Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
United States President Donald Trump has awarded the country’s most prestigious honours in science and engineering to executives from top technology firms including SpaceX, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia.
On Thursday, Trump presented the National Medal of Science to billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Lisa Su of the semiconductor firm AMD.
Two more recipients received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation: Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
At the award ceremony, Trump credited the honourees with “helping pioneer an incredible future for America”.
“Because of these people here, we will always be on top. No one else can compete with us,” Trump said.
Five of the six people receiving medals on Thursday were born outside the US. Four are among the 10 wealthiest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The award ceremony took place hours after the Trump administration announced it was suspending Microsoft and other top tech companies from using the H-1B visa system, which allows companies to hire skilled foreign workers and put them on a path towards permanent residency in the US.
The suspension, officials said, was due to the companies allegedly using the system in a fraudulent manner.
The medal ceremony was the latest example of what critics see as an increasingly close relationship between Silicon Valley tech executives and the second Trump administration.
Powerful companies like Amazon, Meta and Nvidia contributed money to Trump’s second inauguration, and several high-profile industry leaders attended his swearing-in, including Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Trump, for his part, has pledged to slash regulations and position the US “as the world leader in artificial intelligence”.
He has also touted self-regulation in the AI industry amid concerns about the safety of the technology.
Several of the tech entrepreneurs honoured on Thursday have forged close ties to the White House, through political and business dealings.
The South Africa-born Musk, for example, was the largest contributor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and has been a supporter of right-wing causes around the world, which he amplifies on his social media platform, X.
He briefly served as a special adviser to the president during the first months of Trump’s second term, helping to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its efforts to downsize the federal government.
Around the time he left DOGE, however, Musk and Trump had a public falling-out over the president’s tax-and-spending plans.
The two have since reconciled. On Thursday, Trump hailed Musk as “our modern-day Thomas Edison” and an “industrial titan”, citing his work with the aerospace company SpaceX and the carmaker Tesla.
“Few Americans in history have done more to advance America’s national interest than Elon in one field after another,” Trump said.
Another honouree, Dell, has been a financial backer of the president’s efforts to launch Trump Accounts, a scheme to enrol American children born during Trump’s second term into government-backed investment accounts.
Dell and his wife Susan Dell committed $6.25bn to the programme last year.
Separately, the White House entered into a deal in August for the US government to take a 15 percent cut of any AI chip sales that Nvidia and AMD make with China.
Huang, Nvidia’s co-founder, later invested in the struggling US tech firm Intel. He is reported to be among the donors financing Trump’s plans for a new White House ballroom.
The National Medal of Science was first awarded in 1963 to Theodore von Karman, a pioneer in aerospace engineering who fled anti-Semitism in Europe during World War II.
He went on to help found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Nominations for the award are solicited by the National Science Foundation, and the recipients are ultimately selected by a committee appointed by the president.
Anti-migrant protests in two cities in South Africa have turned violent, with the government blaming disinformation about a court ruling on asylum seekers.
Violence erupted on Thursday in Johannesburg’s Soweto township and the east coast port city of Durban, with two dozens cars set ablaze and foreign-run businesses forced to close, police said.
The unrest followed demonstrations demanding that refugee centres stop processing asylum applications.
Acting National Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane on Thursday said 10 vehicles were torched in Johannesburg and 14 in Durban, where three people were arrested.
In Soweto, a Reuters reporter saw residents carrying groceries out of a shop they said was owned by a person from Somalia, whom they chased away. Those residents fled after police arrived.
In Durban, a Reuters reporter saw cars torched in the urban centre, where foreign-owned shops were also looted. AFP reporters in the city said police opened fire with rubber bullets to disperse protesters who reportedly set alight a business run by foreigners.
The protesters are opposed to a July Constitutional Court decision that removes procedural barriers to seeking asylum, including for people who entered South Africa irregularly, lacked asylum transit visas, or missed reporting deadlines.
On Thursday, the government’s Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration held an urgent briefing to address overcrowding at asylum offices after implementing the ruling. A day prior, the committee said all its offices were overwhelmed by the number of incoming applications.
Government spokesperson William Baloyi said the violence was triggered by people spreading deliberately false information about the constitutional court ruling.
Baloyi said the court decision had been widely misrepresented, and that it did not automatically grant refugee status, permanent residence or other legal rights to undocumented migrants.
“We are deeply concerned by what is going on now,” he added.
Months of protests by populist, anti-immigrant groups against undocumented foreign nationals, demanding they leave South Africa, have led tens of thousands to flee, some repatriated by their governments.
Three decades since apartheid ended, South Africa remains deeply unequal and about a third of people are out of work. Migrants are often blamed for taking jobs, fuelling crime and straining public services, although such claims are not supported by evidence.
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – The video shared in Israeli settler groups shows two men bashing an olive tree with long wooden sticks. Smiling and congratulating one another, they try to knock the olives to the ground. They call the result “Pure Olive Oil”.
But as Palestinian activist Bashar Qaryouti explained, the two men don’t own the land, the trees, or the olives.
They’re Israeli settlers who set up an illegal settlement outpost on private property in the village of Qaryut, in the northern occupied West Bank, and made their way into this olive grove, some 200 metres (656 feet) away from Palestinian homes.
“No one has come near here for about three years, thank God,” one of the two men in the video says in Hebrew.
Local Palestinians know the man by name, and he does little to hide. The man is Avichai Suissa, an Israeli settler sanctioned by the European Union, United Kingdom – and previously by the United States – who runs a farm on the outpost. It was established more than a year and a half ago, and videos like this help Suissa raise donations for it.
On his campaign page, he says the goal is to rebuild and expand the farm, which was once dismantled by the Israeli army, to prevent it from falling “into enemy hands”.
“We’re gradually starting to work our way into the area,” Suissa said in the video.
But the land belongs to Palestinians – residents of Qaryut – who have not been able to reach it since the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023. “A few months ago, farmers tried to plough their land, but the army stopped them,” Qaryouti said.
“After we complained, the army declared the area a closed military zone a few days ago, so settlers are going to other lands, to other olives to steal,” Qaryouti explained.
Suissa and others are part of a growing movement of settlers who have intensified their campaign against the olive harvest. The campaign, part of a settler pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank, has turned the olive harvest season in October into a source of fear and danger.
Many Palestinians in the occupied West Bank describe this year as the worst yet in terms of settler attacks, and the season has barely started.
On Wednesday, armed Israeli settlers on tractors raided lands between the villages of Ramin and Burqa, in the northern occupied West Bank. They opened fire on farmers heading to their trees.
Ali Bazzari, a 44-year-old farmer, was killed. His only “crime”, the family says, was trying to pick his olives.
Witnesses say the Israeli army prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. Palestinians had to carry the injured through the mountains to hospitals.
The Israeli Rights Group Yesh Din says it documented 109 incidents of violence directly related to the harvest in 75 Palestinian communities between September 27 and October 6, an average of 11 per day.
Israeli settlers are increasingly attempting to adopt the rituals of the olive harvest season, while pushing out the Palestinians who have kept those traditions for generations.
Several new farms have been set up in the occupied West Bank. One shares videos of olives being pressed. Others invite Israelis to “join in” the experience.
Palestinians say the videos circulating show a disregard for the actual owners of the land taken by the settlers, and a clear attempt to appropriate the season, imitating its rituals and claiming them as their own.
Those rituals – things like collective picking, singing, and shared meals on the farms – are rooted in a deep connection to the land.
The olive harvest season may be an exhausting time of the year for Palestinians, with its hard work and long hours in the sun, but it’s a rewarding one. Olive farmers traditionally gather for family get-togethers, with neighbours and friends volunteering to help one another harvest the olives, in a cultural tradition known as “ouneh”.
The season has a light-hearted element, with debates about whose land produces the best oil, who should charge the most, and who knows how to pick the most olives and not drop any to the ground.
Older generations pass down lessons from history, such as the best time to harvest and how to nurture the trees – an inherited knowledge of climate, agriculture and the land itself.
“They planted so that we can eat. We plant so they [will] eat,” a well-known Arabic saying goes. It highlights the continuity of this inheritance, and the responsibility towards future generations.
These trees, which are meant to be protected, nurtured and passed on, are being taken away – not only by settlers, but by soldiers, too.
Hazem Sanaf, 61, stood on a nearby hill in the village of Beit Rima and watched as Israeli bulldozers ploughed through his lands in late September, after he had received an Israeli military order. The bulldozers destroyed and uprooted more than 400 trees belonging to Hazem and his neighbour, some of them decades old, and his only source of income.
“They just want to take our olive trees from us,” he said, his eyes reflecting his pain.
Hazem is not alone. Several Israeli military orders to uproot olive trees have been handed out across the occupied West Bank. Some have been carried out, while others await their turn.
In the past, the Israeli military has cited the need to clear land of trees to prevent security threats or ambushes on troops. But Palestinians say it reflects a pattern of dispossession and impoverishment.
According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC), Israeli settlers and soldiers have destroyed approximately 50,000 trees this year alone.
Fuad Daraghmeh, from the village of al-Lubban Asharqiya, near Ramallah, carried the thick, broken stem of a tree.
“I took care of it for 30 years,” he said, and headed home. He did not say what he planned to do with the stem, but others said that their trees had been uprooted before, and that they had managed to nourish them back to life.
Others are resigned to saying goodbye to the trees. They sit by the bulldozed trees with small hand tools, picking the last fruit of what they believe is their last crop.
Palestinians have been watching videos of settlers harvesting their olive trees, including the one shared by Suissa.
Beyond the pain, one remark keeps coming up: the method used by Suissa in vigorously beating the tree is no way to treat it, and no way to harvest olives.
“The people who have tended to their lands for decades know that,” one Palestinian activist, who did not wish to be identified for security reasons, said.
India’s Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) says that authorities have detained many of its members as thousands of the group’s supporters and members of several student groups continue to protest, demanding the election chief’s resignation.
Thursday’s demonstrations come ahead of CJP-led antigovernment protests planned for Saturday, with thousands expected to march to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in the capital, New Delhi.
Ashutosh Ranka, a spokesperson for the movement, said in a post on X on Thursday that “at least 10,000” people from CJP demonstrations, student organisations, affiliated grassroots groups and political parties had been detained across the country.
Among those arrested is CJP national spokesman Deepak Baliyan, who was taken into police custody on Thursday, according to the group’s statements.
Al Jazeera could not immediately verify the claims, but videos posted on X showed activists being taken away in vans.
Opposition parties and students affiliated with the CJP movement have been demanding the resignation of the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over a controversial revision of voter lists.
They accuse the poll body he heads of benefitting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On Thursday, CJP said that among those detained was a group of students from the city of Pune who were headed for New Delhi to participate in planned protests at the iconic Jantar Mantar observatory. CJP said they were taken away in a bus to an unknown location.
“Why not just declare EMERGENCY?” CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke said in a response to a post with a video of activists being detained.
India’s Election Commission has so far removed more than 130 million names from the voter lists, with millions appealing the removals. About 969 million people were eligible to vote in the 2024 election.
Protesters allege the changes disproportionately removed voters who support opposition parties while preserving or adding voters more likely to back Modi’s party.
The commission and government deny the allegations. They say the revision has no political motive but is aimed at removing duplicate and ineligible entries while ensuring eligible voters remain registered.
Earlier on Thursday, thousands of supporters of the CJP youth movement protested in the tech hub of Bengaluru.
Many of the protesters held posters that said, “Every name counts, Every vote matters” and “Stop the Murder of Democracy”.
Khushi Shrivastava, a 22-year-old architecture student at the protest, told the Reuters news agency: “I think voting right is the most basic point of democracy … People who actually want to vote, who actually care about the future of India, they are just being [denied] voting rights.”
On Wednesday, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was briefly detained for the third time in two days, as his Congress Party accused police of using “brute force”.
Police said the allegations were being used to “defame” them. BJP’s spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said the allegations were “being levelled by an irresponsible, anarchist opposition”.
Argentine prosecutors argued on Thursday that the “chaotic” medical team treating football legend Diego Maradona at the time of his death should receive prison sentences of up to 12 years.
Seven medical professionals have been on trial since April over Maradona’s death on November 25, 2020 while convalescing after surgery for a brain clot.
The star of the 1986 World Cup died of heart failure and acute pulmonary edema – a condition where fluid accumulates in the lungs – at a rented home in the Buenos Aires suburb of Tigre two weeks after undergoing surgery.
The larger-than-life star, who had a history of substance abuse, was 60 at the time of his death.
His medical team, including his chief doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist and nurses, are accused of providing grossly inadequate care in the lead-up to his death. They deny the charges.
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Patricio Ferrai said the defendants’ “chaotic organisation” left the ailing patient “in a helpless situation, abandoning him to his fate”.
He accused them of having “breached their duties, performed actions contrary to the art of healing” and having “omitted all the acts they were required to perform”.
The defendants are charged with “dolo eventual” – a legal term meaning that a person is aware that their actions could cause harm but persisted nonetheless.
The highest prison sentence sought by prosecutors was 12 years, for Maradona’s personal physician, Leopoldo Luque.
Other sentences ranging from four to 10 years were sought for other medical staff, which include a psychiatrist, nurse and coordinators.
The health workers have argued that Maradona’s death could not have been foreseen and that they did their jobs. Each defendant has also downplayed their own individual responsibility for his care.
The case has revolved around whether the doctors’ decision to allow Maradona to convalesce in a private home, instead of in a hospital, was negligent.
The prosecution has also pointed to the near-total absence of medical equipment, such as a hospital bed, defibrillator or quickly available ambulance as evidence of what they presented as the defendants’ dereliction of duty.
Several medical experts testified that Maradona’s carers failed to react to key warning signs – he was suffering from edema, tachycardia and had difficulty breathing – in the lead-up to his death.
“Diego Armando Maradona’s death clearly did not come out of nowhere: the signs of this fatal outcome began to appear long beforehand,” assistant prosecutor Cosme Iribarren said on Thursday.
The prosecution again showed the court shocking images of the former footballer lying dead in bed, his stomach grotesquely swollen.
Maradona’s three daughters, who were present in court on Thursday for the start of the summation, covered their faces to avoid seeing the images.
The summation is expected to last around two weeks and the verdict is expected at a later date.
The first trial over Maradona’s death was dramatically annulled last year after two-and-a-half months of hearings, following revelations that one of the judges took part in a clandestine documentary about the case.
At least 81 United States military aircraft, including fighter jets and drones, have been lost or damaged during Operation Epic Fury, the code name for Washington’s military campaign against Iran launched earlier this year.
The statistic comes as part of a report released on Monday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan government agency that provides budget-related research to the legislature.
It estimated that, as of August 1, the cost of the American aircraft losses during the US-Israeli war against Iran was between $1.9bn and $3.3bn.
The report this week highlights the growing price tag for the war, which began on February 28. A lasting ceasefire has remained out of reach as the conflict continues into its eighth month.
“The asymmetries of warfare show that even small countries with small militaries can inflict damage on the world’s best militaries,” said Harlan Ullman, a former naval officer and chairman of the Killowen Group, a government advisory firm.
He told Al Jazeera that Iran has managed to achieve a degree of success in damaging US military hardware and bases in the Middle East.
“Iran has plenty of US targets available, and you can imagine what a small drone can do to a major military asset. We have seen examples of that in the Gulf countries during the conflict,” Ullman explained.
Monday’s report listed 12 F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, one F-35A Lightning II jet and seven KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelling aircraft among those affected. Forty-five of the 81 aircraft identified in the report were MQ-9 Reaper drones.
Experts like Ullman trace some of the US vulnerabilities to the changing nature of modern warfare, which is increasingly reliant on low-cost drones that are widely available.
Many have pointed to Russia’s war against Ukraine as an example of how a smaller military like Kyiv’s can keep a larger adversary at bay through drone warfare.
Rumours of a potential drone attack on Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford — a British base that has hosted US assets during the Iran war — also resulted in the sudden departure of a dozen US aircraft on Sunday.
Ullman pointed to those instances as examples of how the threat of drone attacks has been effective in putting larger militaries on the defensive.
“We have seen the US had to relocate its B-1 bombers from the UK fearing Iranian attacks, and we have seen how the Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb, where small drones were launched from inside Russia, targeted and destroyed Russian military assets,” Ullman said.
The rising costs associated with the war against Iran have also placed political pressure on the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Earlier this year, his administration requested a record $1.5 trillion in defence spending for fiscal year 2027, citing the demands of the war.
But the soaring price tag has sparked scepticism in Congress, particularly from Democrats.
Last month, 45 Senate Democrats and one independent wrote an open letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding transparent accounting of the war’s costs.
They argued that a “detailed breakdown” of the costs was necessary before Congress considers further supplemental funding.
“American taxpayers have already paid an extra $100 billion out of their pockets for higher gas and diesel prices alone and at least another $60 billion in higher costs for things like groceries, mortgages, and plane tickets as a result of the war,” the senators wrote.
“Now you are asking that they pay again to fund a war of choice that Congress never authorized and the President launched with no strategic plan.”
In a separate report issued in September, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the war with Iran has cost roughly $38bn, as of August 1.
That amount reflects the costs of replacing expended munitions and equipment lost in battle, as well as increased fuel costs and other operations.
“An additional month of conflict would cost $2 billion,” the office said.
However, it added that, “if the intensity of the conflict increased to roughly the level experienced in July, the cost per month would increase to $3 billion”.
The Pentagon said it had “nothing further to provide” in a response to Al Jazeera’s query about whether the losses reported this week were expected and how they would impact the department’s budget.
Polls indicate the war is widely unpopular among US voters, and analysts have speculated about whether reports of rising costs may have an impact on the US midterm elections, which will decide whether Trump’s Republican Party will retain control of Congress.
But Ullman is sceptical that reports like Monday’s will be a determining factor in the outcome of the vote.
“I do not think that report will influence the course of the upcoming midterm elections, as many Americans, even those who oppose the war, would see it as expected damage in a military operation,” Ullman said.
Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca has brushed off the guilty verdict hanging over the club and says he and the players are fully focused on football matters.
City could face a severe points penalty and even expulsion from the Premier League after an independent commission found they used “sham” commercial contracts to inflate revenue and cut costs by over 900 million pounds ($1.2bn) between 2009 and 2018.
City, who top the league with five wins in five games, return to action for the first time since the guilty verdict was revealed when they travel to Liverpool on Sunday.
The eight-time Premier League winners, who have appealed the decision, then play their first game in front of their own fans since the verdict, when they entertain back-to-back Champions League holders Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday.
“I am very calm, the club has been quite calm. We trust completely the club,” Maresca told City’s in-house media on Thursday.
“We understand the noise, but the focus for us is what we control and we control the football side.
“The feeling is fantastic, to be honest.”
Maresca, who was assistant to former manager Pep Guardiola during the 2022-2023 season, addressed the players for the first time since the verdict when they returned to training on Thursday following the international break.
When asked about the reaction of the squad – many of whom have been linked with a move away from City if the club’s appeal fails – Maresca said they were “excited” given their start to the season.
“The players are excited for the next two games, but especially they are excited because in this moment, we are top of the league, so the players they are just focused on that,” he said.
“They know that what we can control is the football side. They are not worried at all about different things. They know they are professionals.
“They know that the noise is there, but they don’t care too much about the noise.
“They are just focused on this moment, how we can beat Liverpool, how we can, together with the fans, try to win at Anfield.”
As part of City’s appeal against the decision they have continued to maintain their innocence, saying the independent commission’s opinion contains “clear material errors” and that they possess evidence supporting their position.
The commission also found the club guilty of charges relating to their failure to cooperate with the investigation.
Premier League holders Arsenal begin the weekend’s action in the top flight on Saturday when they entertain Leeds United with the chance to move level on points with City, who would then hold Sunday’s game in hand.
London, United Kingdom – Ali Abu Yassin, a playwright from Gaza who continued writing even as Israel’s genocidal campaign devastated the world around him, has won a prestigious award in London.
“This prize is great not only for me, but for Gaza, Palestine, and all the Palestinian people,” Ali Abu Yasin, who was named on Thursday as “Writer of Courage 2026” by the literary group English PEN, told Al Jazeera.
The 62-year-old began writing plays and mastering the oud as a teenager in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, one of the largest in the Strip and a target of recent attacks.
“It’s how I was born, I’ve wanted to express myself using art since my childhood,” he told Al Jazeera.
After the war began in October, 2023, Abu Yasin stopped writing plays and instead wrote about life under Israeli bombardment.
Abu Yasin said for the first two years, he wrote about the situation in Gaza as Palestinians fled and feared for their lives.
“There was no theatre; it was impossible to have a theatre because Gaza was being destroyed,” the writer said, shaking his head.
Since 2023, Israel has killed more than 74,000 people in Gaza and the majority of survivors have been displaced several times over.
Abu Yasin works with actors who now rehearse their lines in makeshift tents, against the sound of gunfire.
“I was near death four, five times. I saw people around me die. We lived by chance, and those who died, died by chance,” Abu Yasin told Al Jazeera.
“My son was trapped under rubble; my house was bombed. So, during those two years, I was trying just to provide some safety to my family. To protect them from famine. And to document what was happening, so the world can hear my voice before I die.”
After a break, he wrote several screenplays that he hid and carried with him throughout displacement.
In 2004, Abu Yasin began working with the Said Al-Mishal Theatre, a hub for Palestinian culture in Gaza City that was levelled in a 2018 Israeli bombing.
Leading playwrights and theatre directors described the attack as “obliteration of this symbol of Palestinian culture and identity” in a letter to The Guardian newspaper.
In 2008, Abu Yasin began writing the Gaza Monologues, a series illustrating life in Gaza, both moments of joy and of pain.
A few weeks ago, Abu Yasin left Gaza with the support of an artist residency programme in France.
“I didn’t actually leave the war. The war lives in me, Gaza lives in me,” he said.
He has found himself conserving small amounts of water and minimising waste, habits he developed by living through the humanitarian crisis.
The award ceremony aligns with his trip to France, allowing him to attend in person largely by fortunate coincidence. For English PEN, the privilege of an in-person ceremony at the British Library is not taken for granted.
“For many years, writers living in Gaza have been among those with the most limited freedom of movement in the world. We recognise this and the direct impact it has on their freedom of expression,” an English PEN spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
Abu Yasin’s recent play, 50 Minutes, was shown in Gaza and tells the story of genocide and mourning. Actors rehearsed in a makeshift tent in a car park, many of them without any previous theatre experience.
Abu Yasin was nominated by the British academic and cultural critic Jacqueline Rose, who won the 2026 PEN Pinter Prize.
The Writer of Courage “is awarded to an author who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty, and shares the PEN Pinter Prize with the winner,” says English PEN.
The organisation is the United Kingdom branch of PEN International, a global association of writers dedicated to “championing freedom of expression and literary advocacy worldwide”.
PEN America, its United States counterpart, came under fire in recent years as some alleged it did not support Palestinian writers. PEN America faced a boycott, leading to the resignation of its president in 2025.
English PEN, which operates independently from the US group, joined PEN International in calling for an arms embargo on Israel and condemning the killing of Palestinian writers.
Rose described his work as “a call for justice, a cry of outrage and a spiritual quest” in a press release.
“He has been the consistent chronicler of the harshness and cruelty of Palestinian existence, and the mentor of young people struggling to pluck meaning from the debris of their lives.”
Rose came to prominence with her 2005 book, The Question of Zion, a psychoanalysis of Zionism.
Abu Yasin has three children and 16 grandchildren. All are in Gaza except for his son, Amjad Abu Yasin, who is an actor in France.
“In Gaza, we have simple dreams. We want to live in peace and to live in freedom. We want the sky and the seas to be open,” he said. “We just want some freedom.”
Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have found former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte fit to stand trial and able to face charges of crimes against humanity related to the so-called “war on drugs” he waged while in office.
The ex-leader is accused of murder and attempted murder for his alleged involvement in dozens of killings. He denies the charges, but faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.
The court in The Hague said on Thursday that independent medical experts had examined the 81-year-old’s health and concluded he was mentally fit to understand evidence and discuss his defence with his lawyers.
“The chamber was satisfied that the accused is able to effectively exercise his fair trial rights in the proceedings,” the court said.
His legal team had previously attempted to get the case thrown out on medical grounds, arguing that serious memory loss had left him unable to absorb new information or reliably recall the past.
The trial is scheduled to open on November 30.
Duterte, who served as president from 2016 to 2022, was arrested in the Philippines in March 2025 and sent to the ICC’s headquarters in The Hague following a lengthy ICC investigation.
Last month, he appeared in person for the first time at the ICC.
Duterte denies the charges against him, saying he only ordered police to act in self-defence as part of his anti-drugs offensive. Judges also denied a request for him to be released from custody.
Estimates of the death toll in the crackdown on drugs during his presidential term vary, from the more than 6,000 reported by the national police to up to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
Prosecutors say that police and government hit squads carried out dozens of killings at his orders, motivated by the promise of money or to avoid becoming targets themselves.
Throughout his presidency, Duterte enjoyed a high approval rating from the public, allowing him to push for his brutal anti-drugs agenda.
He became the first Asian ex-leader to be arrested by the ICC, which prosecutes individuals for the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel’s Ministry of Defence says it is participating for the first time in a defence exhibition in Morocco, as it announced its first-ever national pavilion at the Marrakesh Air Show 2026.
“This marks Israel’s first official participation in the defence exhibition held in Morocco since the signing of the Abraham Accords”, Israel’s Defence Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The ministry said eight Israeli defence companies exhibited “advanced, combat-proven technologies at the show” in Marrakesh, which runs until Saturday.
The Marrakech Air Show, taking place from October 7 to October 10 this year at the Marrakech Royal Moroccan Air Force Base, is organised every two years and is meant for civil and military aeronautics and space industries to highlight their latest offerings.
“Israel’s three major defence industries, Elbit Systems, IAI, and Rafael, also exhibited, presenting solutions across the air, land, sea, space, intelligence, cyber, and digital domains,” it said.
The announcement is the latest sign of increasing ties between the Arabic-speaking North African country and Israel, since the two established ties in 2020 as part of the US-backed Abraham Accords.
Last month, Israel and Morocco agreed to upgrade their diplomatic ties, including elevating their respective missions to embassies and appointing ambassadors to both countries.
The move followed a meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers, hosted by the US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
They also agreed to expand air travel, including by reinstating direct flights operated by carriers from both nations, and confirmed plans for high-level bilateral visits in the coming months.
Morocco is also one of the five countries that have pledged to send troops to Gaza, under the US-backed International Stabilization Force (ISF) as part of US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace.
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