A landmine explosion which injured three South Korean soldiers in the Korean Demilitarized Zone last week, has prompted Seoul to accuse North Korea of deliberately planting mines south of the Military Demarcation Line. Pyongyang denies the allegations and has threatened to retaliate. Al Jazeera’s Jack Barton reports from the DMZ.
Published On 30 Sep 202630 Sep 2026
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WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against President Trump, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and that he believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before.
Smith also told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he stands behind the criminal cases he brought against Trump, a Republican, and that he and his team acted without regard to politics.
“I made those decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith said. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”
Republicans sought to cast the prosecution as a political fishing expedition, accusing Smith of bending ordinary procedures in an overzealous pursuit of the president.
“The Smith election case ultimately wasn’t just about Trump,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the committee. “It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus.”
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, accused Republicans of spreading “baseless conspiracy theories” about Smith’s investigations as part of an effort to “whitewash” the history of Trump’s 2020 election loss and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
“President Trump demonstrated a wanton disdain for the laws of the United States, the will of the people and our national security,” Durbin said. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith, nonstop, are petty, personal and political. They are nothing but a smoke screen to distract from the president’s own clear, unlawful conduct.”
Even as Smith defends his investigations, he is expected to be pressed anew by Republican senators about his team’s access to the phone records of GOP lawmakers as prosecutors investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
In previous testimony, Smith has stood behind subpoenas that prosecutors issued for the phone records of Republican members of Congress who were in touch with Trump when violent supporters of the president rioted inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has said that such subpoenas are a “common practice” in investigations and were necessary in this instance to understand the “scope of the conspiracy” between Trump and his Republican allies.
Nonetheless, the revelation that Smith’s team secretly obtained the phone records during his investigation has animated some Republican lawmakers, who point to it as proof of overreach by the Biden administration Justice Department and a hard-charging prosecutor.
In July, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, referred Smith to the Justice Department for potential prosecution on allegations that he lied at a previous hearing about his collection of the records — something Smith’s attorneys have vigorously disputed.
“I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives,” Smith said. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.”
Grassley, the Senate committee chairman, first disclosed last year that Smith’s prosecutors had obtained what’s known as “toll records” — data that reveals the date, length and time of phone calls between two parties but not the content of the communications.
Smith has repeatedly justified the move as necessary to document any contact that Trump or surrogates may have had with lawmakers on Jan. 6, 2021, as the president beseeched his supporters to halt the certification of the election results.
“My office didn’t spy on anyone,” Smith said during a hearing in January.
Smith was appointed in 2022 by then-Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to take over investigations into Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Both investigations resulted in felony indictments, but Smith abandoned the cases after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing longstanding Justice Department opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be federally indicted.
Smith has remained a top target of retribution for Trump and his administration, which last year announced that it would revoke the security clearances of the lawyers representing the former special counsel. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees, also announced last year an investigation into Smith.
Jordan’s referral to the Justice Department centers on a December 2025 exchange in which Smith was asked about subpoenas that prosecutors had issued for the toll records.
Smith said the records he requested did not include the content of the communications. But Jordan maintains that answer was misleading in light of records released by Grassley showing that Smith had obtained the contents of 44 lawmakers’ text messages in a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration that sought the communications of various Trump advisers and aides.
In response, Smith’s lawyers called his answers “unimpeachably truthful” and noted that he was responding to questions explicitly about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.
Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.
Germany – a fellow Nato ally – pledged to permanently station a combat-ready brigade in Lithuania in 2023 as a response to the changing security situation in Europe.
It is expected to be operational by 2027 and to number about 5,000 soldiers and civilian employees, though it has failed to recruit enough personnel voluntarily and is now turning to compulsory assignments to fill some positions.
The majority of troops will be based in Rūdninkai, near the Suwałki Gap – a line that borders Lithuania and Poland and also links Belarus with Russia’s Kaliningrad.
Nato said that as of December last year it had more than 5,000 troops stationed in Lithuania.
The origins of last week’s drone incident over Lithuania have not been confirmed, however Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas told Newshour that it had come from the direction of Belarus.
UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Thanks to the swift and professional actions of Lithuanian and Italian forces, Nato once again demonstrated our readiness to protect our airspace.
“We stand united, around the clock, in defence of every inch of Nato territory.”
Moscow did not comment on the incident.
Military drone incursions have become increasingly common across Europe since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale of invasion of Ukraine.
Residents in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius were also forced to take shelter in May after a drone alert was triggered, briefly grounding flights and rail travel.
Nato jets have scrambled multiple times to shoot down stray Ukrainian drones that have crossed into fellow Baltic countries Estonia and Latvia this year.
Ukraine has blamed the stray drones on Russian electronic warfare, technology designed to change the flight paths of Ukrainian drones.
Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia all joined Nato in 2004, becoming signatories to the Article 5 provision that states “an armed attack against one Nato member shall be considered an attack against all members”.
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday to pass a law to revoke the citizenship of anyone who defames Israel’s soldiers, his latest threat against the Israeli directors of “NAZA,” a documentary about soldiers’ killing of Gaza civilians.
Directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, NAZA alleges that mass civilian deaths were routinely built into Israeli targeting decisions in Gaza, something Netanyahu and the military reject.
The film, which won a major prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, takes its title from an Israeli military term for expected “collateral casualties” and is built around anonymous interviews with intelligence officers and soldiers.
It has drawn a backlash in Israel, with the military examining potential legal action against those involved in it. But it has also played into the charged political atmosphere ahead of Israel’s October 27 election, which public opinion polls show Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition could lose.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu accused some of his election rivals of failing to take a tough stand against the documentary, saying this made them unfit for office. And on Wednesday, he pledged to advance two bills that he said aimed at addressing the “immense damage” done to Israeli soldiers.
“The first, to revoke the citizenship of anyone who defames (Israeli) soldiers, and the second to hit them in their pockets and increase the statutory damages for defamation they can be sued for by 20 times,” Netanyahu said in a social media video.
“We will hit them both in their pockets and in their citizenship, as their place is not with us.”
Netanyahu cited three incidents in proposing the bills: “the recent film NAZA which portrayed (Israeli) officers and soldiers as war criminals“; 2025 remarks by left-wing ex-general turned politician Yair Golan that “a sane country does not kill children as a hobby“; and a military legal officer’s 2024 leak of a video showing soldiers abusing a Gaza detainee.
Reuters could not immediately reach the NAZA filmmakers for comment.
In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a law that permits stripping citizenship from Israelis who carry out actions that constitute a breach of trust against the state. Any new legislation would likely face similar court challenges.
The NAZA filmmakers say they believe it is important that Israelis watch the documentary and grapple with the narrative it presents.
Gaza health authorities say more than 73,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign that has left much of Gaza in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli tallies.
Srinagar: Every spring, mason Mohammad Ghulam Sarwar boards a train to Indian Kashmir, seeking higher wages despite the risk of being targeted by militants in the disputed Himalayan region.
Sarwar, 25, is one of an estimated half a million migrant workers who stream into the Himalayan region each year, forming the backbone of an economy increasingly reliant on labour from some of India’s poorest states.
The dependence has endured despite decades of insurgency and a series of militant attacks that have made migrant workers vulnerable targets.
Since 2019, at least 24 migrant workers have been killed in militant attacks across the territory, according to local media reports.
More than 1500 people were killed in the same period, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 219 of them civilians.
The latest attack last month saw gunmen shoot dead two brick kiln workers from the central state of Chhattisgarh.
But for workers like Sarwar, the rewards outweigh the risks.
“Kashmir is real paradise. I will keep coming every year for as long as I have the strength to work,” Sarwar, from the eastern state of Bihar, told AFP.
While millions of Indians seek jobs in the Gulf, some workers say Kashmir offers nearly comparable earnings without the costs and complications of overseas migration.
Sarwar earns 1,200 rupees ($12) a day in Kashmir, compared with about 700 rupees in Bihar for the same work, if he could find any at all.
The Muslim-majority region, battling some of India’s highest unemployment rates, has become increasingly dependent on outsiders to perform jobs that many locals consider menial, including domestic work, agriculture and construction.
Local businesses say they struggle to find workers willing or able to take up many jobs.
“Outside the handicrafts sector there is not nearly enough local skilled labour available in Kashmir,” said Mohammad Ashraf Mir of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“We see a rising dependence on migrant workers, tending towards absolute dependence.”
Waiting to be hired
Each morning, groups of labourers gather at prominent squares in the main city of Srinagar, waiting to be hired.
Most stay for about eight months before departing ahead of Kashmir’s harsh winter, when construction slows and agricultural activity dwindles.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, while an insurgency against Indian rule that erupted in 1989 has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Although the rebellion has been largely weakened in recent years, sporadic attacks continue.
Sarwar said he saw a barber from his home state shot dead by suspected rebels some years ago.
While he was saddened by the incident, it failed to deter him.
“Life and death are in the hands of God,” he said.
“If I remain fearful, I will have nothing. But if I overcome, I will have everything.”
Sarwar shares a building in Srinagar with around 200 other labourers. Some 7-10 workers squeeze into tiny rooms, sleeping and cooking in the same cramped space while paying little more than five dollars a month each.
Outside, security is conspicuous.
Paramilitary troops, armoured vehicles and police special operations units patrol streets. CCTV cameras monitor the compound around the clock.
“They have been soft targets for the terrorists in the past,” a senior security official said on condition of anonymity.
“But security arrangements for them have become robust over time.”
‘Feels peaceful’
Police encourage labourers to live in clusters and avoid venturing out after dark.
A labourer from West Bengal said many Hindu workers adopt Muslim-sounding names while in Kashmir, fearing that displaying their religion could make them targets.
Rebel groups say they target migrant workers to avenge police harassment of their families.
Many labourers are reluctant to discuss security concerns publicly.
“I face no troubles here,” said Mohammad Iqbal, a 53-year-old painter from Uttar Pradesh state who has worked in Kashmir since before the insurgency began and is now accompanied by his son.
“It feels peaceful.”
Others are more candid.
“I am afraid of terrorists here,” said Shahid Sofi, a 24-year-old mason from Bihar who previously worked in Delhi and Mumbai.
“But overall working conditions here are good, the weather is good, and I like working in the wide, open spaces of Kashmir.”