US & Canada

Washington, DC – American journalist Dylan Collins wants to know “who pulled the trigger” in the 2023 Israeli double-tap strike in south Lebanon that injured him and killed Reuters video reporter Issam Abdallah.

Collins and his supporters are also seeking information about the military orders that led to the deadly attack. But more than two years later, Israel has not provided adequate answers on why it targeted the clearly identifiable reporters.

Press freedom advocates and three United States legislators joined Collins, an AFP and former Al Jazeera journalist, outside the US Capitol on Thursday to renew calls for accountability in this case and for the more than 250 other killings of journalists by Israel.

“I want to know who pulled the trigger; I want to know what command structure approved it, and I want to know why it’s gone unaddressed until today – on our strike and all the others targeted,” Collins said.

Senator Peter Welch and Congresswoman Becca Balint, who represent Collins’s home state of Vermont, and Senator Chris Van Hollen stressed on Thursday that they will continue to push for accountability in the strike, which wounded six journalists.

“We’re not letting it go. It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us. We’re not letting it go,” Balint told reporters.

The attack

Welch said he was sending his seventh letter to the US Department of State demanding answers, accusing Israel of obfuscation.

Israeli authorities, he said, claim they investigated the attack and ruled the shooting unintentional, but they provided no evidence that they questioned soldiers. Israel also never contacted the key witnesses – namely, Colins and other survivors of the strike.

In October, the Israeli army told the AFP news agency that the attack was still “under review” in an apparent contradiction of what Welch had been told.

“The investigation, non-investigation – there’s nothing there,” Welch said. “You’re basically getting the run-around, and you’re getting stonewalled. That’s the bottom line.”

Israel received more than $21bn in US military aid during the two years of its genocidal war on Gaza.

Throughout the war, Israel has stepped up its attacks on the press. But the country has a long history of killing journalists without accountability.

The October 13, 2023, strike, which wounded Al Jazeera’s Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhia and left AFP’s Christina Assi with life-altering injuries, was well-documented in part because the journalists were livestreaming their reporting.

The correspondents, who had set up their equipment on a hilltop near the Lebanese-Israeli border to cover the escalation on the front, were in clearly marked press gear and vehicles.

Israeli drones had also circled above the journalists before the attack.

“We thought the fact that we could be seen was a good thing, that it would protect us. But after a little less than an hour at the site, we were hit twice by tank fire, two shells on the same target, 37 seconds apart,” Collins said at a news conference on Thursday.

“The first strike killed Issam instantly and nearly blew Christina’s legs off her body. As I rushed to put a tourniquet on her, we were hit the second time, and I sustained multiple shrapnel wounds.”

The AFP journalist added that the attack seemed “unfathomable in its brutality” at that time, but “we have since seen the same type of attack repeated dozens of times.”

Israel has been regularly employing such double-tap attacks, including in other strikes on journalists in Gaza.

“This is not an incident in the fog of war. It was a war crime carried out in broad daylight and broadcast on live television,” Collins said.

Earlier this year, UN rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz called the 2023 strike “a premeditated, targeted and double-tapped attack from the Israeli forces, a clear violation, in my opinion, of IHL (international humanitarian law), a war crime”.

US response

Despite the wounding of a US citizen in the strike, the administration of then-President Joe Biden – which claimed to champion freedom of the press and the “rules-based order” – did next to nothing to hold Israel to account.

Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, also pushed on with unconditional US support for Israel.

On Thursday, Collins decried the lack of action from the US government, saying that he reached out to officials in Washington, DC, and showed them footage of the strike.

“I thought that when an American citizen is wounded in an attack carried out by the US’s greatest ally in the Middle East that we would be able to get some answers. But for two years, I’ve been met by deafening silence,” he told reporters.

“In fact, neither the Biden nor the Trump administrations have ever publicly acknowledged that a US citizen was wounded in this attack.”

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 US citizens, including Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, over the past decade.

Senator Van Hollen said accountability in the October 13, 2023, attack is important for journalists and US citizens across the world.

“We have not seen accountability or justice in this case, and the State Department – our own government – has not done much of anything really to pursue justice in this case,” Van Hollen told reporters.

“It is part of a broader pattern of impunity for attacks on Americans and on journalists by the government of Israel.”

He called the US approach a “dereliction of duty” by the Trump and Biden administrations.

Israeli ‘investigation’

Amelia Evans, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said Senator Welch’s description of the Israeli probe shows that the country’s “purported investigative bodies are not functioning to deliver justice but to shield Israeli forces from accountability”.

Evans urged the Trump administration to “take action” and demand the completion of probes into the killing of Abu Akleh in 2022 and the 2023 attack on journalists in Lebanon.

“It must demand Israel name all the military officials throughout the command chain who were involved in both cases,” she said.

“But as Israel’s key strategic ally, the United States must do much more than that. It must publicly recognise Israel’s failure to properly investigate the war crimes committed by its military.”

Israel often uses claims of investigation in response to abuses.

Former State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who spent almost two years defending Israeli war crimes and justifying Washington’s unflinching support for its Middle East ally, acknowledged that tactic recently.

“We do know that Israel has opened investigations,” Miller, who incessantly invoked alleged Israeli probes from the State Department podium, said in June.

“But, look, we are many months into those investigations. And we’re not seeing Israeli soldiers held accountable.”

‘Chilling effect’

Amid the push for justice, Collins paid tribute to his colleague Abdallah, who was killed in the 2023 Israeli attack.

“Losing Issam was tough on everyone,” he told Al Jazeera. “He was like the dynamo of the press scene in Lebanon. He knew everyone. He was always the first person to help you out if you’re in a jam. He had a larger-than-life personality.”

The killing of Abdullah, Collins added, had a “chilling effect” on the coverage of that conflict, which escalated into a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah in September 2024.

The violence saw Israel all but wipe out nearly all the border towns in Lebanon.

Even after a ceasefire was reached in November of last year, the Israeli military continues to prevent reconstruction in the devastated villages as it carries out near-daily attacks across the country.

“If the intention was to stop people from covering the war, then it has worked to some degree,” said Collins.

In this episode of On the Record, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem is joined by Iran’s former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. They discuss Iran’s political and military involvement in the Middle East and beyond. Zarif reflects on Iran’s involvement with resistance groups in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon and why Iran’s nuclear ambitions have not been obliterated by either the US or Israel.

India is hedging between energy security and strategic partnerships.

Despite pressure from the United States, it has continued buying cheap Russian oil and has recently strengthened economic ties with Russia — from trade to weapons and critical minerals.

But this is a delicate balancing act for Prime Minister Narendra Modi: he wants to cut deals with Moscow, while staying friends with Washington, his biggest trading partner.

For President Vladimir Putin, it shows Russia still has powerful partners and is not completely isolated despite Western sanctions.

And Syria’s economy one year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Plus, the bidding fight over Warner Bros.

The US has rolled back a series of restrictive economic sanctions put in place during the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The United States House of Representatives has voted forward a bill that would end the restrictive Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, originally imposed during the rule of former leader Bashar al-Assad.

The bid to repeal the sanctions was passed on Wednesday as part of a larger defence spending package, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

“With this NDAA, as many know, we are repealing sanctions on Syria that were placed there because of Bashar al-Assad and the torture of his people,” Representative Brian Mast of Florida said. “We’re giving Syria a chance to chart a post-Assad future.”

Mast had previously been opposed to dropping the sanctions. In his statement on the House floor on Wednesday, he warned that, under the bill, the White House could “reimpose sanctions if the president views it necessary”.

The bill now heads to the Senate and is expected to be voted on before the end of the year.

If passed, the NDAA would repeal the 2019 Caesar Act, which sanctioned the Syrian government for war crimes during the country’s 13-year-long civil war.

It would also require the White House to issue frequent reports confirming that Syria’s new government is combating Islamist fighters and upholding the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

Human rights advocates have welcomed the easing of heavy sanctions that the US and other Western countries imposed on Syria during the war.

They argue that lifting those economic restrictions will aid Syria’s path towards economic recovery after years of devastation.

The Caesar Act was signed into law during President Donald Trump’s first term.

But in December 2024, shortly before Trump returned to office for a second term, rebel forces toppled al-Assad’s government, sending the former leader fleeing to Russia.

Trump has since removed many sanctions on Syria and met with President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the push that ousted al-Assad.

But some sanctions can only be removed by Congress, a step that Trump has encouraged lawmakers to take.

This month, Syrians celebrated the one-year anniversary of al-Assad’s overthrow with fireworks, prayer and public displays of pride. But the country continues to face challenges as it recovers from the destruction and damage wrought by the war.

Syrian officials have urged the repeal of remaining sanctions, saying that it is necessary to give the country a fighting chance at economic stability and improvement.

Syrian central bank Governor Abdulkader Husrieh called US sanctions relief a “miracle” in an interview with the news service Reuters last week.

The United Nations Security Council also voted to remove sanctions on al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab, who were previously on a list of individuals linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

The central bank cut rates for the third time in 2025 as limited government data clouds economic outlook.

The United States Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, marking the last rate cut of the year.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.50 – 3.75 percent as US job growth has appeared to stall.

“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up through September. More recent indicators are consistent with these developments. Inflation has moved up since earlier in the year and remains somewhat elevated,” the central bank said in a statement.

The cut was widely expected with an 89 percent probability of a rate cut, according to the CME Fed Watch, a tracker which monitors the likelihood of monetary policy decisions.

The decision came as the central bank faced gaps in many sets of government data used to assess the state of the US economy. During the record-long 43-day government shutdown, key agencies, including the Department of Labor, were unable to gather information needed for their reports.

Among them were import and export prices, the producer price index report, as well state employment and unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday said that it would not release numbers from October because the agency did not have enough resources to collect information.

The last top-line data that the central bank had to make its interest rate decision was from September. At the time, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent and the core inflation rose to 2.8 percent.

A new government report on Wednesday showed US labour costs increased 0.8 percent in the third quarter, slightly less than expected.

The central bank might be more cautious about interest rate cuts in the next year as economic data shows a cooling labour market.

“There is considerable uncertainty around the labour market, but some of the weights should begin to lift early next year,” Ryan Sweet, managing director, US Macro Forecasting and Analysis at Oxford Economics, said in a report published ahead of the central bank’s decision.

“The challenge facing the Fed next year is the potential jobless expansion, when GDP increases but employment gains are modest, at best. This leaves the economy vulnerable to shocks because the labour market is the main firewall against a recession.”

Political turmoil

While the Fed has maintained its independence from partisan interference, there has been increased pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut rates further and he has often used hostile rhetoric towards the Fed chair to do it. The first rate cut in Trump’s second term as president came only in September.

The White House has also installed loyalist Stephen Miran to the Fed board where he is on leave from his job as an economic adviser in the White House. Miran has dissented against the 25 basis point rate cut that was undertaken at each of the two meetings he has attended in favour of larger half-percentage-point cuts.

On Wednesday, Miran, again, voted for a more aggressive cut of half a percentage point while governors Austan D Goolsbee and Jeffrey R Schmid voted not to make a rate cut at all. The other governors all voted for a 25 basis point cut.

“Still elevated inflation and a backlog of economic data complicate the picture for the Fed looking into next year — with President Trump’s aggressive push for lower short-term rates potentially complicating the objective of bringing down longer-term borrowing costs,” Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

Fed Chair Powell’s term is up in mid-May 2026. Trump, in an interview published on Tuesday in news outlet Politico, said support for immediately cutting interest rates would be a requirement for anyone he chose to lead the Federal Reserve.

IOC currently has no universal rule in place for the participation of transgender athletes at the Olympic Games.

The International Olympic Committee says it will announce eligibility criteria for transgender athletes early next year, after months of deliberation as it seeks to find a consensus on how to protect the female category.

The issue has been a source of controversy, with no universal rule in place for the participation of transgender athletes at the Olympic Games.

The IOC, under its new President Kirsty Coventry, did a U-turn in June, deciding to take the lead in setting eligibility criteria for Olympic participation, having previously handed responsibility to the individual sports federations, leading to a confusing patchwork of different approaches.

In September, Coventry set up the “Protection of the Female Category” working group, made up of experts as well as representatives of international federations, to look into how best to protect the female category in sports.

“We will find ways to find a consensus that has all aspects covered,” Coventry told a press conference on Wednesday following an IOC executive board meeting.

“Maybe it is not the easiest thing to do, but we will try our best, so when we talk about the female category, we are protecting the female category.”

Coventry said a decision would come in the first months of 2026.

“We want to make sure we have spoken to all stakeholders, taken adequate time to cross the Ts and dot the Is,” she said.

“The group is working extremely well. I don’t want to try to constrain the working group by saying they need to have a specific deadline, but I am hopeful in the next couple of months and definitely within the first quarter of next year we will have a clear decision and way forward, which I think we are all looking forward to,” said Coventry, a former Olympic swimming champion.

Before Coventry’s decision in June, the IOC had long refused to apply any universal rule on transgender participation for the Games, instructing international federations in 2021 to come up with their own guidelines. Under current rules, still in force, transgender athletes are eligible to take part in the Olympics.

Only a handful of openly transgender athletes have taken part in the Games. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender category to that assigned at birth when the weightlifter took part in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Currently, some international federations have rules in place, but others have not yet reached that stage.

US President Donald Trump has banned transgender athletes from competing in sports in schools in the United States, which civil society groups say infringes on the rights of trans people, as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Trump, who signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” order in February, has said he would not allow transgender athletes to compete at the LA Games.

The catastrophic violence in Gaza has unfolded within an international system that was never designed to restrain the geopolitical ambitions of powerful states. Understanding why the United Nations has proved so limited in responding to what many regard as a genocidal assault requires returning to the foundations of the post–World War II order and examining how its structure has long enabled impunity rather than accountability.

After World War II, the architecture for a new international order based on respect for the UN Charter and international law was agreed upon as the normative foundation of a peaceful future. Above all, it was intended to prevent a third world war. These commitments emerged from the carnage of global conflict, the debasement of human dignity through the Nazi Holocaust, and public anxieties about nuclear weaponry.

Yet, the political imperative to accommodate the victorious states compromised these arrangements from the outset. Tensions over priorities for world order were papered over by granting the Security Council exclusive decisional authority and further limiting UN autonomy. Five states were made permanent members, each with veto power: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China.

In practice, this left global security largely in the hands of these states, preserving their dominance. It meant removing the strategic interests of geopolitical actors from any obligatory respect for legal constraints, with a corresponding weakening of UN capability. The Soviet Union had some justification for defending itself against a West-dominated voting majority, yet it too used the veto pragmatically and displayed a dismissive approach to international law and human rights, as did the three liberal democracies.

In 1945, these governments were understood as simply retaining the traditional freedoms of manoeuvre exercised by the so-called Great Powers. The UK and France, leading NATO members in a Euro-American alliance, interpreted the future through the lens of an emerging rivalry with the Soviet Union. China, meanwhile, was preoccupied with a civil war that continued until 1949.

Three aspects of this post-war arrangement shape our present understanding.

First, the historical aspect: Learning from the failures of the League of Nations, where the absence of influential states undermined the organisation’s relevance to questions of war and peace. In 1945, it was deemed better to acknowledge power differentials within the UN than to construct a global body based on democratic equality among sovereign states or population size.

Second, the ideological aspect: Political leaders of the more affluent and powerful states placed far greater trust in hard-power militarism than in soft-power legalism. Even nuclear weaponry was absorbed into the logic of deterrence rather than compliance with Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which required good-faith pursuit of disarmament. International law was set aside whenever it conflicted with geopolitical interests.

Third, the economistic aspect: The profitability of arms races and wars reinforced a pre–World War II pattern of lawless global politics, sustained by an alliance of geopolitical realism, corporate media, and private-sector militarism.

Why the UN could not protect Gaza

Against this background, it is unsurprising that the UN performed in a disappointing manner during the two-plus years of genocidal assault on Gaza.

In many respects, the UN did what it was designed to do in the turmoil after October 7, and only fundamental reforms driven by the Global South and transnational civil society can alter this structural limitation. What makes these events so disturbing is the extremes of Israeli disregard for international law, the Charter, and even basic morality.

At the same time, the UN did act more constructively than is often acknowledged in exposing Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and human rights. Yet, it fell short of what was legally possible, particularly when the General Assembly failed to explore its potential self-empowerment through the Uniting for Peace resolution or the Responsibility to Protect norm.

Among the UN’s strongest contributions were the near-unanimous judicial outcomes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide and occupation. On genocide, the ICJ granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures concerning genocidal violence and the obstruction of humanitarian aid in Gaza. A final decision is expected after further arguments in 2026.

On occupation, responding to a General Assembly request for clarification, the Court issued a historic advisory opinion on July 19, 2024, finding Israel in severe violation of its duties under international humanitarian law in administering Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. It ordered Israel’s withdrawal within a year. The General Assembly affirmed the opinion by a large majority.

Israel responded by repudiating or ignoring the Court’s authority, backed by the US government’s extraordinary claim that recourse to the ICJ lacked legal merit.

The UN also provided far more reliable coverage of the Gaza genocide than was available in corporate media, which tended to amplify Israeli rationalisations and suppress Palestinian perspectives. For those seeking a credible analysis of genocide allegations, the Human Rights Council offered the most convincing counter to pro-Israeli distortions. A Moon Will Arise from this Darkness: Reports on Genocide in Palestine, containing the publicly submitted reports of the special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, documents and strongly supports the genocide findings.

A further unheralded contribution came from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, whose services were essential to a civilian population facing acute insecurity, devastation, starvation, disease, and cruel combat tactics. Some 281 staff members were killed while providing shelter, education, healthcare, and psychological support to beleaguered Palestinians during the course of Israel’s actions over the past two years.

UNRWA, instead of receiving deserved praise, was irresponsibly condemned by Israel and accused, without credible evidence, of allowing staff participation in the October 7 attack. Liberal democracies compounded this by cutting funding, while Israel barred international staff from entering Gaza. Nevertheless, UNRWA has sought to continue its relief work to the best of its ability and with great courage.

In light of these institutional shortcomings and partial successes, the implications for global governance become even more stark, setting the stage for a broader assessment of legitimacy and accountability.

The moral and political costs of UN paralysis

The foregoing needs to be read in light of the continuing Palestinian ordeal, which persists despite numerous Israeli violations, resulting in more than 350 Palestinian deaths since the ceasefire was agreed upon on October 10, 2025.

International law seems to have no direct impact on the behaviour of the main governmental actors, but it does influence perceptions of legitimacy. In this sense, the ICJ outcomes and the reports of the special rapporteur that take the international law dimensions seriously have the indirect effect of legitimising various forms of civil society activism in support of true and just peace, which presupposes the realisation of Palestinian basic rights – above all, the inalienable right of self-determination.

The exclusion of Palestinian participation in the US-imposed Trump Plan for shaping Gaza’s political future is a sign that liberal democracies stubbornly adhere to their unsupportable positions of complicity with Israel.

Finally, the unanimous adoption of Security Council Resolution 2803 in unacceptably endorsing the Trump Plan aligns the UN fully with the US and Israel, a demoralising evasion and repudiation of its own truth-telling procedures. It also establishes a most unfortunate precedent for the enforcement of international law and the accountability of perpetrators of international crimes.

In doing so, it deepens the crisis of confidence in global governance and underscores the urgent need for meaningful UN reform if genuine peace and justice are ever to be realised.

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

Rights group FairSquare accuses world football governing body of ‘openly flouting’ its own rules on political neutrality.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s effusive praise for Donald Trump and the decision by the world football governing body to award a peace prize to the US president have triggered a formal complaint over ethics violations and political neutrality.

Human rights group FairSquare said on Tuesday that it has filed a complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee, claiming the organisation’s behaviour was against the common interests of the global football community.

The complaint stems from Infantino awarding Trump FIFA’s inaugural peace prize during the December 6 draw for the 2026 World Cup to be played in the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July.

“This complaint is about a lot more than Infantino’s support for President Donald Trump’s political agenda,” FairSquare’s programme director Nicholas McGeehan said.

“More broadly, this is about how FIFA’s absurd governance structure has allowed Gianni Infantino to openly flout the organisation’s rules and act in ways that are both dangerous and directly contrary to the interests of the world’s most popular sport,” said McGeehan, head of the London-based advocacy group.

According to the eight-page complaint from the rights group filed with FIFA on Monday, Infantino’s awarding of the peace prize “to a sitting political leader is in and of itself a clear breach of FIFA’s duty of neutrality”.

“If Mr. Infantino acted unilaterally and without any statutory authority this should be considered an egregious abuse of power,” the rights group said.

FairSquare also pointed to Infantino lobbying on social media earlier this year for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado ultimately received the prize.

FairSquare said it wants FIFA’s independent committee to review Infantino’s actions.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch also criticised FIFA’s awarding of the prize to Trump, saying his administration’s “appalling human rights record certainly does not display exceptional actions for peace and unity”.

Disciplinary action from the FIFA Ethics Committee can include a warning, a reprimand and even a fine. Compliance training can also be ordered, while a ban can be levied on participation in football-related activity. But it remains unclear if the ethics committee will take up the complaint.

Infantino has not immediately responded, and FIFA said it does not comment on potential cases.

Current FIFA-appointed ethics investigators and judges are seen by some observers to operate with less independence than their predecessors a decade ago, when FIFA’s then-president, Sepp Blatter, was removed from office.

Trump was on hand for the World Cup 2026 draw ceremony on Friday, along with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

But it was Trump who received the most attention during the event at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC.

During the event, Infantino presented Trump with a gold trophy, a gold medal and a certificate.

“This is your prize; this is your peace prize,” Infantino told Trump.

FIFA also played a video that touched on some of Trump’s efforts towards so-called peace agreements.

Council on American-Islamic Relations has responded to the designation, calling it an ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘defamatory’ proclamation.

Florida’s governor has designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Ron DeSantis posted his executive order to list the United States-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy group on social media on Monday.

The move follows a similar declaration by the Republican governor of Texas last month. CAIR has rejected the labelling by both states and mounted legal challenges.

In a separate post, DeSantis asserted that the Florida Legislature is “crafting legislation to stop the creep of Sharia law, and I hope that they codify these protections for Floridians against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood in their legislation”.

The designation, which triggers heightened oversight by state law enforcement agencies and establishes financial and operational restrictions, was also declared against the Muslim Brotherhood.

DeSantis’s order asserted that CAIR was “founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood”, which, without offering evidence, the governor asserted was attempting to establish “a world-wide Islamic caliphate” and has direct links to Hamas.

The order instructs Florida agencies to prevent the two groups and those who have provided them with material support from receiving contracts, employment and funds from a state executive or cabinet agency.

Neither CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US government.

However, President Donald Trump has ordered the start of a process to label the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan as “terrorist” organisations, citing their alleged support for Hamas.

CAIR’s Florida chapter told The Associated Press news agency that it plans to sue DeSantis in response to what it called an “unconstitutional” and “defamatory” proclamation.

The group accused the Florida governor of serving foreign interests and lashing out at CAIR due to its civil rights work.

“From the moment Ron DeSantis took office as Florida governor, he has prioritised serving the Israeli government over serving the people of Florida,” CAIR and its Florida chapter said in a statement.

“He hosted his very first official cabinet meeting in Israel. He diverted millions in Florida taxpayer dollars to the Israeli government’s bonds. He threatened to shut down every Florida college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, only to back off when CAIR sued him in federal court.”

Founded in 1994, CAIR has 25 chapters around the country. Last month, it asked a federal judge to strike down the designation declared against it by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

In a lawsuit, CAIR said Abbott’s move was “not only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law”.

On Monday, it said DeSantis and Abbott are both “Israel First politicians” and asserted that their designations are intended to silence American Muslims critical of US support for Israeli war crimes.

The Muslim Brotherhood was established in Egypt nearly a century ago and has branches around the world. Its leaders say they seek to set up Islamic rule through elections and other non-violent means.

The arrest warrant for the country’s former president comes amid a closely-fought election.

Honduras’s top prosecutor has issued an international arrest warrant for former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, intensifying legal and political turmoil just days after the ex-leader walked free from a United States prison.

Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya announced the move on Monday in a post on X, saying he instructed the Agencia Técnica de Investigación Criminal, the main investigative body of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and urged Interpol “to execute the international arrest warrant against former President Juan Orlando Hernández”.

Hemos sido lacerados por los tentáculos de la corrupción y por las redes criminales que han marcado profundamente la vida de nuestro país. Es por ello que en el marco del Día Internacional Contra la Corrupción que se conmemora mañana 9 de diciembre, informo al pueblo hondureño… pic.twitter.com/8V4cpyrKq2

— Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez (@jaza_hn) December 8, 2025

Zelaya’s announcement comes as Hernandez was released from a 45-year prison sentence in the US after President Donald Trump pardoned him.

Hernandez’s wife, who insists he is innocent, said he will not return to Honduras immediately due to safety concerns and that he is currently in a “safe place” in the US.

Hernandez was extradited to the US in 2022, where New York prosecutors had accused him of three drug- and weapons-related offences and alleged he used his presidency to transform Honduras into a “narco-state”.

US prosecutors later secured a conviction, saying Hernandez played a central role in moving cocaine through Honduras and onward to the United States. He was handed a 45-year prison sentence on the back of “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world”, according to prosecutors.

At the same time, Hernandez has been at the centre of investigations in his country that have targeted current and former politicians suspected of diverting public money. In 2023, along with several former officials, he was charged with involvement in the alleged misappropriation of more than $12m in state funds for his political campaign.

Trump’s decision to pardon Hernandez came as he urged Hondurans to rally behind presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a member of Hernandez’s right-wing National Party, in the country’s November 30 presidential election.

“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly”, Trump wrote in a social media post last week.

With 97 percent of ballots counted, Asfura held 40.52 percent of the vote, remaining ahead of centrist rival Salvador Nasralla by roughly 42,100 votes.

The tally had already been halted temporarily on Friday with 88 percent of ballots processed. According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), about 16 percent of tally sheets contained irregularities requiring further review, an issue it attributed to the company managing the vote-counting system.

International observers have urged authorities to speed up the counting process and take steps to reassure voters of its integrity.

US President Donald Trump has cleared the way for tech giant Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chip to China, in a significant easing of Washington’s export controls targeting Chinese tech.

Trump said on Monday that he had informed Chinese President Xi Jinping of the decision to allow the export of the chip under an arrangement that will see 25 percent of sales paid to the US government.

Trump said exports would be allowed to “approved customers” under conditions that protect national security, and that his administration would take the “same approach” in relation to other chipmakers, such as AMD and Intel.

“This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Nvidia, which is based in Santa Clara, California, said the move struck a “thoughtful balance” and would “support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America”.

Nvidia shares jumped more than 2 percent in after-hours trading on the news.

Trump’s announcement marks a major departure from the policy of former President Joe Biden’s administration, which confined Nvidia and other chipmakers to exporting downgraded versions of their products specifically designed for the Chinese market.

In his Truth Social post, Trump slammed the Biden administration’s approach, claiming it had led to US tech companies spending billions of dollars on downgraded products that “nobody wanted”.

The H200, launched in 2023, is Nvidia’s most powerful chip outside of the latest-generation Blackwell series, which Trump confirmed would continue to be restricted for the Chinese market.

While not Nvidia’s most advanced chip, the H200 is almost six times as powerful as the previous generation H20 chip, according to the Washington-based Institute for Progress, a non-partisan think tank.

Under an agreement with the Trump administration announced in August, Nvidia agreed to pay the US government 15 percent of revenues from its sales of the H20, which was designed to comply with restrictions imposed on the Chinese market.

Tilly Zhang, an expert on Chinese tech at Gavekal Dragonomics, said Trump’s decision reflected “market realities” as well as intense lobbying by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

“The priority is moving away from purely blocking or slowing China’s tech progress, more towards competing for market share and securing the commercial benefits of selling their own tech solutions,” Zhang told Al Jazeera.

As blocking China’s tech advancement becomes increasingly unrealistic, “gaining more market share and revenue is turning into a higher priority”, Zhang said.

“That’s what this US move signals to me.”

Zhang said the race between China and the US to dominate artificial intelligence had shifted from export controls towards market competition.

“That might push chipmakers on both sides towards faster innovation, and bring more market dynamics,” she said.

Trump’s announcement drew a swift rebuke from Democratic lawmakers.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who represents Massachusetts, accused the Trump administration of “selling out US security”.

“Trump is letting NVIDIA export cutting-edge AI chips that his own DOJ revealed are being illegally smuggled into China,” Warren said on X, referring to multiple probes into illegal chip shipments carried out by the US Department of Justice.

“His own DOJ called these chips ‘building blocks of AI superiority’.”

Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s move was a blow to US efforts to stay ahead of China in the race to dominate AI.

“Loosening export controls on AI chips will allow Chinese AI firms to close the gap with frontier US AI models, and will allow Chinese cloud computing providers to build ‘good enough’ data centres around the world,” McGuire, who worked on tech policy in Biden’s White House, told Al Jazeera.

“This risks undermining the administration’s efforts to ensure the US AI stack dominates globally.”

The Trump administration has accused ICEBlock of making federal agents vulnerable to attack and called for its removal.

The developer of a popular app used to monitor and share alerts about immigration enforcement activities has sued the administration of United States President Donald Trump for pressuring Apple to remove it.

ICEBlock, whose name refers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had one million users before it was dropped from Apple’s app store, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday.

Developer Joshua Aaron alleged in the complaint that the Trump administration’s campaign against the tracking app amounted to a violation of free speech.

“When we see our government doing something wrong, it’s our duty as citizens of this nation to hold them accountable, and that is exactly what we’re doing with this lawsuit,” Aaron said in the lawsuit.

The suit calls on the district court system to protect the Texas-based software company from “unlawful threats” under the Trump administration.

It also names as defendants some of Trump’s highest-level officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons.

First released in April, ICEBlock quickly became a widely used tool across the US as communities sought ways to share information about immigration raids.

Since returning to office for a second term, Trump has pushed a campaign of mass deportation, targeting a wide range of immigrants, many of whom are in the country legally.

Those raids, many carried out by heavily armed immigration agents in military-style attire, have also faced repeated accusations of human rights abuses.

Critics have questioned the violence used in some arrests, as well as the ICE officers’ use of face masks and plainclothes to conceal their identities.

There have also been reports of inhumane conditions once immigrants are in custody, including overcrowding, a lack of sanitation and faeces-smeared walls.

Human rights advocates have also questioned the speed with which deportations are being carried out, claiming the immigrants arrested have no opportunity to exercise their due process rights and are often prevented from contacting lawyers.

Even US citizens have been accidentally detained in the immigration sweeps. Some immigrants have been deported despite court orders mandating that they remain in the US.

The Trump administration has faced fierce criticism and judicial rebukes for its tactics.

But it maintains that software like ICEBlock puts federal immigration agents in danger of retaliation.

“ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line,” Attorney General Bondi has said.

In October, ICEBlock was pulled from Apple’s app store, a popular platform for downloading mobile software. The Justice Department confirmed that it had contacted Apple to push for the removal.

The lawsuit states that the tech company told Aaron the app had been removed following “information provided to Apple by law enforcement”.

Aaron has countered that the app is an exercise of essential free speech rights and is meant to help protect people from overbearing government activity.

“We’re basically asking the court to set a precedent and affirm that ICEBlock is, in fact, First Amendment-protected speech and that I did nothing wrong by creating it,” Aaron told The Associated Press news agency in an interview.

“I mean, these are people that are wearing masks — which is the antithesis of everything about this country — and they are not identifying themselves, and they’re zip-tying children, and they’re throwing women into vans.”

Surat, India – In 2018, Alpesh Bhai enrolled his three-year-old daughter in an English-language private school in Surat. This was something he never imagined possible while growing up in his village in the Indian state of Gujarat, where his family survived on small fields of fennel, castor and cumin, with their earnings barely enough to cover basic needs.

He had studied in a public school, where, he recalled, “teachers were a rarity, and English almost didn’t exist”.

“Maybe if I knew English, I would have been some government worker. Who knows?”, he said, referring to the dream of a majority of Indians, as government jobs come with tenure and benefits.

His finances improved once he joined the diamond cutting industry in Surat, a city perched along India’s Arabian Sea coast, where nearly 80 percent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished. Monthly earnings of 35,000 rupees ($390) for the first time brought Alpesh a sense of stability, and with it, the means to give his children the education he never had.

“I was determined that at least my children would get the kind of private education I was deprived of,” he said.

But that dream did not last. The first disruption to business came with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The sanctions on Russia hurt supply chains, as India sourced at least a third of its raw diamonds from Russia, leading to layoffs.

Alpesh’s earnings fell to 18,000 rupees ($200) a month, then to 20,000 rupees ($222). Soon, the 25,000 rupees ($280) annual school fee became unmanageable. By the time his older daughter reached grade three, just as his younger child started school, the pressure became impossible.

Earlier this year, he pulled both children out of private school and enrolled them in a nearby public one. A few months later, when new United States tariffs deepened the crisis as demand slumped further, his polishing unit laid off 60 percent of its workers, Alpesh among them.

“Seems like I’ve come back to where I started,” he said.

Surat, India’s diamond hub, employs more than 600,000 workers, and hosts 15 large polishing units with annual sales exceeding $100m. For decades, Surat’s diamond‑polishing industry has offered migrant workers from rural Gujarat, many with little or no education, higher incomes, in some cases up to 100,000 rupees ($1,112) a month, and a path out of agrarian hardship.

But recent shocks have exposed the fragility of that ladder, with close to 400,000 workers having faced layoffs, pay cuts, or reduced hours.

Even before Russia’s war on Ukraine began in February 2022, Surat’s diamond industry faced multiple challenges: disrupted supplies from African mines, weakening demand in key Western markets, and inconsistent exports to China, the second-largest customer. With the onset of the war, India’s exports of cut and polished diamonds in the financial year ending on March 31, 2024, fell by 27.6 percent, with sharp declines in its top markets – the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

The 50 percent tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump have worsened the downturn.

Alpesh now works loading and unloading textile consignments for about 12,000 rupees ($133) a month, barely enough to cover food and rent.

“If I had kept them in the private school, I don’t know how I would have survived,” Alpesh said. “People here have killed themselves over debts and school fees. When you don’t have enough to eat, how will you think of teaching your children well?”

His daughters are still adjusting. “They sometimes tell me, ‘Pupa, the studies aren’t as good now’. I tell them we’ll put them back in the private school soon, but I don’t know when that will happen.”

‘An exodus’

Some workers have returned to their villages, as many migrant families in Surat can no longer afford rent or find alternative work.

Shyam Patel, 35, was among them. When exports slowed and US tariffs hit in August, the polishing unit where he worked shut down. With no other work available, he returned to his village in the Banaskantha district the following month.

“What other option was there?” he said. “In the city, there’s rent to pay even when there’s no work.”

He now works as a daily-wage labourer in cotton fields in his village. His son, who was in the final year of high school, dropped out after four months of the new academic session.

“We’ll put him back in school next year,” Shyam said. “The government school said they can’t take new students in the middle of the term. Till then, he helps me in the fields.”

Across the city, the disruption is evident in government data. More than 600 students left school mid-session last year as their parents lost work or returned to their villages, mostly in Saurashtra and north Gujarat.

“Most migrants come to Surat to settle – the city has entire [neighbourhoods] and housing clusters built for diamond workers,” said Bhavesh Tank, vice president of the Diamond Workers Union Gujarat. “An exodus in the middle of the year is unprecedented, and the drop in school enrolment suggests many are not coming back soon.”

The union estimates that about 50,000 workers have left Surat over the past 12 to 14 months.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist group allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been closely observing the diamond industry crisis in Surat.

“The number of dropouts has reached a point where even government schools are struggling to take in new students, said Purvesh Togadia, a VHP representative in the city. “The poor quality of education is making the transition even more disheartening for families.”

The poor quality of education in public schools is well established. In 2024, only 23.4 percent of grade three students could read at a grade two level, compared with 35.5 percent in private schools. By grade 5, the gap persisted – 44.8 percent in government schools versus 59.3 percent in private ones.

Kishor Bhamre, director at Pratham, an organisation working on children’s rights across education and labour, said the setback is not just academic but psychological.

“Children moving from private to government schools lose the environment they grew up in – their friends, familiar teachers, and a sense of community. For many, it also means shifting from an urban to a rural setting, which makes the adjustment even harder and affects their learning,” he said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Surat Municipal Corporation and the state’s education minister for comment, but did not receive a response.

Limited help

The Diamond Workers Union has repeatedly appealed to the state government to provide an economic relief package and revise salaries in line with inflation. The union has also urged authorities to address the equally pressing situation of the growing number of school dropouts among workers’ children.

The Gujarat government in May introduced a special assistance package for affected diamond workers – a rare move in the industry.

Under the scheme, the state government committed to paying for one year of school fees for diamond polishers’ children, up to 13,500 rupees ($150) annually. To qualify, workers must have been unemployed for the past year and have at least three years of experience in a diamond factory. The fees will be paid directly to the schools.

The government received nearly 90,000 requests from diamond workers across Gujarat, including about 74,000 from Surat alone.  After a slow start – it had provided assistance to only 170 children by July – officials reported disbursing 82.8 million rupees ($921,000) towards school fees for 6,368 children of jobless diamond workers in Surat by mid-September.

But about 26,000 applicants were rejected, reportedly due to “improper details mentioned” in the forms, leading to frustration and anger among workers. In the past few days, nearly 1,000 diamond polishers have filed applications with the local government, demanding to know who rejected their forms and on what grounds, and alleging opacity in the process.

The scheme’s rigid eligibility criteria have also excluded workers.

“The scheme only covers those who have completely lost their jobs, but it leaves out many who are facing partial cuts or reduced work,” said Tank. “They’re struggling just as much and need support equally.”

Tank added that education remains one of the most common concerns among workers reaching out to the union’s suicide prevention helpline, which was set up by the Diamond Workers Union after Surat had already recorded at least 71 suicides among diamond workers by November 2024. It has received more than 5,000 calls so far.

Divyaben Makwana, 40, lost her 22-year-old son, Kewalbhai, who had been working as a diamond polisher for three years. On June 14, he died by suicide.

Kewalbhai had been under immense mental stress after losing his job in the diamond market, his mother told Al Jazeera.

“He was earning around 20,000 rupees ($220) a month, and when even that collapsed,” he took his life, she said. “We took him to the hospital and did everything we could. I borrowed 500,000 rupees ($5,560) from relatives and friends, but we couldn’t save him. Now, I don’t have a son – only a loan.”

She lives in Surat with her husband, who has been unable to work due to prolonged illness, and their younger son, Karmdeep, 18. With no means to return to their village in Saurashtra, Divyaben has begun working as a domestic worker to make ends meet. Karmdeep dropped out after grade 11, and now attends a local coaching centre, where he is learning diamond faceting while looking for work.

“Education has become so expensive,” Divyaben said. “At least with coaching, he’ll learn a skill. By the time the market recovers, if he’s trained as a craftsman, maybe we’ll be able to repay some of our debts.”

She paused, her voice low. “I don’t know if education, whether taken on loan or given free, can really change our fate. Our only hope is still the diamond.”

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

You can access the Diamond Workers Union helpline at +91-92395 00009.

Farmers have been dogged by trade wars that have seen reduced purchases and increased prices on seeds and fertiliser.

United States President Donald Trump has announced a $12bn aid package to help farmers harmed by his hardline tariff policies.

Trump announced the package at a White House event on Monday, saying the money would come from funds raised by tariffs.

“What we’re doing is we’re is taking a relatively small portion of that, and we’re going to be giving and providing it to the farmers in economic assistance,” Trump said.

Since taking office, Trump has used emergency powers to pursue a sweeping tariff agenda, including imposing reciprocal tariffs on nearly all US trade and escalating a trade war with China.

While Washington and Beijing have since begun to de-escalate some of their tensions, the tit-for-tat has spelt a challenging year for farmers.

Despite record harvests in the US, China has increasingly turned to South America for agricultural products, notably soya beans and sorghum. They have also faced higher seed and fertiliser prices as a knock-on effect of the tariffs.

The Trump administration has been acutely aware of the impact, given Trump’s staunch support among many farmers during the 2024 election.

Trump referenced that support on Monday, saying, “We love our farmers.”

“And as you know, the farmers like me … because based on, based on voting trends, you could call it voting trends or anything else,” he said.

Before the White House event, a Trump administration official said up to $11bn in the new aid would go to the newly created Farmer Bridge Assistance, a programme for row crop farmers hurt by trade disputes and higher costs.

It was still being determined where the other $1bn would be allocated, the official said.

The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri has estimated that net farm income could fall by more than $30bn in 2026 due to a decline in government payments and low crop prices.

Soya bean farmers, meanwhile, are expected to see their third consecutive year of losses in 2025, according to the American Soybean Association, a decline that preceded Trump’s tariffs.

The Trump administration has sought to paint a rosier picture, pointing to an agreement between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping for Beijing to buy 12 million metric tonnes of US soya beans by the end of the calendar year. Beijing also agreed to buy 25 million metric tonnes per year for the next three years.

While China has since purchased only a fraction of its promised total in 2025, White House officials have said it is on track to meet the target.

US farmers typically receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies each year.

All told, farmers were set to receive a near-record $40bn in government payments this year, fuelled by an array of disaster relief funding and economic aid.

Hamnet, Sinners and One Battle After Another seen as top contenders, alongside films from Norway, France and South Korea.

The Hollywood award season in the United States is hitting high gear, with nominations unveiled for one of the biggest contests of 2026: the 83rd annual Golden Globes.

Often seen as a bellwether for the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes honour achievements in both television and filmmaking — a distinction that, with the advent of streaming over the last two decades, has become all the murkier.

Limping post-pandemic box office numbers and high-stakes mergers have also complicated the future of the motion picture industry, with streaming giants like Netflix making a play for the century-old studio Warner Bros.

Still, several big-name blockbusters and critical darlings topped this year’s Golden Globe nominations.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s political thriller One Battle After Another was a standout, making good on its star-studded cast to sweep five acting nods, plus nominations for Best Comedy, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It leads the field with nine nominations overall.

Anderson was not the only cinematic “auteur” to receive laurels from the Golden Globe Foundation.

Chloe Zhao’s historical tear-jerker Hamnet — based on the relationship between writer William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes — nabbed six nominations in drama categories.

And Ryan Coogler’s springtime crowd-pleaser Sinners — a vampire film and cultural commentary, wrapped in one — scored seven nods, including Best Drama, Best Director and Best Cinematic Achievement.

While the Golden Globes is often seen as a cozy, champagne-clacking affair for Hollywood titans, this year’s nominations also suggest an ever-more international scope for its honourees.

The meditative Norwegian drama Sentimental Value scooped up eight nominations, and the French nominee It Was Just an Accident, by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, earned four.

South Korea and Brazil also broke free from the Non-English Language Film category, scoring nominations in the acting, songwriting and animation competitions for films like KPop Demon Hunters, No Other Choice and The Secret Agent.

Some pieces of award bait, meanwhile, failed to deliver on their potential, including director Luca Guadagnino’s slippery, post-MeToo drama After the Hunt, which scored a single nomination for star Julia Roberts.

Likewise, the musical film Wicked: For Good — the sequel to last year’s award-season juggernaut — disappointed its expectations. While it scored nods in acting and song categories, it failed to land in contention for some of the biggest prizes, including Best Motion Picture: Comedy or Musical.

The 83rd annual Golden Globes are scheduled to air on January 11, 2026. Here is the full list of nominees:

Best Motion Picture: Drama

• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• It Was Just an Accident
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners
• The Secret Agent

Best Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy

• Blue Moon
• Bugonia
• Marty Supreme
• No Other Choice
• Nouvelle Vague
• One Battle After Another

Best Motion Picture: Animated

• Arco
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle
• Elio
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Little Amelie or the Character of Rain
• Zootopia 2

Best Motion Picture: Non-English Language

• It Was Just an Accident, France
• No Other Choice, South Korea
• Sentimental Value, Norway
• Sirat, Spain
• The Secret Agent, Brazil
• The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture: Drama

• Eva Victor for Sorry, Baby
• Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love
• Jessie Buckley for Hamnet
• Julia Roberts for After the Hunt
• Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value
• Tessa Thompson for Hedda

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture: Drama

• Dwayne Johnson for The Smashing Machine
• Jeremy Allen White for Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
• Joel Edgerton for Train Dreams
• Michael B Jordan for Sinners
• Oscar Isaac for Frankenstein
• Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy

• Amanda Seyfried for The Testament of Anne Lee
• Chase Infiniti for One Battle After Another
• Cynthia Erivo for Wicked: For Good
• Emma Stone for Bugonia
• Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue
• Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy

• Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon
• George Clooney for Jay Kelly
• Jesse Plemons for Bugonia
• Lee Byung-hun for No Other Choice
• Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another
• Timothee Chalamet for Marty Supreme

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

• Amy Madigan for Weapons
• Ariana Grande for Wicked: For Good
• Elle Fanning for Sentimental Value
• Emily Blunt for The Smashing Machine
• Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value
• Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

• Adam Sandler for Jay Kelly
• Benicio del Toro for One Battle After Another
• Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein
• Paul Mescal for Hamnet
• Sean Penn for One Battle After Another
• Stellan Skarsgard for Sentimental Value

Best Director for a Motion Picture

• Chloe Zhao for Hamnet
• Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein
• Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident
• Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value
• Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
• Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Best Screenplay for a Motion Picture

• Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell for Hamnet
• Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident
• Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt for Sentimental Value
• Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
• Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme
• Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Best Original Score for a Motion Picture

• Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein
• Hans Zimmer for F1
• Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another
• Kangding Ray for Sirat
• Ludwig Goransson for Sinners
• Max Richter for Hamnet

Best Original Song for a Motion Picture

• Dream As One for Avatar: Fire and Ash
  • By Miley Cyrus, Andrew Wyatt, Mark Ronson and Simon Franglen
• Golden for KPop Demon Hunters
  • By Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, Park Hong Jun, Kim Eun-jae (EJAE) and Mark Sonnenblick
• I Lied to You for Sinners
  • By Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Goransson
• No Place Like Home for Wicked: For Good
• The Girl in the Bubble for Wicked: For Good
• Train Dreams for Train Dreams
  • By Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner

Cinematic and Box Office Achievement

• Avatar: Fire and Ash
• F1
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
• Sinners
• Weapons
• Wicked: For Good
• Zootopia 2

Best Television Series: Drama

• The Diplomat
• Pluribus
• Severance
• Slow Horses
• The Pitt
• The White Lotus

Best Television Series: Musical or Comedy

• Abbott Elementary
• The Bear
• Hacks
• Nobody Wants This
• Only Murders in the Building
• The Studio

Best Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie

• Adolescence
• All Her Fault
• Black Mirror
• Dying for Sex
• The Beast in Me
• The Girlfriend

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series: Drama

• Bella Ramsey for The Last of Us
• Britt Lower for Severance
• Helen Mirren for MobLand
• Kathy Bates for Matlock
• Keri Russell for The Diplomat
• Rhea Seehorn for Pluribus

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series: Drama

• Adam Scott for Severance
• Diego Luna for Andor
• Gary Oldman for Slow Horses
• Mark Ruffalo for Task
• Noah Wyle for The Pitt
• Sterling K Brown for Paradise

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series: Musical or Comedy

• Ayo Edebiri for The Bear
• Jean Smart for Hacks
• Jenna Ortega for Wednesday
• Kristen Bell for Nobody Wants This
• Natasha Lyonne for Poker Face
• Selena Gomez for Only Murders in the Building

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie

• Amanda Seyfried for Long Bright River
• Claire Danes for The Beast in Me
• Michelle Williams for Dying for Sex
• Rashida Jones for Black Mirror
• Robin Wright for The Girlfriend
• Sarah Snook for All Her Fault

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series: Musical or Comedy

• Adam Brody for Nobody Wants This
• Glen Powell for Chad Powers
• Jeremy Allen White for The Bear
• Martin Short for Only Murders in the Building
• Seth Rogen for The Studio
• Steve Martin for Only Murders in the Building

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role on Television

• Aimee Lou Wood for The White Lotus
• Carrie Coon for The White Lotus
• Catherine O’Hara for The Studio
• Erin Doherty for Adolescence
• Hannah Einbinder for Hacks
• Parker Posey for The White Lotus

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie

• Charlie Hunnam for Monster: The Ed Gein Story
• Jacob Elordi for The Narrow Road to the Deep North
• Jude Law for Black Rabbit
• Matthew Rhys for The Beast in Me
• Paul Giamatti for Black Mirror
• Stephen Graham for Adolescence

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role on Television

• Ashley Walters for Adolescence
• Billy Crudup for The Morning Show
• Jason Isaacs for The White Lotus
• Owen Cooper for Adolescence
• Tramell Tillman for Severance
• Walton Goggins for The White Lotus

Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television

• Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?
• Brett Goldstein: The Second Best Night of Your Life
• Kevin Hart: Acting My Age
• Kumail Ali Nanjiani: Night Thoughts
• Ricky Gervais: Mortality
• Sarah Silverman: Postmortem

Best Podcast

• Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
• Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper
• Good Hang with Amy Poehler
• Smartless with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett
• The Mel Robbins Podcast
• Up First

EU leader Costa and the German government have hit back at a US security strategy harshly critical of Europe.

European Council President Antonio Costa and the German government have lambasted a new US national security strategy that paints Europe as a troubled, declining power that may one day lose its usefulness as an ally to Washington.

The remarks on Monday from the European Union’s leading economy and one of its top officials delivered a stinging rebuke to the National Security Strategy released on Friday by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

The 33-page document contains scathing criticism of the continent, claiming it is facing the “prospect of civilisational erasure” due to migration, scorning it for “censorship of free speech” and suppression of anti-immigration movements, and suggesting that the US may withdraw the security umbrella it has long held over it.

The stoush over the strategy, playing out as Washington ramps up pressure on Ukraine to agree to a plan to end the war with Russia, reflects what EU leader Costa said was a “changed” relationship between the US and Europe.

“We need to focus on building a Europe that must understand that the relationships between allies and the post-World War II alliances have changed,” Costa said at the Jacques Delors Institute, a think tank in Paris.

In response to the strategy document’s comments on free speech, Costa warned, “There will never be free speech if the freedom of information of citizens is sacrificed for the aims of the tech oligarchs in the United States.”

Costa strongly criticised allegations that free speech is being censored in Europe and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

“What we cannot accept is this threat of interference in Europe’s political life. The United States cannot replace European citizens in deciding which are the right parties and the wrong parties,” Costa said.

“The United States cannot replace Europe in its vision of freedom of speech,” he noted, adding, “Our history has taught us that there is no freedom of speech without freedom of information.”

‘Ideology, not strategy’

In Berlin, Sebastian Hille, a deputy spokesperson for the German government, said some of the criticisms in the document were “ideology rather than strategy”.

“Political freedoms, including the right to freedom of expression, are among the fundamental values of the EU,” he said.

He said Berlin also disagreed with the document’s failure to classify Russia, which in February 2022 launched a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, as a threat.

“We stand by NATO’s joint analysis, according to which Russia is a danger and a threat to trans-Atlantic security,” he added.

Divisions over Russia

The US strategy document makes clear that Washington wants to improve its relationship with Moscow, saying that it has a “core interest” in ending the conflict with Ukraine to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia”, while hitting out at European officials’ “unrealistic expectations” for a solution to the war.

An initial US plan for ending the war, which would have allowed Russia to hold on to large territories in eastern Ukraine, sparked criticism from European leaders amid concerns that Washington is trying to force Kyiv to accept unfavourable terms.

The plan has since been altered, first with input from Ukraine alongside its European allies and then in meetings between Ukrainian and US officials. The full details of the proposal as it stands have not been disclosed.

By contrast, Moscow has welcomed Trump’s strategy document.

Costa said that given the strategy document’s position on Ukraine, “we can understand why Moscow shares [its] vision.”

“The objective in this strategy is not a fair and durable peace. It’s only [about] the end of hostilities, and the stability of relations with Russia,” he said.

“Everyone wants stable relations with Russia,” Costa said, but “we can’t have stable relations with Russia when Russia remains a threat to our security”.

Trump has vowed to unleash AI competitiveness, but removing state oversight riles members of his Republican Party.

United States President Donald Trump has said he will sign an executive order creating “one rulebook” for artificial intelligence (AI) development.

The announcement on Monday via Trump’s Truth Social account represented the US president’s latest effort to remove AI barriers, a priority of his administration that has raised concerns related to oversight of the transformative technology.

Trump said the so-called “one rule executive order” would override state approvals of AI, although the legality of such a presidential action remained unclear.

“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” he said. “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”

“THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY!” Trump added, employing his typical use of all-capital letters.

The announcement comes as the White House has pushed for provisions creating a federal AI framework to be added to this year’s defence budget.

The initiative has divided members of Trump’s Republican Party, which has traditionally strongly supported the rights of states and a smaller federal government.

Opponents included Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly a staunch supporter of Trump, who has broken with him on several issues.

“States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state,” she wrote in November.

State lawmakers from across the political spectrum have also warned against federal actions that would override state policies.

“In recent years, legislatures across the country have passed AI-related measures to strengthen consumer transparency, guide responsible government procurement, protect patients, and support artists and creators,” they wrote in a letter to Congress in November.

“These laws represent careful, good-faith work to safeguard constituents from clear and immediate AI-related harms. A federal preemption measure on state AI laws risks sweeping these protections aside and leaving communities exposed,” they said.

Trump has maintained close ties with AI and tech leaders since taking office in January.

He has already signed an executive order calling for the removal of “barriers” to AI innovation. He has also published a so-called AI action plan and an AI “Genesis Mission”.

He compared the latter to the Manhattan Project programme, which led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapons.

A prominent Sudanese doctor’s group has accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of raping at least 19 women as they fled the city of el-Fasher in Darfur.

The Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Sunday that it documented the rapes among women who had fled to the town of al-Dabba in the neighbouring Northern State.

Two of the women were pregnant, the group said.

“The Sudan Doctors Network strongly condemns the gang rape being perpetrated by the RSF against women escaping the horrors of El-Fasher, affirming that it constitutes a direct targeting of women in a blatant violation of all international laws that criminalise the use of women’s bodies as a weapon of oppression,” the group wrote on X.

Sudan Doctors Network: We have documented 19 cases of rape committed by the Rapid Support Forces, including two pregnant women, at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba

The Sudan Doctors Network team at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba has documented the rape of 19 women while they were fleeing from… pic.twitter.com/u5qWp4bdSD

— Sudan Doctors Network – شبكة أطباء السودان (@SDN154) December 7, 2025

Sudan has been engulfed in civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, according to the United Nations. It has also left some 30 million in need of humanitarian aid.

The RSF took the city of el-Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, in October after an 18-month campaign of siege and starvation. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

Survivors who fled the city in the subsequent days recounted mass killings, rape, pillaging and other atrocities, prompting an international outcry.

Amnesty International has accused the RSF of “war crimes”, while the UN Human Rights Council has ordered an investigation into the abuses in el-Fasher. Officials who visited Darfur and spoke to survivors described the region as an “absolute horror show” and a “crime scene”.

Widespread sexual assault

Mohammed Elsheikh, a spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that he was “100 percent sure” that sexual violence committed by RSF fighters is far more widespread than reported.

“Because most of the communities look at it as a stigma, most of the raped women tend not to disclose this information,” he said.

Elsheikh said the network had also documented 23 cases of rape among women who fled el-Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila.

“Unfortunately, the age of these raped victims varies from 15 years to 23 years old,” he said.

In its statement, the Sudan Doctors Network urged the international community to take urgent action to protect Sudanese women and girls.

It also called for “serious pressure on RSF leaders to immediately stop these assaults, respect international humanitarian law, and secure safe corridors for women and children”.

The latest accusations came amid a growing outcry over another RSF attack on a pre-school in the state of South Kordofan that local officials said killed at least 116 people. Some 46 of the victims were children, according to the officials.

On Sunday, Justice Minister Abdullah Dirife said Khartoum was willing to pursue political talks aimed at ending the conflict, but insisted that any settlement must “ensure there is no presence for ‘terrorist’ militias in both the political and military arenas”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, he said the rebels “need to agree to give their weapons in specific areas and leave all these cities, and the police should take over”.

Dirife also called for putting a stop to the “transfer of weapons and the infiltration of mercenaries into Sudan” and claimed that fighters and arms were entering from regions including South America, Chad and the UAE.

The RSF currently holds all five states of Darfur, while the Sudanese army retains control of most of the remaining 13 states, including Khartoum.

Dirife also accused the RSF of repeatedly breaking past commitments to adhere to regional and global mediation initiatives.

“The last initiative we signed was the Jeddah Declaration. However, this militia didn’t commit to what we agreed on,” he said in Doha.

The Jeddah Declaration – brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia in May 2023 – was meant to protect civilians and lay the groundwork for humanitarian access. Several ceasefires followed, but both sides were accused of violating them, prompting the mediators to suspend talks.

The UN has meanwhile formally declared famine in el-Fasher and Kaduguli in South Kordofan and warned of the risk of a hunger crisis in 20 additional areas across the Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan regions.

The World Food Programme’s Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the agency was providing aid to five million people, including two million in areas that are difficult to reach, but warned that assistance has fallen far short of needs.

“World attention needs to be on Sudan now, and diplomatic efforts need to be stepped up in order to prevent the same disaster we saw in el-Fasher,” he said.

Lawmakers in the United States have urged the release of a video of a controversial double-tap strike on a vessel in the Caribbean amid growing scrutiny of the legality of Washington’s militarised anti-drug trafficking campaign.

The bipartisan calls on Sunday came amid mounting controversy over revelations that military officials ordered a follow-up strike in the September 2 operation targeting a suspected drug-smuggling vessel, killing two survivors of the initial attack.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers watched footage of the strikes last week in a closed-door briefing with military officials, but emerged from the screening with substantially different accounts of what happened.

Reactions to the footage split along partisan lines, with Democrats expressing deep concerns about the legality of the strikes and Republicans insisting they were justified.

Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’s armed services committee, said the targeted vessel had been “clearly incapacitated” in the initial strike, and the survivors were unarmed and without any means of communication.

“They ought to release the video. If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false, and people will get a look at it, and they will see,” Smith said in an interview with the ABC News programme This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

“It seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it because it’s very, very difficult to justify,” Smith added.

Jim Himes, who leads the Democrats on the House’s intelligence committee, said the American public should have the chance to judge the video for themselves.

“Look, there’s a certain amount of sympathy out there for going after drug runners, but I think it’s really important that people see what it looks like when the full force the United States military is turned on two guys who are clinging to a piece of wood and about to go under just so that they have sort of a visceral feel for what it is that we’re doing,” Himes told CBS News’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.

Several Republicans said they would support the release of the video, even as they defended the strikes.

Senator Tom Cotton, whose account of the survivors trying to “flip” the boat and continue their voyage has been disputed by Democrats, said he would not object to the video’s release, but would defer to the judgement of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon.

“I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing. It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on Jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years,” Cotton, who chairs the intelligence committee in the Senate, told NBC News’s Meet the Press.

John Curtis, a Republican senator from Utah, also suggested that he would support the video’s release, saying officials should “err on the side of transparency”.

“The American people, they like to make decisions too based on facts, not just on what we tell them,” Curtis told CNN’s State of the Union.

President Donald Trump, whose administration has carried out at least 22 strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific, said last week he would have “no problem” with releasing the footage.

Hegseth on Saturday struck a more cautious note during an appearance at a defence forum in California, telling a Q&A that officials were reviewing the possibility, but needed to make a “responsible” decision.

Scrutiny of the strikes has mounted since The Washington Post reported last month that US military officials carried out a second attack on two people clinging to the vessel’s wreckage after Hegseth directed commanders to leave no survivors.

Hegseth has repeatedly denied the report, which cited two unnamed sources, labelling it “fake news”, “fabricated” and “inflammatory”.

Legal scholars have argued that both the double-tap strike and the Trump administration’s military campaign against suspected drug traffickers more generally are illegal.

“The United States is not currently operating in a context of armed conflict in its strikes in the Caribbean. For that reason, this is not a context in which war crimes apply,” Tom Dannenbaum, an expert in the laws of war at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera.

“Instead, all of the strikes qualify as murder in violation of domestic criminal law, and extrajudicial killings in violation of international human rights law.”

At least 87 people have been killed in the strikes, which the Trump administration began in September.

The Trump administration has yet to make public any evidence to back its claims that the boats were carrying narcotics, were headed to the US, or that they were being commandeered by members of proscribed cartels.

As Israel and Hamas prepare to move towards phase two of a United States-led blueprint to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, disagreements loom over the as-yet undefined role of an international stabilisation force in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said on Sunday that the US draft required “a lot of clarifications”. While the group was ready to discuss “freezing or storing” weapons during the ongoing truce, he said it would not accept that an international stabilisation force take charge of disarmament.

“We are welcoming a [United Nations] force to be near the borders, supervising the ceasefire agreement, reporting about violations, preventing any kind of escalations,” he said, adding that Hamas would not accept the force having “any kind of mandates” on Palestinian territory.

His comments came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier in the day that he would meet with Donald Trump to discuss entering a new phase of the US president’s plan at the end of the month. The focus of the meeting, he said, would be on ending Hamas governance in Gaza and ensuring it fulfilled its “commitment” to the plan, which calls for demilitarisation of the enclave.

“We have a second phase, no less daunting, and that is to achieve the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarisation of Gaza,” Netanyahu said during a news conference with visiting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

It was not clear whether Naim’s comments on the group freezing or storing arms would satisfy Israel’s demands for full disarmament. The Hamas official said the group retained its “right to resist”, adding that laying down arms could happen as part of a process leading to a Palestinian state, with a potential long-term truce lasting five to 10 years.

The US-drafted plan for Gaza leaves the door open to Palestinian independence, but Netanyahu has long rejected this, asserting that creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas.

Vague plan

Trump’s 20-point plan offers a general way forward on such plans as the establishment of the stabilisation force and the formation of a technocratic Palestinian government operating under an international “board of peace”, but does not offer concrete details or timelines.

US officials have said they expect “boots on the ground” early next year, but while countries like Indonesia have agreed to contribute troops, there is no roadmap for setting up the force, and its exact makeup, command structure and responsibilities have not been defined.

Netanyahu appeared to recognise the plan’s vagueness. “What will be the timeline? What are the forces that are coming in? Will we have international forces? If not, what are the alternatives? These are all topics that are being discussed,” he said on Sunday.

The Israeli prime minister said that phase two of the plan, which will be set in motion once Hamas returns the last Israeli captive, a policeman killed in the October 7 attack on southern Israel, would be “more difficult”.

Stage one of the plan has already proven challenging, with Israel continuing to bomb Gaza throughout the ceasefire, killing more than 370 Palestinians, according to health officials. Meanwhile, it has accused Hamas of dragging out captive returns.

Israeli army says yellow line ‘new border’

The plan’s initial steps saw Israeli forces withdraw to positions behind a so-called yellow line in Gaza, though the Israeli military remains in control of 53 percent of the territory. The Israeli military said on Sunday that the line of demarcation was a “new border”.

“We have operational control over extensive parts of the Gaza Strip, and we will remain on those defence lines,” said Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir. “The yellow line is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity.”

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani warned at the Doha Forum on Saturday that the truce was at a “critical moment” and could unravel without rapid movement towards a permanent deal.

He said a true ceasefire “cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal” of Israeli forces, alongside restored stability and freedom of movement for Palestinians, which has so far not transpired under phase one of the plan. He did not allude to the yellow line in his comments.

Amid growing momentum for a move to phase two of the peace plan, Israeli and Qatari officials met with US counterparts in an effort to rebuild relations after Israel’s air strike on Doha in September, Axios reported, citing unnamed sources.