it one of the longest anywhere in the world.

The August 27 satellite image offers new details about the J-36’s size, showing it to have a wingspan of approximately 65 feet and an overall length of some 62 feet. It has already been clear that the three-engined J-36, two distinctly different prototypes of which have now emerged, is a very large tactical aircraft. For comparison, members of the extended Soviet-designed Flanker fighter family, like China’s J-16s, have wingspans of around 48 feet. Flankers are already well known for their large size relative to other fourth-generation fighter designs. As another point of comparison, the variable geometry F-111’s fully extended wingspan was 63 feet.

The September 13 image shows the J-XDS to have a wingspan of around 50 feet and be slightly shorter than the J-36. It’s worth noting that the shadow and image resolution make this estimate more challenging, and readers are advised to take it as such. It has been previously established that the twin-engined J-XDS, also sometimes referred to as the J-50, with its “lambda” wing planform, is smaller and slimmer than the J-36. That being said, it is still firmly in the heavy fighter class.

As mentioned, the remote base near Lop Nur is in the process of being expanded in a major way, overall. The work only started in earnest in the past six months or so, and significant progress has already been made. This includes the enlargement of the main apron, with a single new hangar also having been built at the northeastern end. Three smaller hangars, all joined together and that look to be typical of ones for fighter-sized aircraft, have been constructed at the opposite end, as well.

In addition, a host of other new buildings are seen under construction to the immediate southeast, pointing to plans to expand the scope and scale of work being done at the facility. The series of satellite images below gives a sense of the sheer magnitude of work that has been done just since May of this year.

There had already been a pronounced expansion of the infrastructure at the base in the early 2020s, including the construction of the large main hangar and associated apron. As noted, at that time, the facility seemed largely tied to Chinese military space development efforts. TWZ‘s first report on the airfield came in 2020 after a reusable space plane appeared to have landed there. Last year, we reported on it again after satellite imagery emerged showing a still-mysterious object sitting at one end of the runway.

It seems clear now that the facility has taken on a larger and still growing role in China’s broader advanced aerospace development ecosystem. Comparisons have already been drawn in the past to the U.S. military’s top-secret flight test center at Groom Lake in Nevada, better known as Area 51.

The airfield near Lop Nur is even more remote than China’s existing sprawling test airbase near Malan in Xinjiang province, which also seems to be almost exclusively focused, in terms of aerospace development tasks, on uncrewed aircraft. It also appears to host aircraft detachments for more general training and testing.

The construction of new hangars and other infrastructure at the base in question can only further help with the concealment of assets and other activity there from prying eyes, including in space. That being said, the site is regularly imaged, including by commercial satellites, which clearly did not deter the Chinese from parking the J-36 and J-XDS outside in broad daylight.

Regardless, the appearance of the J-36 and J-XDS at the remote base around the same time is also telling of the facility’s new mission to support the development of advanced air combat technologies. It is further indicative of the state of China’s rapidly evolving sixth-generation fighter programs that they have operated out of this place, possibly alongside each other.

All of this reflects a broader ramping up in China of the development and testing of next-generation tactical air combat platforms, as well as key supporting aircraft. This includes a host of advanced drones intended to perform a variety of missions. Some of these designs are very large, while others are smaller and more in the vein of ‘loyal wingman,’ or what is now often called a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). For example, the satellite image below, from Planet Labs’ archive of shots taken of Malan, shows what is likely a fighter-sized CCA-type uncrewed aircraft.

These Chinese military aviation trends extend into the naval domain, as well. This past weekend, images emerged online that offer the first look at a navalized version of the GJ-11 Sharp Sword stealthy flying-wing uncrewed combat air vehicle (UCAV), intended for operations from aircraft carriers and big deck amphibious assault ships, with its arrestor hook deployed. This drone is sometimes also referred to as the GJ-21.

Even with major construction still underway, the secretive and remote base near Lop Nur is already becoming busier, and has now given us the first commercial satellite imagery showing the J-36 and J-XDS. The facility expansion is likely to see it support future advanced tactical aircraft developments, playing a bigger part in these endeavors going forward.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Pakistan has welcomed Sikh pilgrims from India in the first major crossing since their deadly conflict in May closed the land border between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

More than 2,100 pilgrims were granted visas to attend a 10-day festival marking 556 years since the birth of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, a decision that was in line with efforts to promote “interreligious and intercultural harmony and understanding”, Pakistan’s high commission in New Delhi said last week.

In May, Islamabad and New Delhi engaged in their worst fighting since 1999, leaving more than 70 people dead. The Wagah-Attari border, the only active land crossing between the two countries, was closed to general traffic after the violence.

On Wednesday, the pilgrims will gather at Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak’s birthplace west of Lahore, before visiting other sacred sites in Pakistan, including Kartarpur, where the guru is buried.

The Kartarpur Corridor, a visa-free route opened in 2019 to allow Indian Sikhs to visit the temple without crossing the main border, has remained closed since the conflict.

Four days of conflict erupted in May after New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, allegations Pakistan denied.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded in the 15th century in Punjab, a region spanning parts of present-day India and Pakistan. While most Sikhs migrated to India during partition, some of their most revered places of worship are in Pakistan.

‘Cycle of terror’ spikes as Higher Planning Council set to advance plans to build 1,985 new settlement units in occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces and settlers have carried out 2,350 attacks across the occupied West Bank last month in an “ongoing cycle of terror”, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC).

CRRC head Mu’ayyad Sha’ban said on Wednesday that Israeli forces carried out 1,584 attacks – including direct physical attacks, the demolition of homes and the uprooting of olive trees – with most of the violence focused on the governorates of Ramallah (542), Nablus (412) and Hebron (401).

The research, compiled in a CRRC monthly report titled Occupation Violations and Colonial Expansion Measures, also noted 766 attacks by settlers. The commission said they are expanding settlements, which are illegal under international law, as part of what it called an “organised strategy that aims to displace the land’s indigenous people and enforce a fully racist colonial regime”.

The report said settler attacks reached a new peak with most targeting the Ramallah governorate (195), Nablus (179) and Hebron (126). Olive pickers received the brunt of attacks, according to the report, which said they were the victims of “state terror” that had been “orchestrated in the dark backrooms of the occupation government”.

It described instances of Israeli “vandalism and theft” carried out in cahoots with Israeli soldiers that have seen the “uprooting, destruction and poisoning” of 1,200 olive trees in Hebron, Ramallah, Tubas, Qalqilya, Nablus and Bethlehem. During the violence, settlers have tried to establish seven new outposts on Palestinian land since October in the governorates of Hebron and Nablus.

For decades, the Israeli military has uprooted olive trees, an important Palestinian cultural symbol, across the West Bank as part of efforts by successive Israeli governments to seize Palestinian land and forcibly displace residents.

The spike in Israeli violence comes amid expectations that Israel’s Higher Planning Council (HPC), part of the Israeli army’s Civil Administration overseeing the occupied West Bank, will meet to discuss the construction of 1,985 new settlement units in the West Bank on Wednesday.

The left-wing Israeli movement Peace Now said 1,288 of the units would be rolled out in two isolated settlements in the northern West Bank, namely Avnei Hefetz and Einav Plan.

It said the HPC had been holding weekly meetings since November last year to advance housing projects in the settlements, thus normalising and accelerating construction on land taken from Palestinians.

Since the beginning of 2025, the HPC has pushed forward a record 28,195 housing units, Peace Now said.

In August, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich drew international condemnation after saying plans to build thousands of homes as part of the proposed E1 settlement scheme in the West Bank “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The E1 project, shelved for years amid opposition from the United States and European allies, would connect occupied East Jerusalem with the existing illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.

The Israeli far right’s push to annex the West Bank would essentially end the possibility of implementing a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as outlined in numerous United Nations resolutions.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has been adamant that it won’t allow Israel to annex the occupied territory.  US Vice President JD Vance, while visiting Israel recently, said Trump would oppose Israeli annexation of the West Bank and it would not happen. Vance said as he left Israel, “If it was a political stunt, it is a very stupid one, and I personally take some insult to it.”

But the US has done nothing to rein in Israel’s assaults and crackdowns on Palestinians in the West Bank as it trumpets its Gaza ceasefire efforts.

Australia’s upcoming social media ban for children under 16 years old will include the online forum Reddit and livestreaming platform Kick in addition to seven other well-known sites, according to the country’s online safety commissioner.

The social media ban will go into effect on December 10 and will also restrict access to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X and YouTube, Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Wednesday.

“Online platforms use technology to target children with chilling control. We are merely asking that they use that same technology to keep children safe online,” Wells said.

“We have met with several of the social media platforms in the past month so that they understand there is no excuse for failure to implement this law,” Wells told reporters in Canberra.

“We want children to have a childhood, and we want parents to have peace of mind,” she said.

Social media platforms have had 12 months to prepare for the ban since Australia passed its landmark online safety legislation in November last year.

Initial discussions focused primarily around Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube, but the list was later expanded, and Wells said the list could continue to change.

While more than 140 Australian and international academics signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last year opposing the age limit ban as a “blunt” instrument, Canberra’s move is being closely watched by countries that share concerns about the impacts of online platforms on children.

“Delaying children’s access to social media accounts gives them valuable time to learn and grow, free of the powerful, unseen forces of harmful and deceptive design features such as opaque algorithms and endless scroll,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.

Inman Grant said she would work with academics to evaluate the impact of the ban, including whether children sleep or interact more or become more physically active as a result of the restrictions on using social media.

“We’ll also look for unintended consequences, and we’ll be gathering evidence” so others can learn from Australia’s ban, Inman Grant said.

Critics have questioned how the restrictions will be enforced because users cannot be “compelled” to submit government IDs for an age check, according to a government fact sheet.

Discussions are under way with platforms about how to comply with the new rules, the commissioner said, while failure to comply could lead to civil fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (US$32.1m).

TikTok investigated over youth suicide

News that Australia would add more names to the list of banned platforms came as French authorities said they had opened an investigation into the social media platform TikTok and the risks of its algorithms pushing young people into suicide.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the probe was in response to a parliamentary committee’s request to open a criminal inquiry into TikTok’s possible responsibility for endangering the lives of its young users.

Beccuau said a report by the committee had noted “insufficient moderation of TikTok, its ease of access by minors and its sophisticated algorithm, which could push vulnerable individuals towards suicide by quickly trapping them in a loop of dedicated content”.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Paris police cybercrime unit will look into the offence of providing a platform for “propaganda in favour of products, objects, or methods recommended as means of committing suicide”, which is punishable by three years in prison.

The unit will also look into the offence of enabling “illegal transactions by an organised gang”, punishable by 10 years in prison and a fine of 1 million euros ($1.2m).

With more than 1.5 billion users worldwide, TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, has come under fire from governments in Europe and the United States in recent years.

Concerns raised over the platform have included content encouraging suicide, self-harm or an unhealthy body image as well as its potential use for foreign political interference.

A TikTok spokesman told the French news agency AFP in September that the company “categorically rejects the deceptive presentation” by French MPs, saying it was being made a “scapegoat” for broader societal issues.

Cecile Kohler, 41, and her partner, Jacques Paris, 72, had been jailed on charges of spying for France and Israel.

Iran has released two French nationals imprisoned for more than three years on spying charges their families rejected, French President Emmanuel Macron has said, though it remains uncertain when they would be allowed to return home.

Expressing “immense relief”, Macron said on X on Wednesday that Cecile Kohler, 41, and her partner Jacques Paris, 72 – the last French citizens officially known to be held in Iran – had been released from Evin prison in northern Tehran and were on their way to the French embassy.

He welcomed this “first step” and said talks were under way to ensure their return to France as “quickly as possible”.

The pair were arrested in May 2022 while visiting Iran. France had denounced their detention as “unjustified and unfounded”, while their families say the trip had been purely touristic in nature.

Both teachers, although Paris is retired, were among a number of Europeans caught up in what activists and some Western governments, including France, describe as a deliberate strategy of “hostage-taking” by Iran to extract concessions from the West.

Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said they had been granted “conditional release” on bail by the judge in charge of the case and “will be placed under surveillance until the next stage of the judicial proceedings”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France 2 TV they were in “good health” at the French ambassador’s residence but declined to give details on when they would be allowed to leave Iran.

Their Paris-based legal team told the AFP news agency in a statement that the release had “ended their arbitrary detention which lasted 1,277 days”.

The release comes at a time of acute sensitivity in dealings between Tehran and the West in the wake of the US-Israel 12-day war in June against Iran and the reimposition of United Nations sanctions in the standoff over the Iranian nuclear programme, which the country insists is purely for civilian purposes.

Some Iranians are concerned that Israel will use the sanctions, which are already causing further economic duress in the country, as an excuse to attack again, as it used the resolution issued by the global nuclear watchdog in June as a pretext for a war that was cheered by Israeli officials and the public alike.

The French pair’s sentences on charges of spying for France and Israel, issued last month after a closed-door trial, amounted to 17 years in prison for Paris and 20 years for Kohler.

Concern grew over their health after they were moved from Evin following an Israeli attack on the prison during the June war.

Kohler was shown in October 2022 on Iranian television in what activists described as a “forced confession”, a practice relatively common for detainees in Iran, which rights groups say is equivalent to torture.

Her parents, Pascal and Mireille, told AFP in a statement that they felt “immense relief” that the pair were now in a “little corner of France”, even if “all we know for now is that they are out of prison”.

France had filed a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over their detention, saying they were held under a policy that “targets French nationals travelling in or visiting Iran”.

But in September, the ICJ suddenly dropped the case at France’s request, prompting speculation that closed-door talks were under way between the two countries for their release.

Iran has said the duo could be freed as part of a swap deal with France, which would also see the release of Iranian Mahdieh Esfandiari.

Esfandiari was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting “terrorism” on social media, according to French authorities.

Scheduled to go on trial in Paris from January 13, she was released on bail last month in a move welcomed by Tehran.

Barrot declined to comment when asked by France 2 if there had been a deal with Tehran.

Among the Europeans still jailed by Iran is Swedish-Iranian academic Ahmadreza Djalali, who was sentenced to death in 2017 on espionage charges his family vehemently rejects.