Closed-door diplomatic negotiations between senior Lebanese and Israeli representatives, convened this week at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, wrapped up without any substantive progress on core outstanding disputes, independent regional news outlet The New Arab confirmed Thursday via anonymous sources close to the talks.
Held under U.S. auspices, the latest round of discussions unfolded against a backdrop of sustained Israeli military operations across Lebanese territory throughout the current month, including targeted airstrikes and deliberate home demolitions in the southern districts of Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil, and Sidon. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the proceedings reported that Israeli negotiating teams took uncompromising, rigid stances across all agenda items, while Lebanese delegates maintained a firm, non-negotiable position that all security and de-escalation measures between the two nations must follow a fully reciprocal framework.
Notably, the U.S.-funded Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has formally rejected any proposal for direct military-to-military coordination with Israeli counterparts, pushing instead for a neutral third-party verification system administered jointly by the United Nations and key international partners including France.
The current cross-border conflict traces its origins to October 2023, when Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel triggered widespread regional unrest, prompting near-continuous Israeli airstrikes on Lebanese territory. A November 2024 ceasefire negotiated by the outgoing Biden administration failed to meaningfully reduce Israeli military activity, as Israeli officials insisted their operations were necessary to target Hezbollah leadership and alleged weapons stockpiles across Lebanon, including sites located in the capital Beirut.
A dramatic escalation of Israeli military actions materialized earlier this year, when Israel launched a full-scale ground invasion and seized control of large swathes of southern and eastern Lebanese territory. The pace of violence accelerated further after the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated military operations against Iran on February 28, a move that prompted Hezbollah to launch defensive strikes on Israeli targets in support of its Iranian ally. Since that date, Israeli military actions in Lebanon have killed over 4,300 Lebanese civilians and combatants alike, and displaced more than 1 million people across the country.
A core top priority for Lebanese negotiating teams throughout all recent talks has been securing a binding, clear timeline for the safe return of all internally displaced Lebanese people to their homes, a demand that has seen zero actionable progress since the U.S.-brokered trilateral framework was formally agreed to by Lebanese, Israeli, and U.S. representatives in June of this year. That landmark framework followed five prior rounds of talks hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, culminating in a widely publicized, billed-as-historic signing ceremony on June 26. At the event, Rubio characterized the agreement as merely “the beginning of the beginning” of a longer peace process, and announced two separate U.S. funding commitments: $100 million in humanitarian assistance to be distributed in coordination with the United Nations for conflict-affected communities, with no explicit clarification on whether the funds would serve only Lebanese populations or also cover northern Israeli border towns, plus an additional $30 million in reimbursements for the Lebanese Armed Forces earmarked by the Trump administration.
The 26 June framework established a U.S.-facilitated Military Coordination Group for Lebanon, but the so-called “pilot zones” from which Israel had pledged to withdraw its troops to allow the LAF to assume full security control have not been expanded in any capacity since July. Israeli officials have justified the frozen withdrawal process by claiming the LAF lacks the operational capacity to disarm Hezbollah fighters operating in the region.
Critically, Hezbollah — the U.S.-designated terrorist group that serves as the most powerful armed faction in Lebanon, with military capabilities vastly exceeding those of the U.S.-backed LAF — was excluded entirely from the formal negotiation track. Formed in the 1980s to resist Israel’s longstanding illegal occupation of Lebanese territory, Hezbollah has refused to engage in direct bilateral talks with Israel, though unconfirmed reports indicate the group has maintained discrete backchannel communications with the Trump administration. Hezbollah leadership has repeatedly stated it will not agree to any disarmament measures as long as Israel continues to pose an active military threat to Lebanese sovereignty, especially amid growing public rhetoric from Israeli policymakers openly discussing plans to formally expand Israel’s national borders northward into Lebanese territory.
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Lebanon-Israel military talks in US end without a breakthrough
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Netanyahu’s full West Bank lockdown called collective punishment
Following a deadly Friday gun skirmish in the illegally occupied West Bank that left two Palestinians dead and at least five Israeli soldiers wounded, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued immediate directives to the Israel Defense Forces to enforce a full lockdown on the city of Hebron, and to mobilize forces in preparation for a territory-wide full lockdown across the occupied West Bank. The announcement came shortly after Netanyahu convened an emergency security cabinet session alongside his senior military advisory team, after which he released a public social media statement blaming the Palestinian political and military faction Hamas for orchestrating the deadly exchange, claiming the group was plotting a large-scale offensive targeting innocent civilian populations. While Netanyahu asserted that security forces had uncovered substantial caches of weapons and ammunition in the aftermath of the clash, he declined to share specific details corroborating the alleged planned major attack. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who arrived at the scene of the shooting shortly after the violence unfolded, issued even more aggressive public remarks, stating that a sweeping full-scale military operation modeled after past campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon would soon be launched across the occupied West Bank, which he referred to by the settler-facing nomenclature “Judea and Samaria” to target individuals he labeled as terrorists. Smotrich went further to publicly call for the full dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous governing body for parts of the occupied territories, and announced that orders to demolish Palestinian residential structures in the vicinity of Friday’s clash would be executed within one hour, with additional demolition operations set to continue through the rest of the day. In response to the Israeli government’s sweeping new punitive measures, Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, condemned the planned territory-wide West Bank closure as a blatant act of collective punishment that violates longstanding international humanitarian law. Barghouti warned that Netanyahu’s administration was laying the groundwork for ethnic cleansing of entire residential neighborhoods in Hebron, framing the policy shift as a dangerous, unprecedented escalation of Israel’s long-running forced displacement campaigns against Palestinian communities, and urged the global community to intervene immediately to hold Israeli officials accountable and prevent mass displacement. Yariv Oppenheimer, a former director of the anti-settlement group Peace Now and current project director at the Geneva Institute, echoed these concerns in an interview with Al-Jazeera, noting that the already volatile occupied West Bank, which has seen surging settler violence and near-daily Israeli Defense Force incursions into Palestinian communities for months, was on the brink of far greater unrest. Oppenheimer argued that Israeli political leaders were exploiting the fatal gun battle as a public justification to ramp up military control over Palestinian population centers, predicting a wave of punitive actions including widespread home demolitions, extended curfews, mass arbitrary arrests by IDF troops, and revenge attacks by extremist Israeli settler factions that would push the region into far deeper crisis.
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Are California voters about to impose ‘world’s first’ tax on billionaires?
As one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, California is globally synonymous with sun-drenched coastal mega-mansions, A-list celebrity enclaves, and Silicon Valley’s tech titans. Now, the state’s electorate is set to cast a historic vote on Proposition 40, a ballot measure that would impose a one-off 5% tax on the total net worth of every billionaire residing in the state, with the explicit goal of raising $100 billion to offset crippling federal cuts to California’s public healthcare system.
Crafted as a direct response to sweeping federal tax and spending reductions enacted under the Donald Trump administration, the policy is framed by its backers as a targeted, stopgap solution to prevent a near-term collapse of state healthcare services while long-term sustainable funding frameworks are developed. Proponents, including the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, argue the measure ensures the state’s 200+ billionaires pay their fair share to address glaring structural inequities: California boasts the world’s fourth-largest standalone economy, outstripping the entire gross domestic products of India and the United Kingdom, yet simultaneously hosts the nation’s largest unhoused population and one of the widest wealth gaps in the U.S.
Francesco Trebbi, a leading public policy scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, emphasizes the unprecedented nature of the initiative: “This is the first ever U.S. billionaire tax, a wealth levy targeting the absolute top tier of the wealth distribution, designed to begin narrowing California’s stark wealth disparity.” Public polling underscores broad public appetite for action on inequality, with 72% of California residents surveyed by the Public Policy Institute of California agreeing the wealth gap is widening and state authorities must take aggressive steps to mitigate it. High-profile supporters include Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, philanthropist and former California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, and progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who has campaigned across the state framing the measure as a long-overdue check on unaccountable billionaire power, comparing unregulated elite wealth to 19th-century monarchical excess.
Yet the landmark proposal has ignited ferocious pushback from a cross-section of stakeholders, ranging from tech billionaires to the state’s outgoing liberal governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom has publicly warned the policy risks triggering a mass exodus of the state’s ultra-wealthy residents, eroding the state’s critical income tax revenue base that funds core public services. The Los Angeles Times reports Google co-founder Sergey Brin has poured more than $100 million into political organizations backing competing ballot measures intended to block Proposition 40 entirely. Citing international precedent, Dr. Kristian Niemietz, head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs, argues wealth taxes are functionally counterproductive: once widespread across Europe, such levies now only persist in Spain, Norway and Switzerland, plagued by crippling administrative burdens, suppressed investment, and mass capital flight. He points to 2022 data from Norway showing a wealth tax hike prompted more super-rich residents to leave the country than in the preceding 13 years combined, while Swiss research found a 0.1 percentage point increase in wealth tax rates reduced total taxable wealth by 3.5%.
Even ahead of the January 1, 2026, retroactive residency cutoff for the proposed tax, at least six California billionaires have already relocated out of state to avoid the levy, including Google co-founders Brin and Larry Page, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Los Angeles-based Hankey Group founder Don Hankey, who noted he has created thousands of in-state jobs and ran a profit-sharing program for his employees, yet still felt unwelcome by the policy. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose estimated $200 billion net worth could leave him on the hook for a $12.5 billion tax bill if the measure passes, has received a special expanded stock compensation package from Meta’s board to incentivize him to keep his primary residence in California, where the social media firm is headquartered. DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, with a $1.6 billion net worth, has publicly dismissed the proposal as “stupid” and stated he is actively planning a potential exit from the state.
With a September joint poll from Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times showing 45% of likely voters supporting the measure, 42% opposing it, and 13% still undecided, the race is a statistical dead heat. California is not the only U.S. West Coast state weighing a levy on extreme wealth: Washington state voters are concurrently considering a separate ballot initiative that would impose a 9.9% tax on annual personal income exceeding $1 million. Analysts note the outcome of California’s Proposition 40 will set a precedent for nationwide wealth policy, as U.S. income inequality currently sits at its highest level in more than three decades, with the top 1% of households holding nearly 32% of all national wealth as of the third quarter of 2025. -
Ruins of Limoges city hall a symbol of France divided by national protests
Exactly seven days after violent unrest during France’s nationwide wave of demonstrations left Limoges’ iconic 19th-century town hall reduced to a charred, fire-ravaged shell, the tight-knit porcelain-making city is caught in a moment of collective grief and fierce political division. For Guillaume Guérin, the conservative mayor who only took office six months ago, the past week has been the most searing of his young tenure: standing beside the blackened, still structurally fragile stone facade of the once-grand municipal building, he recalls breaking down in tears when he first witnessed the full scale of the damage, as the building’s beloved wooden clock spire crumbled into roaring live flames in front of onlookers last Saturday. The viral footage of the spire’s collapse sparked immediate national outrage, a reaction Guérin describes as entirely legitimate and understandable, calling the incident not just a local loss for Limoges but a “historical tragedy for all of France.”
Two men, aged 66 and 34, have been taken into police custody in connection with the arson, with regional prosecutors confirming both suspects have documented ties to radical left-wing activist networks. Guérin has publicly noted that while he received a personal message of solidarity from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, he has not heard any direct outreach from Emmanuel Macron, France’s sitting outgoing president. The mayor warns that the destruction of the landmark municipal building will leave a tangible mark on the country’s upcoming presidential election, scheduled in six months’ time, arguing “this country is not doing well at all.”
The fire that destroyed the city’s most recognizable architectural symbol is the most explosive flashpoint yet of weeks of rolling, youth-led national protests that began as narrow demonstrations over dilapidated high school infrastructure, but quickly snowballed into a broader mass outcry over skyrocketing living costs, stagnant wages and widespread public frustration with a paralyzed centrist national government. The administration, led by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, holds no stable working majority in the National Assembly, is grappling with one of the largest fiscal deficits in the European Union, and has offered few actionable policy solutions to address public discontent ahead of the election. Lecornu traveled to Limoges on Friday evening to survey the damage, as national authorities moved to ban public demonstrations in multiple urban centers, deploy additional riot police across high-risk areas, and impose strict local restrictions in Limoges including an overnight curfew and a ban on public gatherings larger than 10 people in the city center.
Public opinion across Limoges remains sharply split on the fire and the legitimacy of the broader protest movement. At a popular student pub in the city center, 24-year-old Alexander, wearing the traditional colorful French student faluche beret, argues that widespread systemic poverty poses a far greater crisis than the loss of a historic municipal building. His view is echoed by 19-year-old medical student Jade, who says she survives on just €300 a month for living expenses and feels her generation is completely disrespected by governing elites, noting that while the town hall fire is tragic, it is far from the most distressing outcome of the current wave of unrest. Both acknowledge that acts of random vandalism are unacceptable, but say the anger driving the protests is fully justified.
Across the city at Limoges’ landmark Eiffel-engineered covered market, however, long-time local residents express overwhelming grief and frustration at the destruction. 63-year-old fishmonger Jean Roger Faucher, whose family has run their market stall for more than a century, married at the town hall decades earlier and says the fire left him completely stunned, adding that while he sympathizes with the protesters’ economic grievances, any demonstration that endangers local residents’ lives cannot be tolerated. 59-year-old butcher Pascale Vuylsteke, who works 100 hours a week to support her business, says she recognizes that living costs have become unmanageable for many, but struggles to accept that mass vandalism is a reasonable response.
Limoges, a historic cradle of the 19th-century French labor movement that grew alongside its world-famous porcelain industry, now finds itself once again at the epicenter of a national political rupture. Many local residents hold out hope that the shock of losing the town hall will push the protest movement away from violent destruction and back toward constructive, peaceful debate — but with further demonstrations already scheduled and national political polarization continuing to deepen, that outcome remains far from guaranteed.
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Student movement takes Serbia’s Vučić to the wire in neck-and-neck election
As Serbia heads to the polls for snap parliamentary elections this Sunday, a grassroots, student-born political movement known as “The Student List” has emerged as the most formidable challenge to Aleksandar Vučić and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) since the party swept into power in 2012. Placed third on the national ballot, the movement has turned a cardiologist and Novi Sad University professor, Ilija Srdanović, into its public face: the 60-something academic arrives for media interviews on a motorbike clad in a bright fluorescent yellow jacket emblazoned with pro-student slogans, a deliberate contrast to the carefully staged public image of the long-ruling political establishment.
The origins of The Student List stretch back nearly two years to the deadly Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse that killed 16 people, a tragedy tied to a flagship infrastructure project under Vučić’s watch: the high-speed Belgrade-Budapest railway line. Outraged by allegations of systemic corruption that they say led directly to the preventable deaths, young Serbian activists launched months of sustained anti-corruption demonstrations across the country. Rejecting traditional top-down political structures, student-led assemblies at Serbia’s major universities selected 250 non-partisan candidates with no prior political experience to run for parliament, ranging from leading academics and professional athletes to economists and engineers. Srdanović, who was chosen to head the nationwide ballot, emphasizes his role as a supportive ally rather than a leader: “It is absolutely normal to stand with my students to help them in their fair struggle.” Notably, the movement has no formal hierarchy or designated prime ministerial candidate even in the event of a landslide win, a structure unprecedented in Serbia’s post-democratic transition political history.
For Vučić, who has rotated through the top roles of deputy prime minister, prime minister and president over 12 years of unbroken SNS rule, the snap election was called after he formally stepped down from the presidency last month to run for a new term as prime minister. For years, state-aligned domestic media has cultivated his image as an unchallenged, decisive national leader, and he retains a loyal base of supporters who credit his administration with a decade of steady economic growth and sweeping nationwide infrastructure upgrades. His campaign has framed the entire student-led opposition as a foreign-funded plot designed to destabilize and dismantle the Serbian state, urging crowds at his final rallies to “always protect and defend” the nation against purported outside interference.
Independent election observers have repeatedly flagged systemic structural advantages enjoyed by the ruling SNS, including pervasive pro-government media bias and the widespread misuse of state public resources for campaign purposes, issues formally documented by the International Election Observation Mission following the 2023 parliamentary vote. A pro-SNS encampment has operated 24/7 for the past 18 months in the central Belgrade park between the National Assembly and Presidency buildings, with repeated reports of camp residents assaulting journalists and barring ordinary citizens from the public space — a site Vučić has lauded as a “symbol of resistance” for free expression.
On the international stage, Vučić has leaned into his long-documented balancing act between competing global powers, warning voters that a Student List victory would force Serbia to sever its long-standing close diplomatic and economic ties with Russia and China, both of which refuse to recognize Kosovo’s unilateral independence, and potentially impose EU-mandated sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. He has repeatedly attacked the opposition for refusing to give a clear public answer on their foreign policy stances, urging voters to choose a proven leader who prioritizes Serbian national interests.
With independent public polling scarce in the final stretch of the campaign, election analysts are forecasting an extraordinarily tight race. The two sides’ closing rallies laid bare their starkly contrasting governing visions: Vučić addressed a packed Belgrade Arena as the sole featured speaker, reinforcing his brand as a singular, strong national leader, while across the Sava River, an estimated 150,000 Student List supporters packed Belgrade’s Slavija Square to hear speeches from a diverse lineup of students and non-partisan candidates. For the first time in over a decade, Serbian voters face a clear choice between a centralized, decades-long ruling administration and a decentralized, grassroots movement promising to restore core civil liberties, independent institutions and rule of law that activists argue have been systematically eroded over the SNS’s 12 years in power.
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Britain’s posh schools are heading to India for students and profits
A wave of prestigious centuries-old British public private boarding schools is launching new international campuses across India, driven by shifting regulatory and market conditions in their traditional overseas expansion hubs. Earlier this year, 473-year-old Bedford School, a historic Bedfordshire institution, unveiled its first all-girls international satellite campus in Mohali, on the outskirts of Chandigarh in India’s Punjab state. Unlike the iconic Gothic central buildings that define its original UK grounds, the Mohali facility features sleek, purpose-built modern academic blocks, with a distinctive red-brick clock tower paying deliberate homage to the school’s British heritage.
Bedford is far from the only elite UK educational institution making inroads into India. At least six long-established British fee-paying private schools, including three of the UK’s oldest educational foundations, have now established locations spanning the breadth of the nation. This cohort includes Harrow School — alma mater of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru — which opened its Bengaluru campus in 2023 in India’s Silicon Valley, a bustling hub of tech firms and startup activity. Shrewsbury School operates a site in Bhopal, central India, while Wellington College has set up operations in Pune, the western Indian city known as the “Oxford of the East” for its dense network of top-tier higher education institutions. Renowned schools including Millfield and Queen Elizabeth’s School are also in advanced stages of planning their own Indian campuses for coming years.
The expansion surge comes as external pressures reshape the global business model for UK private schools. For more than a decade, China and Hong Kong hosted roughly half of the 151 total international satellite campuses run by 50 British private schools, serving as the primary engine of their overseas growth. However, a 2025 report from UK think tank the Private Education Policy Forum (PEPF) notes that expansion in the region has slowed sharply amid tighter regulatory oversight, rising government scrutiny and public pushback against foreign-run private institutions. A 2024 national Chinese mandate requiring all schools to integrate patriotic education across every curriculum subject further disrupted operations, leading to multiple planned new campus projects being scrapped entirely. Compounding these headwinds, the UK government’s 2024 Autumn Budget introduced a new 20% VAT levy on domestic private school fees, set to take effect January 1, 2025. Naomi Atkins, founding principal of Bedford School Mohali, explains that even UK private schools that previously had no interest in international expansion are now actively pursuing overseas markets to offset domestic revenue strains, describing many institutions as being in a “desperate situation.”
India presents a uniquely attractive alternative market for these legacy schools. For generations, local elite boarding schools modelled on the British colonial public school system have served the country’s aristocratic and upper-class families, but the market has expanded exponentially in recent years as a fast-growing cohort of newly affluent Indian families prioritize global educational exposure for their children. Caroline Pascoe, head of Harrow Bengaluru, notes that the school’s all-through Cambridge curriculum — a globally recognized framework used across 10,000 institutions worldwide, spanning primary education all the way through to A-level qualifications — is a major draw for local families. Many parents, including Harsimran Singh Kocchar, a local education network operator who enrolled his 5-year-old daughter at Bedford Mohali, cite the schools’ stated focus on holistic character development, confidence building and equitable treatment of all students, free of the “VIP culture” that permeates many top-tier Indian private institutions, as key deciding factors. The student base also includes large numbers of non-resident Indians, both expats who have returned to India after long stints abroad and families still based in the UK or Middle East who want their children to maintain cultural ties to their Indian roots.
The schools work to preserve their iconic British traditions while integrating local Indian customs to resonate with their student bodies. At Harrow Bengaluru, 60% of the teaching staff are international hires, students wear the signature traditional Harrow hats and uniforms, teachers are referred to as “Beaks”, pupils take part in the global cross-country running event the Long Ducker, and the classic British house system forms the backbone of campus social life. These practices are paired with local cultural elements, including daily recitals of the Indian national anthem and celebrations of major festivals such as Ganesh Chaturthi, alongside a robust roster of extracurricular programs in music, drama and sports.
Despite these promising market conditions, operating in India has presented unforeseen challenges for the UK institutions. Almost all new campuses are launched via joint ventures with local education investors, and Atkins notes that typical revenue share margins for the British school brands have shrunk from a standard 10% in other markets to as low as 1% in some Indian partnerships. Many schools also overestimated the size of their target demographic: while India has 250 million total enrolled schoolchildren, widespread pre-existing English-language education infrastructure and a highly competitive local private school sector create far stiffer competition than in non-English-speaking markets like China, Vietnam or South Korea. India’s relatively low per capita income also limits the addressable market, as full boarding fees at top British campuses can reach £15,000 per year, a price point out of reach for the vast majority of families. Atkins notes Indian parents are far more price-sensitive than families in other Southeast Asian education markets, prompting Bedford Mohali to set its fees at roughly half the rate of competing British international schools to stay competitive.
PEPF data shows that between 2011-12 and 2022-23, British private schools’ global satellite campuses generated a combined total of £152.4 million in cumulative profits, with that figure rising steadily year over year. However, analysts and school leaders agree that growth in India will be slow and steady rather than the explosive expansion seen previously in China. While the country’s shared colonial educational heritage and fast-expanding new wealthy class create a significant long-term opportunity for the legacy British institutions, the Indian market is unlikely to fully offset the lost revenue from China for the foreseeable future.
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Book says Kushner had access to secret, Arab-funded bank accounts
A newly released excerpt from investigative journalist Matthew Cole’s upcoming explosive book, published by Vanity Fair on a recent Thursday, has laid out a series of incendiary claims targeting Jared Kushner, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and current senior foreign policy adviser in Trump’s second administration. Titled *Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East*, the book asserts that at the outset of Trump’s first presidential term, United Arab Emirates leader Mohamed bin Zayed and then-future Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman funneled a combined sum of roughly $2 billion into at least two undisclosed foreign bank accounts to which Kushner held access. The first account, codenamed “Alpha” and established at First Abu Dhabi Bank, operated as an informal off-the-books foreign policy fund that Kushner and bin Zayed partially co-managed to advance shared geopolitical priorities. The second, codenamed “Beta,” was structured to route funds from an Azerbaijani financial institution to an apparent Israeli government-linked account held at the Central Bank of Israel, with one anonymous source close to Cole’s investigation confirming this account was explicitly set up for Kushner’s personal financial benefit. Neither account was ever publicly or confidentially disclosed by Kushner during his tenure as a White House senior adviser, a position that required mandatory public and classified financial disclosure filings under U.S. federal ethics rules. As a government official with regular access to top-tier classified intelligence, Kushner was legally obligated to report any account where he held signatory authority or beneficiary rights. Cole’s reporting also draws on a 2020 tip from a reliable intelligence source that confirmed Dutch authorities had hacked Kushner’s personal mobile device and monitored him accessing a Dubai-based account holding hundreds of millions in Azerbaijani-origin funds, with records showing he transferred large sums to third parties including a regional warlord, private mercenary, and former contract killer. A former prosecutor who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2016 Russian election interference investigation told Cole that if Kushner exchanged favorable U.S. government treatment for the Gulf state funding, he could face felony federal bribery charges, even if the only action he took was relaying a request to his father-in-law, then-President Trump. The former Mueller team official also noted that even if the accounts had been disclosed properly, Kushner would likely have been required to register as a foreign agent for acting on behalf of UAE and Saudi interests to secure influence within the White House. Within hours of the Vanity Fair excerpt’s publication, Kushner issued a fiery public rebuke via social media, dismissing all allegations as “completely insane, categorically false, and never happened.” He accused Cole of publishing unsubstantiated fiction, noting the journalist had failed to produce a single verifiable piece of evidence including bank statements, wire transfer receipts, account numbers, or transaction dates to back up the claims, and described the work as a deliberate blend of fantasy, partisan advocacy, and malicious fabrication. The allegations emerge at a critical juncture, as Kushner currently serves as the Trump administration’s special peace envoy, with formal mandates to lead high-stakes negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war and resolve the ongoing military conflict with Iran that the Trump administration launched in February of this year. Adding to the ongoing scrutiny, government ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to block Kushner from serving in a senior foreign policy role without the required U.S. Senate confirmation.
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Millions removed from India’s draft voter rolls viewed as targeting of Muslims
For years, 44-year-old Old Delhi businessman Sameen Ud Din has cast his ballot at his longstanding Nizam Ud Din residence, including in the 2025 Delhi state elections. But when the Election Commission of India (ECI) released the draft voter list for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, he discovered his name had been erased from the rolls entirely, with no prior official notification explaining the removal. “It is a bitter irony that I, a regular voter, was never contacted by the ECI before my name was struck off,” Din shared with Middle East Eye. “Now I am being pressured to submit Form 6 to re-register as a new voter, which requires me to make a false declaration that I have never been enrolled before – a move that carries serious legal penalties.” Din is far from an isolated case. Thousands of Muslim and Dalit voters across India have reported identical, unprompted removals from the draft SIR lists, as official data shows roughly 133 million names have been flagged for elimination from national electoral rolls.
Critics argue the deletions are not neutral administrative housekeeping, but a targeted campaign that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. A 2025 investigation by Indian news outlet The Wire found that in West Bengal, 1.8 million of the 2.75 million names marked for removal – nearly 70% of the total – belonged to Muslim residents, even though Muslims make up only 25% of the state’s total electorate. In some local districts, Muslim names accounted for more than 90% of all proposed deletions, a staggering statistical gap that has sparked widespread public anger and mass street demonstrations across the country.
Leading the charge against the SIR process is the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a grassroots movement that originated as a satirical online campaign in May 2026, initially formed to demand the resignation of BJP Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following a massive leak of India’s national medical entrance exam, the NEET. What began as a digital protest has rapidly evolved into a formidable street mobilization force, organizing nationwide demonstrations under the slogan “Lehra Do Tiranga” (Wave the Tricolour). At a mid-October rally in central Delhi, the Congress Party estimated turnout reached 250,000 people, with tens of thousands more participating in parallel protests in cities across India. Demonstrators waving Indian national flags marched from Connaught Place through central Delhi, chanting slogans demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, condemning heavy-handed police tactics, and accusing the ruling Modi administration of attempting to rig electoral demographics.
Authorities led by the BJP-controlled Delhi government attempted to quash the unrest by imposing prohibitory orders banning gatherings of four or more people in large swathes of the capital, just days after Delhi Police removed the iconic, decades-old protest site at Jantar Mantar from its list of approved demonstration locations, re-routing permitted events to far-flung, underused grounds on the city’s outskirts. Despite these restrictions, thousands of demonstrators defied the bans, leading to widespread detentions. “We are out on the streets to defend Indian democracy, and we are not engaging in any violence – yet the police are still arbitrarily arresting people,” protester Vishnu told Middle East Eye from a police transport vehicle holding detained demonstrators. “These illegal detentions are the hallmark of a fascist state. Our demand is non-negotiable: scrap the SIR entirely, because it is nothing more than a state tool to reengineer this country’s voting demographics. They have already successfully pulled this trick in dozens of locations, and we are calling on every citizen to join us to fight this oppressive government.”
Among those detained during the marches were CJP founder and digital strategist Abhijeet Dipke, and All India Students Association president Neha Bora. Bora was released without charges on Saturday morning, while Dipke was released after appearing before a Special Executive Magistrate and signing a personal bond. Delhi Police has filed at least two formal cases against the movement for violating public assembly restrictions.
The ECI and ruling BJP have defended the SIR process, framing the roughly 130 million proposed deletions as a routine, good-faith administrative effort to purge dead, duplicate, and otherwise ineligible voters from the rolls to clean up electoral integrity. But a September 23 investigation by *The Indian Express* uncovered deep internal rifts within the Election Commission, revealing that two sitting Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had filed formal written objections at least 14 times over a 10-month period to major decisions that were enacted without their knowledge, consultation, or approval. Their documented concerns included unvetted mass additions and deletions of voters, unauthorized changes to Form 6 protocols, unrestricted access to the central national voter database, and unregulated modifications to the commission’s core electoral technology systems. The ECI has publicly dismissed the reports of internal dissent, claiming the documents cited were merely informal suggestions, and that every decision related to the SIR process was reached with full, unanimous agreement among all commissioners.
Political analysts argue the stakes of the SIR process extend far beyond administrative procedure, posing a fundamental threat to the fairness of India’s upcoming 2029 general national elections. Ajay Gudavarthy, an associate professor of political studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, explains that the disproportionate removal of Muslim and Dalit voters appears to be a deliberate, calculated political strategy by the BJP to consolidate electoral support among upper-caste and Other Backward Class (OBC) communities. “The overwhelming majority of deleted names belong to Muslim voters, and that deliberate targeting is why there has been no broader cross-caste mass outrage against the SIR,” Gudavarthy noted. “The BJP’s larger design is not just to erase Muslim votes, but to socially polarize the entire electorate along religious lines through these deletions. Removing large numbers of Dalit voters alongside Muslim voters serves to trigger reverse consolidation of upper-caste and OBC voters behind the BJP, entrenching their hold on power.”
In Odisha’s Cuttack district, the experience of Sayed Rashad Ikmal’s family illustrates how the flawed SIR system operates at the grassroots level. The names of Ikmal’s aunt and uncle – a retired Indian Railways finance department employee – were both struck from the draft voter list, even though they had been registered voters for decades. The family later discovered an unauthorized Form 7 petition (the official document used to request a name’s removal from voter rolls) had been filed against their names, with no knowledge or consent from the couple. Only after they appealed directly to their local Block Development Officer (BDO) was the fraudulent deletion request cancelled, and their names restored to the rolls. Ikmal notes that local communities across his district are increasingly reporting that Muslim residents are being disproportionately targeted for deletion, a trend that has coincided with the spread of the Hindu right-wing “Go to Bangladesh” narrative that frames Indian Muslim citizens as illegal foreign infiltrators. “This repeated threat of being labelled an illegal Bangladeshi migrant is one of the most terrifying narratives being weaponized against Muslim communities,” Ikmal said. “It has been used repeatedly to divide voters along religious lines ahead of state elections, and to galvanize support for the BJP.”
Gudavarthy warns that the ongoing SIR controversy exposes a dangerous erosion of institutional autonomy in the world’s largest democracy. “The only way to restore accountability to our electoral system is through sustained mass public protest and greater decentralization of electoral governance away from unaccountable central authorities,” he said. “This crisis is a critical lesson for Indian democracy: even longstanding, supposedly independent institutions can be easily subverted when the executive branch is allowed to overreach its authority without pushback.”
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Father who killed Oregon school shooter describes anguish over children he couldn’t save
In a raw, candid interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting aired Friday, 36-year-old carpenter Kaylub Giamanco — the father of two daughters enrolled at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon — opened up about the harrowing moments he intervened to neutralize a 16-year-old former student gunman earlier this month, an act that has earned him widespread public acclaim but left him grappling with crippling guilt over the lives he could not spare.
The deadly rampage unfolded on what was meant to be a cheerful school picture day: Giamanco had planned to eat his pre-packed lunch at his job site, but a last-minute decision to return home to share the meal with his wife placed him in the immediate vicinity of the campus just as the violence erupted. At first, he assumed the individual carrying a long gun near the property was pulling a tasteless prank, but that illusion shattered the second he witnessed the teen fire at a passing pickup truck and advance toward the school entrance.
Giamanco grabbed a handgun from his vehicle, dialed emergency services, and told dispatchers he could not wait for law enforcement to arrive, as bystanders would surely lose their lives if he delayed. He crawled toward the building past the sound of children screaming and begging for their lives, later recalling he fully expected the encounter to be the final act of his life. He slipped through a broken, bullet-shattered window to reach the classroom where the attacker had already opened fire, and found 25-year-old teacher Megan Lambert — who held the position she had long dreamed of, and whose family remembered her as a fierce advocate for marginalized and special needs students — physically grappling with the teen to seize his shotgun. Giamanco fired at the gunman, neutralizing him before he could harm more people, then laid his own weapon on the ground and raised his hands the moment a responding police officer arrived to avoid being misidentified as a threat.
The attack claimed the lives of three young male students — 5-year-old Rhoam Summer, and two other boys whose identities have been withheld at their families’ request — alongside Lambert. Two additional people, including 54-year-old teacher Becky Drury, sustained gunshot wounds; Drury shared that she was shot while attempting to lock her classroom door to shield her students. Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz confirmed that Lambert’s brave, split-second decision to throw her phone at the gunman, tackle him, and fight for control of his weapon almost certainly prevented a far higher casualty count, a reality Giamanco echoed in his interview as he insisted the slain educator was the “real true hero” of the incident.
While communities across the state and beyond have hailed Giamanco as a lifesaver, the carpenter has been unable to shake overwhelming remorse. “I want to apologise for not saving their babies,” he said, referencing the families of the four victims, adding that he hopes to meet every grieving household soon to sit with them, cry alongside them, and offer physical comfort in their grief. He also shared that he struggles with relentless post-incident flashbacks, often staying awake long after his wife and daughters have fallen asleep, replaying the sounds of screams and the faces of the children he could not rescue. He noted he still struggles to process that he took the life of what may have been a minor, after witnessing the teen storm into his daughters’ school armed for violence.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has publicly recognized Giamanco’s life-saving intervention while acknowledging the immense, long-term emotional toll the experience will leave on him. Law enforcement is still investigating the motive behind the 16-year-old former special education student’s attack, and Giamanco’s family has previously issued a statement noting he does not seek public fame, and requesting that the public respect the privacy of all affected families as they navigate their healing process. -
Antisemitism reviewer David Bell said Muslim schools could threaten UK’s ‘coherence’
Newly unearthed archival remarks have cast a cloud of public scrutiny over Sir David Bell, the lead author of the landmark UK government-commissioned antisemitism in schools review published this week. Long before he led the 2025 probe, Bell, who served as chief of Britain’s national education regulator Ofsted back in 2005, drew widespread backlash for singling out Muslim faith schools in a citizenship education lecture, claiming that inadequate curricula at those institutions could erode Britain’s broader national social cohesion.
During that 2005 address, Bell argued that the rapidly expanding network of faith-based schools required careful, sensitive government oversight to ensure all students learned not only the tenets of their own religion, but also gained meaningful exposure to other belief systems and core civic values of British democratic society. He specifically noted that at a subset of Muslim schools, this cross-cultural and civic education was not being delivered to a sufficient standard, warning that unaddressed religious segregation in education could put the country’s shared social fabric at risk. His comments drew immediate public pushback from multiple senior education sector stakeholders, including his own colleagues at Ofsted.
Christopher Schenk, a then-senior independent faith school inspector, pushed back against Bell’s framing, stating that his own on-site visits to Muslim schools showed institutional leaders actively framed tolerance and intercultural harmony as core Islamic virtues, and worked intentionally to prepare their students to be fully engaged, contributing members of British public life. Iqbal Sacranie, then Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, noted that only 3% of all Muslim children in the UK attended dedicated Muslim faith schools, and that many of those institutions were already outperforming the mainstream state school sector academically, describing Bell’s focus on the community as irresponsible and unfounded. Dr Mohamed Mukadam, then chair of the Association of Muslim Schools, went further to label the comments a clear example of Islamophobia, pointing out that Muslim school graduates posted far higher rates of progression to further and higher education than the national state school average. Subsequent 2005 Ofsted inspection data later confirmed that 18 out of 50 reviewed Muslim schools failed to meet basic tolerance education standards, a lower failure rate than the 17 out of 40 evangelical Christian schools that fell short of the same requirements.
Additional controversies have since surfaced around Bell’s newly released antisemitism review, which the current Labour government has pledged to implement in full, including a mandate for all schools to adopt the widely contested International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Critics have noted that Bell previously held a position on the National Council of the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East, a body that publicly opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel, though Bell has since stated he never attended any of the group’s meetings, performed no work on its behalf, and was never consulted on any of its policy positions, emphasizing his antisemitism review was focused exclusively on tackling hate against Jewish communities, not Middle East geopolitics.
Further analysis of the review’s underlying data has revealed significant limitations in widely circulated media claims that “three in five Jewish pupils experience antisemitism at school.” The statistic is drawn from a small, unrepresentative survey of 16 to 18-year-olds, with a total sample of only 92 Jewish respondents. Of that group, just 70 answered the question about experiencing or witnessing antisemitism, with 29 reporting such incidents – equal to 41% of respondents, not the 60% implied in headline coverage. The review’s own annex explicitly notes the dataset is not representative of the full UK school population, as it only sampled students applying for further or higher education, and that results from the tiny Jewish subgroup should be interpreted with extreme caution.
Critics of the government’s planned adoption of the IHRA definition have also raised substantive concerns: the National Education Union’s General Secretary Daniel Kebede warned the contested framework would further stifle legitimate classroom discussion of the ongoing Gaza conflict, rather than delivering practical, targeted support to schools to address antisemitism. The IHRA definition, drafted in 2004 as a non-binding monitoring tool, includes illustrative examples that critics argue blur critical distinction between legitimate political criticism of Israeli state policy and antisemitic hate, a concern even the definition’s lead author Kenneth Stern has publicly echoed, warning against its use as a punitive disciplinary or legal tool that could unjustly restrict free expression. Representatives from Middle East Eye state the organization has reached out to Sir David Bell to request formal comment on all outstanding points of contention.