In a stunning 11th-hour political about-face less than 48 hours before Michigan’s critical 2026 U.S. Senate Election Day, long-serving Democratic U.S. Representative Haley Stevens has ignited a firestorm of cross-party condemnation after publicly throwing her support behind Republican nominee Mike Rogers — a direct break from repeated, explicit assurances she gave to fellow party members that she would stand behind her former 2024 primary rival, progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Per CNN’s verified on-the-ground reporting, Stevens reaffirmed her unwavering commitment to El-Sayed as late as 10 p.m. on Saturday night to a senior, trusted Democratic Party ally, with no hint of a coming policy shift. Just 12 hours later, on Sunday morning, she stood side-by-side with Rogers at a prominent Detroit-area church to formally announce her full endorsement of the GOP candidate, a move that caught nearly every member of Michigan’s Democratic political ecosystem completely off guard. The abrupt reversal immediately set off a wave of fierce pushback from Democratic elected officials, grassroots organizers, and political commentators, with widespread scrutiny focusing on Stevens’ disjointed, often contradictory attempts to justify her last-minute decision during a live primetime CNN interview with anchor Anderson Cooper that same Sunday. When pressed repeatedly by Cooper to name a specific, verifiable event that had triggered her overnight change of heart, Stevens evaded direct answers for several minutes before stating, “Well, look, this is just a weight off my shoulders, OK?” She went on to make unsubstantiated claims that El-Sayed’s campaign had grown increasingly hostile and alienating to moderate Democratic voters, before doubling down with the baffling assertion: “Nothing with me changed, Anderson.” Cooper quickly called out the logical inconsistency of that claim, pointing out that Stevens had spent months on the campaign trail describing Rogers as a de facto rubber stamp for former President Donald Trump’s far-right policy agenda, and repeatedly warning voters that handing Republicans an additional U.S. Senate seat would put critical Democratic priorities at catastrophic risk. As Stevens continued to ramble through vague grievances about El-Sayed without citing a single concrete incident that had shifted her position, Cooper openly expressed frustration at her refusal to answer straightforward questions, noting, “You’re not really answering any of my questions, so it’s somewhat frustrating.” The viral clip of the tense exchange spread across every major social media platform within hours, drawing thousands of critical posts from voters and political observers who mocked the obvious contradictions in Stevens’ public statements. New York City public advocate Zohran Mamdani was among the first high-profile figures to publicly condemn the move, posting on X that Stevens had “betrayed the working class” by endorsing the exact Republican she had previously pledged to campaign against, at a time when Michigan voters’ access to affordable healthcare, housing security, and cost of living relief were all directly on the ballot. Stevens later attempted to frame her endorsement as a stand against antisemitism, claiming she could no longer support El-Sayed due to his public association with popular progressive streamer Hasan Piker, and invoking Piker’s uncle, left-wing political commentator Cenk Uygur, as a core justification for her decision. She also cited a controversial outside group campaign ad that drew widespread criticism for deploying antisemitic tropes by tying Michigan household cost of living struggles directly to U.S. foreign aid for Israel — a spot that El-Sayed had already publicly rejected and disavowed per Axios reporting. But Cooper quickly pointed out that all of these associations and the ad controversy were fully public knowledge weeks, if not months, before Stevens’ sudden endorsement flip, leaving no logical explanation for why she had waited until 48 hours before polls opened to abandon her party’s nominee. The explanation sparked a second wave of viral backlash online, with hundreds of social media posts highlighting the blatant timing gap, including a widely shared clip from a Hasan Piker fan account that mocked Stevens’ disjointed, unhinged on-air rant that left even Cooper visibly confused. Most notably, Stevens’ attempt to wrap her decision in a stand against antisemitism was forcefully rejected by the national leadership of the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish-American Council, which released a blistering joint statement from chair Adam Goldwyn and vice chair Steph Newton. The pair acknowledged that many Jewish Democratic voters held legitimate policy disagreements with El-Sayed over Israeli policy and community safety, but emphasized that those serious, nuanced debates deserved thoughtful public dialogue rather than cynical, last-minute political exploitation. The council’s leadership went on to call out Stevens for her glaring double standard, noting that she had completely ignored well-documented antisemitism controversies tied directly to Rogers’ campaign — including confirmed reports that members of his youth outreach team had defended a local Young Republicans group chat that contained explicit praise for Adolf Hitler. “If Stevens actually cared about protecting Jews, she would have raised those concerns with Rogers’ campaign before endorsing the MAGA Republican. She did not,” the statement read. Multiple high-profile Jewish Democratic officials across Michigan echoed that condemnation, including state congressional candidate Jeremy Moss, who noted that while he had publicly disagreed with several of El-Sayed’s past remarks, Rogers’ far-right alignment with Trump made him an unacceptable alternative for the U.S. Senate seat. The controversy also spilled over into Stevens’ own congressional office, with multiple members of her senior staff submitting immediate resignations in protest of her endorsement, while fellow Democratic lawmakers publicly voiced their shock. Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, who had spoken directly with Stevens on Saturday night just hours before her endorsement, told reporters he could not wrap his head around the sudden reversal, and veteran Michigan Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell publicly questioned why Stevens had chosen to drop the bombshell endorsement so close to Election Day, with no advance warning to state party leadership. For his part, El-Sayed has largely declined to engage in the public drama, telling reporters gathered at a campaign stop on Sunday that he remains fully focused on speaking directly to Michigan’s voters about their top economic priorities, rather than addressing Stevens’ last-minute political about-face.
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Man and boy arrested after allegedly attacking One Nation volunteer with baseball bat in Australia
Law enforcement authorities in the Australian state of Victoria have taken two individuals into custody following a reported violent assault targeting a volunteer affiliated with right-wing populist political party One Nation, an incident that has sparked widespread condemnation from cross-party leaders ahead of the state’s upcoming election. The arrests unfolded on Sunday evening outside the volunteer’s residential property in Torquay, a coastal township roughly 100 kilometers southwest of Melbourne. A 37-year-old adult male has been formally charged with multiple assault-related offenses and ordered to remain in custody pending further court proceedings, while a 14-year-old male minor involved in the incident has been issued an official formal caution by officers responding to the scene. First responders transported the injured party to a local medical facility, where they received treatment for non-life-threatening injuries, according to official Victoria Police statements. One Nation’s Victorian state leader Warren Pickering outlined the party’s account of the sequence of events, stating the altercation erupted after the two suspects were caught tampering with election campaign signs displayed on the volunteer’s private property. Pickering denounced the alleged violence in unreserved terms, labeling it “deeply un-Australian and completely unacceptable” in a public statement. “There is zero room for political violence or any form of intimidation directed at any individual in this country,” Pickering emphasized. “If you disagree with another person’s political views, the appropriate and democratic response is to cast your vote in line with your values, not to physically harm them.” The state’s sitting Premier Ben Carroll also joined the chorus of condemnation, describing the reported assault as a deeply shocking development. “It does not matter which political party a volunteer supports, whether they are handing out flyers for a red, blue, orange or green party campaign – these are ordinary people stepping forward to contribute to the democratic process based on what they believe is right, and no one should ever face physical attack for that choice,” Carroll noted. The alleged assault has unfolded against a tense backdrop of the active 2024 Victoria state election campaign, and comes just weeks after a separate violent incident that left independent federal Member of Parliament Helen Haines requiring double leg amputation. While police investigating the attack on Haines have not publicly confirmed an official motive, a growing cross-sector consensus among Australian politicians, law enforcement agencies and social policy experts has warned that increasingly hostile, polarised public political discourse across the country is creating a growing elevated risk of targeted political violence against public figures and grassroots campaign volunteers.
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Houthis launched cross border raids on Saudi military posts, sources say
Exclusive accounts from senior Western and Arab officials with direct insight into operational developments, shared with Middle East Eye, reveal that Yemen’s Houthi movement, formally known as Ansar Allah, has carried out a string of previously unpublicized small-scale incursions across the border into Saudi Arabia over recent months, extending the long-running Yemeni conflict beyond its national boundaries.
Targeting isolated border outposts in Saudi Arabia’s rugged, mountainous southwestern frontier, at least one confirmed raid took place in the final days of October, with the entire operation captured and verified via international surveillance systems. The Western official confirmed that Houthi fighters seized a cache of specialized small arms exclusively issued to Saudi border security units during one of these incursions, providing tangible evidence of the ground operations.
These raids represent the first documented Houthi ground assaults on Saudi territory since the formal collapse of the 2022 UN-mediated Yemeni ceasefire. Prior to the truce’s implementation, Saudi authorities regularly documented Houthi infiltration attempts, including coordinated ground strikes on border population centers and Saudi military installations.
Mohammed al-Basha, leading Yemen analyst and founder of the Basha Report Risk Advisory, as well as an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, confirmed he has been closely tracking the steady escalation of Houthi military activity along the shared frontier. He outlined a clear two-phase pattern of Houthi offensive expansion: the first wave relied on long-range drones and short-range ballistic missiles, while the subsequent phase introduced weaponized quadcopters deploying mortar ordnance and targeted sniper operations against Saudi border personnel. Basha noted that the resumption of full ground incursions was a long-anticipated, predictable development, stating it was “only a matter of time” before the group returned to this tactic. He projected that upcoming Houthi ground operations will mirror the hit-and-run guerrilla tactics deployed in the early years of the 12-year Yemeni conflict, where fighters quickly seize coalition personnel, capture weapons caches, destroy military hardware and vehicles, and withdraw before facing sustained counterattack.
In response to the emerging border threat, an Arab official confirmed that Saudi Arabia is leveraging its Mecca Pact allies to reinforce its southern frontier, with military support from Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey poised to deliver critical defensive capabilities. Both Turkey and Pakistan have publicly announced plans to deploy military units including anti-aircraft defense batteries to Saudi territory, while Egypt’s national parliament formally approved the deployment of defensive military forces to the kingdom just last week. Adding to regional military shifts, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani announced on Saturday that Damascus is actively evaluating formal membership in the Mecca Pact, and the Western official confirmed that a contingent of Syrian drone specialists has already been deployed to Yemen to support Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces on the ground.
While these new cross-border ground raids do not shift the broader military stalemate across Yemen, they coincide with dramatic Houthi territorial gains inside the country: per Reuters reporting from Monday, Houthi forces have advanced to a position just 50 miles outside the strategic port city of Aden, the administrative capital of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, and have fully encircled the major urban center of Taiz. For years, the Houthis have launched hundreds of long-range strikes targeting Saudi civilian infrastructure including international airports and energy facilities, attacks that have killed at least 24 people and once forced Riyadh to cancel a high-profile global investment summit.
The new wave of ground incursions has laid bare the critical vulnerabilities of Saudi Arabia’s vast, remote southern border, highlighting the immense operational challenges of patrolling its harsh, mountainous terrain. The operations have also amplified longstanding concerns within Saudi leadership that the Houthi movement holds explicit territorial ambitions over the kingdom’s three southern provinces of Asir, Jazan, and Najran, territories formally ceded to Saudi Arabia by Yemen under the 1934 Treaty of Taif. The Houthi movement originated in Yemen’s northern Saada governorate, a mountainous region directly south of the Saudi border, takes its name from founder Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, and follows the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam. While the group recruits widely across Yemeni society, its senior leadership claims Hashemite lineage tracing back to the Prophet Muhammad. -
North Korea denies being behind record $6.3bn Binance hack
A senior North Korean official has forcefully rejected widespread international accusations that Pyongyang orchestrated the historic $6.3 billion breach of leading cryptocurrency platform Binance, framing the allegations as a deliberate, bad-faith campaign by the United States to tarnish the isolated nation’s global reputation. Kim Yo-jong, director of the DPRK’s General Affairs Department and sibling to supreme leader Kim Jong Un, delivered the formal public rebuke in a Tuesday statement, dismissing the hacking claims as baseless, “absurd rhetoric” that represents the latest in a long line of Washington’s hostile, underhanded attempts to mislead global public opinion. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Secret Service, and independent global cybersecurity and blockchain analysts have publicly attributed the unprecedented heist to TraderTraitor — a state-linked North Korean hacking collective also widely known as the Lazarus Group — marking the largest recorded crypto breach in history. U.S. federal law enforcement agencies have already issued a public call for partners across the crypto industry to cooperate in identifying and freezing any digital transactions linked to accounts associated with the suspected hacking unit. Kim pushed back fiercely against the pattern of accusations, arguing that Washington’s repeated habit of pinning nearly all major global cyber incidents on the DPRK constitutes a “grave political provocation” against the country, and emphasized that the DPRK’s official national policy is to firmly oppose all malicious, illegal activity in digital cyberspace. This high-profile incident is far from the first time North Korea has been tied to major large-scale cyber heists: the same TraderTraitor collective was formally blamed for the 2025 record-breaking $1.5 billion breach of crypto exchange Bybit, and multiple independent think tanks including Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies have documented that Pyongyang has spent years systematically building out its state cyber operations, recruiting top technical university students for specialized training under the oversight of the nation’s intelligence agency. North Korea has consistently denied all prior allegations of state-sponsored cybercrime, which multiple Western governments and analysts argue the country relies on as a critical revenue stream to bypass harsh international economic sanctions. For its part, Binance has focused its public communications since the breach on technical updates and user protection measures, confirming that initial forensic investigations found the attack originated when a threat actor compromised a senior engineer’s work laptop to initiate unauthorized mass withdrawals. After a full suspension of all platform operations in the immediate aftermath of the heist, Binance worked directly with major cryptocurrency issuers to freeze a large share of the stolen funds before resuming full trading services. When the platform reopened, data showed customers withdrew more than $3.6 billion in assets in a 24-hour period, though Binance has reiterated its commitment to covering 100% of user losses tied to the attack, noting that it has already reimbursed roughly 95% of the total stolen value to affected clients. The BBC has reached out to Binance’s leadership for additional formal comment on the ongoing incident.
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US elections 2026: Can a Democrat-controlled Senate thwart Trump’s agenda?
Across every partisan demographic, American voters have made their widespread frustration with the status quo unmistakable in nearly every public and private conversation in the months leading up to the 3 November midterm elections. Defying decades of historical precedent for low turnout in non-presidential election cycles, pre-Election Day early voting has already drawn a record-breaking 56 million participants, a landmark figure that signals an electorate hungry for systemic change. Compounding the ruling party’s uphill battle, incumbent President Donald Trump currently holds a lower approval rating than any of his three immediate predecessors at the equivalent point of their first-term midterm campaigns. Bipartisan polling data and internal forecasts from Republican election analysts overwhelmingly indicate that the Democratic Party is on track to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives, flip a narrow majority in the Senate, and secure the largest share of state governorships across the 50 U.S. states. Despite these projected electoral shifts, legislative insiders and political analysts warn that sweeping, landmark policy changes are highly unlikely to materialise in the new Congress, even as the balance of narrative power and procedural leverage on Capitol Hill will undergo a dramatic transformation.
Rina Shah, a former Republican congressional advisor, outlined to Middle East Eye that a Democratic-controlled Senate would not seek to fully roll back the Trump administration’s existing policy portfolio, but instead deploy a targeted, strategic refusal to advance new White House priorities. A core early priority for liberal senators would be to block the Trump administration’s push to install a slate of conservative judges to federal courts, a move that follows a series of recent judicial rulings that ordered the release of multiple critics of Israel from immigration detention after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their U.S. visas and green cards. Shah explained that full Senate majority control grants the party authority over the legislative calendar, committee leadership appointments, and all confirmation processes, allowing Democratic leaders to slow-walk or reject presidential nominees for ambassador and national security posts, launch oversight hearings with full subpoena power, and embed binding conditions into must-pass appropriations bills and the annual National Defense Authorization Act to place new restrictions on U.S. arms sales, overseas troop deployments, and executive war-making authority.
President Trump’s long track record of wielding the presidential veto means he will almost certainly strike down any standalone legislation that conflicts with his policy agenda. Even so, Shah noted that forcing these bills to a veto stage serves a deliberate political purpose: it compels Republican lawmakers to cast public votes on high-profile issues, laying the foundational framing for the 2028 presidential election campaign. The real legislative leverage for Senate Democrats, she emphasised, lies in so-called “must-pass” pieces of legislation such as federal government funding packages and defence authorisation bills, which the president cannot veto without taking direct public ownership of a disruptive government shutdown or a lapse in critical national security funding. Trump has already demonstrated his willingness to trigger two full government shutdowns during his first term in high-stakes standoffs with Democratic lawmakers, but analysts note that a third shutdown tied to core voter priorities of affordability and public safety would carry far greater electoral consequences for his 2028 re-election prospects.
To override presidential vetoes, offset potential partisan defections on divisive policy issues, and even secure the two-thirds majority required to convict a sitting U.S. president or cabinet member in an impeachment trial, Senate Democrats would need to win a 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority – a threshold that all current projections confirm is unachievable in this 2026 midterm cycle. This mathematical reality means that Democratic leaders will be forced to pursue targeted negotiations and bipartisan compromise to win over a handful of moderate Republican lawmakers to advance their legislative priorities.
Jennifer Hendrixson White, a former senior staffer for the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee and current visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s American Statecraft Programme, told MEE that the success of Democratic legislative efforts will hinge entirely on how party leaders frame policy debates and position proposed bills for floor votes. She noted that Senate Republicans, who hold six-year terms that extend well past the remaining duration of Trump’s current term, are far more willing to challenge the president’s agenda than they were in the early months of his first administration. If lawmakers centre their proposals around reclaiming the Article One constitutional responsibilities of the legislative branch – the core system of checks and balances designed to constrain unilateral presidential power – they can draw bipartisan support from Republicans who are eager to reassert congressional authority over executive overreach.
To secure a narrow 51-seat Senate majority, Democrats will need to defend all 47 of their currently held seats and flip four Republican-held districts, with Texas, Maine, North Carolina and Alaska widely viewed as the most likely pickup targets, while Iowa and Ohio remain fiercely competitive toss-up races. There is near-universal consensus among election forecasters that Democrats will easily retake the U.S. House of Representatives, but the Senate carries outsized institutional weight, as its six-year terms insulate senators from the shorter two-year electoral cycles that define House membership and the four-year presidential term. A recent YouGov survey of competitive Senate races published on Monday shows most contests running neck-and-neck, but with Democrats holding a consistent aggregate advantage, while 75 percent of bettors on the prediction market Polymarket have placed wagers on a full Democratic sweep of both congressional chambers. High-profile Republican figures including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also publicly stated on ABC News on Sunday that they expect the Democratic Party to win control of both chambers, with Christie additionally projecting that Democrats will secure 27 of the 36 available governorship seats up for election this cycle.
Voters across the entire political spectrum have expressed widespread shared frustration over soaring cost of living, and widespread disapproval of the Trump administration’s aggressive domestic and foreign policies – including highly publicised violent confrontations between immigration enforcement agents and civilian communities, and the ongoing nine-month joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that has no clear end in sight. These priorities directly contradict the core 2024 campaign pledges Trump made to voters, which centred on delivering widespread affordability, public safety, and a full end to all ongoing U.S. foreign wars.
Even on highly polarising issues such as the traditionally unconditional U.S. security partnership with Israel, analysts note that tangible policy shifts will be gradual, but will begin with sustained, open debate on the Senate floor. David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University, explained to MEE that a major emerging priority for the new Democratic caucus will be pushing to conditionalise U.S. military aid to Israel, a policy debate that is far more politically viable than attempting to pass formal sanctions on the ongoing Iran war. He noted that the rising political power of progressive left figures such as Michigan’s incoming Democratic leader Abdul El-Sayed and independent Senator Bernie Sanders will give Democrats the narrow margin of votes they need to force these long-suppressed policy debates onto the legislative agenda. Wajahat Ali, a *Daily Beast* columnist and author of *Go Back to Where You Came From*, emphasised that Israel’s plummeting unfavourability ratings among U.S. voters, particularly young liberal demographics, can no longer be sidelined by party leadership. He warned that unwavering pro-Israel hawkishness will become a non-negotiable litmus test issue for any Democratic politician with national presidential aspirations, and that party leaders and major donors face an imminent choice between doubling down on unqualified support for Israel, or evolving their positions to align with the shifting priorities of the broader U.S. electorate. Since the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli military assault on Gaza that the United Nations and leading Holocaust scholars have formally labelled a genocide, U.S. public approval of Israel has fallen to the lowest recorded level in national polling history.
Hendrixson White noted that the Trump administration has proven far more resistant to traditional congressional political pressure than previous presidential administrations, and warned that a key risk for the new Democratic Congress is wasting limited legislative time on non-binding symbolic statements that do not force tangible action from the White House, rather than advancing substantive policy priorities or rigorous oversight. She raised concerns that excessive focus on anti-corruption investigations could distract the party from the core economic issues that drove voters to the polls in 2026. Critics of the Trump administration have long demanded formal congressional investigations into a wide range of alleged improprieties, including a $100 million private jet gifted to the president by the Qatari government, his long-documented ties to convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and the undisclosed personal financial benefits his son-in-law Jared Kushner accrued while serving as an unpaid White House Middle East peace negotiator. Trump, his immediate family, and all members of his cabinet have repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
McCuan, who regularly briefs foreign diplomats on U.S. election outcomes and their policy implications, argued that a Democratic-controlled Senate is far more likely to prioritise a forward-looking policy agenda than to focus exclusively on retrospective accountability measures. He cited decades of peer-reviewed political science research showing that midterm elections function first and foremost as a public backlash against the sitting president, rather than a narrow referendum on specific administrative missteps. This means Senate Democrats will need to roll out a proactive, voter-focused policy platform that is explicitly designed to position the party for victory in the 2028 presidential election cycle. Given the structure of the U.S. political calendar, prospective 2028 presidential candidates are already required to launch formal exploratory committees to gauge public support, raise campaign funds, and hire full campaign staff, meaning the 2028 election cycle will effectively begin the day after the 2026 midterms conclude. McCuan stressed that the Democratic agenda will need to centre directly on kitchen-table voter priorities: reducing household costs for groceries, gasoline, and diesel fuel, rather than dedicating the majority of legislative time to impeachment proceedings or punitive investigations. Ali, however, expressed deep scepticism of Democratic congressional leadership, arguing that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries lack the strategic vision to meet the current political moment, citing their history of opposing Medicare for All, attacking progressive socialist candidates, accepting large campaign donations from the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, and holding undisclosed private meetings with Jared Kushner. He warned that the projected Democratic midterm gains do not represent a permanent national political realignment toward the Democratic Party, but a temporary, short-term electoral backlash against the excesses of the MAGA movement that will expire quickly if the party fails to deliver tangible results for working-class voters. The 120th U.S. Congress will be formally sworn into office on 3 January 2027.
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UK MPs urge government action over London event advertising settlement-linked Israeli agency
A cross-party coalition of 15 United Kingdom Members of Parliament has formally submitted a letter to the UK government, calling for immediate intervention to block a major upcoming international travel expo in London from featuring promotional activities linked to an Israeli state agency heavily involved in the construction of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. The three-day World Travel Market (WTM) London, one of the global travel industry’s most high-profile annual gatherings, is scheduled to run from 3 to 5 November, with its opening day falling on a Tuesday. As first uncovered by Middle East Eye (MEE) last week, the event’s exhibition floor will host an official stand operated by the Israeli government’s national tourism office, which is co-shared by a network of Israeli commercial and public organizations. One of these featured partners is iTravelJerusalem, a tourism promotion initiative focused on Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem that falls under the oversight of the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA). The JDA, a statutory body jointly governed by the Israeli national government and the Jerusalem municipal authority, leads urban development projects across the city and has been a central operational player in the planning, construction, and ongoing expansion of illegal Israeli settlements built on internationally recognized occupied Palestinian territory. The formal demand for government action was drafted and sent to UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Monday by Independent MP Adnan Hussain, and has garnered signatures from a diverse cross-section of parliamentary representatives spanning multiple political parties. Signatories include prominent Labour backbenchers John McDonnell and Kim Johnson, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, all five sitting Green Party MPs (Carla Denyer, Ellie Chownes, Hannah Spencer, Sian Berry, and Adrian Ramsay), three additional Independent MPs (Shockat Adam, Iqbal Mohamed, and Ayoub Khan), and Scottish National Party MP Chris Law. The letter, whose full text was reviewed by MEE, lays out two core explicit requests: first, that the UK government immediately contact WTM London’s event organizers and mandate the full removal of any exhibitor and associated promotional materials whose presence at the expo would enable or advance the normalization of illegal Israeli settlements; and second, that ministers provide formal confirmation of concrete, actionable steps being taken to enforce the UK’s existing ban on the advertising of illegal settlements, rather than leaving the policy as a series of unenforced verbal commitments delivered only during parliamentary debates. The coordinated parliamentary push comes in the wake of a landmark policy announcement made by the UK government just one month prior, in which officials formally recognized Israel’s long-running occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal and unveiled a sweeping new package of sanctions targeting Israeli settlement operations. The letter’s signatories emphasize that the UK government cannot maintain any credible moral or political standing if it continues to publicly condemn the forced displacement of Palestinian communities, acknowledge the risk of ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestinian territories, and publicly vow to ban the promotion of illegal settlements on UK soil, while simultaneously permitting organizations directly implicated in these contested activities to leverage a high-profile international event hosted in central London to advance their work. To back up their demands, the MPs cite a 2025 official report published by the Office of the European Union Representative for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which documents the JDA’s formal plans to evict roughly 40 Palestinian families from the Umm Haroun compound in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to make way for a new 320-unit illegal settlement development. Additional documented JDA projects referenced in the letter include a 2020 Israeli government-approved Jerusalem cable car scheme that would require mass uprooting of local trees and the demolition of critical Palestinian civilian infrastructure including water, sewage, and telecommunications lines, as well as a planned large-scale settlement housing development directly adjacent to the Palestinian residential community of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem. Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Hussam Zomlot issued a public statement responding to MEE’s initial reporting last Thursday, criticizing the upcoming WTM event for granting a platform to Israeli entities that he described as complicit in ethnic cleansing, and urging the UK government to translate its previously stated policy commitments into tangible enforcement that imposes real consequences for parties involved in illegal occupation and settlement activity. In their closing message to Foreign Secretary Miliband, the 15 MPs note that they will not accept a perfunctory response that merely restates the UK government’s existing public position, and demand a detailed, urgent reply outlining specific actionable steps that will be taken before WTM London opens its doors to attendees. “The question is no longer simply what the Government believes, but whether it is prepared to act on what it has said,” the letter stresses. As of the time of MEE’s publication, requests for comment submitted to both WTM London event organizers and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had not received a formal response.
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PM plans debt re-set for Commonwealth nations as slavery apology talks begin
Against the sunlit backdrop of Antigua, King Charles III joined UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the sidelines of the 2024 Commonwealth Business Forum, moments before the official opening of the 56-nation Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that has already been dominated by long-simmering debates over the legacy of transatlantic chattel slavery. Two years removed from the underwhelming 2022 CHOGM gathering in Samoa, where the UK faced widespread criticism for its dismissive stance on slavery reparations under former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Burnham’s administration has laid out a markedly revised diplomatic playbook to reset relations across the intergovernmental bloc. In a Guardian op-ed published ahead of the summit, Burnham openly acknowledged that decades of UK inaction on addressing the transatlantic slave trade’s enduring harms had eroded trust and undermined the Commonwealth’s collective functionality, a stark departure from the Starmer government’s pre-summit declaration that reparations were not even up for discussion. The new UK delegation, which includes Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is launching preliminary, consensus-building conversations designed to de-escalate the often fraught reparations debate, while clarifying that direct financial compensation to slavery descendants will not be offered by the British state. Instead, the government has confirmed it is actively considering issuing the first formal, official UK apology for the transatlantic slave trade, timed to align with the UK’s 2025 rotating presidency of the G20. Miliband, confirming the government’s openness to the apology in a widely shared social media video, framed the gesture as a meaningful, historic step while pushing back on demands for direct financial payouts, noting that placing the burden of compensation on modern British taxpayers was neither a feasible nor appropriate solution to redress centuries-old atrocities. The policy shift has drawn sharp criticism from opposition Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who warned in public remarks that a formal apology would act as a legal and rhetorical lever for Commonwealth nations to press formal, costly claims for reparations, urging Burnham to abandon the plan entirely. Alongside the slavery legacy discussions, Downing Street has tabled a flagship “debt reset” initiative to deliver targeted relief for low- and middle-income Commonwealth nations grappling with spiraling sovereign debt interest payments that have strained public services across large swathes of the Global South. UK officials have also announced the launch of two new cross-Commonwealth task forces, set to be fully operational by the end of 2024: one dedicated to mapping critical mineral assets and mitigating shared supply chain vulnerabilities across the bloc, and a second focused on dismantling trade barriers and scaling up cross-national investment flows. Senior British diplomats have framed the Commonwealth as a uniquely valuable diplomatic space for coordinated engagement with developing nations, one that operates independently of the geopolitical rivalries that define forums including the UN and G20, with no formal representation from China, the United States or Russia to complicate bloc decision-making. Officials in Number 10 have expressed cautious optimism that Burnham’s proactive, more transparent approach will pave the way for constructive, productive dialogue over the summit’s two-day duration, mending the rifts that opened between the UK and other Commonwealth members during the 2022 Samoa gathering.
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‘We grew up around this historic Delhi mosque – now we have been forced out’
Nestled in one of Delhi’s most heavily secured, upscale central neighborhoods, steps away from the Indian Prime Minister’s official residence, the centuries-old Race Course Mosque stands surrounded by mounds of crumpled rubble, a lone surviving structure amid the flattened remains of tightly knit residential settlements that housed generations of low-wage working families. For decades, hundreds of households of drivers, cleaners, gardeners, and domestic staff occupied the small, modest homes tucked between high-security military compounds, elite private clubs, and sprawling luxury bungalows in the Race Course enclave, building interwoven lives, livelihoods, and community ties that stretched back multiple generations. That way of life was abruptly upended on October 7, when municipal authorities carried out mass demolition drives across three adjacent settlements, claiming the structures were illegally erected on government-owned land, and citing public security risks stemming from the residential clusters’ close proximity to sensitive military installations. In total, 717 families were forcibly relocated to the Savda Ghevra residential colony, a remote development situated roughly 31 miles away on Delhi’s far northern outskirts, bordering the state of Haryana. Prior to the demolition, residents had filed a petition with the Delhi High Court challenging the eviction order, arguing that a move to such a distant location would irreparably disrupt their access to existing jobs, local schools, and longstanding community support networks. The court ultimately ruled in favor of the government in August, accepting official security justifications for the clearance and noting that alternate housing units had been allocated to displaced families. Only two religious sites were spared the bulldozers: the Race Course Mosque and a nearby Hindu temple. But within hours of the demolition, both structures had their municipal water and electricity supplies severed, and access to the surrounding compound was heavily restricted. Most worshippers are turned away at the security perimeter, with only a small handful occasionally granted entry after lengthy negotiations with posted guards. A bitter legal dispute now looms over the mosque itself: government officials assert full ownership of the land the mosque occupies, while the Delhi Waqf Board argues the site was formally registered as waqf property under Islamic charitable law in 1977, designated a protected heritage structure, and dates back between 125 to nearly 300 years. The Waqf Board has submitted formal appeals to administrative authorities demanding the immediate restoration of utility services, while a local worshipper has filed a separate High Court petition challenging the ban on regular congregational prayers and raising fears that the mosque could face demolition in the near future. On October 29, the central government informed the Delhi High Court that it would take no punitive or demolition action against the mosque for a four-week window while reviewing the Waqf Board’s formal objections, but pushed back against demands to restore full public access for prayers, claiming safety risks remained amid ongoing nearby demolition work — a position fiercely contested by the petitioners’ legal representative. The court declined to issue immediate intervention orders, and has scheduled the next hearing for December 16. For the hundreds of displaced families who once built their lives around the mosque, the uncertainty over the site’s future is secondary to the cascading hardships of their forced relocation. Mohammad Wasim, a 50-year-old professional driver who once lived steps from the mosque, still makes the long journey back whenever he can to pray, often facing rejection at the gates from patrolling guards. On a recent weekday afternoon, he was one of only four or five worshippers inside the mosque, where a loud portable generator chugged away to provide the only source of power after municipal services were cut. “Our entire lives and our hearts are tied to this ground,” Wasim explained, gesturing to the rubble where his family home once stood, the site of both his father’s wedding and his own daughter’s decades later. “We grew up playing here. How can we ever just walk away?” The transition to Savda Ghevra has been devastating for nearly all the relocated households, who have lost easy access to the stable informal livelihoods that sustained them for generations. Rekha, a widowed domestic worker who spent decades washing dishes for nearby wealthy households and performing voluntary seva service at the local Hindu temple, now finds herself stranded in a third-floor apartment that she struggles to climb due to a metal rod implanted in her leg after a major surgery. She has lost all her former clients, and her 19-year-old son has been unable to secure steady work in the new neighborhood. “They gave us a house, but they stole our actual home,” she said. Urban policy researcher Mukta Naik, who has studied displacement patterns across Delhi for years, noted that the Race Course evictions fit a long-running pattern of working-class communities being systematically pushed to the city’s peripheries, largely because they lack formal land ownership documentation for sites they have occupied for generations. “This kind of distant relocation completely severs their ties to jobs and the informal mutual support networks they have relied on for decades,” Naik told the BBC. “It leads to massive drops in income and livelihood loss, and as families scatter to find whatever work they can, those critical community safety nets are almost impossible to rebuild. They end up having to fend entirely for themselves.” Savda Ghevra was first established in 2006 on former agricultural land to house previous waves of displaced Delhi families, and its first residents arrived to find nothing but empty bare plots, with no paved roads, running water, or electricity. Over 17 years, residents gradually built the neighborhood from scratch, opening small shops and organizing collective campaigns to secure basic public services, and by the early 2020s it was home to an estimated 50,000 people. Now, the newly arrived Race Course families are being forced to repeat that grueling process from scratch, trading the tree-lined central Delhi avenues they knew for rows of identical concrete apartment blocks abutting open empty farmland. Many families now spend hours each day on multi-leg commutes across the city to maintain access to their old jobs and their children’s former schools. Babloo, a former club employee from Race Course, wakes up at 5 a.m. every day to escort his children on a three-train metro ride to their old central Delhi school, waiting six hours at a local tea stall for classes to end before making the long trip back to Savda Ghevra, arriving home at roughly 4 p.m. He has since taken a new job in Meerut, a town nearly 43 miles northeast of Delhi, after being unable to find comparable work closer to his new residential colony. Officials have stated that no suitable alternate housing plots were available closer to the Race Course site, and argued in court that Savda Ghevra already has operational schools, local clinics, and public transport links that can support incoming families. But those formal amenities do little to address the specific, unmet needs of many displaced residents. Naeem Khan, a 63-year-old grandfather, says his two grandsons who live with him, both of whom have speech and hearing disabilities, have no access to the specialized therapy and special education services they relied on in central Delhi. His family of seven has been forced to split across multiple homes, with two of his adult sons relocating elsewhere due to lack of space in his single allocated one-room unit. “We have been thrown 20 years backward overnight,” he said. The relocation has had a disproportionately severe impact on women, Naik explained, as existing childcare responsibilities, high public transport costs, and late-night safety risks make long cross-city commutes to informal domestic work far more burdensome for women than for men. Where the upscale Race Course neighborhood offered steady, small earning opportunities for women — washing dishes, tending private gardens, collecting discarded plastic bottles to resell — the low-income Savda Ghevra colony has no such client base. Akhtari, an elderly widow who previously earned roughly $1.05 a day collecting empty mineral water bottles and drying leftover flatbreads to sell as cattle feed, now has no source of income at all. “Everyone who lives here is poor, broken, and struggling just to get by themselves,” she said. “No one has extra money to pay someone else to do housework.” She no longer has the nearby support system of neighbors and the mosque’s imam who would previously bring her flour or check in on her if she did not step outside for a day. She now lives in constant fear of falling seriously ill, with no one nearby to notice if she is in distress. “If I collapse and die inside my apartment, no one will even know,” she said. “I just hope someone eventually breaks down the door to find me.” Multiple administrative bodies including the Delhi government’s housing agency, the local municipal council, and the central government’s land management office have not responded to repeated requests for official comment on the displacement and mosque dispute.
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Thousands of European troops to rehearse Ukraine deployment in event of peace
A newly unveiled multinational military drill, codenamed Exercise Koalicja and scheduled to run from 9 to 22 November in Poland, is being spearheaded by the United Kingdom and France to validate the rapid deployment capacity of a European-led security contingent designed to support Ukraine immediately following a potential future peace settlement. Drawing 2,800 service members across land, air, and sea domains from 12 European nations – including Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, alongside the two lead states – the exercise marks a tangible step forward for the long-discussed Ukraine reassurance force framework first proposed by European partners last year as a core component of long-term bilateral security guarantees for Kyiv. The UK is contributing 300 troops and two Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets, which will run simulated missions to outline protocols for safeguarding commercial civilian air traffic once Ukrainian airspace is fully reopened. Turkey will head the exercise’s maritime component, focused on refining mine-clearing operational procedures to eventually re-establish unobstructed commercial shipping lanes in the Black Sea, a critical corridor for global agricultural and energy trade disrupted since the full-scale Russian invasion. Commanders overseeing the newly designated Multi National Force – Ukraine (MNF-U) emphasized that the deployed contingent will operate outside of formal NATO command structures, will not participate in offensive combat operations, and will not take on frontline ceasefire monitoring or traditional peacekeeping duties. Its core stated mandates will be to provide visible security reassurance to Ukrainian populations and facilitate the long-term rebuilding and professionalization of the country’s armed forces. While U.S. officials have participated in high-level planning discussions for the initiative, Washington has confirmed it will not contribute personnel or hardware to the deployment. UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting stressed in a public statement that the initiative is no longer a hypothetical contingency plan, noting that participating allies are building a fully operational, rapidly deployable force ready to activate the moment active hostilities cease. Lt Gen Tom Bateman, the UK’s commanding officer for MNF-U, added that the exercise translates years of political pledges into verifiable military readiness, representing a concrete, credible commitment from the “Coalition of the Willing” nations to Ukraine’s long-term sovereignty and stability. Despite the clear progress in planning, numerous critical operational details remain unresolved, with more open questions than finalized protocols surrounding the force’s eventual structure, exact size, and full deployment parameters. Western officials have declined to publish explicit rules of engagement outlining responses to potential attacks on deployed personnel, though they confirmed the contingent retains full inherent rights to self-defense. Russian leadership has already issued explicit public opposition to any foreign military presence on Ukrainian soil, with President Vladimir Putin stating last year that any deployed foreign troops would be classified as legitimate military targets. Military analysts have previously projected that a robust, effective security guarantee for Ukraine could require a force of tens of thousands of personnel, but participating nations note that final troop contributions will be contingent on the specific terms of any future ceasefire and individual domestic political approvals. Additional unresolved points include the exact scope of training support the Western contingent will provide to Ukraine’s already combat-experienced armed forces, which have in recent years become leading global instructors for NATO member states on frontline drone warfare tactics. Critically, as of the exercise’s launch, the Russian government has given no public indication that it intends to negotiate an end to its ongoing full-scale military campaign in Ukraine.
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UK: Labour to stop cooperating with Greens in 11 councils over ‘Zionism is racism’ vote
The UK’s ruling Labour Party has formally severed collaborative governing ties with the Green Party across 11 local authorities in England, in direct response to a landmark policy passed by the Greens at their October annual party conference that labels Zionism as a form of racism. The vote by Green activists made the party the first major UK political group to formally adopt that stance, alongside a policy shift backing a single, inclusive democratic Palestinian state with equal rights for all ethnic and religious communities, replacing the longstanding two-state solution framework that has dominated mainstream UK political discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Labour Party chair Bridget Phillipson laid out the party’s firm position in an official statement, emphasizing that the Green motion on Zionism had crossed an unnegotiable moral boundary. “No local power-sharing arrangement can ever justify abandoning the moral duty we hold to stand up for every member of our communities and the shared anti-racist values that define our party,” Phillipson stated. “We cannot collaborate at any level of governance with a party that endorses this divisive, discriminatory policy.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham had previously publicly denounced the Green policy as antisemitic shortly after it was passed last month.
The 11 councils where all joint working agreements with Greens will immediately cease are Arun, Derbyshire Dales, Havant, Lewes, Sheffield, Stafford, Warwick, Wealden, West Devon, and West Suffolk. Labour noted that six local Green council groups, based in Broadland, Monmouthshire, North Somerset, Rother, West Oxfordshire, and West Sussex, have already publicly rejected the national party’s new motion, a move that Phillipson’s team described as a “right and appropriate” stance. The party added that it was “disappointed” other local Green branches had declined to disavow the policy as required under Labour’s terms for continued collaboration, and called on the Green Party’s national leadership to formally rescind the motion entirely.
In an official response, the Green Party pushed back against Labour’s move, arguing that cross-party local partnerships between Greens, Labour, independents, and Liberal Democrats have long delivered stable, effective local governance, protected critical public services, and delivered tangible improvements for residents across the country. The party accused Labour leadership of issuing arbitrary ultimatums that undermined the judgment of their own local elected representatives, disrespected the will of local voters who had backed cross-party collaborative governance, and disrupted long-running successful community-focused initiatives.
Zack Polanski, the Jewish deputy leader of the Green Party, warned on Monday that Labour’s decision to end local power-sharing deals would ultimately backfire on the ruling party. “Our party is focused on delivering policies to tax billionaires, tackle the accelerating climate crisis, and end arms sales that are enabling ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Polanski said. “Labour’s choice to disrupt local public services to enforce their policy of supporting that genocide at the local level lays bare the true priorities of Andy Burnham and his administration.” The Green Party had previously hit back at Burnham’s earlier criticism of the motion, stating that it would refuse to take lectures on antisemitism from a government that continues to supply military hardware to the state of Israel.