An Israeli MP behind a bill that would prevent the main UN agency in Gaza and the West Bank from working in Israel has accused the US ambassador in Israel of lobbying opposition leaders to block the move.

If the bill passes in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, this week, it will prohibit any Israeli official from providing services or dealing with employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency and forbid UNRWA from operating in Israel.

Several countries, including the US, have expressed concern over the impact of the bill.

The Israeli government has claimed that some of the UN Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) staff are affiliated with Hamas. UNRWA has strongly denied the allegations, but several governments suspended funding for the agency earlier this year while the allegations were investigated.

She described the US pressure as unacceptable.

But it said that the proposed legislation would make it impossible for UNRWA to operate and would leave a “vacuum that Israel would then be responsible for filling.” A spokesman said UNRWA provided vital services in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan.

UNRWA has long been a target of Israeli criticism and relations between Israel and the UN have slumped amid the war in Gaza.

Last week, the spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the IDF had killed a commander of the Hamas ‘Nukhba’ force who had also been employed by UNRWA since July 2022.

Subsequently, Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had “reached new heights of hypocrisy and insensitivity. Last night, he lamented the elimination of their ‘UNRWA colleague’ by IDF forces in Gaza.”

In a letter sent to two senior members of the Israeli government earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned” about the potential adoption of the bill.

“UNRWA colluded with Hamas, it is educating kids to hate Israel and spreading antisemitism, it is selling them stories that they will be able to come back to Israel. This will not happen,” Malinovsky said.

UNRWA says it insists on the neutrality of its staff and said the allegations made by Israel about 66 employees out of 30,000 staff amounted to just 0.22% of its payroll.

“There is absolutely no ground for a blanket description of ‘the institution as a whole’ being ‘totally infiltrated,’” the agency said in May.

Former war cabinet member Benny Gantz posted on X last week that UNRWA “chose to make itself an inseparable component of Hamas’ mechanism – and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it.”

On Saturday, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK expressed “grave concern” over the legislation.

They said that without UNRWA’s work, the provision of assistance “including education, health care, and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank would be severely hampered if not impossible.”

In a dramatic show of unity, Georgia’s often fractured opposition gathered at the presidential palace in Tbilisi, standing shoulder to shoulder behind the president, Salome Zourabichvili, as she defiantly announced, “I do not recognize these elections. Recognizing them would be tantamount to legitimizing Russia’s takeover of Georgia … We cannot surrender our European future for the sake of future generations.”

The government, controlled by the ruling Georgian Dream party, she said, is “illegitimate” and the election it carried out October 26 was a “complete falsification.”

Her voice rising, she said: “We were not just witnesses but also victims of what can only be described as a Russian special operation – a new form of hybrid warfare waged against our people and our country.”

She urged Georgians to gather in protest Monday evening on the capital’s main street, Rustaveli Avenue, “to peacefully defend every vote and, most importantly, our future.”

The statement was a bold challenge to the Georgian Dream’s founder and now honorary chairman, the reclusive billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who claimed victory in the parliamentary election even before all the votes were counted.

Ivanishvili had vowed to ban the opposition if his party won the election, and his opponents are taking him at his word.

On Saturday, as Georgians cast their ballots, thousands of Georgian and international election observers fanned out to voting precincts across the country, from urban centers to poor, remote villages in the Caucasus mountains, trying to evaluate whether the vote was free and fair.

Throughout election day, video of violations, some of them egregious, like a man boldly jamming ballots into a ballot box, spread quickly.

The day after, at a briefing by the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, the conclusions were troubling: “systematic” intimidation; harassment of voters inside and outside polling stations; “pervasive intimidation and pressure on public sector employees and social-service benefits recipients.”

Observations by the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) were even more stark: “On election day, ISFED documented serious violations, such as ballot stuffing of ballot papers, multiple voting, unprecedented levels of voter bribery, expulsion of observers from polling stations, as well as instances of mobilizing voters outside polling stations, collecting their personal data, and controlling their voting intentions.”

In Tbilisi, former US Representative John Shimkus said the intimidation and harassment of voters created an “atmosphere of fear.”

Swedish Member of Parliament Margareta Cederfelt added: “The government’s continued harassment and intimidation of voters and civil society not only during the election period, but well before it, has threatened Georgia’s democratic underpinnings.”

The Georgian opposition owes its new unity to the efforts of President Zourabichvili, a person some of them used to criticize, but now respect.

“She is on the right side of history,” said opposition politician Nika Gvaramia. “She is the only one who can unite people.”

Speaking at his Ahali party headquarters, part of the “Coalition 4 Change” just off Tbilisi’s main street, Gvaramia, along with Elene Khoshtaria, founder of the “Droa” party, told reporters: “Russia hacked the (Georgian) election.”

Moscow, they claimed, is carrying out a “hybrid war” with new and different means of technical meddling, and it’s right out of “Putin’s playbook.”

The West, they said, isn’t even playing catch up.

Meanwhile, the Georgian government announced that its first high-level visitor after the election will be Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who plans to spend October 28 and 29 in a high-profile show of support to the Georgian Dream government.

The illiberal leader has found common cause with Georgia’s ruling party and was the first international leader to congratulate them after the election – even before the votes were officially tallied.

Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales said his car was fired on in what he claimed was an “assassination attempt” amid simmering political tensions in the South American country.

Morales, who was not injured, blamed the government for the attack, which he called a “failure” that adds to the “political defeat of a government that has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the Bolivian people.” The government denied any involvement and said that an investigation had been opened.

Morales said he was heading to the radio station in the central Bolivian department of Cochabamba, where he hosts a weekend program, when two vehicles intercepted his car and “four hooded officers dressed in black with weapons in their hands, got out and began to shoot.”

Fourteen bullets hit the car, injuring his driver in the head and arm, Morales said during his radio show.

Morales posted a cell-phone video on Facebook which he claimed shows the alleged attack. It shows the driver’s bloodied head and several bullet holes in the car’s windshield. Morales is seen in the passenger seat as they frantically drive away.

Morales posted to his Instagram profile a statement from his party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), blaming the attack on current Bolivian President Luis Arce and two of his government ministers. The statement did not provide evidence supporting this claim.

Bolivia’s Deputy Security Minister Roberto Rios said that there had not been a police operation against Morales and that his department would investigate the claims, including the possibility of a “self-attack” staged by Morales, state-run news agency Agencia Boliviana de Información (ABI) reported.

Power struggle

Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, led the country for more than a decade before he resigned from his office in November 2019 due to mounting accusations of electoral fraud, which he has denied. Ultimately, the leader claimed he was forced out in a coup and fled to Mexico, where he was granted political asylum. His resignation was followed by deadly clashes between Bolivian security forces and Morales supporters.

After a year of exile in Argentina, Morales returned to his home region of Chapare in central Bolivia in 2020, while stating his intention to remain involved in politics.

Throughout the past year, Morales has clashed with sitting president Arce – his fellow MAS party member and former ally – as both politicians battle for reelection in 2025.

The power struggle has unfolded during a period of acute economic strife in Bolivia. In recent weeks, blockades set up by Morales’ supporters on major highways have led to food and fuel shortages in some cities.

The blockades were established after the government announced a judicial investigation into the former president over an alleged case of human trafficking. Morales denies having committed any crime and attributed the investigation to political persecution by Arce.

The Bolivian police have said the blockades involve “violent armed groups.” In a statement, Bolivia’s foreign ministry denounced the “destabilizing actions” from Morales, who they said encouraged the blockades in an attempt to “disrupt the democratic order.”

The political turmoil in Bolivia reached a flashpoint in June with the arrest of a general accused of orchestrating a coup against the government. Armed soldiers and armored vehicles led by Gen. Juan Jose Zúñiga attempted to occupy government offices and break into the government palace to oust Arce.

Thick, toxic smog has once again enveloped northern India and eastern Pakistan just days before the start of Diwali, a Hindu festival typically celebrated with fireworks that each year sends air quality plummeting.

The air quality index in the Indian capital of Delhi was roughly 250 on Monday morning, after days in the “very unhealthy” zone above 200, according to IQAir, which tracks global air quality.

In the Pakistani city of Lahore, roughly 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Indian border, air quality surpassed a “hazardous” 500 on Monday – almost 65 times the World Health Organization’s guidelines for healthy air – making it the most polluted city in the world at the time of the ranking, according to IQAir.

Air quality across the region is set to worsen as winter smog season approaches, when an ominous yellow haze blankets the skies due to farmers burning agricultural waste, coal-fired power plants, traffic and windless winter days.

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, is set to begin Thursday – a five day celebration during which people gather with their families, feast and set off firecrackers, in some cases in defiance of local bans, further exacerbating air pollution.

Dystopian scenes of orange haze and buildings enveloped by fog emerge each year as smog season dominates the news, raising alarm as doctors warn of the risk of respiratory diseases and impacts on life expectancy. India’s air pollution has been found to be so bad, that experts have warned smog could take years off the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Residents and experts have long questioned why India has failed to curb air pollution, as Delhi and its neighboring states butt heads over who is really to blame.

Delhi had banned the use and sale of firecrackers ahead of Diwali, but the policy has been difficult to implement.

Last week, India’s Supreme Court condemned governments of the Punjab and Haryana states for failing to crack down on illegal stubble burning, the practice whereby farmers set crop waste on fire to clear fields. Local officials claim they have reduced the practice significantly in recent years.

The Indian government also launched its nationwide Clean Air Programme in 2019, ushering in strategies across 24 states and union territories to reduce particulate matter concentration, a term for air pollutants, by 40% by 2026. The measures include cracking down on coal-based power plants, setting up air monitoring systems and banning burning of biomass.

Officials have also begun sprinkling water on roads and even inducing artificial rainfall to combat air pollution in the Indian capital, though experts say these are band-aid solutions that fail to address the underlying issues.

Some Indian cities have seen improvements in their air quality, according to government data, but progress has been slow.

Between 2018 and 2022, New Delhi’s average PM2.5 concentration (a measure of pollutants in the air) for the month of November, when the pollution season typically begins, more or less stayed the same, according to IQAir.

Experts in the past have questioned whether India has the political will to combat pollution.

Adam Crapser has become something of a cause celebre for what critics say is a flawed United States law that unfairly leaves tens of thousands of international adoptees in limbo without citizenship.

Eight years after he was deported from the US – his home for decades – Crapser was in a Seoul courtroom on Wednesday, suing for restitution on what he called a flawed adoption process that has made a shambles of his life.

As a bill in Congress that could bring the 49-year-old back to the US waits in committee, Crapser’s case puts a spotlight on an international adoption system loophole – one that has torn some families apart.

“I wanted to be with her. I wanted to raise her. I wanted to be in her life. I wanted to be her father. I wanted to do everything that I could to give her a life that I didn’t have,” Crapser said. “I want her to know definitively that since all of this started — before she was born — that I have been fighting this.”

Crapser was adopted by a Michigan family in 1979 and lived in the US for 37 years. His American family and guardians, however, failed to secure the paperwork for his citizenship and he was deported after a lengthy legal battle in 2016.

“I’m stuck. I’ve been in between like this for a significant amount of time,” Crapser said of his desire to return to his family and the uncertainty of his future.

Crapser made history as the first Korean adoptee to sue the South Korean government and his adoption agency for damages in 2019.

As he awaits a court decision in Seoul, a bill that could grant him US citizenship remains stalled in Congress.

The proposed bill, the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2024, aims to grant automatic citizenship to international adoptees and rectify the loophole in the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, which excluded those who were 18 or older at the time the law was enacted.

Crapser, who was 25 when the law was passed, did not gain US citizenship.

Crapser remains skeptical about the passage of the new bill, pointing out that it “probably” may not happen “in our lifetimes,” based on the lack of progress since discussions of the recently introduced legislation began in 2017. 

A spokesperson for Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, said, “While it’s unlikely that we’ll see more movement in the rest of the 118th Congress” — which ends in January 2025 — “given the election and the lame-duck period we’re expecting, we are hopeful that this very necessary bill progresses in future Congresses to become law.”

The bill has been referred to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees for review.

A gap in citizenship

After being abandoned by his initial adoptive parents in the 1980s, Crapser moved between foster homes and care facilities, according to a 2023 court case in the Seoul Central District Court.

In 1989, he was adopted by another couple, who were prosecuted in 1991 for charges of physical abuse and assault against foster and adopted children and found guilty in 1992.

Around 2012, when Crapser applied for the renewal of his expired permanent residency – commonly known as a “green card” – his criminal record, including charges of burglary and assault, drew the attention of US immigration officials, according to the court case.

“It’s been said a lot that I made a lot of mistakes and I got into a lot of trouble in the United States, and I admit that,” Crapser said during testimony Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. “I survived the best that I could in the United States, without a family and without any Korean people around me.”

The criminal record was deemed a violation of his green card status, and in 2016 he lost his fight against deportation back to South Korea, where he was born — but a place where he didn’t know the language or customs.

Having grown up with no exposure to Koreans, he says he grapples with a sense of disconnect from the place he is expected to call home.

“I don’t have any choice,” Crapser said. “All I know is American culture. I didn’t know anything about Korean customs, cultures, rules, history, or anything because it was intentionally kept from me.”

Anguish over his family separation

Despite his 10-year-ban on returning to the US, he said he’s pursued legal avenues to be with his children. He has not seen his 10-year-old daughter since 2017.

“I’ve literally tried every single legal remedy to try and get back to the United States earlier so I could be in my child’s life, and that has not been successful,” he said.

Crapser can file for waivers in two years, he says, but remains uncertain about how long that legislative process will take. Attempting to return to the US beforehand could result in a lifetime ban.

“I want to make sure that there’s a historical record, not only for my children, but also for the history of adoption that this has to do with other countries where they failed to ensure the children receive naturalization in the receiving countries,” he added.

In response to recent media reports about adoptions from South Korea in the 1980s, Holt International acknowledged the potential unethical practices in a public statement and noted Holt Children’s Services separated from Holt International in 1977.

“These reports highlight serious concerns, and we do not take these concerns lightly or dismiss the fact that mistakes were likely made,” Holt said in the statement.

Last year, a lower Korean court ruled that Holt must pay Crapser 100 million won ($72,300) in damages for not informing his US adoptive parents about the steps required to secure his citizenship following the completion of his adoption in a US state court, according to the lawsuit.

However, the Seoul Central District Court rejected Crapser’s additional claims against Holt and cleared the government of liability. Both Crapser and Holt filed appeals, with Holt asserting that it bore no legal obligation to ensure Crapser obtained his citizenship, the AP reported.

An attorney for the government stated that officials at that time had no legal obligation to confirm the citizenship status of adoptees and found no clear reason to question the accuracy of Crapser’s paperwork, according to the AP.

The Seoul High Court is set to render its decision on January 8 regarding Crapser’s seeking of monetary damages.

A woman who went missing on a solo hike in Australia’s Snowy Mountains was found “dazed and injured” on Sunday, police said, after suffering a suspected snake bite while missing for nearly two weeks.

Lovisa Sjoberg, 48, was spotted by rescuers as she walked along a bush trail in Kosciuszko National Park, southwest of the capital Canberra, on Sunday afternoon.

New South Wales Police Superintendent Toby Lindsay said Monday she was “fortunate to be alive” after being bitten by a snake, potentially a copperhead. The venomous species can deliver a painful bite that can lead to death without medical attention.

“She advises that she was bitten by a snake approximately four days prior and had rolled her ankle and was dehydrated,” Lindsay said. “She’s in fact pretty fortunate to be alive and went through a pretty tough time.”

It’s not known how long Sjoberg was missing in the wilderness – she had last been seen driving a rented car on October 15.

Police only started investigating her whereabouts last Monday after the car rental company reported their vehicle had not been returned.

Officers tracked the car to Kiandra, a former gold mining town near the mountains, and investigated the theory that Sjoberg, an avid photographer and experienced hiker, had become lost in the wilderness when she set off on foot.

Police sent up helicopters, planes, and deployed search teams by road, on foot and horseback for six days before spotting her on Sunday.

The northern part of Kosciuszko National Park recently reopened to visitors after an annual closure during winter. The park was closed two months earlier this year to allow aerial culling of deer, pigs and wild horses, known as brumbies, in an effort to protect its alpine environment.

Sjoberg has an Instagram account dedicated to images of wild horses, and members of brumby advocacy groups expressed serious concern for her welfare on social media.

Plans by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to shoot brumbies from helicopters led to a failed legal bid to stop the cull this year.

The government said the cull was necessary to protect native plants and animals in the alpine wilderness, which are vulnerable to damage from large numbers of feral animals.

The Snowy Mountains are part of the Great Dividing Range, a mountainous region some 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) long, that contains some of Australia’s highest peaks. It’s popular with hikers and skiers who visit nearby resorts during the annual ski season.

The United States has approved $2 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, including the first-time delivery to the self-ruled island of an advanced surface-to-air missile defense system, in a move that has drawn China’s criticism.

Taiwan’s presidential office on Saturday thanked Washington for greenlighting the potential arms sales. Under the island’s new president, Lai Ching-te, Taiwan has been stepping up defense measures as China increased its military threats against the territory it claims as its own.

Beijing last week held war games encircling Taiwan for the second time since Lai took office in May.

The US is Taiwan’s strongest unofficial ally and its laws bound it to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.

“Strengthening Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities is the foundation for maintaining regional stability,” Taiwan’s presidential spokesperson Karen Kuo said.

China criticized the move, saying it undermined its sovereignty and security interests, was harming US-China relations and threatened peace across the Taiwan Strait, which separates China from Taiwan.

“China strongly condemns and firmly opposes this and has lodged serious protests with the US,” read a statement by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson. “We will take resolute countermeasures and take all measures necessary to firmly defend national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.”

The potential sales package includes three National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and related equipment valued at up to $1.16 billion, according to the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

It also includes radar systems worth an estimated $828 million.

The NASAMS system has been battle-tested in Ukraine and will help to strengthen the Taiwanese army’s air defense capabilities, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

China’s war games last week were aimed at practicing the “sealing off of key ports and key areas” around Taiwan, according to Chinese officials. Taiwan counted a record one-day total of 153 aircraft, 14 navy vessels and 12 Chinese government ships.