Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has voted to accept the Gaza ceasefire deal, despite threats from right-wing coalition partners to bring down his government. Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, said it made Netanyahu more popular but accepted it could lead to him losing power.
Mick Jagger and his fiancée Melanie Hamrick looked loved up as they made a rare red carpet appearance. The private couple looked in love as they walked the carpet at the New York City Ballet Fall Fashion Gala.
The Rolling Stones rocker, 82, walked the red carpet in the United States alongside his fiancée Melanie, 38. The former dancer wowed in a stunning red satin gown with a thigh high split whilst Mick looked dapped in a black blazer and a floral shirt.
The pair looked loved up as they walked a rare red carpet together after meeting backstage at a concert in 2014, when she was touring with New York City’s American Ballet Theatre.
She was with the dance company for 15 years before she retired from dancing in 2019 to focus on her love of writing fiction, which she now does as a career, and raise her and Mick’s son Deveraux.
Melanie had previously been quizzed about the couple’s romance and the age gap. Of their romance, she shared to The Times: “Everyone’s going to have their opinion. If you think about others’ opinions, no matter where you are in life, you’re going to have a problem and you’re going to analyse it.
“Am I happy? Yes. Are the people in my life happy? Yes. Am I hurting anyone? No. Okay, they can mind their own business.” Joking about their age gap in another interview, she added: “He’s younger than me!
“He’s amazing; he really is … I feel very secure in my relationship. There will always be rumours, but I know what Mick and I have, so I don’t pay attention to them.”
Earlier this year, Melanie confirmed the pair had got engaged “two or three years ago” but were in no rush to tie the knot. She said: “Maybe one day we’ll marry, maybe not. We are so happy in our current life that I would be too afraid to change anything. We try to support each other, be there for each other, and make sure everyone is happy. That’s all that matters to me and all I strive for.”
When the pair first met backstage at his concert, Melanie didn’t think anything about them dating. “Maybe a spark, but nothing incredible, like, ‘Come on, I’ll blow your mind and we’ll travel the world,” she recalled of their first meeting, “We didn’t even exchange phone numbers. At the time, I wasn’t in a relationship, but he was.”
The pair also chatted about the son Deveraux Octavian Basil they share together, revealing he’s just like his dad. Melanie explained: “It’s amazing. It’s natural. It’s in his genes. He just, like, moves. No one taught him.
“No one influenced him. He moved like that before he even saw one of his dad’s concerts. It’s still there.”
Meghan Markle is set to make another appearance at a major event in the US, just days after her joint outing with Prince Harry in New York for the World Mental Health Day gala.
The Duchess of Sussex will travel to Washington DC next week for the Fortune’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit on October 14, where she will be joined by some of the most influential names in the country.
Meghan is reportedly set to discuss the launch of her lifestyle brand As Ever, as well as “navigating entrepreneurship in the public eye and building a brand that will endure.”
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According to People magazine, the three-day summit will also feature talks by former Vice President Kamala Harris on her presidential campaign and recently released book; Selena Gomez on her Rare Beauty brand; Kara Lawson on coaching the USA Women’s Basketball Team and Brené Brown on team leadership and company culture, amongst others.
It comes after a whirlwind few weeks for the duchess. She made a surprise appearance at Paris Fashion Week last Saturday before heading to New York City, where she and Harry received an award last night.
The couple, co-founders of the Archewell Foundation, received the Project Healthy Minds’ Humanitarians of the Year Award in recognition of their campaigns to make the online world a safer place for families and young people.
Accepting the award, Meghan spoke candidly of her two children and their futures, saying: “Our children, Archie and Lili, are just six and four years old. Luckily still too young for social media, but we know that day is coming.”
“Like so many parents, we think constantly about how to embrace technology’s benefits, while safeguarding against its dangers. That hopeful intention of separation is rapidly becoming impossible.”
Before heading to New York, the Duchess of Sussex travelled to the French capital to attend the Balenciaga show for their Spring/Summer 2026 womenswear design showcase at Paris Fashion Week.
Many asked why Meghan appeared at this particular show during the event, and it appears she is friends with the fashion designer Pierpaolo Piccioli – Balenciaga’s new creative director – and wore his designs when he previously worked at Valentino.
A spokesman for the duchess said: “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attended the Balenciaga show in Paris on Saturday night in support of Pierpaolo Piccioli, who recently assumed the role of creative director for the house.
“This marks her first time back to the shows in over a decade. Over the years, the duchess has worn a number of designs by Pierpaolo. They have worked closely together collaborating on design for key moments on the world stage.”
A small tent held up by flimsy tarpaulin stands alone, surrounded by bloodied and tattered blue helmets and vests with the word “PRESS” marked across them. Smashed cellphones, laptops and camcorders, and debris lie scattered around it in what could be a scene from a warzone.
But this is not a warzone. It is an installation setting the scene for a two-day conference organised by Al Jazeera, which began on Wednesday to highlight the terrible dangers faced by journalists working in armed conflicts.
The installation has been positioned in front of the angular conference hall of the Sheraton Grand hotel, a brutalist building that stands in Doha’s upscale West Bay neighbourhood.
Inside, an LCD screen is playing footage of Al Jazeera’s journalists wearing those blue vests and jackets, reporting in Gaza. It then cuts to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu patting an Israeli military soldier on the back before footage of protesters carrying Palestine flags and posters calling Netanyahu a war criminal.
To the side of the hall, a panel listing the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been injured or killed while reporting on Israel’s war in Gaza, over which Hamas and Israel have now agreed to the first stage of a peace process, appears. The panel is horrifyingly long, spanning the entire length of the hall.
Most recently, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was deliberately killed by an Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City on August 10. That assault also killed an Al Jazeera correspondent, two Al Jazeera camera operators, a freelance cameraman and a freelance journalist.
Opposite, on the other side of the hall, another panel displays the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been killed while reporting on conflict all over the world, including Rasheed Wali, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 while covering clashes in the city of Karbala; and Mohammad al-Masalmeh, killed in Deraa, Syria in 2013 while covering the civil war.
It is a painful reminder that the war on Gaza, in which nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed, according to the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory – including 10 from Al Jazeera – is no isolated case of journalists losing their lives while reporting in conflict zones.
Gaza has marked a turning point for journalists, however, Louise Alluin Bichet, director of projects and emergency response at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told the conference on Wednesday.
While reporters once relied on the sorts of bulletproof vests seen strewn at the entrance to the conference to shield them from accidental injury, as they performed their jobs amidst and on the sidelines of conflict, she said, they are now being deliberately targeted.
“It does not matter what kind of body armour you’re wearing.”
As Maryam bint Abdullah Al-Attiyah, chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), highlighted, international law has been flouted in the Gaza war and “journalists have been targeted and killed.”
Al Jazeera Arabic anchor M’hamed Krichen opened the conference on Wednesday with a video of smoke billowing in Gaza as journalists come under attack.
“The journalists became news themselves,” Krichen said as an image of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, writhing in pain after an attack played out on the screen. Dahdouh has lost many family members in Gaza, including his wife and several of his children.
The video then cut to footage of Samer Abudaqa, an Al Jazeera cameraman killed in an Israeli attack in December 2023 in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. Krichen told the audience that Abu Daqqa had bled for six hours while Israeli forces prevented an ambulance from reaching him.
“Al Jazeera has said goodbye to many of its sons,” Krichen said.
As journalists come increasingly under fire, the newly appointed director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani, told the conference their safety must be the overriding priority for all news organisations.
“Otherwise, war crimes will remain unwritten,” he said. “Protecting journalists is protection of the truth itself.”
Wael Dahdouh was one of Al Jazeera’s most prominent correspondents during the earlier stages of the war. He has been seriously injured and has lost close relatives during the course of the war, and was evacuated to Qatar in December 2023 to receive treatment for an injury.
He describes what has been taking place in Gaza as a “total genocide”.
On October 25, 2023, an Israeli air strike targeted a house in the central Gaza Strip where Dahdouh’s family had taken shelter while he was reporting on the war. Several close family members, including his wife, son, daughter and grandson, were killed.
“Journalists are being killed and genocide is being committed against them,” Dahdouh told the conference, gesticulating heavily with his left hand, as his right hand is still recovering from a serious injury.
Dahdouh told the audience that reporting on a war which has had such devastating personal consequences has been a major challenge for all journalists in Gaza.
“When your family is dead, cut into pieces before you … there is a volcano inside of you. You want to fight, but you remain professional and you continue your work,” he said.
After he buried his wife and children, he told his son and daughter, who had been injured: “I am going back to Gaza (City) to continue my work. What do you want to do?”
“We will come with you. Either we die together or live together,” they said.
Then tragedy struck again. Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza Dahdouh, 27, also a journalist, was killed by an Israeli missile strike in western Khan Younis in January 2024.
Journalists in Lebanon, where Israel launched major attacks during the second half of 2024 – to target members of Hezbollah, it said – and killed at least 1,000 people, have also faced this dilemma.
Nakhle Odaime, news correspondent and presenter at MTV Lebanon, also chose to continue reporting despite coming under fire.
“I recorded a video because I thought it might be the last video I’ll record. The voice of the truth should reach the audiences,” he told the conference.
While journalists are treated the same as civilians under international law – they are never legitimate targets in a war – there is one main difference between the two.
“The civilian can go away from the combat field, but the journalist has to stay,” said Omar Mekky, the regional legal coordinator for the Near and Middle East region for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “To assimilate the war journalist with the civilian is not right.”
The protection of journalists in war zones must be specifically enshrined in international law, therefore, he and others – including Fadi El Abdallah, head of public affairs at the International Criminal Court (ICC) – told the conference.
It is also necessary to expand the definition of “journalist” in the era of social media, Mekky said. “Anyone who has access to these resources is a journalist,” he added, referring to those using phones and social media to broadcast news of the war.
Female journalists, who endure different forms of violence while reporting in conflict zones, must also be afforded special protections, said Renaud Gaudin de Villaine, a human rights officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Ultimately, however, none of this will be possible without the political will of states, said Bichet from RSF. “The backup needs to come from all the states that have the power to put pressure.”
Time is of the essence, said Doja Daoud, regional programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un vowed to turn the country into a ‘socialist paradise’ during a huge ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
A day job as a grocery-slinging speedster helped Victoria Levitt become a world champion sprinter, she says.
The 29-year-old Tesco worker, who prides herself on just how quick she is in the click and collect department, won T44 100m gold at the World Para-athletics Championships in New Delhi earlier this month.
Her stunning debut on the international stage also saw the Nottinghamshire runner collect silver in the 200m event.
Levitt said stepping on to the global stage to race – something she previously thought impossible – was both the “scariest and most wonderful thing” to ever happen to her.
“I never went to the championships expecting to win anything. I just wanted to put together two really good runs,” she told BBC East Midlands Today.
“To come away with medals and to be a world champion was a complete shock.
“To be able to stand on a podium in first place and hear the anthem was just the proudest moment of my life.
Just a week after conquering the world in her sport, Levitt is back home in Mansfield and eager to get back to work – not just on the track with local running club Mansfield Harriers, but also the Christmas rush at Tesco and her other part-time job in administration at a disability charity.
Her breakout success in India, plans for the Commonwealth Games next year and the prospect of Los Angeles Paralympic Games in 2028 are no reasons for her to stop doing the other things she “loves and enjoys”.
“My authentic self on the track is the Vicky that works at Tesco, the Vicky who is the administrator and the Vicky who trains like crazy,” she said.
“It’s because of that work and it’s because of that job that I’m able to do what I can do.”
Levitt says she previously “tried the full-time athlete thing” but got bored in the process.
It was at that point the runner, originally from Dudley, who studied prosthetics and orthotics at university before working in that field, decided to juggle a number of part-time jobs.
Tesco was meant to be a “temp job” over just one festive period. But she found the job helped fuel her competitive spirit.
“As part of click and collect, you have pickers in store,” she explained to BBC Radio Nottingham.
“So we have a pick rate that we have to achieve – a target – and it’s fair to say that I repeatedly go over that target quite a lot. We did have a league table and my name used to be there quite a lot at the top.
“At the time my colleagues didn’t know that I was a sprinter, only the management did. I pulled them to the side and said, ‘Look, you know, I have a little bit of an unfair advantage with this because of being a sprinter’. So I asked if it was possible to take me off the league table because it’s not fair.”
While she knew she was quick “on the trolleys”, she “didn’t think much” of her chances of qualifying for the World Championships.
“When I got the selection through, I was like, ‘Oh dear, I probably need to prepare’,” she laughed.
“The heat training was probably harder than the training itself. Being stuck in a sauna at 40C for 70 minutes on a bike doing speed sessions was dreadful.
“It was all just such a surreal experience.”
The world-beating effort that Levitt produced in India was the high point in her meteoric rise as a disability athlete.
She only took up sprinting seriously after a run of injuries – which included stretching a nerve in her ankle while competing in martial arts and a suffering a leg cut on a trail run – left her with permanent nerve damage in her leg.
At every step of her recovery and transformation into an elite athlete, be it while working at Tesco or on the track, the runner says she has done it the “Victoria Levitt way”.
“Every person’s gold medal is different,” Levitt said.
“My gold medal is a gold medal but climbing the stairs independently might be someone’s gold medal, doing a Couch to 5k could be someone’s gold medal – again, it goes back to that message of ‘do it your way’.”