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A legal battle is under way between Argentina and the United Kingdom, triggered by an oil project off the coast of the disputed Falkland Islands.

The Argentinian government wants to stop drilling in the area by a joint British-Israeli venture, saying it should not take place until the issue of sovereignty has been resolved.

For its part, the British government rejects these arguments, stressing its full sovereignty over the area.

The case is the latest chapter in the dispute between the UK and Argentina.

The two countries went to war in the early 1980s after Argentina invaded the Falklands. So, what are the implications of this case?

Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Diego Guelar – Former Argentinian ambassador to the United States

Javier Farje – Latin American affairs specialist and historian

Tobias Ellwood – Former British MP who served as a minister at the Ministry of Defence and the UK Foreign Office

Match of the Day’s Dion Dublin and Leon Osman discuss the problems that have led to Crystal Palace being bottom of Premier League, after a couple of seasons of unprecedented success for the club.

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Democrats regained control of both chambers of the United States Congress in this year’s midterm elections, with a wave of victories that party leader Hakeem Jeffries likened to an “American tsunami”.

But as of Wednesday night, two US Senate races remain undecided.

A cliffhanger in the southeastern state of Mississippi and a scandal-plagued Alaska race are the final Senate contests to be tallied.

As it stands, the Democrats will usher in the 120th Congress on January 3 with a majority of at least 54 seats in the 100-member Senate.

If they win both Mississippi and Alaska, they will need fewer Republican breakaways to avoid the filibuster, a means by which the minority party can indefinitely stall legislation in the chamber. Filibusters can be avoided with a 60-member vote.

So, why are Alaska’s and Mississippi’s Senate races still up in the air? Al Jazeera breaks it down with this brief explainer.

What’s the hold-up in Mississippi?

The Republican stronghold of Mississippi was an unlikely Senate battleground this year.

The last time the state voted for a Democratic president was in 1976. The last time it elected a Democrat to statewide office was more than a decade ago, in 2015.

But the race between incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, and her Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, proved tighter than expected.

The contest remains too close to call, with both candidates holding about 49 percent of the vote, according to The Associated Press (AP) news agency. Ninety-six percent of the ballots have been counted so far.

As of Wednesday night, Colom was leading Hyde-Smith by a razor-thin margin of 1,138 votes, with a few thousand provisional and mail-in absentee ballots left to be counted.

Provisional ballots, also called “affidavit ballots”, are supplied to voters whose eligibility is uncertain. This can happen when a voter fails to present the appropriate identification documents at their local polling precinct.

Mississippi allows 10 days for such votes to be processed. Mail-in ballots, meanwhile, have a window of five business days to be received after the election, according to state officials.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson counted roughly 3,600 mail-in ballots still to be tallied, along with an “unknown” number of affidavit ballots.

“Counties have 10 days from the date of the election to submit their certified results to our office, which is November 13,” Watson wrote.

In the event of a deadlock, Mississippi is the only state in the country with no formal provision that would automatically authorise a recount. The candidates would need a court order to request one.

When will we know Alaska’s results?

In the northwestern state of Alaska, the Senate race could take days or weeks to be called, owing to the state’s vast rural distances and its ranked-choice voting (RCV) system.

Democrat Mary Peltola leads incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan by a meagre 637 votes as of Wednesday night, according to AP.

The race has become one of the most closely watched in the country. Nearly a quarter of the votes remain uncounted.

Ranked-choice ballots allow Alaskan voters to number the candidates in order of preference.

But the system can result in multiple vote counts. The initial count tallies the candidates ranked as voters’ top choice. If one of those candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote, they win the election outright.

If no candidate passes the 50 percent threshold, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and a new round of vote-tallying commences. Supporters of the eliminated candidates see their votes redistributed to their second choice.

This process of elimination and recounting continues until one candidate ultimately wins a majority.

Alaska is one of only two states in the US to use ranked-choice voting for statewide elections, and critics blame the system for the slow vote tally.

According to Alaska’s Division of Elections, ranked-choice results will not be published until 15 days after the election, on November 18.

The state is also under a microscope due to a controversy in the Senate race. Two candidates named Dan Sullivan competed in the contest.

One, Dan S Sullivan, is the state’s incumbent senator and an ally of President Trump.

The other, Dan J Sullivan Jr, is a retired schoolteacher widely rumoured to have been a Democratic plant to draw votes away from the incumbent.

Trump’s Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to prevent Alaska from certifying its election results, claiming the second Sullivan amounted to an attempt to pervert voter choice.

But a federal judge dismissed the suit on Sunday. The Justice Department has nevertheless pledged to appeal, a prospect all the more likely if Peltola prevails in the vote count.

It’s one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts.

The dispute over the territory of Western Sahara started more than 50 years ago. It began with the end of Spanish colonial rule in the region.

Since then, both Morocco and the Polisario Front have claimed the Western Sahara.

In the 1990s, the United Nations tried to reach a settlement, and deployed a peacekeeping mission to the region.

Last week, that effort ended when Russia and the United States blocked proposals to extend the mission’s mandate.

So, could this development lead to renewed fighting?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Samir Bennis – Political analyst and author of the book The Self-Determination Delusion: How Activist Scholars and Journalists Have Hijacked the Western Sahara Case

Irene Fernandez-Molina – Senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and author of the book Moroccan Foreign Policy under Mohammed VI, 1999-2014

Mahjoub Mleiha –  Advocacy head of Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA)

The success of Palestinian-led parties – who won 15% of the vote in Israel’s elections – has created a conundrum for Israel’s leadership: partner with non-Zionists or accept political gridlock. While the bloc led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got the most support from Israeli voters, it didn’t win enough seats in Israel’s parliament (Knesset) to build a ruling coalition so far.

Israeli politician Ofer Cassif, a member of one of the Palestinian-led parties, tells host Steve Clemons that the Israeli people “need to understand that the future must be a future of Jewish-Palestinian partnership and not another form of exclusion.”

Sao Paulo, Brazil – Far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, along with his wife and two daughters, landed in Miami, Florida, in the United States on Wednesday, days after he was defeated in Brazil’s presidential run-off election.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued an order late on Sunday night for Bolsonaro to turn in his regular and diplomatic passports, believing him to be a flight risk in connection with a money laundering and currency evasion investigation involving the senator and his friend Willer Tomaz — who the local press says already left Brazil for Miami two weeks ago.

Argentine immigration authorities said on Wednesday that Flavio and his family used a land crossing to enter Argentina late Tuesday night, and less than an hour later boarded a private plane operated by Baires Fly destined for Guayaquil, Ecuador. That plane arrived in Ecuador, and later took off for Miami, Florida, with Flavio and his family on board. The Bolsonaro family landed at Opa-Locka Executive Airport near Miami on Wednesday morning.

The US State Department confirmed on Tuesday that it will issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family, allowing them to enter the country.

US President Donald Trump and Argentina’s President Javier Milei are the only two prominent world leaders who have not yet acknowledged Brazil’s Sunday election result, in which centre-left incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pulled off a jaw-dropping comeback to win re-election, scoring 51.8 percent of votes over Bolsonaro’s 48.2 percent. It was a difference of millions. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said, without citing evidence, that Brazil’s election appeared to have been “rigged”, though he also expressed his admiration for President Lula.

News of Flavio’s abrupt departure drew swift indignation from some voters on the ground.

“He’s acting like a coward who’s unwilling to face the consequences of his actions,” said Cristiana Cunha, 36, speaking to Al Jazeera in Sao Paulo. She said she was unsurprised by news of his leaving the country.

Priscila Cardoso, a 45-year-old psychoanalyst also living in Sao Paulo, was even more scathing: “It’s a joke, it’s like a parasite fleeing through the sewer,” she said.

Political analyst Paulo Roberto de Souza of the Democracy in Check Institute told Al Jazeera that Flavio’s flight may kick off a new dispute for power among Brazil’s conservatives, in which the Bolsonaro family may be pushed to one side.

“By leaving the country, he’s made it easier for the right wing to start a fight over the Bolsonaro’s spoils,” he said, noting that, despite the relatively fine margins, Flavio’s defeat on Sunday was “humiliating” for the family.

“In 2022, [Flavio’s father] Jair Bolsonaro became the first incumbent Brazilian president to lose a re-election battle. And now, in 2026, Flavio became the first presidential candidate to lead after the first round and lose a run-off. It imposes a ceiling on the Bolsonaros’ power,” de Souza said.

In the aftermath of Sunday’s result, Flavio called a press conference in which he said it would be “impossible” for him to acknowledge the outcome of the vote, announcing he would pursue a petition to have the election annulled.

His claims were based on a last-minute Brazilian Supreme Court decision on Sunday that delayed the closing of polls by two hours, after both candidates had requested extensions due to insufficient availability of public transportation and adverse weather conditions. But official records show that fewer than 35,000 votes were recorded during the two-hour polling extension, and Lula’s winning margin was more than 4.4 million votes.

For some voters, Flavio’s call for an annulment came across as bad sportsmanship. Cardoso, who is a single parent, likened his behaviour to that of a “spoiled child who loses a game and takes the ball home with them”.

While Flavio has yet to concede defeat, his Liberal Party has recognised Sunday’s result, and prominent allies have sought to put the election behind them.

Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who campaigned alongside Bolsonaro and won re-election in a first-round landslide, published a two-minute video on social media on Tuesday outlining his own project for the country and mentioning Flavio only once.

“Without a doubt, Tarcisio is the main figure in this reorganisation process on the Brazilian right,” said de Souza. “For this election, he was the name floated and insisted upon by some key figures in Bolsonarism, as well as neo-Pentecostal leaders.”

His main obstacle, however, will be walking the tightrope between political pragmatism and continuing to convince hardline Bolsonaristas that he is a “loyal ally”.

It is unlikely, in de Souza’s view, that there will be a member of the Bolsonaro family on the presidential ticket come the next election in 2030. “They are much more likely to be figures that provide endorsement, rather than actual players themselves,” he said.

Among voters, however, Bolsonarism stepping into the background appears like a distant thought. “The Bolsonaro family is always trying to perpetuate its power in Brazil,” noted voter Cunha, pointing to the election of Flavio’s brother Carlos and mother-in-law Michelle to Senate seats.

“I definitely think there could be a Bolsonaro on the ballot in 2030; I just don’t know which one.”

Algeria’s parliament has approved a proposal to deploy troops to neighbouring Niger, in a major shift in the North African nation’s noninterventionist military doctrine.

Algeria’s lower house, the People’s National Assembly, ratified the deployment on Sunday after the upper house, the Council of the Nation, unanimously approved the proposal earlier in the day.

Details about the number of soldiers and when they will be deployed have yet to be made public.

It comes nearly two months after Algeria dispatched four Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 jets, a transport aircraft and an aerial refuelling aircraft to Niamey, following what Algerian authorities described as an attempt to destabilise Niger’s military-led government.

The step comes amid a thawing of relations between Algiers and Niamey as Niger’s President Abdourahamane Tchiani visited Algeria in February and, months later, his defence minister, Salifou Mody, ⁠⁠travelled to Algiers to discuss security cooperation.

The shooting down of a Malian drone by the Algerian army last April triggered a diplomatic crisis after Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso recalled their ambassadors from Algiers. The condemnation of the 2023 coup in Niger by Algeria had also strained ties.

The troop deployment is reportedly intended to protect oil installations belonging to Algeria’s state-owned energy company, Sonatrach. Troops would be sent “to protect Algeria’s economic and strategic interests, particularly its oil facilities in Niger”, The Associated Press news agency reported, quoting Algerian Senator Belkacem Boulghiti.

It also comes as Algiers seeks to deepen security cooperation in the Sahel, a vast belt of territory stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, including several countries along Algeria’s southern frontier.

Why does this matter?

Algeria has historically been reluctant to deploy its armed forces beyond its borders, reflecting a longstanding foreign policy built around sovereignty, noninterference and opposition to foreign military intervention.

But that does not mean it has never done so.

Algerian forces participated in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, although overseas military deployments have remained exceptionally rare in the decades since.

A constitutional revision in 2020 formalised the conditions under which Algerian troops could be sent abroad.

Under Article 91, the president may authorise such deployments, provided they receive the backing of at least two-thirds of the members of each chamber of parliament.

The constitution also provides for Algerian participation in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League.

The move is particularly significant given Algeria’s military capabilities. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the country spent more than $25bn on its armed forces in 2025, making it Africa’s largest military spender.

But the decision also comes against a backdrop of growing diplomatic tensions and shifting regional alliances.

In September, Algeria severed diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, accusing Abu Dhabi of repeated “hostile” and “provocative actions” without publicly detailing the incidents behind the decision.

The two countries have long disagreed over several regional issues, including Western Sahara and the UAE’s alleged interference in North African and Sahelian affairs.

Taken together, these developments suggest that Algeria is becoming increasingly willing to assert its security interests beyond its borders, even as it continues to emphasise the principles of sovereignty and noninterference.

Why the Sahel?

For Algeria, instability in the Sahel is not a distant security concern.

The country shares thousands of kilometres of borders with Mali, Niger and Libya, making developments in its southern neighbourhood particularly consequential.

The roots of the current security crisis can be traced, in part, to the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya in 2011.

At the height of the Arab Spring uprisings, Algeria took a firm stance against foreign military intervention and warned that the disintegration of the Libyan state could destabilise neighbouring countries.

Those concerns were not unfounded.

Following Gaddafi’s overthrow, weapons and armed fighters, including Tuareg who had served in Libya, spread into neighbouring countries.

Their return helped fuel a rebellion in northern Mali in 2012, contributing to a security crisis that preceded the military overthrow of President Amadou Toumani Toure that March.

Over the following decade, armed rebellion expanded across parts of the Sahel, particularly Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Since 2012, those three countries alone have experienced six military coups: three in Mali, two in Burkina Faso and one in Niger.

Many of the coups unfolded against a backdrop of deteriorating security, with military leaders accusing civilian governments of failing to contain increasingly powerful armed groups.

But insecurity was not the only factor. Political grievances, governance failures and rivalries within armed forces also contributed to the coups.

Who else is operating in the Sahel?

Another factor shaping Algeria’s calculations is the changing presence of foreign military forces across the region.

For more than a decade, France was a central player in counterterrorism operations in the Sahel, deploying thousands of troops to combat armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

But that military presence has largely unravelled.

Following successive coups and deteriorating diplomatic relations, France withdrew its troops from Mali in August 2022, Burkina Faso in February 2023 and Niger in December 2023.

The withdrawals were accompanied by growing anti-French sentiment and demands from military governments for greater control over their security policies.

Niger demanded the departure of approximately 1,500 French soldiers following its July 2023 coup.

Just months later, in April 2024, approximately 100 Russian military personnel arrived in Niamey, bringing equipment and providing training to Nigerien forces.

The personnel were associated with Africa Corps, a Russian paramilitary group close to the Kremlin.

Moscow has also expanded its military cooperation with Mali and Burkina Faso, where Russian personnel have undertaken training, advisory and security roles, including combat support in Mali.

The United States has also seen its military footprint shrink.

In 2024, Washington withdrew approximately 1,000 soldiers from Niger after the military government terminated their security cooperation agreement. The withdrawal included personnel stationed at an important US drone base near Agadez.

The result has been a significant realignment of the Sahel’s security partnerships, with Western military forces departing and Russia assuming a more prominent role.

What does Algeria stand to gain?

For Algiers, the proposed deployment to Niger carries immediate security and wider strategic implications.

At the most practical level, protecting Algerian energy investments would help safeguard the country’s economic interests in a region affected by armed rebellions and political instability, including the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP), which would transport Nigerian gas to Europe and traverse Niger and Algeria.

It could also deepen cooperation with Niger, whose military government has sought new security partners since taking power in 2023.

More broadly, the move would allow Algeria to establish a direct military presence in a neighbouring country at a time when the Sahel’s security architecture is being reshaped.

“We are not sending our soldiers to wage war in Niger, but for a mission to secure economic infrastructure,” Senator Boulghiti told reporters after the vote. “It is simply an adaptation of our doctrine to evolving circumstances so we can rise to the new challenges imposed by the situation in the Sahel region.”

Government websites in Europe and elsewhere have gone offline after news of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators scrambling to protect their systems.

Developers of the PHP programming language on Wednesday released urgent new fixes, saying all users were “encouraged to update immediately”.

PHP runs on the servers that host websites, building pages behind the scenes before they reach a visitor’s browser. Most people never see it, but it powers everything from blogs to online shops and government portals.

The vulnerabilities, which had been lurking in the software for years, were uncovered with the help of artificial intelligence. Details about them leaked online on Tuesday before fixes were available, forcing PHP to rush them out.

Experts said they were bracing for a wave of intrusions as hackers jumped to get ahead of the updates.

What is the bug?

Andrew Cullen, a lecturer on AI and cybersecurity at the University of Melbourne, said many devices in the world are connected to one piece of foundational software, which is where the bug was found.

The vulnerability allows a hacker to run code on a website, meaning they could change the website or force it to release personal information collected in a database, Cullen told Al Jazeera.

Both flaws stem from how PHP handles fatal errors, such as running out of memory. Because the problem sits in PHP itself, even the simplest website running an affected version can be vulnerable, and attackers could read passwords and other credentials from a server’s memory, the cloud security company Wiz said. Both flaws scored 9.2 out of 10 on the industry’s standard severity scale, placing them in the “critical” category.

The two flaws, nicknamed PHP2Shell, were found independently by two cybersecurity companies using AI. Calif, working with OpenAI, reported the first on August 11. Wiz, which is owned by Google, reported the second on August 24.

The vulnerabilities remained hidden in the PHP codebase for more than a decade and would have been extraordinarily complicated for a human hacker to take advantage of, Wiz said in a statement.

Calif and Wiz said they had coordinated with each other, the PHP team and OpenAI before making the vulnerabilities public.

However, Amazon security chief CJ Moses said his security team detected an attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities on October 17, four days before the public disclosure.

Moses said it was unclear how the hacker learned of the flaws while Calif’s and Wiz’s reports were still under embargo. Security researchers usually keep details of flaws secret until a fix is ready, so attackers cannot use them in the meantime.

Who can potentially be affected?

PHP, a language that dates back to the early 1990s and initially stood for Personal Home Page, underpins huge parts of the public-facing web and is baked into WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento sites, meaning any critical vulnerability potentially has enormous knock-on consequences.

Calif, Wiz and the web infrastructure company Cloudflare said the flaws affect PHP 5.4 and later versions, more than a decade of releases.

Cullen said the vulnerability was “really unprecedented”, noting that PHP powers more than 70 percent of websites globally, although sites that have been updated are protected.

“There is a real risk to the kind of shared digital infrastructure that we all rely on,” Cullen told Al Jazeera. “There is concern in the cybersecurity community about what the blast radius for this will be, even though the developers of PHP have been very quick to try and develop patches for it.”

Cullen added that while AI was getting better at cybersecurity, it was also getting better at being a hacker. “This means that we are developing systems … that are making the internet safer by helping to fix bugs, but we’re also making it riskier by discovering bugs and creating bugs they’ll be able to hack,” he said.

What has the impact been so far?

In the Netherlands, the Dutch cybersecurity agency itself went offline, saying it had done so as a precaution because of the vulnerabilities. Several organisations followed the example and took public-facing websites offline, including the Port of Rotterdam, government portal Overheid.nl, the national football association KNVB, the websites for the country’s five largest political parties and several hospital ‌websites.

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said he was closely monitoring the situation.

Disruptions were even more widespread in Finland, where state IT services provider Valtori said government public network services had been taken offline “as a precautionary measure”.

France’s Ministry of the Interior said it had placed all of its websites into preventive maintenance.

Belgium’s Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation said it had temporarily taken its websites offline after reports of cyberattacks exploiting the PHP vulnerabilities although the country’s cybersecurity centre said it had not recorded any attacks on Belgian websites.

South Korea’s ⁠government raised ⁠its private-sector cybersecurity alert level and activated emergency response measures. It issued security guidance to about 28,000 companies with registered chief information security officers and 5,900 members ⁠of a government information-sharing ⁠network as well as operators of critical infrastructure, web-hosting firms and data centres.

The operator of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia also said it had taken down an unspecified number of systems until they could be safely patched while the Internet Archive, the sprawling online library, said it also briefly went offline to deal with the issue.

Voters in Alberta have chosen to remain part of Canada in a first-ever independence referendum.

Canadian state broadcaster CBC News called the results of Monday’s vote late on the same day after 48 percent of the ballots counted showed overwhelming support for the “remain” side, with 76 percent opting to stay with Canada.

The result marks a major win for Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is facing a trade and political war with the United States amid US President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs and repeated suggestions of annexing the country.

On his way into a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, Carney called it a “great day.”

“I’m thrilled that Albertans have chosen unity. They’ve chosen to build together. They’ve chosen to continue to take care of each other, to move forward together with purpose,” he said.

But the result also comes as a disappointment for those Albertans seeking independence for the resource-rich region following years of grievances laid at Ottawa’s door. Here’s what we know:

What was the referendum about?

The nonbinding referendum was first announced in May following a campaign and petition by a group of Albertans who want to be an independent country.

While only about one-third of Albertans were found to be pro-independence in polls, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith argued in her announcement that a referendum was necessary to respect the 300,000 Albertans who had petitioned officials for it.

In the referendum, voters answered 10 questions, including whether the government should begin a binding process to seek independence from Canada. They also answered questions on immigration, access to provincial services like education, social care and healthcare, and voter identification requirements.

Prime Minister Carney had campaigned for Albertans to vote “remain”, saying last week at a rally in Calgary that separation would be “ a dangerous bluff that will lead to years of deep division”.

“There are some outside our borders who are working to break us so they can own us,” he said.

Researchers have pointed to possible online influence campaigns by both Russian and US entities that helped amplify the call for separation and allegedly shared misleading information. Alberta PM Smith told media in August that the online activity was under observation.

What have the reactions been?

Prime Minister Carney, who grew up in the region, said “Albertans made a clear choice” in a statement he made early on Tuesday.

“They chose unity, to build together, and to take care of each other,” he said, adding that “Canadians will move forward together with renewed purpose and high ambition.”

Alberta’s Premier Smith said she was pleased to see the results and that “Albertans have voted for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada.”

Separatist leaders from the groups Let Alberta Decide, the Alberta Prosperity Project and the Pathway to Independence said they will wait for all votes to be counted before conceding.

First Nations groups turned out in strong numbers to vote to remain with Canada, with one southern Alberta polling station in an area home to the Siksika Nation temporarily running out of ballots, local media reported.

Why is Alberta important, and why are there calls for independence?

Many Albertans have long complained that their critical natural resources are funding the government in Ottawa and the commercial hubs of Toronto and Montreal, but that the province does not receive proportionate benefits.

The province, with a population of 5.1 million, holds massive oil deposits. It also holds reserves of critical and rare-earth metals including lithium, titanium and zircon, which are essential for manufacturing many tech items, from smartphones to fighter jets.

Separatist movements, some of which even support Alberta joining the US, go back to the 1940s, following the discovery of oil reserves. Some of Alberta’s premiers have had spats with Ottawa over wealth distribution.

US President Trump has made remarks about Canada becoming a US state in recent months.

Last week, he told a political rally in the US state of Arizona that Canada will “end up being the 51st state, because it’s the only way it works”.

The two countries have been embroiled in a trade war since talks fell apart in August this year and they slapped each other with tit-for-tat tariffs.

Earlier this month, tech billionaire Elon Musk called for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec to separate from Canada, saying “they’d be better off”.

But the matter of Alberta’s independence gained intense scrutiny last year after pro-separatists launched a petition to pressure the government.

Alberta, alongside other western provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, have all complained about “western alienation” by the government in the centre.

Is it over for Alberta’s independence bid?

With separatism agitations running so far back, experts say the referendum will likely not end the movement altogether.

Ahead of the vote, some separatist leaders said they would pursue another referendum if necessary, arguing that the referendum shows that independence is legally possible.

“Regardless of what happens on Monday, we’ve already won,” Keith Wilson, co-leader of Let Alberta Decide, said at a rally last week.

EXCLUSIVE Coronation Street star Vicky Myers has told the Mirror what Swarla fans can expect for Lisa and Carla Connor-Swain and their family as we head through the rest of 2026

Coronation Street star Vicky Myers has teased what’s ahead for Lisa and Carla Connor-Swain.

Teasing Halloween and the end of the year, she hinted there was no real drama. A year ago, the couple, known as Swarla by fans, hit a number of obstacles thanks to Lisa’s ex-wife Becky Swain.

Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Lisa actress Vicky agreed Christmas would be happier than last year, before she teased what was ahead for the Connor-Swains. She also teased Halloween, and it sounds like there’s plenty of fun ahead.

She told us: “As far as their relationship’s concerned, between Lisa and Carla, and also as a family unit with Ryan, they’re in a really good place. And I think after last year’s shenanigans, this is good, this is fine, you know?”

Asked if it would be a happy Christmas for once, Vicky replied: “Yeah!”. She then teased what was coming up for her character. On Halloween she said: “Just because it’s Halloween, it doesn’t have to be chaos and mayhem, it’s perfectly fine.”

Asked about the couple’s outfits for the Halloween episodes, she went on: “Just wait until you see them! I can’t really say too much about it, but I was having a chat with makeup, and I’d already suggested the costume and who Lisa should go as.

“And then this person passed away the week that we were shooting it, and I couldn’t believe it, because this person’s a bit of an icon. I just love this person. So to do that, it is a great homage to this person.

“I was made up. And I was very grateful to them for letting me sort of scratch that itch.” Vicky also shared the importance of Lisa and Carla living their own lives on the Cobbles, as well as having scenes together as a couple, amid viewers recently commenting that there’s been an absence of Swarla scenes.

Vicky explained: “It’s important because we get to see them in their own professions and as individuals rather than as a unit. But that doesn’t mean to say that they’re not together, and I know that some people can catastrophise things.

“But I think it’s really important that we can show these women in their their own way, in their own right. Because I think what’s really important is that Lisa came in as this Detective Sergeant.

“Carla’s been a a staple and an icon of the show for 20 years. I think it’s something to celebrate! Especially how ever-changing this industry is, and the show is. For Ali [King] to have been here and portrayed this iconic character for 20 years with the same amount of energy and brilliance and level of curiosity is fantastic, and absolutely should be celebrated.

“People should be sort of singing it from from the rooftops. But I do think it’s important for the viewers to see them in in their own profession and in their own right. It’s good representation as well.

“We have to go to work. Life is is very different to how it was years ago, and also with Betsy’s story, it was really important to be a story of hope, after everything that happened. Because we move, we go on, we continue, we have to. There’s no choice. So, I think for that as well, Betsy to have two working moms, that’s also massively important.”

Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITV X. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok, Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads.

Forces aligned with Yemen’s government on Thursday said that they had intercepted a drone headed towards Medina in Saudi Arabia, and a missile fired towards Riyadh, amid escalating fighting between them and Yemen’s Houthi group.

Fighting between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iran-aligned Houthi rebels has intensified along the country’s western Red Sea coast, along with expanding Houthi attacks on oil facilities and airports in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, Yahya Saree, the military spokesman for the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah or Supporters of God, said the group’s forces had conducted “a high-quality military operation targeting Aramco in Dhahran”, as well as strikes on Riyadh airport and a refinery in the capital.

He added that operations “will continue in the coming days, targeting Saudi enemy airports and oil facilities”.

A Saudi Ministry of Energy official confirmed that a building belonging to Aramco in Dhahran was hit, resulting in a “limited fire” but “no casualties or fatalities”. Dhahran is home to Aramco’s headquarters, a vast complex comprising numerous buildings and residential compounds.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition launched strikes against the Houthi stronghold in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which the armed group seized in 2014 and has held ever since. The coalition fought the Houthis, who also seized large quantities of Yemen’s military assets, until a ceasefire was agreed in 2022. That ceasefire has broken down in recent months.

Reporting from Sanaa, Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry said the war has become a tit-for-tat exchange of blows. The Iran-backed group “will continue to launch these air strikes and … its goal is to meet fire with fire – air strike for air strike, capital for capital, airport for airport, and energy facility for energy facility”.

Which sites have the Houthis targeted in Saudi Arabia?

Recent Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia have mainly targeted key infrastructure on the outskirts of Riyadh, but they appear to be edging closer to the city centre.

Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid international airport over the weekend killed 14 people and wounded more than 300 others. Houthi attacks have also been reported on other airports, including Abha international airport in southern Saudi Arabia, where two people were killed, and on Saudi Aramco energy facilities.

Authorities say Riyadh airport will remain shut at least until Saturday as several airlines cancelled flights, emptying the skies over the kingdom’s capital.

Al Jazeera’s Mawry said Saudi Arabia “has much more to lose” from tit-for-tat attacks disrupting air traffic, as Sanaa international airport has been closed for many years due to the damage it has sustained over the years of civil war. There are currently no Yemeni airliners at the airport.

Additionally, by disrupting security, the Houthis are signalling that Saudi Arabia will suffer mounting economic costs for its involvement in Yemen. Earlier this year, the Houthis similarly began launching strikes on Saudi-linked shipping in and around the Bab al-Mandeb strait at the entrance to the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia has increasingly relied on this shipping route for oil exports since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in March, under fire from the United States and Israel.

The kingdom is set to host a major investment conference in Riyadh later this month, dubbed “Davos in the desert”, but it is now unclear whether the event will go ahead amid the attacks.

Organisers of the Six Kings Slam tennis tournament, originally slated to begin next week in Riyadh, have announced the event will be pushed to December.

Saudi Arabia is also preparing to host the FIFA World Cup in 2034.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from the Qatari capital, Doha, said, “These military hits by the Houthi forces are meant to create a pressure campaign that is also having knock-on economic effects.”

“The Gulf Cooperation Council has become a place where these enormous events have been playing out over the past year, and if they carry on, the international implications for the global economy will continue to be negative,” he added.

What’s the situation on the ground in Yemen?

Yemeni government forces are currently engaged in a major counteroffensive operation, called “Dawn of Yemen“, to retake coastal territory seized in recent weeks by the Houthis near the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a vital maritime trade chokepoint.

The Saudi cabinet pledged in a meeting led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week that it “will not allow its security or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb strait to be threatened”.

On Wednesday, Yemeni government forces said they had carried out 2,309 “targeting operations” against the Houthis as part of their “Dawn of Yemen” military campaign.

The forces’ spokesperson, Majeed al-Nuzaili, said the operations were conducted using combat aircraft, drones, artillery and rocket launchers, and destroyed 460 Houthi military vehicles.

Government forces say they have retaken areas in Sabr al-Mawadim and al-Sarari in Taiz governorate and have repelled a large Houthi attack west of Taiz city in southwest Yemen, a government-held city that was besieged by Houthi fighters earlier this month. Taiz governorate includes the flat, western coastal region on the Red Sea, which contains the port city of Mocha and the Bab al-Mandeb. Much of the governorate also lies within Yemen’s highlands while its capital, Taiz, is nestled between mountains.

Al Jazeera’s Mawry said fighting has been so intense in the area because of its strategic value. “Whoever controls the altitude and gains control of the mountains controls the landscape. They control the Red Sea coastlines and even the city of Taiz,” he said.

The internationally recognised Yemeni government has been calling for more reinforcements as well as Saudi air attacks on the positions recently taken over by the Houthis, mainly in the district of al-Misrakh, south of Taiz, and the district of at-Turbah, which are the gateways to the city of Taiz.

Mawry reported that while the Saudi-led coalition’s aerial strikes are forcing the Houthis to withdraw and retreat, allowing government forces to advance, they have not been able to gain a full hold over some of those positions.

“It is then followed by another counter-military offensive by the Ansar Allah group to retake the area. And this is sort of the routine that we have been seeing since early September,” he said.

The Houthi siege of Taiz has resulted in civilian casualties and severe shortages of fuel, gas and other supplies. On Wednesday, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported that wheat flour stocks have been nearly exhausted.

The Red Cross said front-line hospitals in areas including Marib, Taiz and Yemen’s Red Sea coast ⁠are registering unprecedented numbers of weapon-wounded patients, with some facilities admitting more than ⁠700 casualties in a single week.