Why are UN peacekeepers in Lebanon being attacked by Israel?
In southern Lebanon, Israeli forces are attacking UN peacekeepers. Why does Israel view the soldiers as targets and why are they there? Al Jazeera’s Virginia Pietromarchi has some answers.
Trump campaign requests military protection, fearing ‘Iran threat’
In the final weeks of the election campaign, Donald Trump’s campaign has requested that the former president be protected by military aircraft, which is an unprecedented requirement for a candidate in the country.
The New York Times and Washington Post reported on Friday that many in Trump’s orbit have come to the conclusion that Iran may have been responsible for two recent assassination attempts against the former president, in addition to the expanded flight restrictions on Trump’s residences, rallies, and an array of military vehicles to transport him around.
In recent years, no presidential candidate has used military aircraft to campaign before an election. Because she is the vice president in charge, Kamala Harris is protected by the military and flies on Air Force Two, a military aircraft.
Iran threat
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned Trump about the “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,” according to a statement from a Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung last month.
According to Cheung, “intelligence officials have determined that these ongoing and coordinated attacks have increased in recent months.”
Trump echoed the assertion on his Truth Social platform, saying that “moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again.”
Iran has not been linked to either of the two recent assassination attempts against the former president, despite the FBI’s alleged lack of evidence. General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020, when Trump was in office, according to US intelligence officials. According to officials, Iran has a limited ability to strike US territory.
The government requested military protection after Trump’s campaign advisers received information that claimed Iran is still actively plotting to kill him, according to The Washington Post, which cited emails and anonymous sources. According to the sources, drones and missiles have grown in concern for the advisers.
Secret Service failures
The Secret Service and Trump’s team have engaged in the most recent exchanges, with Trump receiving a few shots and getting slightly hurt at a rally in July that featured Trump being shot at and wounded.
Both the attacker in that instance, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed on the scene, and Ryan Routh, a gunman who was found in September allegedly pointing a rifle through a fence at a West Palm Beach, Florida golf course where Trump was playing, are believed to have acted alone.
Routh has entered a not-guilty plea after being accused of an assassination attempt.
Russia’s Putin meets Iran’s Pezeshkian amid spiralling Middle East violence
As concerns grow about the growing attacks between Israel and Iran and its network of aligned armed groups, Russian President Vladimir Putin has met Iran’s new leader.
On Friday, Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke about the Middle East with regional leaders in Turkmenistan, according to Russian state media.
Before their two nations are scheduled to sign a strategic partnership agreement, they interacted.
Pezeshkian said on Friday that he hoped the agreement could be finalised at the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, which Putin invited him to, in Russia on October 22-24.
During their meeting, Putin told Pezeshkian that Moscow’s and Tehran’s positions on international affairs were often “very close”, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
We prioritize our interactions with Iran. They are developing very successfully”, Putin said.
Our communications are being strengthened day by day and becoming more robust, according to Pezeshkian, who was quoted by the Iranian news agency IRNA as saying this.
Pezeshkian also spoke about Israel’s “savage attacks” in Lebanon, adding that Israel should “stop killing innocent people” in the region and accused the United States and Europe of backing its actions.
As the country fights the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which is affiliated with Tehran, the Israeli military has deployed ground troops into southern Lebanon.
In addition, Israel has previously been accused of attacking people’s homes in Lebanon and Gaza.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Iran’s relations have significantly improved. Iran is accused of providing Russia with weapons to use in Ukraine. Tehran has denied that claim.
As the conference opened on Friday, Putin said he wanted to create a “new world order” for Moscow’s allies to counter the West.
He stated that Moscow was willing to discuss the emerging multipolar world in various forums, including the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the BRICS, and that it would support “the broadest possible international discussion.”
Democrats attack third-party candidate Jill Stein in razor-thin race
Democrats are fighting it out for every vote in the presidential election in less than a month, and they have chosen third-party candidates as potential “spoilers.”
Some progressives who are disenchanted with the Democratic National Committee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have flocked to the party’s executive branch, the DNC, in a television advertisement that attacked Jill Stein, a long-time Green Party candidate.
The advertisement, which is running in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, blames Stein for Republican challenger Donald Trump’s 2016 win and warns that “a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump” – a refrain Democrats have regularly levelled against her in tight races between their candidates and Trump.
The video also includes a comment by former President Trump, saying, “Jill Stein? I like her very much”.
The advertisement, the first against the third-party candidate, signals Democrats ‘ growing worry that every lost vote may cost them such a razor-thin election. Stewart is in the lead with a poll of about 1%, just like Cornel West and Chase Oliver, both of whom are progressive academic and independent.
In some battleground states, those votes may make all the difference.
Third-party history
Third-party candidates have long been blamed for their impact on tight election outcomes — most notably in 2000 when Green Party nominee Ralph Nader earned 97, 421 votes in Florida, a state that eventually went to George W Bush, along with the presidency, by only 537 votes.
Third-party supporters and candidates have since refuted the accusations, saying they are working to end a fundamentally flawed two-party system and give voters a greater choice.
“You don’t have a democracy unless it’s a competitive democracy at election time”, Nader recently told Al Jazeera. “Historically, the function of third parties in an Electoral College system has never really been to win elections but to have new agendas”, he said.
With only two choices, Democrat or Republican, Nader added, “on major issues, they are very similar”.
According to a Gallup poll this month, 58% of Americans believe a third major party is necessary because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” of representing the people.
Stein on Israel
Despite having virtually no chance of winning the presidency, Stein’s message resonated with some voters because of Democrats’ and Republicans’ unwavering support for it despite the fact that she has hardly any chance of winning. She has consistently criticized US support for Israel, which has helped her gain new supporters in this election cycle.
“The Kamala Harris campaign is looking for a scapegoat”, she told The Washington Post this week, referring to the Harris campaign’s concern about her candidacy. They may alter their current policy at this time. They would rather not see the genocide end than they would prefer to lose the election.
This week, the Abandon Harris campaign, a Michigan-based Muslim group that says it aims to hold Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration “accountable for the Gaza genocide”, endorsed , Stein for president.
The Muslim-American community is one of the country’s most important populations, and our movement continues to make sure that the American people understand that we are a part of fighting against oppression and using all of our resources to stop genocide wherever it occurs, according to a statement from the organization.
Donald Trump, Kamala Harris locked in close election race: WSJ poll
A new Wall Street Journal poll suggests that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican challenger Donald Trump are in a dead-horse race for the presidency of the United States.
In six of the seven battleground states where the next president will be elected, the vice president and former president are within two percentage points of one another, according to the data released on Friday.
In the poll, while Harris led in the states of Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, Trump was ahead in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Nevada. With the exception of Nevada, where Trump is in the WSJ poll by 5%, all the outcomes fall within the margin of error.
Between September 28 and October 8, the newspaper reported conducting a survey of 600 registered voters in each state.
US elections are not won by popular vote nationwide. Instead, candidates compete for votes in individual states.
It resembles a point system, whereby each state is worth a number of points in accordance with its population size. The winner receives all the electoral college votes in all but two states, including Nebraska and Maine.
The majority of states almost certainly choose one party. As an example, states like Oklahoma and Alabama are Republican strongholds, while a win in California and Vermont is frequently predicted as soon as the polls close.
The battleground states
That leaves a handful of states where there are close, competitive elections. These are known as swing states. All eyes are on the seven WSJ polled states in this round.
Trump defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the majority of the state’s battleground states to win the presidency in 2016 despite losing the popular vote.
According to a Pew Research Center survey released on Friday, Harris is leading the race nationally by one point – 48 percent to Trump’s 47 percent.
In recent months, the results of US election results have fluctuated. Trump and Joe Biden both held solid lead in almost all polls earlier this year, but the Democrats gained ground when Harris assumed Harris’s nomination for president.
Harris outperformed Trump by a Morning Consult poll in September, with a gap of 51% to 46%. However, in light of worries about the Middle East’s turmoil and the economy, the former president appeared to win back some support.
In the past, US election results have been far off the mark. For instance, many surveys had predicted that Clinton would have a comfortable victory if she had defeated Donald Trump in 2016.
Despite this year’s polls, it seems that the US will hold a close presidential election in the coming months.
Senate race
On November 5, control of the Senate and House of Representatives will also be in your hands.
Democrats’ hopes of preserving their overwhelmingly Democratic majority in the Senate were predicted to be hampered by a Friday New York Times poll.
The party currently has 51 seats in the 100-member chamber, including four independents who support the party.
However, according to the Times survey, Democrats are likely to lose a seat with Republican ingenuity.
In West Virginia, where conservative Democratic incumbent Joe Manchin isn’t running for re-election, Republicans were already anticipating winning.
However, according to the Times poll, Democratic Senator Jon Tester is now eight percentage points ahead of his Republican challenger in rural Montana, where Trump easily won in 2016 and 2020.
Democrats will also have a fight on their hands to keep Senate seats in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona and Nevada, but they will be hoping to challenge Republican incumbents in Texas and Florida.
A Republican-controlled Senate can prove to be a major hurdle for Harris should she win in November.
Tesla’s robotaxi event was long on Musk promises, short on details
Elon Musk has a long-awaited to-do list for himself at Tesla’s eagerly-anticipated Hollywood unveiling of its driverless robot axis for a businessman who struggles with broken promises.
After traversing the fake streets of the Warner Bros movie studio set in a sleek, silver , two-door “Cybercab” prototype, Musk promised on Thursday night that the company’s popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles would be able to operate without driver supervision in California and Texas by next year.
Musk demonstrated a robovan capable of transporting 20 people around town, which he claimed would “turn parking lots into parks” by promising that the company would begin producing the fully autonomous Cybercab by 2026 for less than $30, 000.
Then came the dancing humanoid robots that later sold for between $20, 000 and $30, 000 each, according to Musk. “I think this will be the biggest product ever, of any kind”, he declared.
Some Tesla investors and experts expressed concern about more detailed information on how the company plans to transition from a carmaker to a titan of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence with a solid business plan at Thursday night’s electronic dance music-infused event, which had the signature trappings of Musk’s salesmanship.
In Friday’s early trading, Tesla shares dropped nearly 8%. Since Musk announced the switch to robotaxis in April, the stock has increased nearly 50%, which has been hampered by concerns that lower-cost EV rivals might eat into Tesla’s market share. Still, shares are down 8 percent over the last year, compared with a 33 percent increase in the broad-market S&, P 500 index.
“His vision is lovely, but somebody has to actualise it”, said Ross Gerber, a Tesla shareholder and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. “For now, for the next 24 months, Tesla has to sell EVs. Why aren’t we focused on that”?
Gerber said he was happy to see products like the Cybercab and the robovan, but hoped to also see a more traditional, lower-priced mass-market vehicle that the company could sell in the near future.
Investors saw a need for Musk to gain new customers because he had pledged to sell a car that was scheduled to cost around $25, 000 for years. The Reuters news agency reported previously , that Tesla had abandoned this project, initially sending Tesla shares down.
According to analysts, the lack of information on Tesla’s robotaxis eased competition concerns for the companies, which shares of ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft increased by about 10%.
‘ Years behind ‘
By pursuing a less expensive technological development, Musk believes Tesla will be able to expand its autonomous vehicles much quicker than its rivals, overtaking Alphabet’s Waymo.
Tesla’s strategy is simpler and much cheaper than that of its rivals, but has , critical weaknesses. One of the issues that regulators might have with the AI technology supporting its self-driving system is that it is nearly impossible to ascertain the cause of a crash or other failure.
Waymo’s software is “at least years behind” it. That’s the hard part. No flashy vehicle design is going to change that”, said Matthew Wansley, professor at New York’s Cardozo School of Law.
Tesla’s rivals use similar AI and camera technology, but layer on so-called redundant systems and pricier sensors as a safety precaution.
Ramesh Poola, co-chief investment officer at Creative Planning, which holds Tesla shares, said he was impressed by the presentation, but “Obviously, we were looking for more details on what exactly his future plans are going to be and how he’s going to monetise this new AI and robotics”.
In particular, Poola said he anticipated that regulators would pose a “major hurdle” to Musk’s plans to shift to unsupervised autonomous driving by next year. Tesla’s current “Full Self-Driving” driver-assistance feature cannot be operated safely without a human driver paying constant attention.
“He’s shown the prototypes and definitely, there’s some excitement around it”, Poola said. But widespread adoption of autonomous Cybercabs, where riders can hail rides through an Uber-style app, are still “maybe three to four years away”, he said.
Poola continued, adding that he will be instructing clients not to sell Tesla stock. “There are lots and lots of avenues to monetise this technology”, he said. “Cybercab may not necessarily be next year, but down the road, the viability is there”.
Musk had stated that he intended to run a fleet of self-driving Tesla taxis that could be rented out through an app. He made no mention of the app at Thursday’s event.
Tasha Keeney, the company’s director of investment analysis, said she had been looking for more information about the app.
Keeney expressed encouragement, however, by Musk’s plan to start a self-driving system in Texas and California in the fall of 2014.