Top World News

Oct 29, 2026 - World

Prime minister claims Arab Israeli parties used foreign backing to steal elections, in which his coalition lost its majorityBenjamin Netanyahu has been accused of using smear tactics to cling to power, after he claimed that Arab Israeli parties had used foreign backing to “steal” Tuesday’s election, in which the prime minister’s coalition lost its parliamentary majority.Netanyahu and his allies called on the internal security service, Shin Bet, to investigate alleged vote buying and other irregularities in Palestinian communities in Israel, supposedly funded by foreign money. Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump's administration quietly agreed to arm a foreign military unit with a gruesome human rights record, a new report revealed.The Trump administration agreed to send about $35 million in military aid, including armored personnel carriers, to Cameroon's Rapid Intervention Battalion, known as the BIR, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. U.S. officials and congressional aides told The Journal that State Department officials negotiated the aid alongside a deal for the Central African nation to accept deportees from the U.S. who aren't Cameroonian.The unit has a brutal past. A 2017 Amnesty International report accused the BIR of war crimes during its fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group, finding that members beat and drowned detainees and tortured some of them to death. Trump's first administration cut off some aid to the unit in 2019 and booted Cameroon from a U.S.-Africa trade pact over its forces' ongoing abuses, which Cameroon denied at the time.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on the aid package earlier this year, according to The Journal. That stalled the deal for months until April, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team told her the administration was overriding her and pushing ahead.Shaheen this week tore into the arrangement as "grotesque" and said Rubio had let her down by signing off on it.In a statement, Shaheen argued that the U.S. has no business handing sensitive military gear to governments with shaky human rights records, let alone as payment for taking in people.Cameroon started accepting U.S. deportation flights in December and has taken in at least 36 people since, according to Refugees International, a humanitarian advocacy group. Some officials told The Journal the Trump administration intends to ramp up flights to African countries in the coming months. Around the time the aid was disclosed to Congress in January, the U.S. also steered $30 million to the United Nations refugee agency's operations in Cameroon, even as it slashed foreign aid elsewhere.The State Department wouldn't discuss the details of any agreement but praised its partnership with Cameroon on security and counterterrorism, and said it follows the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid to forces tied to human rights abuses. Cameroon's embassy in Washington did not respond to The Journal's request for comment.

Oct 29, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump received a high-level military briefing Thursday as his administration considers launching another round of major attacks against Iran, according to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal.Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, made a rare in-person visit to the White House to discuss potential military operations, the Journal reported, citing U.S. officials and others familiar with the meeting.Cooper was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Dan Caine. The meeting also covered other topics, according to the report.The unusual gathering came as the U.S. weighs “resuming major combat operations,” the Journal reported Thursday. It followed a separate White House meeting a day earlier when military leaders met with Vice President JD Vance.Vance has reportedly reached out to one of Iran’s most powerful hard-liners in an effort to revive peace negotiations, according to the report, suggesting the administration is still pursuing diplomatic efforts even as it considers new military strikes.But Trump himself recently raised the prospect of renewed strikes.“We may do another little Epic Fury,” Trump said at a rally last week, referring to the earlier U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran.The possibility of renewed strikes has also alarmed some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who said he had been briefed on some of the classified military planning and called the plans "insane.""It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law," Murphy warned.

Oct 29, 2026 - World

US vice-president writes to top Iranian security official in sign Washington has not abandoned diplomacyHopes of averting a major new conflagration between Iran and the US soon after Tuesday’s midterm elections could rest on Iran’s response to a personal letter from the US vice-president, JD Vance, offering to restart diplomacy.The letter, written after predominantly Qatari mediation, was sent to the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, Mohsen Rezaei on Sunday. It requires Tehran to agree to make commitments on its nuclear programme at the start of a process that would lead to the opening of the strait of Hormuz within seven days in return for US sanctions relief. Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - World

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) says he’s been briefed on the Iran war plan President Donald Trump is expected to launch after the midterms and calls it “insane,” the Daily Beast reported on Thursday.Murphy said he couldn’t share details. However, in a post on X, he claimed the plan would likely destroy the country’s commitment to the rule of law, adding that it “will not achieve objectives and will set off a new cycle of escalation.”At the Middle East Institute on Thursday, Murphy said he’d had a “fairly detailed conversation” about it and predicted it would prolong the conflict with Tehran. He acknowledged the public has heard it described as short in duration, but said the plan is “insane.”He noted reports that the Pentagon may be considering civilian infrastructure targets.Murphy said officials had been asked by the president to develop a plan, and that whether they think it will work, he couldn’t say. In his view, it would drag out the war and hurt U.S. security interests.He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees. His comments followed reports that Gulf nations were told to prepare for a brief but intense campaign after Nov. 3. The Wall Street Journal cited officials as saying Trump was weighing strikes on nuclear sites and civilian infrastructure. Trump has said he won’t strike Iran before the election.Trump's campaign against Iran has proven wildly unpopular, with the public largely seeing him as breaking a promise to avoid foreign entanglements, and with the Strait of Hormuz crisis driving up energy prices to uncomfortable levels.