united states

President Masoud Pezeshkian says Iran “has never avoided” dialogue with the US, even though it’s been attacked three times during negotiations.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans say the US-Israeli war is not worth fighting, marking a significant spike since July.

Approximately 70 percent of US adults in a new nationwide poll say the US-Israeli war has not been worth fighting, a five-point spike since July.

“Seventy-one percent of adults disapprove of how Trump is handling Iran and 69 percent say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting,” said the survey released on Thursday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 adults in the US, also suggested that Americans are deeply frustrated with US President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with only 17 percent of US adults polled approving of his handling of the cost of living. Just 26 percent approved of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

Public angst over fuel costs has surged, with about half of respondents now deeply concerned about being able to fill their tanks —up from 39 percent in July. Roughly half of respondents are also highly concerned about being able to afford food.

The data comes as Trump kickstarts his midterm campaign trail in an all-in effort to galvanise the Republican base, stumping first in Texas and Oklahoma amid widespread voter anxiety surrounding the war on Iran’s mounting economic fallout.

The poll also indicated that, despite their frustration, two-thirds of Republicans surveyed said that higher than usual prices are due to factors outside of Trump’s control, with about one-third saying it was directly related to Trump’s policies.

The sombre numbers suggest the president remains deeply unpopular nationally, with some Republicans also faulting him for failing to deliver on promised relief.

‘Pollsters are corrupt’

Overall, more than half of adult respondents said the national economy and the country as a whole are worse off since President Trump took office again in 2025.

In an interview with TIME magazine, published on Thursday, Trump was asked if the deeply unwanted war would threaten his party’s chances in November, to which he initially responded, “It’s possible,” before adding that “it should help, because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Confronted with sliding poll numbers, Trump said that the “pollsters are corrupt” and that the bad polls “are fake”, adding that he would beat anybody running today “by 20 points”.

New York lawmakers are renewing a push to change the state’s sexual assault laws after prosecutors in the United States said the current rules made it difficult to bring charges for an alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity house.

At issue is whether someone who willingly becomes intoxicated can be considered mentally incapacitated and therefore unable to consent to sex.

Under current New York law, only someone who was drugged or given alcohol without their knowledge can be considered “mentally incapacitated” because of intoxication and unable to consent. The same does not apply to someone who willingly consumed alcohol or drugs.

State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and State Senator Nathalia Fernandez are sponsoring bills in their respective chambers that would change that.

In the state Senate, the bill is known as S10632, and in the New York Assembly, it is filed as Assembly Bill A101.

In a post on the social media platform X, Dinowitz said the proposed law would allow prosecutors to focus on whether someone was capable of consenting, rather than how they became intoxicated, and whether the accused “knew or should have known” that the person was unable to consent.

He said people who voluntarily drink or take drugs currently face significant barriers in sexual assault cases, particularly if they remain partly conscious or responsive during an alleged assault.

“The fact that someone made the choice to consume alcohol or another intoxicating substance should never be used to undermine their experience or shift responsibility onto the survivor when they’ve been sexually assaulted,” Dinowitz wrote.

The years-long reform effort has gained new momentum after Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said the existing law was one reason his office initially declined to pursue charges against several Cornell students accused of sexually assaulting a woman on October 19, 2024.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, was 20 at the time. She has since filed a civil lawsuit against seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, as well as Cornell University and several other defendants.

The lawsuit alleges fraternity members gave her alcohol and ketamine and sexually assaulted her after she became incapacitated.

Doe also reported her allegations to campus police in November 2024.

In a statement explaining why his office did not pursue charges afterwards, Van Houten said Doe never claimed at the time that she had been involuntarily intoxicated, physically forced or unconscious. He also said she did not clearly express that she did not consent.

Any of those circumstances could have provided grounds for prosecutors to pursue rape charges under New York law, according to the district attorney.

“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” Van Houten wrote.

“In this case, multiple prosecutors and criminal investigators reviewed Jane Doe’s statement and correctly determined the alleged facts as set forth in the statement do not constitute a crime.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, Van Houten’s office has faced intense scrutiny. It said on Monday that it will reopen the investigation and bring the case before a grand jury, which will consider whether there is enough evidence to indict anyone.

Van Houten also told CBS News on Wednesday that he had not seen a transcript of a campus police interview conducted three weeks after the alleged assault in which the woman said: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”

Cornell has defended its handling of the case, saying it investigated the allegations and disciplined the accused students, with penalties ranging from suspension to expulsion.

On Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the university had agreed to her request to bring in an outside law firm to conduct a new investigation into its handling of the case.

Previous efforts to change New York’s sexual assault laws have foundered in the state legislature. Senate bill S10632 has passed its chamber but has never received a vote on the Assembly floor.

“Rape is the only crime that I’m aware of where, if the victim was drunk, they may not get justice,” Dinowitz, the assembly member, said in an interview with Reuters. “There shouldn’t be any difference in terms of the survivors of sexual assault between the people who are voluntarily intoxicated and who are involuntarily intoxicated.”

New York is one of 19 states where a person can be considered mentally incapacitated because of intoxication only if they did not willingly become intoxicated, according to Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies sexual abuse.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Jeglic said. “If you’re incapacitated, you’re incapacitated, regardless of whether you consumed it yourself or somebody else gave it to you without your consent.”

The case is the latest dispute over US President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case focused on the Trump administration’s policy requiring millions of undocumented immigrants to remain in detention while they fight deportation.

The case, accepted on Thursday by the justices, is the latest dispute over US President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown to reach the nation’s highest court.

At issue is whether migrants already living in the US have a legal right to a hearing where a judge can decide whether they should be released on bond from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention while their deportation cases are pending.

In July 2025, the administration introduced new guidance directing federal immigration authorities to detain undocumented immigrants without a bond hearing for the duration of their deportation proceedings, which can last for years.

The new policy, which has divided lower courts, reverses a decades-old interpretation that allowed some immigrants in the US to be released while their cases were pending in immigration court, according to Reuters news agency.

Most US federal appeals courts have ruled that immigrants cannot be detained without a bond hearing. But the 5th and 8th US Circuit Courts of Appeals have found that immigrants accused of illegally entering and remaining in the country must remain detained while their deportation cases proceed.

Trump administration attorneys told the Associated Press the split is “disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law”.

“The result is an unworkable patchwork of inconsistent immigration enforcement, where aliens present without admission are subject to mandatory detention in some circuits but are entitled to bond hearings and often released in others,” the lawyers wrote.

Millions could be affected

The Supreme Court case stems from a 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling involving Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national who entered the US around 2004 or 2005.

Immigration officers arrested him in September 2025 while he was driving to work in the US state of Massachusetts. He was initially denied a bond hearing under the administration’s policy but was later released on bond, according to court documents cited by Reuters.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press the Trump administration is trying to deny bond hearings for immigrants apprehended within the US rather than limiting the restriction to noncitizens stopped at the border.

“Millions of noncitizens could be affected by the government’s new interpretation,” ACLU attorneys wrote.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments on Monday, when its new term starts.

TA419 hackers used deceptive tactics, impersonating real figures like a former White House AI official

Chinese hackers have been impersonating artificial intelligence (AI) experts in the United States, including a former government official, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.

The report, released on Thursday, found that in July, a China-aligned hacking group called TA419 targeted a slate of US policy experts by impersonating prominent figures, including Lynne Edwards Parker, the former principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The hackers, who had been operating since April 2025, first sent otherwise harmless-looking emails intended to engage a target, such as requests to join an “AI Policy Advisory Committee”, and, once they responded, the target would be sent to a fake login page designed to steal their credentials.

The targets included policy experts at think tanks, defence contractors, universities and law firms in both the US and Japan.

The report used a technique that creates a fake browser pop-up window inside a legitimate webpage that mimics an authentic-looking sign-in prompt to deceive victims and make it harder for them to realise they are handing over their information to hackers.

Proofpoint did not specifically name the targets hacked, but the Reuters news agency was able to confirm at least one of them as Alex Engler, a former White House official who now heads the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy.

Engler told Reuters that he got one of the emails, but after checking with industry colleagues, he discovered that he had received the email from an impersonator.

In February, the same group was behind the impersonation of a “prominent” Anthropic employee in efforts to target AI policy experts. The cybersecurity firm behind the report believes that the group will continue to target think tanks and other policy experts and will continue to use the identity of real-world experts to do it.

Parker did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

A medicine injected just twice a year could transform the fight against HIV.

In a 2024 clinical trial involving more than 2,000 young women in South Africa and Uganda, no participants who received lenacapavir contracted HIV.

Developed by United States pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, the injectable drug can be used to prevent HIV.

“It’s the most innovative tool that has reached the HIV arena for the last decade, because it’s the closest we have [to] a vaccine,” Carlota Baptista da Silva, global HIV lead at Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF), told Al Jazeera.

The World Health Organization has recommended the long-acting injectable as an additional form of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP – medicine to reduce the risk of getting HIV.

But the arrival of the drug comes at a challenging juncture in the global fight against HIV.

International funding for HIV fell 18 percent in 2025, to $7.3bn, its lowest level in nearly two decades, according to the United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The squeeze has already hit prevention programmes: The number of people receiving medicine to reduce risk fell from 1.4 million in 2024 to 1.1 million in 2025.

That makes the arrival of a highly effective, twice-yearly prevention option significant. The question of who can access it is now more urgent.

For MSF, the scientific question has largely been answered: lenacapavir can prevent HIV with remarkable efficacy.

The fight now is whether the rules governing manufacture, price and supply will allow that scientific breakthrough to reach the people who need it.

Why some countries are excluded

In the United States, lenacapavir costs about $28,000 per person annually. Generic versions are expected to cost about $40 a year.

A generic version is a copy of the original drug made by another manufacturer after the patent holder licenses the technology. It contains the same active ingredient, but it can be produced and sold at a much lower price.

In June 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved lenacapavir for HIV prevention, giving people the option of an injection twice a year. But in several low- and middle-income countries, access to cheaper versions is not expected at scale until 2027.

Gilead is supplying its own version of lenacapavir at no profit for programmes supported by the Global Fund and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), with rollouts under way in countries including South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria and Eswatini.

These are not the cheaper generic versions expected to cost about $40 per person a year. Gilead has licensed six manufacturers to produce those, with large-scale generic rollout expected in 2027.

At least 26 middle-income countries are excluded from Gilead’s generics agreement, MSF says, including countries with rising HIV infections and some that helped test the drug. Among them are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Peru.

“People should not really help generate the evidence for breakthrough medicine and then find that their country is excluded from affordable generic access,” da Silva said.

According to MSF, countries excluded from the licence accounted for close to 23 percent of new HIV infections globally in 2023.

Gilead has since announced a separate agreement with the Pan American Health Organization, creating an access pathway for 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries outside its generic licensing territory, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Peru.

MSF argues that leaves those countries dependent on Gilead rather than able to automatically buy the cheaper generics.

MSF says it still cannot buy the drug

For more than a year, MSF says it has sought permission to purchase lenacapavir directly from Gilead for its medical programmes, without demanding a discounted price.

“Despite those requests, Gilead has not allowed MSF to purchase this medicine directly,” da Silva said.

That matters particularly in humanitarian emergencies, she argues. People displaced by conflict or disaster may struggle to take a prevention pill every day, while sexual violence and other vulnerabilities can increase the risk of HIV.

Daily PrEP pills are already available as an alternative to the injection. But unlike lenacapavir, they need to be taken consistently to provide protection. An injection offering six months of protection could be particularly valuable.

“People living through conflict [and] humanitarian crises cannot be the last in line for medical innovation,” da Silva said.

Gilead declined Al Jazeera’s request for an interview due to scheduling constraints.  In its emailed statement, it said its access strategy combines no-profit supplies, royalty-free licensing and regional agreements. It didn’t reply to questions about why it won’t sell its drug to MSF, or why certain countries were excluded from its generics agreement.

The company plans to provide enough lenacapavir for up to three million people through 2028 as generic manufacturers scale up production, with large-scale generic rollout expected in 2027.

MSF says that is nowhere near the scale required, pointing to projections that close to 20 million people worldwide need access to PrEP to substantially reduce new HIV infections. That includes all forms of PrEP, not just lenacapavir.

But countries left outside Gilead’s generic licensing deal may have another option.

Can governments bypass the patent barriers?

World Trade Organization (WTO) rules allow governments, in some cases, to bypass a drug company’s patent so cheaper versions of a medicine can be made or imported without the company’s permission.

They can also authorise government use of patents and challenge patents they consider weak or unjustified. The 2001 Doha Declaration affirmed WTO members’ right to use such safeguards to protect public health.

Brazil has used them before in the fight against HIV. In 2007, after negotiations with pharmaceutical company Merck over the price of the HIV drug efavirenz failed, Brazil issued a compulsory licence allowing it to access cheaper generic versions of the medicine.

Nearly two decades later, activists are urging Brazil to consider using those powers again for lenacapavir if patent barriers prevent affordable generic access.

MSF says governments excluded from Gilead’s licence could consider those same legal safeguards for lenacapavir, including compulsory licensing, government-use authorisations and challenges to patents.

It is also calling on Gilead to ensure its agreements with generic manufacturers do not prevent them from supplying countries where patent barriers have been removed through such measures.

For MSF, the stakes go beyond lenacapavir. The way the drug is made available could determine whether one of the greatest advances in HIV prevention in decades reaches people based on need, rather than where they live or what their health systems can afford.

“For a humanitarian medical organisation, we should not have to spend more than a year trying to find a way to buy a WHO-recommended medicine,” da Silva said.

Witnesses say Tennessee officials were unable to execute Christa Pike after a lethal injection attempt.

Officials in the United States have failed to put a Tennessee woman to death for a murder she committed in 1995, after the lethal injection was halted for hours as courts considered a last-minute appeal to stay her execution.

Christa Gail Pike, 50 had been scheduled to die on Wednesday for a killing she committed at age 18, after the US Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start.

Her death would have been Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.

Following the top court’s ruling, officials attempted to go ahead with the execution as planned and appeared to give Pike two doses of the sedative pentobarbital, according to media witnesses.

At 7:46pm local time, prison officials closed the curtain separating Pike from the media viewing room. It was raised three minutes later, when witnesses said Pike could be heard loudly snoring.

The curtain was closed again at 8:06pm. Witnesses continued to hear Pike snoring until the microphone was switched off at about 8:53pm, when they were told to leave the area. The Associated Press news agency reported that emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.

The Tennessee Department of Correction did not immediately explain why the execution had not been completed.

Supreme Court ruling

Pike had initially been scheduled to die on Wednesday morning, and witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay.

The appeals court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered during her sentencing.

Later on Wednesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. Its conservative majority did not explain the decision, while the three liberal justices dissented.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that vacating the stay “unnecessarily prevents” the appeals court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.

Tennessee’s attorney general had argued that delaying the execution traumatised the family of Pike’s victim, Colleen Slemmer, and rewarded what it called “abusive delay tactics”.

1995 killing

Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse, including that she was raped from early childhood.

“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability,” her lawyers wrote in a filing.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she had initially intended to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she could not “put the brakes on”.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother has said she wants Pike’s death sentence carried out after waiting decades for the execution.

Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the US, representing about 1 percent of all executions, according to the centre.

Trump repeats the claim that the US has “virtually total control” over the Strait of Hormuz during an event marking Hispanic Heritage Month.

Mammoth deal has raised questions about corporate consolidation and editorial independence in media.

A United States judge has entered an order giving the green light for the media giant Paramount to complete its $110bn acquisition of entertainment company Warner Bros., despite fears about the long-term impacts of media consolidation.

On Wednesday, US District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved a settlement between Paramount, Warner Bros, and a group of 12 states that had sued to block the merger.

In her ruling, Martinez-Olguin described the proposed deal as a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms”.

Analysts have long raised concerns about the acquisition, one of the largest media mergers in history.

The coalition of states that sued to block the deal, led by California, had argued that combining Paramount with Warner Bros would effectively stifle media competition. They estimated that nearly one-third of all theatrical releases and basic cable programming would be consolidated under the merger.

But the states abandoned their lawsuit in favour of a settlement on September 21.

The five-year agreement requires Paramount to abide by theatrical film release quotas, committing to 30 releases per year in the US.

It also mandates that the combined company must keep negotiations with cable providers for Warner-owned channels separate from its deals for Paramount-owned channels.

The settlement approved on Wednesday also includes the creation of a five-member panel meant to safeguard the editorial independence of CNN and CBS, two major news networks.

But sceptics have pointed out that the merger puts a large swath of US media under the control of David Ellison, who leads Paramount.

Under Wednesday’s agreement, Ellison is in charge of appointments to the board that would oversee news independence.

The Paramount CEO is the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a strong backer of pro-Israel causes who has close ties to the administration of President Donald Trump.

The founder of the film production company Skydance, David Ellison acquired Paramount last year as part of another controversial merger.

The 2025 Paramount-Skydance deal brought CBS under Ellison’s control. Ahead of the merger, sceptics questioned the abrupt cancellation of the CBS comedy show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which had been critical of Trump.

Ellison later installed Bari Weiss, a pro-Israel media figure, as the head of CBS News in a move that also raised questions about diminished independence within major journalism outlets.

Some critics depicted Wednesday’s settlement as a further capitulation to powerful corporate interests.

“Allowing one Trump-aligned, foreign-owned conglomerate to dominate American news and entertainment is a disastrous outcome,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in the wake of the settlement’s announcement.

But public officials like California Governor Gavin Newsom had called on his state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta to scrap the 12-state effort to block the deal and to pursue a settlement instead.

Paramount emerged victorious from a bidding war with the streaming giant Netflix in February to win control of Warner Bros’s holdings.

That includes a series of media and entertainment services, including the film studio Warner Bros Pictures, CNN and HBO Max. The Trump administration approved the deal without alterations in June.

Seven Minnesota judges face ethics complaint after speaking publicly about the US president’s immigration crackdown.

The United States Justice Department has filed a misconduct complaint against seven federal judges in Minnesota who spoke publicly about the pressure their courts came under during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The judges spoke to The New York Times this month about dealing with a flood of cases during Operation Metro Surge, an immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests in the Minneapolis-St Paul area from December to February.

The Justice Department says it crossed an ethical line by talking publicly about the cases.

Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the judges of showing “obvious bias” against the Trump administration and called on them to step aside from any cases involving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“When we have a situation like we have now, where you have a judge, a couple of judges, just not only violating the canons in our view but also showing bias in what they’re saying, we have no choice but to act,” Blanche told reporters.

The judges say they did nothing wrong. A spokesperson for Minnesota’s federal court system said legal experts had found that the judges were “well within the ethical rules” when they spoke to the newspaper.

The complaint is the latest in a series of clashes between the Trump administration and the judiciary, which has blocked some of the president’s policies and, in several cases, accused government lawyers of failing to follow court orders.

One of the judges named in the complaint, Patrick Schiltz, alleged that the government did not comply with nearly 100 court orders related to immigration enforcement in January alone.

In one ruling, he wrote that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “is not a law unto itself”.

Schiltz was nominated by Republican President George W Bush and previously clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

He later told The New York Times that what happened in Minnesota’s federal courts during the crackdown “created a grave threat to the rule of law”.

Schiltz also pointed to guidance issued by a federal judicial ethics panel in February, saying that judges can speak publicly about issues such as the rule of law and judicial independence.

“That is exactly what I did,” he said.

A United States immigration judge has ruled the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque can be deported under a controversial law that United States President Donald Trump’s administration has used against non-citizens advocating for Palestinian rights.

Judge Jayme Salinardi ruled on Wednesday that Palestinian-born Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, can be removed from the US based in part on a memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world”, according to his lawyers.

Sarsour, who has lived in the US for more than three decades, called the ruling “deeply disappointing”.

“I will continue fighting to defend the right to free speech and to stay in the country I have called home for more than three decades,” he told The Associated Press news agency.

His lawyer, Patrick Taurel, strongly rejected the decision.

“I wish the world could see the evidence that we presented and hear the testimony that the court heard because the case we presented compels only one conclusion, which is that Salah is not deportable,” Taurel told reporters on Wednesday.

“He’s done nothing wrong. He should be given back his green card, frankly, with an apology for what’s being done to him.”

The ruling does not mean Sarsour will be immediately deported.

His lawyers have 60 days to argue that sending Sarsour back would put him at risk of torture, which could protect him from deportation under the Convention Against Torture. If they lose, they plan to appeal. Taurel said he can’t be deported while that appeal is pending and will remain in the US for the “foreseeable future”.

‘Extreme deference’

Sarsour was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Milwaukee in March, nine months after Rubio issued a memo declaring him deportable on foreign policy grounds.

The June 2025 memo invoked a rarely-used US law that allows the Secretary of State to seek the deportation of non-citizens whose presence could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” The administration has used the same provision against pro-Palestinian activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.

Sarsour’s lawyers criticised the “extreme deference” Salinardi gave to Rubio’s memo. But Taurel said the judge believed his hands were tied by an earlier ruling in Khalil’s case, which found that a letter from the Secretary of State could be enough to make someone deportable on foreign policy grounds.

That meant Salinardi could not look behind Rubio’s decision to examine the evidence supporting it, Taurel said.

“If the Secretary of State says the person is deportable, it is game over,” he told reporters Wednesday.

The government did not win on all of its arguments.

Salinardi rejected its allegation that Sarsour had lied on his green card application. Taurel said the judge also rejected an allegation that Sarsour had falsely claimed to be a US citizen in order to vote.

Al Jazeera reached out to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security but did not receive responses by the time of publication.

Decades-old convictions

Sarsour is separately fighting the Trump administration in federal court over his detention while his deportation case is ongoing.

A federal judge ordered his release from ICE custody in June after 81 days, questioning why decades-old convictions that US authorities had long known about suddenly justified detaining him. The judge found there was a “substantial” case that the government was retaliating against him for speaking out about Palestinian rights.

The Trump administration has appealed his release, arguing that Sarsour’s convictions in Israel make him a security threat. He was imprisoned in 1988 after confessing to throwing stones and a Molotov cocktail at Israeli military personnel, and was convicted again in 1995 over an attempt to hold weapons.

Sarsour denies the offences, and his lawyers say the confessions were forced through torture. His former lawyer, Jawad Boulos, testified in August that Sarsour was coerced into signing confessions and was not convicted of an offence tying him to a “terrorist” organisation.

Taurel criticised Salinardi for giving what he called “extreme deference” to Israeli government records submitted by ICE, which Sarsour’s lawyers argue were incomplete and relied on confessions obtained through torture.

“A great deal of evidence we presented was ignored,” Taurel said.

The evidence challenged Israel’s military court system, where he said secret evidence can be used and Palestinians can be denied access to lawyers for extended periods.

Luna Droubi, an attorney representing Sarsour, said the case raises broader questions about whether immigrants can speak freely on political issues without fear of being targeted by the government.

“Why raise these arrests now?” she said. “Do I have the right to speak out about issues that matter to me? What if I draw a political cartoon? Am I going to be arrested and detained because of that?”

‘The end of my life’

Sarsour said being deported to the occupied West Bank “means the end of my life”.

His lawyers argue his prior treatment in Israeli custody shows he could face torture if sent back. Taurel said Sarsour’s former lawyer testified that his case stood out because Sarsour told him that Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, had taken him to hospital while in custody.

The judge also named Jordan as a possible destination. Sarsour travelled to the US on a Jordanian-issued document, but his lawyers say he is not a Jordanian citizen and has no right to live there. They believe he could ultimately be returned to the West Bank and Israeli custody if sent to Jordan.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to cut the number of positions in the US military reserved for generals and admirals by 20 percent, raising concerns about political interference in the military’s leadership amid strained relations with senior Pentagon officials.

An announcement is expected on Wednesday when Hegseth gives his “State of the Force” address to junior officers and enlisted personnel at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

The Pentagon has presented previous cuts as a way to reduce bureaucracy. But analysts say Hegseth’s latest changes may be aimed at sidelining experienced commanders, discouraging dissent and appointing more officers loyal to President Donald Trump to the ranks.

So is the US military too top-heavy, and what could the cuts mean? Here’s what we know.

What is Hegseth planning?

Citing Pentagon officials, The Associated Press news agency has reported that Hegseth will double the 10 percent reduction in top-ranking personnel ordered last year, bringing the total decrease to 20 percent by January 1, 2027. The plan affects roughly 800 general and admiral positions across the one- to four-star ranks.

Congress sets statutory limits on the number of generals and admirals. A Congressional Research Service report recorded 848 active-duty generals and admirals in September 2025, below the authorised maximum of 857.

Cutting positions does not necessarily mean immediately dismissing everyone occupying them. An official told the Reuters news agency that some roles would be eliminated, while others would be assigned to lower-ranking officers.

Why are top-ranking military positions being removed?

The argument for reducing senior ranks predates Hegseth’s tenure, with supporters saying fewer layers of command would reduce administrative work and give officers closer to operations greater authority.

Walter Ladwig, a political scientist specialising in US foreign policy at King’s College London, said there is a credible case for reform. “Since the end of the Cold War, the overall size of the force has declined significantly, but we haven’t seen a corresponding reduction in the number of flag officers,” he told Al Jazeera.

“At the same time, we’ve seen headquarters and staffs proliferate.”

Trump and Hegseth have already fired or pushed into retirement more than two dozen military leaders since Trump took office in January 2025.

Those removed include General Randy George, the US Army’s top uniformed officer, in April, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, in February 2025. The administration also dismissed the only two women serving as four-star officers, alongside other senior female officers.

In February 2025, Trump also fired Air Force General CQ Brown as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a wider shake-up of top military leadership.

Other departures have been of civilian leaders. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned in late August after reported disagreements over Hegseth’s handling of senior military personnel.

The dismissals, alongside blocked promotions, have raised questions about how the administration selects commanders and whether professional disagreements could jeopardise careers. Robert Ralston, a lecturer in political science and international studies at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said the proposed reductions should be weighed alongside these earlier decisions.

“These cuts appear to be part of a broader, sustained effort by Hegseth to fill the ranks based on political, rather than meritocratic, considerations,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Politics is driving these decisions, in my view.”

What political fallout could there be from this?

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona criticised Hegseth’s changes at the Pentagon. “The US military doesn’t need more testosterone; it needs better leadership at this point,” Kelly told MS NOW’s Morning Joe programme last week.

“The consequences of firing all these admirals and generals are that we’re losing a portion, a good portion, of a generation of great leadership.”

David Galbreath, professor of war and technology at the University of Bath in the UK, told Al Jazeera that resistance from Congress and military leaders could complicate the changes.

He pointed to the opposition that arose to President Jimmy Carter’s plans to withdraw US ground troops from South Korea as an example of how military and congressional pressure can constrain a president.

“I suspect that after the election, we are likely to see a much more confrontational Congress with investigations and impeachments of Hegseth,” he said.

Whether that prediction comes true will likely depend on November’s congressional elections and whether the Republican Party retains control of both chambers of Congress.

What criticisms have been made of Hegseth?

Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon has been marked by controversy and tensions with senior officials. In March 2025, he shared details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen in a Signal chat group which inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief.

A number of US media reports about the dwindling supplies of weapons in the Middle East prompted his department to investigate leaks and restrict journalists’ access earlier this year. The New York Times reported in August that about 50 Joint Staff military and civilian officials had undergone polygraph tests amid growing mistrust inside the Pentagon.

Hegseth has meanwhile made ending what he calls “woke” culture a central priority, introducing new physical fitness requirements and abolishing diversity policies.

Ralston said the combination of dismissals and blocked promotions could damage morale and the military’s future leadership. “His relationship with senior military leaders has been adversarial, his scuttling of promotions has undoubtedly damaged morale, and will have long-term consequences for leadership pipelines within the Department of Defense,” he said.

King’s College’s Ladwig also described Hegseth’s relationship with senior Pentagon leaders as unusually confrontational but cautioned against interpreting every proposed cut as a power struggle.

“When a military is under civilian control, it means that the elected government has the right to determine defence priorities and reorganise the armed forces accordingly,” he said.

But Ladwig warned that the changes could encourage officers to hold back their professional recommendations when advising senior politicians. “That might create incentives for military officers to censor themselves rather than provide candid professional military advice, particularly if being politically aligned with the administration is seen as a path to success,” he said.

“This is a very worrisome pathology, and it’s the kind of thing that produces ineffective militaries in dictatorships.”

As Iran and the United States work with mediators to end seven months of hostilities, the reality in the Strait of Hormuz is shifting in ways that could prove to be a game-changer in ongoing negotiations.

According to the latest data from tanker-tracker websites, traffic through the key waterway has been steadily increasing, with some estimates putting oil and petroleum flow through the Strait of Hormuz at nearly 80 percent of what it was before the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28.

This could dent Iran’s leverage in reaching a favourable deal for itself in its attempts to end the fighting, which has seriously hampered its already heavily sanctioned economy, amid the US blockade of Iranian ships and ports.

Despite that, experts believe it would be a mistake to think normality in the Strait of Hormuz is imminent, or that Iran will fold easily despite growing economic hardship.

“The fact that oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz is encouraging, but flows are not yet regarded as completely secure or guaranteed, particularly while the wider conflict remains unresolved,” Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, told Al Jazeera.

Moreover, oil prices remain high globally, including in the US, where President Donald Trump faces a crucial midterm election that could see his party swept away in both houses of Congress.

Tanker insurance costs also remain elevated and energy flows through Hormuz are still far from secure, suggesting Iran’s leverage may be weakening rather than disappearing.

Oil flows through Hormuz recovering

The latest data from commodity analytics firm Kpler points to a significant recovery in oil exports from the Middle East.

Crude exports reached an estimated 16.328 million barrels per day (bpd) in September – their highest level since the war began in late February, the firm reported this week.

Flows through the Strait of Hormuz itself were expected to reach about 9.719 million bpd during the month. Saudi Arabia has driven much of the increase, with its exports rebounding from 2.446 million bpd in August to about 5.4 million bpd in September.

Kpler said Middle East crude exports have recovered to just under 80 percent of their pre-war level. But the figures remain about 3.2 million bpd below the 19.513 million bpd exported in February.

The data also does not include ships crossing Hormuz with their tracking systems switched off, meaning actual traffic could be higher.

Prior to the war, an estimated 120-140 vessels crossed through the waterway daily, roughly half of them oil tankers moving approximately 20 million barrels per day. At the height of the fighting, traffic through the waterway collapsed to as few as two tankers a day after Iran in effect closed the strait in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks.

Is Iran losing leverage?

The rebound in oil flow presents a challenge for Tehran. Iran has sought to use its ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz – one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints – as leverage against Washington’s military and economic pressure.

But if large volumes of oil can continue moving through the strait while Iran itself remains under a US naval blockade, Tehran’s bargaining power could diminish.

Iran, however, rejects any assessment that its control over the strait is slipping.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi on Tuesday said the ability of vessels to transit the waterway with US assistance did not mean Hormuz had returned to normal.

Oil prices are another indication that Iran has not lost all of its leverage.

Brent crude fell 2.6 percent to $102.59 a barrel on Tuesday as traders focused on recovering Middle East exports. But it was still heading for a roughly 13 percent gain in September.

Chris Beauchamp, an analyst at IG, said markets were beginning to incorporate evidence of recovering flows but remained wary about how durable that recovery would be.

“It takes time for evidence to filter through to markets,” Beauchamp said. “Oil prices came off yesterday as the narrative began to take hold, and should continue to fall.”

But he said concerns persisted over whether the US protection system could withstand a renewed barrage of Iranian missiles and drones.

Streeter of Wealth Club said the market still had a geopolitical risk premium built into crude prices, despite the improving flows.

“Insurance costs for tankers also remain elevated because of the perceived risks of operating in the region, adding to the cost of transporting crude even as more ships make it through the waterway,” she said.

Moreover, Streeter warned that crude figures tell only part of the story. Flows of refined fuels, particularly diesel and gasoline, remain constrained, while damage to infrastructure has placed additional pressure on energy supply chains, she added.

There is another vulnerability, the investment strategist pointed out. Countries including the US have relied heavily on strategic oil reserves to cushion the impact of the disruption and help contain prices.

“With those stockpiles now significantly depleted, there is a thinner buffer if there is another disruption, which is helping to keep a floor under crude prices,” Streeter added.

‘Economic war’ on Iran

There is little doubt that economic pressure on Iran is intensifying, potentially increasing Tehran’s incentive to reach an agreement.

Official data from the Statistical Center of Iran earlier this month showed gross domestic product (GDP) contracting 10.1 percent year on year between March 21 and June 20, while the crucial oil and gas sector shrank 26.4 percent.

Iran has also been battling high inflation and a plunging currency as the US blockade constrains oil exports and foreign currency earnings.

Twelve-month average inflation reached 69.9 percent earlier in September, while the rial had fallen beyond 2.2 million to the US dollar in early September.

In August, the US announced a fresh economic pressure campaign against Iran, promising to target Tehran’s financial interests across the world.

Mohammad Eslami, a research fellow at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran was facing an “economic war” alongside the military conflict.

“There is a US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which affects Iran’s revenues from oil exports and other products such as petrochemicals, which are important to Iran’s economy,” Eslami said. “As a result, Iran’s dollar revenues have been affected by the blockade.”

But he cautioned against judging Iran’s economy solely through the value of its currency.

“The exchange rate is a very important indicator, but it is not the only measure for explaining what is happening or the difficulties and challenges facing Iran’s economy,” Eslami said, adding that Iran has faced US economic pressure for “five decades”.

Can a deal be reached?

Despite the military and economic pressure, negotiations have not collapsed.

At the United Nations General Assembly last week, Tehran and Washington engaged in three hours of indirect talks, as US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

President Trump later described the encounter as “very good” and “very productive.”

Iran also proposed a seven-day roadmap under which the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened and normal maritime traffic restored if Washington meets Tehran’s conditions, a plan Trump categorically rejected.

Those conditions included ending the naval blockade on Iran, easing sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian funds.

However, on Wednesday, Reuters news agency reported that Araghchi had received US feedback on the proposal through Qatari mediators.

An official briefed on the talks said the main disagreement now centred on the sequencing of measures rather than the components of the plan.

US president’s comments came after he was asked why North Korea can have nuclear weapons when Iran cannot.

United States President Donald Trump has described North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “a friend” and played down concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, saying, “as long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine”.

Trump made the remarks in Washington, DC, on Tuesday after a reporter asked him why North Korea could have nuclear weapons but Iran could not.

“That’s interesting. You know why? Because you had a different president, and they could have stopped him,” he said, referring to previous US administrations.

“He happens to be a friend of mine, Kim Jong Un, he’s a friend of mine. He likes Trump, doesn’t like a lot of other people. I’m about the only person in the entire world that he likes, and I like him,” he said.

He said North Korea’s nuclear capacity was “pretty large” but “not like us”.

“You know what, as long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine,” he added. “You know why? Because he respects me and he likes me.”

South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said last week that its northern neighbour possessed between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads. The figure is significantly higher than Trump’s recent assertion that Pyongyang has 57 nuclear weapons.

Trump is seeking to re-engage with Kim and secure a win on the international stage as the US and Israel’s war on Iran enters its eighth month.

The US president launched the war along with Israel on February 28, saying Iran could not have a nuclear weapon. Iran has denied seeking a weapon, noting it had signed an agreement with world powers in 2015 that curbed its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. But Trump abandoned the agreement during his first term in 2018.

The US-Israel war on Iran has disrupted global energy supplies, raised fuel costs and hurt Trump’s popularity ahead of the November midterm elections.

Trump held summits with North Korea’s Kim in 2018 and 2019, but diplomacy broke down over US demands that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons. Since then, Kim has expanded his arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles and strengthened his diplomatic footprint by aligning with Russia over its war in Ukraine and tightening relations with China.

Trump had earlier said he planned to hold in-person talks with Kim before the end of the year.

But North Korea has not formally committed to such a meeting.

The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula.

After a week of fierce competition, Backpack emerged victorious as Fat Bear Week champion, the heftiest bear in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The nonprofit running the longstanding contest announced on Tuesday that the bear, known for his pacifist nature, was the winner with more than 100,000 votes, giving him a close win over Bear 910 with just over 50 percent of the poll.

The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner towards the Aleutian Islands. Fat Bear Week was started in 2014 as an interactive way to inform the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies.

Last year’s winner, Chunk — known officially as Bear 32 — clinched his victory at an estimated 1,200 pounds. He was handily defeated in the first round of competition this year by Bucky, who went on to lose a face-off against Backpack, known officially as Bear 89.

The event this year featured 16 bears vying for the heavyweight title in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament. All voting is done online, and the winner was declared on Tuesday evening after the final poll closed. The public could watch the bears on explore.org’s livestream cameras before deciding on their favourite.

“Fat bears are successful bears,” the nonprofit says on its website. These bears gorge themselves on the abundant salmon that return to the Brooks River starting in late June. It is there that they can stuff themselves to accumulate the fat reserves they will need to survive the winter. To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area around the river.

Son of ex-champion

Backpack is the son of former Fat Bear Week champion Holly, who introduced him to the Brooks River when he was a first-year cub in 2006. His name was inspired by his habit of climbing onto his mother’s back when they swam the river. This year’s fans cheered on Backpack in the contest’s Instagram comments, noting his lineage and reputation as a gentle giant.

“Unlike many large adult male bears, Backpack hasn’t shown much aggression toward his competitors,” his contestant profile reads.

Backpack uses his “quiet strength” rather than brawling and is often seen in wildlife cameras sitting on a rock downstream, appearing to take in the scenery around him.

He defeated Bear 910, who is also the daughter of a former champion: 409 Beadnose.

Adult male brown bears typically weigh between 600 and 900 pounds (270-410kg) in midsummer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon, large males can weigh more than 1,000 pounds (454kg). Females are about one-third smaller. Bears may each eat as many as 30 fish a day this time of year, working hard to eat a year’s worth of food in about six months.

During winter hibernation, bears do not eat or drink and can lose one-third of their body weight.

Fat Bear Week’s contestants also included five bear families, in recognition of the record-high number of families and cubs at the river this summer. A mother must feed and protect her cubs while also eating enough calories to sustain herself through hibernation. Cubs often face the risk of attack from other bears due to territorialism or food scarcity.

Bear 132 and her three spring cubs advanced to the semifinals, but lost out to Bear 910.

She has become one of the largest and most experienced mother bears at Brooks River, according to her contestant profile. In mid-July, one of her cubs became separated from the family for several days, wandering the river corridor alone. The cub was reunited with the family a few days later.

Pentagon official says the plan will be announced in the defence secretary’s ‘State of the Force’ address in Virginia.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will cut the number of positions reserved for generals and admirals by 20 percent, a Pentagon official has told Al Jazeera, in a change that will affect leadership across the Army, Navy and Air Force.

Hegseth is expected to announce the decision on Wednesday during a visit to the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he will deliver his “State of the Force” address in front of junior officers and enlisted officials, the official said.

The Associated Press news agency, citing Pentagon officials, reported that Hegseth will direct all the military services to double the 10 percent reduction that he ordered last year to the roughly 800 flag and general officer positions. This would make it a 20 percent total decrease and is to be completed by January 1, 2027.

Fox News reported the new reductions could include any one-star general or above or officer of equivalent Navy rank.

The Washing Post reported that the cuts could affect the careers of “hundreds of current and rising military leaders following scores of firings and denied promotions”.

US President Donald Trump or Hegseth have fired, or pushed into retirement, more than two dozen military leaders since taking office in January 2025, including the Army’s top uniformed officer, General Randy George, in April.

The administration also fired the only two women serving as four-star officers, along with several other senior female officers. Other top officials have left through retirements and resignations, including the Army secretary, Dan Driscoll, who resigned this month after repeated clashes with Hegseth.

When the defence secretary first announced the effort to trim the highest levels of the military ranks, he argued it was intended to remove “redundant force structure to optimise and streamline leadership”. And in a memo released in May 2025, he added that his aim was to free the military from “unnecessary bureaucratic layers”.

At this time last year, Hegseth also declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives for troops that included “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed concern over Hegseth’s latest move in a statement. He said eliminating senior leadership positions must be done in consultation with Congress and warned that the planned cuts “should alarm every American”.

“Congress has been clear with the Secretary that he must consult this body and explain his reasoning for senior officer removals and promotion holds. To date, we have not received satisfactory answers,” Reed said.

“Our military is conducting major operations around the world, and the force is already under strain,” he added.

The number of general officer positions is set by law, but positions can be left unfilled if the administration does not submit nominees to Congress.

The resolution cites a ‘lack of accountability’ by Israel’s government and an ‘inability to secure justice’ by the US.

The United States Senate has blocked a resolution that would have required President Donald Trump’s administration to report on the killing of nine Americans in the occupied West Bank and on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children in military detention.

The resolution failed 47-53 on Tuesday, with senators voting largely along party lines.

It was brought to the floor by Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, and cited a “lack of accountability” from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an “inability to secure justice” from the US government.

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote against advancing the resolution, while Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, joined Democrats in supporting it.

Van Hollen forced the vote under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which allows individual members of Congress to demand a formal State Department report on the human rights practices of any country that receives US security assistance.

“Violence is raging in the West Bank, & despite the deaths of nine Americans, the wrongful detention of even more, & the daily torment of Palestinians, we have no accountability from the U.S. or Israeli govt”, Van Hollen wrote on X before the resolution was brought to a vote.

Nine Americans killed

The resolution called for an unclassified report within 30 days of adoption. It would have detailed investigations into the deaths of the Americans, the treatment of US citizens held in Israeli prisons, and the conditions facing Palestinian children in Israeli military detention.

The measure cited the deaths of nine American citizens in the occupied West Bank since January 2022, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist and Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot in the head and killed in May 2022 while reporting in the city of Jenin.

It also included Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli soldier in September 2024, and Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in July 2025.

The others were Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee, who was 14; Tawfic Abdel Jabbar and Mohamed Ahmad Alkhdour, both 17; Omar Assad; Khamid Ayyad; Nasrallah Abu Siyam; and Khamis Rabee Jabara.

The resolution also noted the arrests of several Palestinian-American children by Israeli forces.

Among them was Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old from Florida, who was arrested in February 2025 and held in pretrial detention for nine months without contact with his family. It noted that US embassy officials and lawyers who met him told his family that he had lost nearly a quarter of his body weight, contracted scabies, and was beaten and tortured.

Other Palestinian Americans who remain in custody include Adam Wajeh Abdelfattah Karakrah, 16, and Sama Safi, 20, a student detained in June in raids targeting students at Birzeit University.

The resolution cited rights groups that have documented the deaths of at least 44 Palestinians in Israeli military camps since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Those groups, it said, have documented widespread abuses, including beatings, sexual violence, harassment and threats, “pointing to systemic and deliberate mistreatment”.

It also went on to note a sharp escalation in Israeli settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, and stressed that there have been no convictions for the killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers since 2020.

US President Donald Trump reiterates that Tehran will not have a nuclear weapon.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez has disputed the government’s account of what led to his shooting during a Doordash delivery in Austin, Texas.

A Venezuelan asylum seeker who was shot in the back by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Texas is facing a federal assault charge, after prosecutors accused him of striking the officer with his car’s side-view mirror.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, appeared in federal court in Austin on Tuesday, where he was charged with assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer. He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

The charge stems from a September 20 encounter that began while Garces Perez was making a DoorDash food delivery near a shopping centre in Austin, the Texas state capital.

A federal complaint filed on Monday says immigration officers noticed that Garces Perez’s car had its emergency lights flashing, and they ran a database check. They found it was registered to Garces Perez, who was subject to a final order of removal from the US.

When the officers approached, Garces Perez handed over his driver’s license through a partially opened window but did not get out of the car, the complaint says. He asked the officers to wait until his wife could arrive to retrieve the vehicle.

Court documents describe the exchange up to that point as “pleasant and not aggressive”.

About a minute later, however, court documents say Garces Perez “abruptly” closed his window and drove off, striking one of the officers in the torso with his driver’s side mirror.

That officer chased Garces Perez in his own vehicle and caught up with him a short time later. In the complaint, the officer alleges that Garces Perez then tried to drive into him, prompting him to open fire.

There is no publicly available footage showing the events described in the complaint, including the shooting.

Videos, however, have circulated online showing the shooting’s aftermath, with Garces Perez injured in his car.

The complaint relies on unreleased body-camera footage from one of the two ICE officers who stopped Garces Perez.

The second officer was not wearing a body camera, according to the affidavit. That officer says he was struck by Garces Perez’s side mirror and later shot him.

Garces Perez, however, gave federal investigators a different account of the moments immediately before he was shot.

He told investigators that, after a brief chase, a law enforcement SUV struck his car, causing it to spin around, according to the affidavit. He said the officer then opened fire, shooting him in the back.

Garces Perez has been held in a detention facility in south Texas since the shooting.

His lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said on Sunday the bullet was still lodged in his body and that he has a fractured clavicle. In a social media post, Lincoln-Goldfinch explained that his supporters were worried he could develop sepsis or suffer permanent damage if he didn’t undergo surgery soon.

The Department of Homeland Security has argued, however, that Garces Perez is receiving adequate medical care.

Garces Perez’s legal team is also seeking to stop his removal from the US.

The Venezuelan national entered the US in 2024 through CBP One, an online programme expanded under former President Joe Biden to allow asylum seekers to make appointments with immigration authorities at the US-Mexico border.

Trump ended the programme on his first day back in office, accusing the app of contributing to an immigration crisis in the US. His administration has since relaunched CBP One as CBP Home, a self-deportation portal.

Lincoln-Goldfinch has said Garces Perez was legally seeking asylum in the US and had a valid work permit. She has asserted that he was ordered to be deported after missing an immigration court hearing because the notice had been sent to an old address.

Garces Perez is due back before a federal immigration judge on Wednesday for a separate hearing on whether he can remain in the country.

The case comes amid a surge in immigration enforcement during Trump’s second term, with ICE reporting more than 50,000 arrests in both July and August.