JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
WAR WITH IRAN - DAY 215 MON SEPTEMBER 30,26 - Alarm sounds on agentic governance as rapid deployment creates security gaps.
THE NEXT US-ISRAEL HIT ON IRAN SHOULD BE VERSE 37. ALL OFFENSIVE NUKE SITES MISSLES,DRONES,AND OF COURSE KHEMENI AND THE IRGC GUARDS.THEN AFTER IRANS REGIME CHANGE. MUSLIMS COME TO JESUS BY THE MILLIONS.
JEREMEIAH 49:32-39 (IN IRAN AT THE BUSHEHR OR ARAK NUKE SITES AND ALL OFENSIVE WEAPONS DESTROYED IN IRAN)
Jeremiah 49:32-39
32 Their camels shall be a booty, and the multitude of their cattle a spoil: and I will scatter to all winds those who have the corners [of their hair] cut off; and I will bring their calamity from every side of them, says Yahweh.
33 Hazor shall be a dwelling-place of jackals, a desolation forever: no man shall dwell there, neither shall any son of man sojourn therein.(Location & Size: It was strategically located along the Via Maris (Way of the Sea), a major trade route connecting Egypt with Syria and Mesopotamia.)
34 The word of Yahweh that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning Elam,(IRAN) in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, saying,
35 Thus says Yahweh of Hosts: Behold, I will break the bow of Elam,(IRANS OFFENSIVE WEAPONS) the chief of their might.(MISSLES AND NUKE SITES)
36 On Elam (IRAN) will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of the sky, and will scatter them toward all those winds; and there shall be no nation where the outcasts of Elam shall not come.(SINCE 1979 IRANIANS HAVE GOTTIN OUT OF IRAN BECAUSE OF KHEMENI AND HIS APOCOPOLIPTIC DEATH CULT BELIEF-BLACK HATER 12ERS)
37 I will cause Elam (IRAN) to be dismayed before their enemies, and before those who seek their life;(ISRAEL THE LITTLE SATAN AND THE U.S THE BIG SATAN) and I will bring evil on them, (MISSLES) even my fierce anger,(FIRE) says Yahweh; and I will send the sword after them,(IRANS OFFENSIVE WEAPONS) until I have consumed them; (DESTROYED THEM ALL NUKE SITES,MISSLES ETC)
38 and I will set my throne in Elam,(IRAN WILL BECOME A CHRISTIAN NATION) and will destroy from there king (KHEMENI CLAN) and princes, says Yahweh.(IRANIAN ARMY GUARDS)
39 But it shall happen in the latter days, that I will bring back the captivity of Elam,(IRAN) says Yahweh.(WERE IN THE LATTER DAYS NOW)
WHEN ARE THE 500 MILLION MIGRATING BIRDS IN ISRAEL IN THE SPRING TIME.(GET READY ISLAM TO BE BIRD SEED FOR THESE BIRDS)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m0bXU5Xqc5M
The 500 million migratory birds in Israel during the spring arrive from Africa and head toward Europe and Asia, with the peak migration occurring in March and April. While migration starts in late February, the most intense movements, particularly of birds of prey, storks, and pelicans, occur during the third week of March and continue into April.
Key Details on the Spring Migration
Peak Period: Mid-March through April.
Main Migration Route: The birds use the Great Rift Valley, which includes the Hula Valley and Eilat, acting as a "bottleneck" where millions of birds fly through the narrow land bridge.
Best Spots: The Hula Lake Park (Northern Israel) and the Eilat Birding Center (Southern Israel) are primary locations for observing the migration.
Key Species: Hundreds of thousands of white storks, along with black kites, raptors, and pelicans, pass through over these months.
uration: The spring migration runs from late February and continues into June, though the heaviest traffic is in March/April.
The 500 million migratory birds fly over Israel in the fall between late August and mid-December. The peak migration period for the autumn, when the highest volume of bird traffic occurs, is typically October and November.
Key Fall Migration Details
Location: The Hula Valley (Agamon Hula Park) in northern Israel is the premier spot to witness this phenomenon.
Timing: Migration starts as early as late June with some waders, but intensifies from mid-August through November.
Peak Festival: The "Annual Hula Valley Bird Festival" is usually held in November to align with the peak migration traffic.
Key Species: Many birds of prey (raptors), including honey buzzards and steppe eagles, cross during this time, along with massive flocks of storks and cranes.
While roughly 500 million birds pass through in the autumn on their way to Africa, the same number crosses again in the spring (mid-February to May) on their way back to Europe and Asia.
JEREMEIAH 49:23-27
23 Concerning Damascus.(SYRIA) Hamath is confounded, and Arpad: for they have heard evil tidings: they are fainthearted; there is sorrow on the sea;(WAR SHIPS WITH NUKES COMING ON SYRIA) it cannot be quiet.
24 Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail.
25 How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy!
26 Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD of hosts.
27 And I will kindle a fire (NUKES OR BOMBS) in the wall of Damascus, and it shall consume the palaces of Benhadad.(ASSADS PALACES POSSIBLY IN DAMASCUS)
Iran indicates it received official US response to latest offer on ending war-Officials don’t say what reply contained; FM Araghchi updates Tehran cabinet on his trip to UN General Assembly; UK monitors says three ships hit in Hormuz-By Agencies 30 September 2026, 5:09 pm
Iranian officials indicated Wednesday that they have received an official US response to Tehran’s latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which US President Donald Trump had publicly rejected just days earlier.The officials did not say what the response contained, nor whether it was a rejection or not.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented the US response to President Masoud Pezeshkian at a Cabinet meeting, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told the state-run IRNA news agency.“We will make every effort to bring the agreement to fruition and will firmly stand up for the rights of the Iranian people,” Pezeshkian said. “The agreement must now be based on a win-win strategy.”The Cabinet meeting followed Araghchi’s return to Iran after traveling to New York for the UN General Assembly last week. While there, officials held indirect talks with US officials and also met with Qatari and Pakistani mediators on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders.An official briefed on the talks, who is not Iranian and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the Qataris had briefed Araghchi on the US response on Tuesday when Araghchi stopped off in Doha on his way home from New York. According to the official, the sides largely agree about the steps that are needed but still disagree about the order in which to take them.Araghchi briefed the Cabinet on his trip to New York and the meetings he held there, including Iran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Mohajerani said had been conveyed through mediators.Iran wants an eventual deal to grant it control over the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil shipping route, which runs past its coast.Shipping through the strait has increased in recent weeks, with shippers charging high fees to brave the risk of attacks. But flows of crude oil, refined products and natural gas remain substantially disrupted. In the latest incidents, Britain’s UKMTO maritime security body reported on Wednesday that unknown projectiles struck three ships in the Strait of Hormuz the previous day.A crude oil tanker and two other vessels had each “been struck by an unknown projectile,” the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO) said.It had earlier described one of the vessels as an LNG tanker, before later describing it as a tanker.Around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed through the strategic shipping lane before the war.But since the conflict broke out, Tehran has been blocking the passage of commercial ships, firing on vessels it accuses of unauthorized crossings.Washington has responded with a counterblockade of Iranian ports in an effort to prevent Tehran from exporting its oil.Araghchi last week said he floated the proposal to reopen the strait in a week if the US agreed to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, release frozen Iranian assets and waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, among other conditions.Trump swiftly rejected the proposal, saying Iran wanted to make a deal because it was “losing so badly” but that its offer “would not be acceptable.”Despite Trump’s public rebuffing, mediators continued working with Iran and the United States on trying to broker a deal to end the fighting and open the strait, according to officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.Meanwhile, the Trump administration said it was pushing forward with economic warfare against Tehran as the prospects of the two sides coming to an agreement appear uncertain.The US Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions on Tuesday targeting people and companies around the globe that it accuses of being financial facilitators or enablers of Iran’s military supply chain.The latest action by the US administration is part of the administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” campaign, aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines” for the already heavily sanctioned Iranian government.Ten individuals and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong and Pakistan now face sanctions over accusations of procuring weapons and weapon components for Iran’s defense ministry as it fights its now seven-month war against the US.Iran’s economy is spiraling further-Iran’s economy, which was under heavy strain before the war started, has been in a freefall since the conflict began in late February.The country’s currency fell to a new record low on Tuesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging more than 2.5 million rials to the US dollar in a stark reflection of how the war in the Middle East has steadily eroded the Iranian economy.The latest decline came just 27 days after the rial hit its previous record low of 2.2 million to the dollar on September 2. The currency has repeatedly reached new lows since the war began in February.Trump on Tuesday said that Iran is “failing very badly, very badly” and predicted anew that the war will be “over with very, very soon.”At the onset of the conflict, he had predicted that the war would last just weeks. More recently, Trump said he expects it won’t end until after the November 3 midterm elections in the US.In the United States, polls show the Iran war was unpopular from the outset. The disruption to global energy supplies and resulting surge in fuel prices have hurt Trump’s Republicans, trying to hang on to both houses of Congress in legislative elections five weeks away.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps urged Americans on Tuesday to vote out Trump’s allies.“Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state,” they wrote in a 26-page letter to US voters. “Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed.”Iran executes 2 men on charges of violence during January protests-Also on Wednesday, two men were executed in Iran over their role in violence during nationwide anti-government protests in January, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.Citing the country’s judiciary, IRNA said the men took part in unrest in the northeastern city of Mashhad that left four members of the security forces dead earlier this year. Their death sentences were upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court before being carried out Wednesday morning.The unrest began December 28 amid anger over Iran’s collapsing currency and worsening economy and quickly spread across the country, with demonstrators increasingly calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Iranian authorities responded with a deadly crackdown.Rights groups say thousands were killed and tens of thousands arrested, while Iranian authorities have reported a substantially lower death toll.
EU study puts digital identity on research roadmap for next Horizon Europe-Commission study identifies decentralized identity, wallets and verifiable credentials as priorities for Europe’s next research cycle-Sep 30, 2026, 2:26 pm EDT | Ashok Singal
The European Union is deciding where to place its next big technology bets.The European Commission has proposed €175 billion for Horizon Europe for 2028–2034, the EU’s next seven-year research and innovation program. The proposed structure makes Digital Leadership a strategic area within its competitiveness pillar, while separate proposed “moonshot” projects target technologies including next-generation AI, quantum computing and data sovereignty.The €175 billion is not yet an approved budget. It remains part of negotiations over the EU’s next long-term financial framework. But the proposal establishes the direction: digital technology is expected to be a major part of Europe’s next research investment cycle.The next question is where within digital technology that money should go.A study published by the Commission on September 29 provides part of the answer.Commissioned by the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT), it assesses 12 critical digital technology areas to help shape the digital research and innovation priorities of the next Horizon Europe program. It recommends areas for investment rather than selecting individual projects.For the identity industry, the findings mark a shift. The study names decentralized identity among emerging fields where concentrated investment could help Europe develop technological leadership. Its research roadmaps also identify digital wallets, verifiable credentials and zero-knowledge technology among areas to prioritize.The broader Horizon Europe category covering blockchain, distributed ledgers and digital identity received only about €23 million in mapped funding during 2021–2025, less than 1 percent of the total across the digital technology areas examined.That puts the study’s recommendations in context: identity has been a relatively small part of Europe’s digital research spending, but it is now being identified as an area with future strategic potential.From the current Horizon Europe to the next one-Europe is not starting from scratch.The current Horizon Europe program runs from 2021 through 2027 with a €95.5 billion budget. It is organized around three main pillars, with much of Europe’s strategic digital research sitting within Pillar II, Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness.That includes European partnerships covering Chips, Smart Networks and Services, High Performance Computing, AI-Data-Robotics and Photonics, while cybersecurity is addressed through the Civil Security for Society cluster.The new study maps Horizon Europe’s 2021–2025 work programs across 12 digital technology areas. Microelectronics received about €2.97 billion, AI €2.57 billion and cybersecurity €616 million.Blockchain, distributed ledgers and digital identity received about €23 million, the smallest allocation among the areas examined. More than half came through the European Innovation Council and European Research Council rather than the main thematic calls.The €23 million does not capture all identity-related research because identity also appears within cybersecurity and other areas. But it shows the difference in scale between explicit digital identity funding and investment in neighboring technologies.The proposed Horizon Europe for 2028–2034 changes the architecture.It would have four pillars, with Digital Leadership explicitly included within the competitiveness component of Pillar II. Separately, the Commission has proposed large technology-driven moonshots, including next-generation AI, quantum computing and data sovereignty.Identity is not one of those moonshots.That makes the DG CNECT study particularly relevant to the identity sector: it indicates which technologies could sit beneath the broader Digital Leadership agenda even without becoming headline moonshot projects.Identity moves onto the research priority list-Identity appears in two of the study’s research roadmaps.Its cybersecurity roadmap identifies decentralized identity and digital wallets as mature, high-impact trends to prioritize, alongside post-quantum cryptography and AI-system security.Its blockchain roadmap identifies self-sovereign identity, verifiable credentials and zero-knowledge technology among R&I priorities.The study also flags fragmentation among competing identity standards, ID methods and verification protocols. It calls for secure formal verification techniques — mathematical methods for proving that systems and protocols behave as intended — backed by further research.Privacy is another theme. The study connects technologies such as homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation with digital identity, including the EU Digital Identity Wallet.At the broader strategic level, decentralized identity appears alongside explainable and trustworthy AI, edge AI and cryptography among emerging fields where the researchers say concentrated investment could help Europe develop longer-term technological leadership.Biometrics gets a passing mention-Biometrics is not itself identified as an R&I priority.It appears mainly in the study’s analysis of European AI patents, which lists biometric identification and verification as a subarea covering facial, iris and fingerprint recognition and behavioral biometrics. Examples include improved biometric matching and behavioral biometrics for continuous authentication.The study’s proposed AI priorities are nevertheless relevant to biometric developers. They include trustworthy and explainable AI, AI evaluation, AI safety and security, and edge AI.Its discussion of trustworthy AI calls for further work on fairness, bias, explainability, robustness and accuracy — issues that also affect how biometric AI is evaluated and deployed.Europe’s problem is getting technology to scale-The study’s recommendations come against a broader European commercialization problem.-The EU had 20,720 advanced digital technology startups in 2025, with cumulative startup creation roughly tripling since 2015. But only 728, or 3.5 percent, met the study’s definition of scaleups, while 40 had reached unicorn status.Funding thins out as companies mature. Fourteen percent of EU seed-stage companies reach early-stage venture capital, compared with 21 percent in the U.S. Twenty-one percent of EU early-stage companies subsequently reach growth-stage funding, compared with 38 percent in the U.S.The study says research agendas are broadly aligned with industry needs. The weaknesses are elsewhere: European research does not consistently reach the global technological frontier, and the EU trails the U.S., China and Japan in patenting across most of the digital fields examined, with quantum and photonics notable exceptions.Its answer is therefore not simply more early-stage research. The study recommends more support for prototypes, pilots and field testing in real operating environments, stronger industrial participation and better pathways from research to commercialization.Regulation will shape what gets commercialized-For identity technology, the research agenda will also meet a regulatory framework already moving toward deployment.Under the revised eIDAS framework, Member States must make at least one EU Digital Identity Wallet available by the end of 2026. That gives immediate relevance to the study’s proposed research around wallets, verifiable credentials, interoperability, privacy-enhancing technologies and zero-knowledge proofs.The AI Act creates a different set of boundaries for biometrics. It restricts certain biometric applications and places specified biometric uses within its high-risk framework.That makes research into AI evaluation, bias, accuracy and robustness more than an academic question for biometric developers. New technologies will have to demonstrate performance while fitting within Europe’s rules for how biometric AI can be deployed.What to watch-The study puts identity on Europe’s future research agenda. It does not guarantee funding.The real signal will come when the next Horizon Europe work programs turn strategic priorities into calls for proposals: will decentralized identity, wallets, verifiable credentials and privacy-preserving identity technologies receive dedicated funding, or continue competing inside larger cybersecurity, AI and blockchain budgets? For providers, the direction points toward interoperability, privacy-preserving verification, trustworthy AI and post-quantum-ready cryptography.For buyers, it means looking beyond individual product performance to how identity technologies integrate with wallets and credentials, minimise disclosure, demonstrate AI accuracy and bias testing, and adapt as European standards evolve.Horizon Europe could fund the technologies that come next. eIDAS is already defining the identity infrastructure into which some of them may have to fit, while the AI Act is defining boundaries for how some biometric AI can be used.
EU sets digital ID rules for cross-border health data exchange-MyHealth@EU framework ties patient and provider authentication to eIDAS and EUDI Wallets, with phased requirements beginning in 2027-Sep 25, 2026, 2:38 pm EDT | Ayang Macdonald
The European Commission has approved a new legal framework which spells out an interoperable cross-border ID and authentication mechanism for patients, health professionals, and healthcare providers within the context of MyHealth@EU use. MyHealth@EU is the EU infrastructure that facilitates the cross-border exchange of electronic health data among member states.Adopted on September 21 and published in the Official Journal of the EU a day later, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2099 will be implemented following a phased timetable, beginning March 26, 2027. This is an implementing regulation under the European Health Data Space that connects its cross-border health-data infrastructure with the eIDAS and EUDI Digital Identity framework.Under the rules, identity verification across the MyHealth@EU network must integrate directly with national digital ID schemes recognized under the eIDAS framework. The alignment ensures that citizens can authenticate access to medical records abroad using notified national eIDs and European Digital Identity Wallets.Per the guidelines, all member states will have to determine a set of healthcare attributes used to identify natural persons in connection with their electronic health records for cross-border exchange, which must be notified to the Commission by March 26, 2028, and subsequently published.By March 26, 2029, the competent authority in a person’s member state of affiliation must issue those healthcare attributes as electronic attestations of attributes to their EUDI Wallet, upon request.With regard to authentication requirements for online patient requests, electronic identification must initially meet at least the substantial assurance level under eIDAS, with the requirement expected to move to high assurance from March 2030. Authentication must also meet at least substantial assurance for health professionals, with high assurance expected by March 2032.The new implementing act reflects a broader policy trend toward the sectoral rollout of the EUDI Wallet, demonstrating how it is moving from a general-purpose identity tool to a specialized sectoral credential. The move comes as member states are required to offer at least one EUDI Wallet by the end of 2026.
NIST tests show progress on key challenges in fingerprint biometrics capture-Sopra Steria, Neurotechnology, Hisign and Dermalog software evaluated
Sep 30, 2026, 4:36 pm EDT | Chris Burt
The technology for capturing fingerprint biometrics has reached the point where many of the advances that matter most are not in minute improvements in match rates with scans for single or even multiple fingers. Instead, some of the more consequential challenges now involve segmenting images of hands into distal phalanges, or upper finger joints, and contactless capture with regular smartphones.Sopra Steria is encouraged by the results of its first submission of software to NIST’s Slap Fingerprint Segmentation (SlapSeg) Evaluation.“The results confirm that our approach is already competitive and that we have built a strong technological foundation,” Sopra Steria said on LinkedIn. “More importantly, they have provided our development team with valuable insights into where the solution can be improved further.”The company says enhancements to the accuracy and robustness of its technology are already being made based on the insights gained from SlapSeg.Three other biometrics developers have submitted to SlapSeg so far in 2026: Beijing-based Hisign, Dermalog and Neurotechnology.Hisign’s results for fell around the middle of the pack on the leaderboard, except in full palm segmentation, in which it scored a third-highest 92.5. Dermalog’s entry nearly matched the fastest performance recorded, beaten only by an entry by Lakota Software Solutions back in 2019, before upper palm and full palm segmentation was included in the evaluation. Among current submissions, Neurotechnology ranks second for tenprint cards and upper-palm segmentation, and first for identification flats and full-palm segmentation. The upper palm result is the third among current software, the other three all second-highest.Neurotechnology joins FastCap qualifiers-Neurotechnology also joined the list of contactless fingerprint software providers to meet the qualification test criteria for Phase One of NIST’s Fast Capture (FastCap) program.The first dozen out of 18 technology providers participating in FastCap under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) were announced in August. The criteria for qualification is set by NIST Special Publication 500-339, Specification for Certification Testing of Contactless Fingerprint Acquisition Devices.“Contactless fingerprint capture becomes much more useful when the images it produces can be searched against existing contact-based records,” says Evaldas Borcovas, head of biometrics research at Neurotechnology in the announcement.Borcovas notes that the qualification confirms the interoperability of his company’s biometric technology for smartphone cameras with data collected on contact fingerprint scanners, which means it can be used with real digital identity systems.
Armenia sets 2029 target for EU visa‑free travel, launches biometric ID reforms-New biometric passports and ID cards launch Nov. 1 as Yerevan works through EU visa liberalization benchmarks-Sep 30, 2026, 11:54 am EDT | Lu-Hai Liang
Armenia has set 2029 as the target date for completing the reforms required under its EU–Armenia Visa Liberalization Action Plan. A key plank of the Action Plan is migration management, which includes rolling out a new biometric identification system.Interior Minister Arpine Sargsyan recently held talks with EU officials in Yerevan. Sargsyan is leading negotiations on visa liberalization and said her government is committed to fully implementing the plan, which she says is a priority for strengthening democratic institutions and securing visa‑free travel with the EU.Developed through a public‑private partnership, the new biometric system is scheduled to launch on November 1. Armenia’s embassies and consulates have already announced a temporary suspension of passport issuance and replacement services from October 5 to facilitate the transition.The biometric overhaul follows adoption of the Law “On Identification Documents” in May 2026, which mandates the introduction of biometric ID credentials. Under the new rules, ID cards will be mandatory for people aged 16 or older. Persons aged 6 to 16 will be able to receive the document on a voluntary basis, while children under 6 will rely on birth certificates for identification.All travel documents will comply with ICAO standard 9303. The South Caucasus country presented the design of the new passports in April and announced that Armenians will be able to use the documents at contactless border checkpoints.Armenia’s new biometric ID and passport infrastructure is being delivered via a Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Haypass, a local firm established through a consortium involving French identity giant Idemia and A.C.I. Technology, is the overall technology partner of the project, managing system implementation, infrastructure and offices. IN Groupe later acquired Idemia Smart Identity, the entity that co-formed Haypass.Issuance is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026.Head of the Migration and Citizenship Service, Nelly Davtyan, said the ID card will cost 5,950 drams (about US$15), while the passport will go for 28,650 drams (approximately US$74), during a press conference on August 14.The new system lays the ground for Armenia’s visa liberalization process and supports integrated border management. A comprehensive border strategy is expected to be submitted to the government by year’s end.The reforms will modernize Armenia’s identity infrastructure, according to officials, as it enhances security and aligns the country’s travel credentials with EU standards as it works toward visa‑free movement by 2029.
UK invites digital ID providers to join testing for machine-readable DVS register-OfDIA outlines system set for October onboarding tests-Sep 30, 2026, 11:15 am EDT | Chris Burt
The UK’s machine-readable register for Digital Verification Services (DVSs) is nearly ready, and the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes wants DVS Providers to help test the infrastructure behind it.OfDIA announced its intentions with the machine-readable DVS register in July to replace the current register. Making the register machine-readable is intended to support automated checks so that the system can scale. OfDIA identified the machine-readable version of the register as a priority when it confirmed its commitment to the DVS trust framework in July.The agency is planning technical testing through an API model to support direct connections for secure data exchange, and a credential model for verifying credentials presented from a digital wallet, according to a government blog post.Tests of the onboarding process will take place in October, when OfDIA will also begin interviewing DVS providers to gauge their readiness for integration testing. More tests covering the technical models will follow.-How the system works-The API model is used when a public authority is asked by a DVS provider to validate an individual’s data, and the authority must first confirm the DVS provider is registered to perform the task. It uses X.509 certificates and OpenID Federation specifications. The credential model allows wallets to check reader services are registered as verifiers, using a Verifier Identity Certificate Authority List (VICAL) for verifiers to check and a Reader Identity Certificate Authority List (RICAL) for wallets. VICALs and RICALs are defined in the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard.Registered DVS providers will get access to a “DVSP Portal,” currently in development, to create an account. The account allows them to submit and manage information about the services they provide, including technical information for generating transport certificates and create and publish entity configurations.Transport certificates presented by DVS providers can be traced back to OfDIA through the trust chain created by a certificate issued by an appointed certificate authority, which is chained to an OfDIA root certificate authority, according to the announcement.Entity configurations take the form of self-signed JSON Web Tokens (JWTs). The JWT may carry a signed OpenID trust mark with certification details.Relying parties use a mutual TLS to check certificates, which confirms the DVS provider is on the register. The DVS provider can confirm the client’s identity through tls_client_auth or private_key_jwt.Relying parties confirm the valid roles for the service through the API and a resolve endpoint OfDIA is also working on.Connections are initiated by the individual presenting a QR code or tapping their phone with NFC enabled.DVS providers are invited to email digital.identity.register@dsit.gov.uk to participate in the tests.
Alarm sounds on agentic governance as rapid deployment creates security gaps-Rig Security, RSA, Delinea join chorus of firms offering trust models for agentic identity-Sep 30, 2026, 4:06 pm EDT | Joel R. McConvey
The great AI agitation continues. Opportunities presented by agentic AI have created a market for governance. Increasing instances of agents overstepping their boundaries are adding urgency. Now, Meta even offers a branded “personal AI agent,” Muse, which is already raising privacy concerns. The agentic era is upon us, and it is turning the biometrics and identity industry inside-out.Rig emerges from stealth to deploy ‘identity correlation engine’An announcement from Rig Security says it has emerged from stealth with $12 million in seed funding for its identity protection platform. The round was co-led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Brightmind Partners, with strategic participation from the CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and additional backing from cybersecurity founders and executives.Rig promises to deliver a comprehensive governance solution for AI agents: a “unified, real-time view of chained permissions and trust relationships across cloud, on-premises and identity-provider systems, and the ability to enforce policy as risk emerges.”Part of this risk lies in the ambiguity that exists in the connection between agent and person.Rig points out that coding assistants, autonomous agents and automation tools don’t log in as themselves: they borrow human identities.“Identity used to mean people’s credentials,” says Guy Kozliner, CEO of Rig Security. “Today, the most active identities in an enterprise are AI agents, and they are acting under human names. Security teams can see that an account did something dangerous. What they cannot see is whether a person did it or an agent did, and they cannot stop the agent without blocking the person.”Rig aims to confirm which agents exist, what access they have and what they’re doing with it, and enforce policy at runtime. Its patented process employs Rig’s proprietary machine learning-powered “identity-correlation engine,” RICE, which enables access to the Identity Dependencies Graph: “a live map of how human, machine and AI identities are connected through accounts, permissions, sessions and trust relationships, and how those relationships can be abused.”RSA Agent ID prefers agentic security to blind faith-The headline on RSA’s latest release could be the title of a mid-21st century country hit: “Hope Isn’t an AI Strategy.” It announces the launch of RSA Agent ID, an agentic security identity platform for highly-regulated industries.“For government, financial services, and critical infrastructure, getting agentic security wrong is not inconvenient, it is catastrophic,” says RSA CEO Greg Nelson. “Hope won’t control agents, but RSA Agent ID will.”The company says RSA Agent ID discovers, secures, and governs AI agents across their lifecycle, supporting agentic identity security that determines what an agent can do, where control begins and ends, and where attackers strike.Nelson says “RSA Agent ID brings agents under the same identity discipline RSA has applied to human access for decades.”Without active adoption, policy is just paper: Delinea-According to new research from Delinea, 87 percent of IT leaders say an AI tool or agent accessed sensitive data beyond its intended scope in the past year. The 2026 AI Policy Enforcement Report also says policy has outpaced adoption: “99.7 percent of organizations now have a formal policy governing what data AI tools and agents can access, yet only about half check that access against policy in real time.”“Written policy is only as good as your ability to enforce it at the moment an AI agent acts,” says Art Gilliland, CEO of Delinea, in a release. “Our research echoes what I hear from leaders constantly: they have the AI policies in place, but they can’t see or report on what their agents actually do.” When an agent goes beyond its scope, 55 percent of organizations take a full day or longer to detect it.The answer, says Delinea, is “continuous, runtime authorization with least-privilege scoping and full session visibility across AI, human and machine identities, giving security teams a defensible record of who authorized each access, what the agent did and why it was allowed.”
Aadhaar biometrics rule for subsidies effectively makes India’s digital ID mandatory-Requirement for LPG benefits forces poor Indians to adopt optional national system-Sep 23, 2026, 2:28 pm EDT | Chris Burt
India’s Aadhaar became the world’s largest digital ID system without being made official mandatory. But is possessing the national ID really a choice for Indians? What if they are poor? As of October 1, Biometric Aadhaar Authentication becomes mandatory for previously-registered beneficiaries to receive subsidized LPG (liquid petroleum gas) for household use. The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas announced the change to help prevent the fraudulent diversion of subsidized LPG to businesses and ineligible households.India’s government subsidizes the household cooking fuel through the PMUY program, which distributes fuel directly to beneficiaries, and the PAHAL program, which deposits subsidies directly into the bank accounts of recipients. Authentication for the programs can be completed at fuel distributor’s shops, through their mobile apps, or through home-visit services.The government has already established and pushed back eight deadlines to complete biometric authentication, starting with June 30, 2026. The biometric authentication process can be completed with fingerprint, face or iris biometrics collected-Back in 2015, the Ministry stated that not only was Aadhaar not necessary to receive the subsidy, but emphasized that distributors were not permitted to refuse refills to customers on the basis of not having Aadhaar. “Complaints in this regard should be immediately taken up and resolved along with necessary action against the erring distributor as deemed fit,” the government said at the time.The government began encouraging fuel companies to use Biometric Aadhaar Authentication to complete KYC checks for LPG subsidy beneficiaries under the PMUY and PAHAL programs in October, 2023. Biometric identity verification improved the government’s ability to reach intended beneficiaries, according to a mid-2024 announcement.But the system was known to suffer from extensive fraud. The Ministry used Aadhaar numbers, bank account details and other data to deduplicate its database of eligible LPF subsidy recipients last year, resulting in the deactivation of 40 million accounts. As of mid-2025, two-thirds of PMUY beneficiaries had completed authentication with Aadhaar biometrics, and biometrics became required for new beneficiaries.With the introduction of the same requirement for refills for registered beneficiaries, Aadhaar becomes mandatory for all LPG subsidies in India.More than 274 million LPG recipients, or almost 90 percent, have already completed Aadhaar Biometric Authentication, and therefore are unaffected by the new requirement.The Ministry says LPG will not be denied to those who do not authenticate themselves with Aadhaar biometrics, but the subsidies will.Digital ID as optional as social safety net-But if the subsidy is deemed necessary for poor households, and the digital ID is required for the subsidy, then logic suggests the digital ID is required for poor households. Those too well off to receive subsidies are those to whom choice applies.The phenomenon is unfortunately familiar.Aadhaar is also mandatory for the PM-KISAN scheme, which provides financial assistance for farmers, and is already used in almost all transactions (98 percent) by the national social safety program for directly distributing grains to the poor.“A unique identification number registration has a lifecycle,” Jaume Dubois, founder and CEO of ID30, tells Biometric Update in an email about the policy change. “At first, it is a factor of inclusion: people can prove who they are, often for the first time. Without precautions, the same number can end up becoming a factor of exclusion, once authentication turns into a condition of access and a failed match costs someone a benefit they are entitled to.“Legal identity is a right of every person, and providing it is the responsibility of the state, from birth, including making sure every eligible person can use it,” Dubois continues.“Full enrollment is close to unreachable, even with time and resources: some people will always remain outside, for many different reasons. That is why, in every project we lead, we design the fallback paths together with the main path, starting at enrollment: handling of edge cases, alternative authentication, assisted and offline channels. We encourage authorities to take every case into account, so that each person always has a way through.”A similar phenomenon has also been seen in other countries, such as Malaysia. But with India’s major influence on the shape of digital identity around the world, digital rights advocates will be watching how the changes play out closely and warily.
ICE builds nationwide ERO intelligence layer around biometric targeting operations-$100 million-plus plan would place 142 cleared analysts across every ERO field area and national centers processing biometric identity queries-Sep 24, 2026, 6:30 pm EDT | Anthony Kimery
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is preparing a more than $100 million contracting effort that would place experienced intelligence analysts throughout its nationwide deportation operations, including inside Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) centers that use biometric and biographic data to identify and target people for enforcement.The proposed contract for a newly surfaced organization called ERO Overwatch and National Security Enforcement (ERO ONE) calls for approximately 142 Intelligence Research Specialists across ERO headquarters, all 24 ERO field areas, and three national targeting and support centers.ICE expects the analysts to hold Top Secret clearances and be eligible for access to Sensitive Compartmented Information.Twelve would work at ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) in Williston, Vermont. ICE says the center conducts “person-centric” analysis and processes about 1.55 million biometric and biographic queries annually, providing identity and immigration-status information to federal, state, and local law enforcement.Another nine ERO ONE analysts would be assigned to the Pacific Enforcement Response Center (PERC) in California, which ICE says uses biometric information and in-depth analysis to verify a subject’s identity, immigration status, criminal record, custody status, and removability.ICE’s description of its broader mission similarly says ERO works with law enforcement partners on the “biometric and biographic identification” of people encountered in prisons and jails, and that LESC coordinates enforcement responses using biometrics to identify foreign-born people arrested for criminal offenses.The new ERO ONE Statement of Work does not say its analysts will themselves run facial recognition or fingerprint searches, and it does not identify a new biometric platform.But it would embed contractor intelligence personnel inside an existing enforcement architecture in which biometric identity resolution already plays a central role.The contract also includes ICE’s current AI governance language, which explicitly contemplates using AI in determinations affecting individuals, including identity verification.The provisions require human oversight of AI used to support law enforcement decisions and prohibit AI output from serving as the sole evidence for punitive or enforcement action.The expected procurement shows ICE is building a common intelligence support structure that extends from biometric-enabled national targeting centers into its field enforcement organization across the country.ICE posted its Request for Information on September 18, seeking industry feedback on the proposed ERO ONE contract.The accompanying Statement of Work calls for analysts to conduct all-source research using classified and unclassified information, identify intelligence gaps, assess trends and threats, analyze relationships among people, organizations, locations and events, develop network diagrams and provide analytical support to operational planning.Of the 142 Intelligence Research Specialist positions, 94 would be distributed across all 24 ERO areas of responsibility, with between three and five analysts assigned to each.Another 15 would work at ICE headquarters at Potomac Center North in Washington, D.C. Twelve would be assigned to the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center (NCATC) in Williston, 12 to LESC, and nine to PERC in Laguna Niguel, California.The staffing pattern is important because ERO’s national targeting centers already produce leads for immigration officers.ICE describes its targeting operations organization as comprising NCATC, LESC, and PERC, which use technical capabilities, analytical tools, and law enforcement expertise to generate intelligence-driven leads on people subject to removal.NCATC analyzes information from law enforcement and immigration databases to identify and locate targets. LESC handles biometric and biographic identity queries and provides real-time information to law enforcement agencies, and PERC develops enforcement leads using criminal, immigration, and identity information.ERO ONE would add a contractor intelligence workforce operating across those centers while simultaneously pushing the same broader analytical capability outward into every ERO field area.The analysts could coordinate with ERO headquarters and field offices, other ICE components, DHS organizations, federal law enforcement agencies, and Intelligence Community members.They would work with classified national security information as well as law enforcement sensitive information, personally identifiable information, and operational data.The Statement of Work requires at least eight years of relevant professional analytical experience and says analysts must be capable of integrating information from multiple classified and unclassified sources and producing finished intelligence.Contractor analysts would not have independent law enforcement authority. Government personnel would continue to establish priorities and requirements and make inherently governmental decisions.The connection to biometric identity systems is not theoretical at LESC.ICE says the center’s Operations Unit processes biometric and biographic Immigration Alien Queries generated by federal, state, and local law enforcement encounters. The queries help determine identity, immigration status, and criminal history.The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inventory of major information systems says LESC personnel use the Alien Criminal Response Information Management system (ACRIMe) to process more than 1.5 million Immigration Alien Queries annually by searching law enforcement systems for immigration and criminal history information.Results are returned through Immigration Alien Responses that can feed subsequent enforcement action.The underlying process has long included interoperability between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DHS biometric systems.The FBI has described how a biometric match can generate an Immigration Alien Query to LESC, after which ICE may investigate, which can result in a detainer or removal proceedings.The ERO ONE Statement of Work itself treats biometric identifiers as particularly sensitive personally identifiable information alongside Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, Alien Registration Numbers, and financial account information.Exactly when ICE established ERO ONE remains unclear.The earliest public document identified by Biometric Update that uses the full ERO Overwatch and National Security Enforcement name is the August 20 Statement of Work.DHS first published its acquisition forecast for the requirement on September 11 and revised it September 17. The revised forecast lists ICE official Ahren Pagaduan as the requirements contact.The forecast calls the procurement a “New Requirement,” estimates its value at more than $100 million, and anticipates an award during the second quarter of fiscal 2027. The projected contract would run into February 2032.But the intelligence functions themselves are not new.ERO has operated NCATC, LESC, and PERC for years. ICE’s fiscal 2024 annual report said the three centers provide real-time leads and referrals to field offices to improve targeted enforcement operations.The concept of building intelligence capability deeper into ERO’s field organization dates back at least to the first Trump administration.ICE’s fiscal 2021 congressional budget justification requested 50 additional positions and $9.1 million for “ERO Intelligence and Counterterrorism Engagement.”ICE said the expansion would improve ERO’s intelligence gathering capability and establish permanent Senior Deportation Officer intelligence positions in field offices while expanding participation in Joint Terrorism Task Forces-The request described a base of 792 positions and $131.8 million for the program before the proposed increase.The Statement of Work requires the incoming contractor to develop a transition plan to transfer authorized ongoing work and says the contractor may have to coordinate with an incumbent contractor to avoid disrupting operations.ERO already contracts for substantial analytical work at its targeting centers.Deloitte Consulting holds an ERO delivery order for Internet research and data analytics supporting the Targeting Operations Division in Williston. Federal contracting data identify that award as the incumbent for lead development and open source intelligence support.Deloitte also holds a separate contract providing analytical and call-center support at PERC.In October 2025, ICE sought industry input on another targeting operations requirement for NCATC and PERC that would use commercial and law enforcement databases, publicly available information, and social media to locate people and develop enforcement leads.Those existing functions overlap significantly with work now described under ERO ONE.
NADRA adds family digital IDs, QR verification to PakID as iris use expands-Pakistan extends reusable digital identity services while adding iris biometrics for children and people who struggle with fingerprint verification-Sep 29, 2026, 9:15 am EDT | Ayang Macdonald
Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has expanded its PakID mobile application with digital family identity credentials, QR-based document verification and mobile biometric verification, adding new functions to a platform that is becoming a gateway to Pakistan’s digital government services.PakID is NADRA’s official mobile application for identity registration, updates and service tracking. The app has surpassed 18 million downloads, with 8.17 million recorded between November last year and May.According to an announcement reported by ProPakistani, the newly released PakID version 5.8.0 makes it possible for users to obtain digital ID cards for their spouses and eligible children, which can be stored alongside the user’s own digital ID and presented when needed.The update also introduces QR-based verification for B-Forms and Identity Card Cancellation Certificates, allowing users to scan the digital QR codes through the PakID application and view the verified information. It also adds biometric verification for influenza and meningitis vaccinations required for Hajj and Umrah pilgrims, which can be completed through the PakID application.Officials say the three features are the latest in a series of moves by the government to position PakID as a reusable public infrastructure that facilitates access to a wide range of public services. This year, the platform has seen several innovations, including upgrades to digital vehicle and civil registration services, digital identity documents, appointment bookings and remote biometric verification.The developments give PakID a role beyond that of an application for accessing NADRA’s identity services. The platform is increasingly being used to store and verify digital identity documents and to provide biometric authentication for specific services, pointing towards a model in which the national digital ID infrastructure can be reused across different government services.Iris scan for minors expands-In another development, NADRA has made iris scanning available for minors under the age of 18, as reported by The Express Tribune.The expansion, which is available at more than 5,000 counters across the country, is meant to strengthen the identification of children and prevent their identities from being stolen or misused to register another person’s child.A media director at the ID authority, Shabahat Ali, said photographs and other biometric identifiers would strengthen registration, particularly where existing records do not sufficiently distinguish one child from another.Biometric fall-back option to drive inclusion-According to NADRA officials, the iris biometric facility is also intended to serve as a fall-back providing an alternative for older people, manual workers and others whose fingerprints are difficult to capture because of illness or skin conditions.NADRA has informed financial institutions that where fingerprints cannot be obtained because of age, illness or other reasons, an individual can be verified through facial recognition, while the iris provides another unique biometric marker for identification, The Nation reports. Authorities say the alternative could help people who have experienced difficulties accessing banking and other services because of failed fingerprint verification.The development follows an earlier regulatory change under which Pakistan broadened its definition of biometric identification to recognise facial features and the iris, alongside fingerprints. The emphasis on alternative biometric verification, according to NADRA, is part of efforts to make the country’s identity system more inclusive, while strengthening safeguards around the identification of children.
US Social Security becomes major test of digital identity at scale-SSA has reached 105 million my Social Security accounts, but its formal 2027 target is 110 million as Login.gov and ID.me become increasingly central to online access-Sep 29, 2026, 4:21 pm EDT | Anthony Kimery
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has reached 105 million my Social Security accounts, placing access to the agency’s online services behind a digital identity layer as the federal government moves to make Login.gov a common gateway for covered online public services.SSA is becoming more than a large agency promoting online self-service. It is emerging as one of the largest tests of whether the federal government can make robust digital identity verification a routine gateway to public services without making that gateway an obstacle for the people those services are intended to reach.The agency’s latest formal target is considerably more modest than the one SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano set less than a year ago.SSA’s 2026-2030 strategic plan established an Agency Priority Goal of 110 million my Social Security accounts by the end of fiscal 2027. The plan projected 105 million accounts by the end of fiscal 2026. The agency has now reached that projection, an SSA spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW.That contrasts sharply with Bisignano’s earlier goal of reaching 200 million account holders by the end of calendar 2026. SSA publicly announced the target in November 2025, saying it wanted to build on nearly 20 percent growth in online transactions during the previous fiscal year.SSA has not said it abandoned the larger ambition. An agency spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW that SSA was still striving for 200 million my Social Security account holders but did not provide a new deadline.The numbers, however, tell only part of the story. SSA’s digital-first strategy is also turning one of the federal government’s largest public-facing programs into an enormous practical test of digital identity proofing.As of June 7, 2025, SSA no longer allows access to its online services with the agency’s old Social Security username and password.Users must sign in through Login.gov or ID.me, and those who have not previously established the necessary credentials must verify their identity with the provider they select, according to SSA’s account guidance.SSA describes Login.gov as best for most users in the U.S. and ID.me as serving users inside or outside the country. Customers with a foreign mailing address are specifically directed to create an ID.me account.Both services provide identity verification and access to my Social Security, making identity proofing increasingly inseparable from SSA’s effort to move interactions online.For one of SSA’s two enrollment paths, biometrics are explicitly part of that process.An SSA guide for creating an account with ID.me instructs users to upload images of the front and back of a government-issued identification document and then take a selfie. The guide says ID.me uses the selfie to verify that the user is the person depicted on the ID.Login.gov requires a more careful distinction.The government identity service offers several service levels. Its basic identity verification service requires users to provide identity information and identification but does not use facial matching and does not meet the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Identity Assurance Level 2 standard.Login.gov’s enhanced IAL2 service adds a selfie and facial matching, comparing the selfie with the portrait on the user’s identification document. Users may also be offered in-person identity verification at participating U.S. Postal Service locations.SSA’s current public account instructions say Login.gov users need government-issued photo identification, but they do not state that SSA requires Login.gov’s enhanced facial-matching service for my Social Security.Login.gov’s privacy and identity verification policies say a self-photograph is required when a partner agency requires verification through biometric comparison.An August 31 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memorandum designates Login.gov as the universal sign-on for covered public services and directs agencies to use its identity verification service for covered public-facing services that require identity proofing, unless an agency determines that Login.gov cannot meet requirements specific to the user population, risk profile, or operations involved.The policy does not prohibit agencies from keeping other identity providers.OMB says agencies may also offer another authentication or identity-verification solution when Login.gov cannot fully meet a particular use case or when doing so is necessary to avoid imposing additional burdens on a significant population of users.The memo specifically notes that people living abroad may have limited official records that make identity verification more difficult and may warrant another solution. SSA currently directs customers with foreign mailing addresses toward ID.me.Agencies using alternatives must promote Login.gov as the default for new accounts among populations it can serve and routinely reevaluate whether other solutions remain necessary. OMB also directs agencies to phase out alternatives that do not meet its specified exceptions.The directive acknowledges a problem that becomes more significant as digital identity systems become gateways to government benefits.Agencies must consider how their identity requirements affect users and avoid friction that is not justified by the risk of a transaction.OMB specifically directs agencies to monitor measures including verification pass rates, abandonment rates, and completion times to identify user burden or limitations on access.Agencies should consider those measurements alongside fraud and security metrics and privacy considerations.Nextgov/FCW found examples of those barriers among SSA users.Legal aid attorneys described clients having difficulty with ID.me video proofing and others waiting for Login.gov verification codes by mail.The publication also reported that identity verification services can present difficulties for people without current photo identification, people who are unhoused, and those whose identities cannot be successfully established through data matching.Login.gov provides in-person verification at participating U.S. Postal Service locations for eligible agency services, while ID.me provides a remote video call option for people who cannot complete automated verification.Nextgov/FCW identified both as alternatives available to people having trouble establishing my Social Security accounts.However, an AARP survey published in August suggests unsuccessful account creation is not the main reason tens of millions of Americans have yet to establish an SSA account.The survey, based on a nationally representative sample of 1,390 U.S. adults, found that 44 percent said they had a my Social Security account, ranging from 66 percent of people 65 and older to 29 percent of those ages 18 to 49.Among respondents who said they did not have an account or were unsure, 90 percent said they had never attempted to create one. Only 3 percent said they had tried and were unable to do so.Those numbers suggest SSA faces two different problems as it tries to expand the portal: persuading people who see little immediate reason to create an account and ensuring that those who do need access can successfully pass identity verification.The second problem is likely to grow in importance. SSA’s strategic plan says the agency intends to make nearly all transactions available through my Social Security or state-of-the-art telephone services and wants its online offerings to become safe and convenient enough that customers prefer conducting their business online.The agency is already adding more substantive services to the account. In July, SSA added online submission for several disability adjudication forms, expanded online case-status tracking at the hearings and appeals levels, and made additional hearing-related notices available via My Social Security.Moving from 105 million accounts to the commissioner’s still-stated aspiration of 200 million would mean attracting another 95 million accounts into a system in which access now depends on federated sign-on and identity-proofing services.Meanwhile, OMB is pushing the rest of government toward the same Login.gov-centered architecture and explicitly requiring agencies to measure whether their identity controls create user burden or limit legitimate access, while weighing those results against fraud, security, and privacy measures.
ICAO commits to progress in digitizing traveler identification systems- Live deployments of contactless systems lead to measurable gains in efficiency, growth-Sep 25, 2026, 3:28 pm EDT | Joel R. McConvey
Digital identity tends to gain traction in use cases that solve real-world problems. Travel is a process filled with pain points – and so it is not surprising that it is a sector that has moved to integrate digital ID and biometrics quickly into airports, seeking improvements to the post-9/11 model that prioritized security at the expense of comfort and efficiency. New digital identity and biometrics pilots and services are ever increasing in the U.S. But they do not always move quickly.There is a sense of urgency in an announcement from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that governments and industry have renewed commitments to accelerate the shift to digital identity and contact-free border processing.A release noting the recent ICAO TRIP Symposium observes that “countries are moving forward with national programs using multimodal biometrics, automated gates, and even contactless and digitally enabled travel for their residents.” Automation has taken over tedious manual checks, freeing up officers to focus on oversight and critical risk.The symposium saw growing consensus that “automation and data-driven risk management enable most travelers to be processed with less friction while frontline officers can focus on higher-risk cases. Redesigned operational models can allow one officer to oversee several automated lanes, reducing staffing burdens and overtime.”On one hand, it is worth pointing out that this could easily translate, from a worker’s perspective, to “more automation means paying fewer humans.” On the other hand, there is good reason to fix a system that has, for the past 25 years, imposed tight restrictions on the majority, even though most travelers pose no security risk whatsoever.ICAO Council President Toshiyuki Onuma sums up the goal. “We must ensure that travel becomes smarter, more inclusive, and seamless, without compromising security or convenience,” he says. “By doing so, we will sustain the international trust that underpins the development of air transport worldwide.”Standards align nations at different stages of digital transformation-The international shift to seamless travel is not happening in unison: different legal frameworks and states at different levels of readiness pose challenges for a global transition. Some countries have already begun establishing ecosystems leveraging biometrics and digital credentials. Others face technical obstacles.But a commitment to aligning with ICAO specifications and standards will put everyone on a common path toward the ultimate goal of interoperability across borders.“While technologies and operational models may differ across States, alignment with ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs), technical specifications and guidance material is essential to ensuring global trust, recognition and cross-border compatibility,” the organization says.The ICAO is developing the ICAO Digital Travel Credential and maintains the ICAO Public Key Directory, to support compatibility and security across national systems.Cooperation, coordination key to establishing trust-As projects take shape and government and industry align, digital travel is moving beyond proof-of-concept into a maturation phase. Bottlenecks remain: interoperability is the main project, but relying-party acceptance and identity governance must also be solved. And business cases must be made to transition pilots into everyday infrastructure.“Automation and human capacity must develop in parallel,” says ICAO, “but legal and administrative frameworks must be established before real-time or interactive systems can be scaled effectively.” Pilots should continue – but it is only through regional and global cooperation, and “incremental, feedback-driven rollouts” that the linked goals of safety and interoperability can be achieved.Securing every link in the traveler identity chain, from civil registration and document issuance to border control and digital access, is also a critical measure to establish the foundation of any functional identity system: trust. This, says the ICAO, is what must exist for a successful, seamless global travel nvironment.‘Airports should be designed to embrace this technology’A session on ‘Advancing Digital Identity & Seamless Travel Efforts,’ held at the recent FTE Global 2026 in Dallas, Texas, features leaders from Tampa International Airport, U.S. Travel Association, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) and Ernst & Young (EY) discussing how digital identity is becoming a critical enabler of the next generation of seamless travel.Future Travel Experience, which hosts FTE Global, quotes Tampa International Airport Director of Digital Technologies & Innovation Douglas Wycoff, who says digital identification will be “the game-changer over the next three to five years.”“The key element of the digital solution is a consistent, uniform experience that compliments the journey from curb to gate,” he says. “To use a piecemeal solution would be potentially confusing to our guests.”Wycoff speaks to the need to help push biometrics pilots into full deployment with coordination across the entire airport. “The constant crossroads of developing technology, communication/collaboration breakdowns, and building the synergy between all airlines and the airport facility is the major challenge affecting these solutions going into full production,” he says.Nonetheless, he believes digital identity technologies “could be the single most impactful transformation in ticket level designs and passenger flow portals, while being a huge saving in terms of staffing for the airlines.”“Airports should be designed to embrace this technology and require airlines to participate,” he says. “The concept of the airline managing the passenger from the moment they arrive at the door is no longer relevant. Unless a passenger has a specific or unique issue, this technology should keep a traveller from having to interact with airline personnel until they get to the gate.”Trust still not at cruising altitude-The takeaways from both events are similar. The time for trials is over. In order to leverage digital identity’s full range of benefits, collaboration and cross-departmental coordination is necessary. Investment will follow successful business cases. And the market wants digital ID.FTE cites numbers showing that more than 80 percent of American travellers embrace biometric technology. The infrastructure is developing to support full production deployments of contactless airport systems. The adoption of TSA-compatible mobile driver’s licenses (mDL) continues. And so does innovation: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is currently seeking a biometric capture system that can photograph Global Entry travelers while they walk through airport arrival lanes, moving the trusted traveler program toward continuous-flow facial comparison.Airports are ready for digital ID. Digital ID is ready for airports. Now, the remaining question is one that has dogged travelers since the dawn of commercial flight: why is this taking so long? One answer is that trust is not yet fully established. Take a recent audit by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general (IG), which found that a vendor supporting the TSA’s biometric checkpoint system could access and extract passengers’ driver’s license and passport images during troubleshooting and system upgrades without the agency knowing. A leaky ship is one thing, but when it comes to travel, for trust to flourish, the experience must be seamless – and airtight.
Prove-it time for face biometrics providers as tech hits cross-sector mainstream-Sep 26, 2026, 3:00 pm EDT | Chris Burt
Face biometrics are crossing over into the mainstream in a wide range of sectors, which means being stress-tested. Investments leading to facial recognition or selfie biometrics deployments for access control, age checks, retail payments, digital identity and of course law enforcement made headlines. That also means it is time for results, from the new RealSense ID to the IPO considerations of Toss.Other popular stories this week on Biometric Update include an interview with Indicio VP of Digital Strategy & Governance Trevor Butterworth on VCs, decentralized ID and AI agents and last Friday’s look at Malaysia’s increasingly necessary national digital ID.Going mainstream across multiple markets-RealSense is selling its robotic vision portfolio to Cognex for $500 million, but CEO Nadav Orbach tells Biometric Update in an interview he expects RealSense ID, the remaining access control-focussed biometric authentication business, to quadruple next year. Alcatraz has expanded its feature set to compete in the same biometric physical access control market, and has signed up a large U.S. university for its facial authentication system.Face biometrics are also gaining traction in retail payments, though South Korea’s Toss is delaying a planned U.S. IPO to wait for improved conditions in the broader financial market. Toss’ corporate parent is also dealing with increased oversight brought on by its growth.The mainstream adoption of face biometrics is also the onboarding and authentication mechanism underpinning the digital IDs whose proliferation appears to be reaching a potential Tipping Point, as discussed on the September 18 episode of the Biometric Update Podcast.One of the potential killer applications for these credentials is online age assurance. Insiders from Shufti, Innovatrics and Gataca delved into the effect digital wallets will have on this market in a Biometric Update webinar and Q+A follow-up last week.Reusable digital identity provider ShareID has passed compliance assessments by CLR Labs for PAD and IAD. Similarly, Mobai has been declared conformant with eIDAS ecosystem standards for digital identity services, electronic signatures and automated unattended remote identity proofing by Attestic Certification.Both Hong Kong and Singapore have deployed in-vehicle facial recognition for border clearance, allowing people to complete biometric identity verification without getting out of their cars.Western Australia Police say their three-month trial of live facial recognition was successful at deterring crime. NEC technology was used to scan just over 900,000 faces across 77 deployments, with 209 alerts, eight of which were found to be false positives, and 79 arrests.LFR use is also growing in America, but civil rights advocates joining a lawsuit in Reno argue farming its use out to a private company and untrained officers is poor policy.The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) announced it had awarded Clearview AI a contract to use its forensic facial recognition in investigations last week. But the BIA was already using Clearview’s technology in January, at latest. The discrepancy is not explained in public records.Technology still evolving-The latest NIST FRTE 1:1 report features a strong crop of new algorithms from 21 developers, and underlines the importance of judging accuracy based on the operational goals and conditions.Debate continues to swirl around face image quality assessment, as research from NIST, DHS and UNHCR points to issues affecting operational usefulness. But the floor for useful quality is fairly firm, research from Johns Hopkins University shows.The next running of DHS’ RIVR program will specifically target AI-generated ID documents and deepfakes, reflecting the altered threat environment for face biometrics.And even Face ID, which popularized native device biometrics nearly a decade ago, is still improving. Apple is adding more image data to its TrueDepth system for the iPhone 18 Pro, the function of which is subject of speculation.Please let us know if you come across any podcasts, online videos or other content you think we should share with those in biometrics and the broader digital identity community in the comments below or through social media.
Better face recognition exposes limits of image quality scores-Johns Hopkins research and NIST, DHS and UNHCR evaluations expose the widening gap between image quality and face recognition utility-Sep 24, 2026, 7:26 pm EDT | Ashok Singal
Face recognition algorithms are becoming increasingly capable of extracting identity information from poor images. But new research into low-resolution face recognition highlights a stubborn operational problem: better algorithms can recover more from degraded imagery, but only when useful identity information remains.Researchers at Johns Hopkins University tested a new approach to recognizing faces affected by conditions common in surveillance imagery, including blur, occlusion, poor contrast, atmospheric turbulence and low resolution. Their research identifies three underlying challenges.First, useful identity information can be sparse, particularly in video where only some frames contain discriminative information. Second, gallery and probe images can come from very different quality domains: a high-resolution reference image contains texture, landmarks and fine facial details that may no longer be available in a degraded probe. Third, adapting recognition algorithms to low-resolution imagery can degrade information previously learned from higher-quality faces, a problem known as catastrophic forgetting.The researchers were able to improve recognition across low-resolution benchmarks including BRIAR, IJB-S and TinyFace. But their failure analysis also demonstrated the limits of what better recognition can recover. Faces below roughly 8 by 8 pixels can contain too little texture or shape information for reliable matching, while extreme pose, heavy occlusion, atmospheric turbulence and motion blur continued to cause errors.The findings illustrate a broader challenge for operational biometric systems: how do you determine that an image is too poor before sending it to the face matcher? The answer is becoming more complicated as recognition algorithms improve. Image quality and recognition utility are related, but they are not the same thing. An image that a quality assessment algorithm considers poor may still contain enough identity information for a newer or stronger matcher to recognize successfully. Conversely, an image that passes conventional quality checks can still contribute to a false non-match.A useful quality assessment algorithm must therefore do more than detect blur, pose, lighting or other defects. It must predict whether those defects have removed enough identity information to cause the recognition system to fail.That is the problem NIST, DHS, UNHCR and developers of tools such as OFIQ and BQAT are trying to quantify.NIST tests whether poor quality predicts recognition failure-NIST’s ongoing Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) Quality Summarization Track tests whether quality assessment algorithms, or QAAs, can predict false non-matches.For its Entry-to-Visa evaluation, NIST compares airport arrival webcam images, which include operational challenges such as varying illumination and backgrounds, with high-quality visa-like application photographs.NIST sets a recognition threshold at which a set of 15 accurate FRTE verification algorithms produces a 1 percent false non-match rate (FNMR). It then removes the 1 percent and 5 percent of images that each QAA considers lowest quality and recalculates the FNMR.If a QAA perfectly predicted recognition failure, removing the lowest-quality 1 percent should take FNMR from 1 percent to zero. In practice, NIST finds that QAAs do not always assign low quality values to images involved in false non-matches.NIST applies a similar methodology to Kiosk-to-Entry comparisons, where lower-quality kiosk images are compared with medium-quality airport arrival webcam images. This time, NIST removes the lowest-rated 20 percent of samples. Even after discarding far more images than the original 1 percent error rate, QAAs do not consistently identify all samples responsible for false non-matches.The results demonstrate the gap: the images a QAA identifies as worst are not necessarily the images a face matcher fails to recognize.
DHS finds matchers succeeding on low-quality images-The Open Source Face Image Quality tool, or OFIQ, is one of the industry’s major attempts to standardize face quality assessment. Developed under Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), it is the reference implementation for ISO/IEC 29794-5 and provides individual quality measures along with a Unified Quality Score (UQS).A U.S. Department of Homeland Security study found the same quality-utility disconnect from another direction.Researchers tested OFIQ against 16 commercial face recognition systems and concluded that UQS provided “extremely limited utility” for the DHS use cases examined.Commercial matchers successfully recognized many images OFIQ rated as very low quality, and filtering images according to OFIQ scores did not substantially reduce recognition errors.That has direct consequences for recapture. Asking a traveler or customer to take another photograph creates friction and operational cost, but DHS found that additional captures did not always improve image quality enough to justify the intervention. OFIQ showed more potential for selecting the best image when multiple captures were already available.The findings illustrate the central problem: as recognition algorithms become better at extracting identity from degraded imagery, a low image-quality score does not necessarily mean low recognition utility.UNHCR exposes the operational tradeoff-UNHCR’s much larger OFIQ evaluation shows what that disconnect can mean operationally.The organization evaluated OFIQ against a demographically diverse collection of 32 million images, including two million mated pairs. The relationship between OFIQ scores and face match scores was only weak to moderate, although UQS was the strongest factor contributing to prediction, followed by the age of the photograph.UNHCR found that a UQS threshold of 25 could still provide operational value because removing images at the lowest end of the quality distribution produced a disproportionate improvement.But the tradeoff was substantial. About 23.7 percent of active enrollment images fell below UQS 25, while roughly 90 percent of those images could still be used effectively for face recognition.A quality threshold can therefore remove disproportionately problematic images while simultaneously rejecting large numbers of images that a recognition system could successfully use.A separate large-scale evaluation by eu-LISA and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre provides a more encouraging data point. An as-yet unpublished evaluation of operational Visa Information System data found a correlation between higher UQS and lower FNMR.That does not necessarily contradict the DHS findings. The evaluations involve different image sources, populations and recognition systems, so the relationship between quality and recognition failure may not transfer from one operational environment to another. DHS evaluated OFIQ against multiple commercial matchers in its use cases, while eu-LISA and JRC examined VIS data.The divergence reinforces the broader issue: the predictive value of a quality score can itself depend on the images, population, matcher and operating environment against which it is tested.For now, eu-LISA continues to use its own quality assessment tool for face biometric enrollment.More measurements can describe quality, but can they predict failure? OFIQ is not the only approach.Biometix added face analysis based on OFIQ to its open-source Biometric Quality Assessment Tool (BQAT) in 2024. It subsequently expanded BQAT with measures including eye-color detection, gaze direction, brightness, contrast and dynamic range.Those measures can provide a more detailed description of what is wrong with an image. But adding more measurements does not necessarily solve the prediction problem exposed by NIST, DHS and UNHCR.A system may correctly identify that a face is poorly illuminated, off-angle or blurred. The harder question is whether those deficiencies have removed enough identity information to make the particular recognition algorithm processing it fail.OFIQ 2 attempts to close the gaps-Those operational findings are feeding into the next generation of OFIQ.OFIQ 2, being developed as the reference implementation for the revised ISO/IEC 29794-5 standard, will retain OFIQ’s 27 quality components and may add another. Potential improvements include better treatment of motion blur, gaze direction, background uniformity and expression neutrality, along with computational improvements and efforts to reduce demographic differentials.The underlying algorithms may change as well. CenterFace is being considered to replace SSD for face detection, while PPFL could replace ADNet for landmark estimation. Candidate algorithms are being assessed for accuracy, computational complexity, demographic differentials and licensing. Alternatives to OFIQ 1’s Unified Quality Score algorithm are also under consideration.Operational users are feeding experience back into development. Javier Galbally has explained how eu-LISA passes feedback to the OFIQ development team run by BSI and secunet and maintains a regularly updated webpage addressing frequently asked questions about the tool.secunet plans to make a pre-release of OFIQ 2 available in the fourth quarter of 2026, providing more time for community review than the first release. A new demonstrator will follow, while webcam support and additional visualization capabilities are also in development.But the evaluations of the current generation set a higher bar for OFIQ 2 than simply detecting more image defects. The key question will be whether the revised quality components and UQS improve the ability to predict recognition failure across different matchers and operational environments, rather than only providing a more detailed description of image quality.The definition of “good enough” keeps moving-The research into low-resolution recognition and the quality-assessment studies describe two sides of the same problem.Recognition algorithms are becoming better at extracting identity from increasingly degraded imagery. Quality algorithms are trying to determine when an image has become too degraded to use. But there may be no universal quality threshold separating those two states.NIST shows that the images receiving the lowest quality scores are not necessarily the ones producing false non-matches. DHS shows commercial matchers successfully recognizing many images assigned very low OFIQ scores. UNHCR demonstrates the operational tradeoff of rejecting such images, while the different results reported by DHS and eu-LISA/JRC suggest that the predictive value of quality can vary with the matcher, dataset and operating environment.Yet better recognition cannot eliminate the physical limit. The Johns Hopkins research found that severe degradation can eventually leave too little discriminative identity information for even an improved recognition algorithm to reliably extract.The operational challenge, therefore, is no longer simply determining whether an image is good or bad. It is determining whether that image contains enough usable identity information for the recognition system that will actually process it.
Hong Kong age assurance plan for social media, AI will draw on international examples-‘Multi-pronged approach’ to regulation could combine legislation, education, PR-Sep 30, 2026, 12:32 pm EDT | Joel R. McConvey
The government of Hong Kong is the latest to pursue online safety regulations intended to protect minors from the potential harms of social media and chatbot AI.A government notice quotes Secretary for Justice Paul Lam, who says Hong Kong will take a “multi-pronged approach,” which could include legislative, administrative and educational measures – and present a potential for biometric age assurance technology.Lam also says the government will look at how other countries have approached the issue.“We have to consult overseas experience because we are all aware that in other jurisdictions, some rules and regulations have already been introduced to regulate the use of AI by minors,” he says.But, he says, the content of those various rules and regulations varies considerably. “So what we have to do is to study the content of those overseas experiences and analyse to what extent they are effective.”The government will convene a task force, to be led by the Department of Justice, focused on designing a plan that will serve the specific needs of Hong Kong. This will include a public consultation.“We have hard law on the one hand; we have soft law, guidelines and codes of conduct, those sorts of things,” Lam says, as reported in the South China Morning Post. “And then we have education, propaganda, public relations. There are many options, and they are not mutually exclusive. They may run in parallel.”A touch of Australia’s SMMA, a sprinkling of the UK’s OSA-Hong Kong’s case shows the global age assurance program evolving into a stage in which nations exploring measures have reference models on which to build, giving them the kind of second mover’s advantage that, for instance, has factored into the development of Africa’s digital identity ecosystem. Australia broke the ground on social media regulations in December 2025. Since then, governments in every corner of the globe have taken the cue, pursuing their own models with specific policy priorities. As such, the policy menu has expanded, allowing a country like Hong Kong to peruse the regulatory options before ordering.It is also a further example of Asia’s embrace of age assurance in a growing variety of flavors.The continent has been quick to move on regulations, seeing governments experiment with different combinations of tools including age restrictions, mandatory age assurance, parental consent, platform liability, digital identity integration and privacy-centric verification.Hong Kong’s case, however, is unique, given its status as a Special Administrative Region of China, which has its own ideas about the internet. Lam says he is not concerned about potential infringement on individual rights “because the purpose is not to restrict any sort of freedom.”He believes the risk warrants quick action. “We are only aiming at protecting our children to ensure that they will not be exposed to risks,” Lam says. “In particular, the type of risk that I am sure everyone would agree contains undesirable elements, for example, pornographic materials, ideas that incite children to resort to violence.”“Legal reform often covers a wide scope and really takes time. But we cannot wait, and we understand that it is better if it is done faster.”Bout pits safety against privacy, urgency against slow policymaking-The situation shows a number of major forces in the age assurance debate colliding with one another. Political urgency clashes with the slow pace of regulation. And the intent to make the internet more appropriate for kids runs into the risk of legislation being used as an excuse for governments to exercise more control. Hong Kong’s independence from Beijing is not what it once was, and China has already shown itself willing to impose unwanted restrictions on its territory.Hong Kong, then, faces an additional challenge in designing its regulatory regime: how to differentiate it from a controlling parent with a mass surveillance habit, a poor human rights record and a preference for authoritarian rule.
Vendor pitches facial recognition layer for Flock camera data-Vidizmo says integration isn’t built or deployed, but proposal shows how exported Flock imagery could be fed into a separate biometric system-Sep 30, 2026, 11:10 am EDT | Anthony Kimery
A surveillance technology company is pitching law enforcement on a way to combine Flock Safety data with facial recognition, potentially adding biometric identification downstream from a camera network whose manufacturer says it does not and will not use the technology.Vidizmo told a Tennessee police department that its Intelligence Hub could bring Flock data, Axon body-worn camera footage, and other evidence into a single platform that investigators could search by face, vehicle, or object, according to 404 Media.But the proposed capability comes with an important caveat. Vidizmo CEO Nadeem Khan told 404 Media that the company has neither used facial recognition on footage from Flock cameras nor built the specific tool needed to export data from Flock into Vidizmo’s platform.Vidizmo nevertheless advertises a FlockOS integration on its website. The page states that the connection is “available on request” and lists REST API access, content ingestion, and other potential connection methods.It also tells prospective customers that Vidizmo can build and maintain a connector if one is not already available, consistent with Khan’s explanation that the integration being pitched has not yet been built.Khan told 404 Media that an agency could import plate reads or clips that it had exported under its own authorized access and said Flock had “not been involved in or informed of this.”Flock did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.Flock has repeatedly said its automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems do not perform facial recognition.Its Trust Center says Flock cameras do not use facial recognition and that searches are based on vehicle characteristics rather than identity.A separate Flock data privacy page lists biometric and facial recognition data among information its ALPR systems do not collect.CEO Garrett Langley went further this month, saying the company “will not add facial recognition to our devices.”Vidizmo is proposing something technically different. Facial recognition would occur in its system after it obtained data from Flock, rather than inside Flock’s cameras or through Flock’s own ALPR recognition process.Vidizmo already sells the underlying facial recognition capability independently of Flock.Its technical documentation describes an Object Library in which operators can enroll a person’s face using reference photographs and assign the subject a watchlist priority.Cameras running Vidizmo’s AI Live Insight software can then compare detected faces against those enrolled subjects.The company’s face recognition setup documentation says the system can display a recognized person’s name on live video, log the recognition as an event, and save a clip when configured to do so.Operators can also set a numerical match threshold that controls how strong the similarity score must be before the system treats a detected face as a recognition.The company separately offers facial-attribute analysis. Its documentation says its software can attempt to classify detected faces by age, gender, and race and use those predicted attributes as search filters.The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has cautioned that biometric performance can vary by algorithm, image quality, and demographic group. NIST’s testing does not evaluate Vidizmo’s facial-attribute model.A joint WIRED and 404 Media investigation, based on data and software extracted from a physically removed Flock camera, found that the device’s software explicitly detects people, vehicles, bicycles, and license plates.The camera’s logs covered about 21 days and recorded roughly 50,200 vehicles while generating about 1.6 million images. When the software detected a person, it recorded the person’s location within the image and a confidence score.No evidence was found that face recognition was enabled or actively used in the camera software beyond capabilities included by default in the Android operating system.The proposed Vidizmo connection fits into Flock’s broader evolution from a license plate reader vendor into a platform that connects multiple surveillance and public safety data sources.Flock describes FlockOS as a real-time crime center platform that brings license plate readers, video, drones, gunshot detection, computer-aided dispatch, and records management systems into a common interface.The company says FlockOS connects more than 4,800 agencies and explicitly advertises the ability to “connect any vendor.”Vidizmo’s integration page similarly describes FlockOS as a source from which detections and camera video could be brought into an evidence record and analyzed through its Digital Evidence Management System or AI Intelligence Hub.The proposal comes as automatic license plate readers and facial recognition draw new scrutiny on Capitol Hill.Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube introduced the Facilitating Liberty and Accountability for Flock Observations Act on September 24. The bill would generally prohibit federal agencies from purchasing, operating, accessing, or sharing data with networked ALPR systems without a judicial warrant, subject to specified exceptions.It would also condition some Justice Department grants for state, local, and tribal law enforcement on adopting substantially similar protections.The next day, a group of Democratic senators reintroduced the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act.The bill would prohibit federal entities from using facial recognition and certain other biometric technologies unless Congress later authorizes their use and would condition some federal funding to state and local governments on adopting comparable restrictions.VIDIZMO’s pitch sits at the intersection of those two debates.ALPR systems and facial recognition have generally been treated as separate surveillance technologies, but increasingly interconnected platforms make the distinction less about what the original camera can do and more about what happens to its data afterward.
7 YEARS OF DEATH AND HELL.
REVELATION 6:7-8 (8 BILLION- 2 BILLION = 6 BILLION)
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse:(CHLORES GREEN) and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth,(2 BILLION) to kill with sword,(WEAPONS) and with hunger,(FAMINE) and with death,(INCURABLE DISEASES) and with the beasts of the earth.(ANIMAL TO HUMAN DISEASE).
REVELATION 9:15,18 (6 BILLION - 2 BILLION = 4 BILLION)
15 And the four(DEMONIC WAR) angels were loosed,
18 By these three was the third part of men killed,(2 BILLION) by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMBS)
HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION.(THESE VERSES ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
LUKE 17:34-37 (8 TOTAL BILLION - 4 BILLION DEAD IN TRIB = 4 BILLION TO JESUS KINGDOM) (HALF DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION PERIOD JUST LIKE THE BIBLE SAYS)(GOD DOES NOT LIE)(AND NOTICE MOST DIE IN WAR AND DISEASES-NOT COMETS-ASTEROIDS-QUAKES OR TSUNAMIS)
34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other shall be left.(half earths population 4 billion die in the 7 yr trib)
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.(Christians have new bodies,this is the people against Jerusalem during the 7 yr treaty)(Christians bodies are not being eaten by the birds).THESE ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES-NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES.BECAUSE NOT HALF OF PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE CHRISTIANS.AND THE CONTEXT IN LUKE 17 IS THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION OR 7 YR TREATY PERIOD.WHICH IS JUDGEMENT ON THE EARTH.NOT 50% RAPTURED TO HEAVEN.
MATTHEW 24:37-42 (THESE ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES-SURE NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
42 Watch therefore:(FOR THE LAST DAYS SIGNS HAPPENING) for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
WORLD TERRORISM
GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)(HAMAS IN HEBREW IS VIOLENCE)
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM)(HAMAS) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.(CAN YOU SAY TORNADOES,HURRICANES,VOLCANOES,EARTH QUAKES,LANDSLIDES,FLASH FLOODING,EXPLOSIONS,SNOW STORMS,THEN FINALLY NUKESAND ANY OTHER JUDGEMENTS THE EARTH CAN VOMIT THE SINNERS OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH WITH.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places,(DIFFERNT PLACES AT THE SAME TIME) and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
2 Peter 3:6-7 Amplified Bible (AMP) (HOT SUN, NUKES ETC)
6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.
7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun,(HEATING UP-SOLAR ECLIPSES) and in the moon,(MAN ON THE MOON-LUNAR ECLIPSES) and in the stars;(ASTEROIDS-PROPHECY SIGNS) and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear,(TORNADOES,HURRICANES,STORMS) and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth:(DESTRUCTION) for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.(FROM QUAKES,NUKES ETC)
GENESIS 16:11-12
11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her,(HAGAR) Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael;(FATHER OF THE ARAB/MUSLIMS) because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
12 And he (ISHMAEL-FATHER OF THE ARAB-MUSLIMS) will be a wild (DONKEY-JACKASS) man;(ISLAM IS A FAKE AND DANGEROUS SEX FOR MURDER CULT) his hand will be against every man,(ISLAM HATES EVERYONE) and every man's hand against him;(PROTECTING THEMSELVES FROM BEING BEHEADED) and he (ISHMAEL ARAB/MUSLIM) shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.(LITERAL-THE ARABS LIVE WITH THEIR BRETHERN JEWS)
ISAIAH 14:12-14
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,(SATAN) son of the morning!(HEBREW-CRECENT MOON-ISLAM) how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I (SATAN HAS EYE TROUBLES) will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.(AND 1/3RD OF THE ANGELS OF HEAVEN FELL WITH SATAN AND BECAME DEMONS)
JOHN 16:2
2 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.(ISLAM MURDERS IN THE NAME OF MOON GOD ALLAH OF ISLAM)
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE.
Joel 3:2-King James Version (YOU DIVIDE JERUSALEM IN HALF - YOUR POKING GOD IN THE EYE - GOD SAYS AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH- YOU WANNA DIVIDE JERUSALEM IN HALF - HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION 4 BILLION DIE ON EARTH.
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE.
LUKE 19:40
40 And He answered and said unto them, “I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.”
US leaves Iraq after 23 years, stoking fear of vacuum emboldening ISIS, militias-Withdrawal fulfills 2024 agreement reached under Biden; Tehran hails departure as victory, Iraqi security officials warn ISIS could regroup without a Western military presence-By Ahmed Rasheed and Muayad Hameed Today, 10:58 am-SEP 30,26
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) — US forces withdrew from their remaining bases in Iraq on Wednesday, raising fears they will leave behind a security vacuum, further embolden Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias and give the resurgent Islamic State organization an opening to regroup.The departure, celebrated as a victory by Tehran and its allies, was agreed to in 2024 under US President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration even as it wages war against Iran.It comes 23 years after US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, then triggered upheaval and chaos, culminating with the rise of Islamic State.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps urged Americans to vote out Trump’s allies in Congress as US forces exit from neighboring Iraq, where Tehran has steadily entrenched itself through proxies since the Iraqi dictator’s fall.While the departure of US forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, some worry that security forces trained and funded by the United States still can’t protect the country, where 4,500 American forces died in more than 20 years of war.“The lesson from the past two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous,” said Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who advises the security forces.After US forces invaded in 2003, it went on to occupy the country, install a Shiite-led government and fight a years-long insurgency — first by Saddam loyalists, then al-Qaeda, as a sectarian civil war devastated Iraq — before withdrawing at the end of 2011. They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group Islamic State, which terrorized millions, in a major war from 2014 to 2017.Around twice as many Americans died in “Operation Iraqi Freedom” as in the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with an abrupt US withdrawal in 2021.In this year’s conflict with Iran, 7 of the 18 US service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the last an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July.Iran, allies are the winners-Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces to leave the entire Middle East, casts the US pullout from Iraq as a triumph for its “axis of resistance” of allied armed groups across the region.“What is further concerning is not necessarily direct Iranian intervention, but the possibility that Iran’s proxies will feel increasingly empowered in the absence of a Western military presence. These groups may attempt to expand their role in shaping state policies and consolidating their presence within key institutions,” said Baghdad-based political analyst Ahmed Younis.Some Iraqi security officials, both in the federal government and the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, say the US pullout also risks giving new life to Islamic State fighters, who, despite the defeat of their self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago, retain a sleeper cell network.At their height, the militants occupied a third of Iraq and slaughtered thousands of people, including hundreds they videotaped themselves gunning down inside a former US military base.US troops had been providing Iraqi security forces with critical intelligence on Islamic State movements, aerial surveillance and reconnaissance.“The most important question now is whether Iraq’s security institutions have prepared a viable Plan B for the post-coalition phase,” said retired Iraqi Army General Mohammed al-Jubouri, who led a brigade in the war against Islamic State.“One of the worst-case scenarios would be Islamic State obtaining armed drones or improvised explosive drones at a time when Iraq still lacks sufficient air defense capabilities to counter such threats effectively.”
'There is a lack of willingness to accept people from Gaza'Gazans desperate to leave still struggling to do so, even as Israel claims door is open
Trouble finding willing hosts, visa restrictions, onerous security checks and other bureaucratic hurdles mean exiting Gaza remains a lengthy, difficult task despite Jerusalem saying it wants the Strip’s residents to go By Nurit Yohanan 29 September 2026, 4:17 am
Appearing on a screen from his home in Spain, 30-year-old Ezzadeen Shehab looked like any ordinary young European studying for a master’s degree in writing.Holding a pen, with a piece of artwork propped next to a cabinet behind him, Shehab appeared ensconced in domestic tranquility. The comfortable scene, though, belied the struggles and suffering of a young man who had spent the last three years on an odyssey to leave the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel and the war that erupted in its wake.Shehab was born and raised in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. After finishing school, he left for Egypt to pursue higher education, eventually moving to Isfahan, Iran, to study medicine.Throughout his nine years of studies in Iran, he did not return to Gaza once. His first trip home, to celebrate completing his studies, came on October 4, 2023. He planned to stay for a few days and then leave for a medical internship in Germany.Nearly three years later, at the end of July 2026, Shehab finally left Gaza, going to Spain instead of Germany after receiving a scholarship for a master’s degree in writing.He won the scholarship after his writings on the war, initially published on social media, were turned into a book, “Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes From the Genocide in Gaza,” published this year by Scribe UK.Israel’s government says it wants Gazans to leave the territory, and many Palestinians are eager to escape the rubble-strewn and poverty-stricken enclave.But nearly a year after the ceasefire that began in October 2025, Gazans still face immense difficulties when trying to leave the Strip.The main obstacle is finding a country willing to accept them. But even for those who do have somewhere to go, bureaucratic hurdles stemming from the situation inside Gaza can make the process of leaving lengthy and uncertain.A slight rise in departures-Exclusive data obtained by The Times of Israel from authorities overseeing the crossings illustrates the scale of the bottleneck.Since the ceasefire began, some 10,500 people have left Gaza — more than 6,000 through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt and some 4,500 through the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel.The figure is only slightly higher than during a comparable period of the war: Between June 2024 and July 2025, some 8,000 Gaza residents left the Strip, indicating that the complicated mechanism governing departures has remained largely unchanged since the ceasefire.That is despite the Defense Ministry announcing the establishment of a directorate for the “voluntary departure” of Gaza residents in early 2025, saying it was meant to help hundreds of thousands of Palestinians get to third countries.The Israeli move came after US President Donald Trump unveiled an initiative that envisioned relocating all of Gaza’s 2 million residents outside the Strip as part of a broader proposal for ending the war.But the 20-point plan Trump presented in September 2025 took a markedly different approach.“No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza,” the plan stated — an apparent reversal from the president’s initial proposal to relocate Gaza’s entire opulation.Nonetheless, Defense Minister Israel Katz said earlier this month that the initial plan was still under discussion between Israel and the US, though the White House denies this. Katz claimed surveys showed that around 80 percent of Gazans sought to leave but had nowhere to go.“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Katz said at a conference on September 2. “Hamas isn’t allowing them [to leave], and there are no countries in the world taking them in. President Trump put the issue on the agenda. Now every country needs to take people in — and that’s the big issue.”Should other countries be open to taking in Gazans, Katz said the Israeli government “is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”Members of the international community have repeatedly accused Israel of attempting to facilitate the mass transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population, a charge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies.Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.However, right-wing politicians, including figures in his government, have repeatedly called for efforts to encourage Gazan emigration.In recent weeks, as Israel heads toward elections, several political parties — including the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and a party headed by controversial former IDF general Ofer Winter have stressed that they would promote “voluntary migration” from Gaza as part of the next government.Thanks to disastrous living conditions, many Gazans seem willing to take Israel up on the offer, though some experts note that there is nothing voluntary about migration under such circumstances, accusing Israel of pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing. For now, those trying to leave contend that their efforts are being stymied rather than facilitated.No contact between Gazans and Israel-When the war broke out on October 7, Israel completely sealed off its border with the Strip, though the Rafah Crossing into Egypt remained open for those wishing to leave.The Egyptian company Hala facilitated the departure of anyone able to pay — around $5,000 per person — regardless of whether they had ties to a third country or required medical treatment, subject only to security approval by both Israel and Egypt.Shehab’s plans to leave for Germany were stymied by the suddenly steep price of exiting, as well as the difficulty of reaching Rafah, at the Strip’s far southern edge, from his family home in Jabalia, on the other end of the suddenly war-sundered enclave.The IDF’s capture of the Gaza-Egypt border in May 2024 led to Rafah being closed for several months, making it impossible to leave the Strip.Beginning in July 2024, Israel started allowing a limited number of medical evacuations from Gaza to third countries through the Kerem Shalom Crossing into southern Israel. From there, evacuees would either travel to Ramon Airport near Eilat for a flight to their destination or travel overland to Jordan and fly from there.The evacuations began following a petition filed by several human rights organizations – Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual.In early February 2025, Israel began allowing Gazans with certain kinds of visas for third countries to leave through Kerem Shalom using the same mechanism, even if there was no medical necessity.The Rafah crossing has been reopened since February of this year, though Egypt no longer accepts Gazans simply on the basis of payment. Instead, only those with permission to seek specialized medical care may enter. Cairo also allows some Gazans to transit via Egypt to a third country, so long as they have a visa and a connection to the foreign locale, such as family or a job there.France, for example, accepted a group of 115 Gazans in July 2025 through its PAUSE program for “scientists and artists in exile.” The program is intended to allow researchers, academics and artists who cannot continue their work in their home countries because of war, persecution or security threats to relocate to France and continue their work there.A scholarship to study in a third country is also a ticket out via Egypt, so Shehab began trying to find a school willing to sponsor him.He began applying widely, contacting institutions and officials in more than 20 countriesin hopes of finding a way to leave.“In the end, I wrote a book [about life during the war] and got a scholarship for a master’s degree in literature in Spain in January 2025,” he said.Thanks to the book, he was able to get in touch with a professor at a Spanish university, who helped him secure the scholarship.Gazans wishing to leave must coordinate their exit with Israeli authorities and not the the standard liaison for such approvals, the Palestinian Authority, according to both Shehab and Shai Grunberg, a spokesperson for the Gisha rights group, which assists Gazans seeking to leave the Strip.Grunberg added that the PA may sometimes assist with issuing documents, such as Palestinian passports, or forwarding travel papers to relevant authorities.Instead of the PA, the host country’s local mission serves as the intermediary between the two sides: On one end, it communicates with the Gaza resident to complete the visa process; on the other, it works with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which carries out a security screening of the individual whom the country is seeking to evacuate.COGAT, a Defense Ministry body which deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, confirmed to The Times of Israel that a Gazan seeking to leave the Strip communicates only with the relevant foreign embassy, and not with Israeli authorities.In Shehab’s case, the university that agreed to sponsor him contacted Spain’s Foreign Ministry to begin the process of coordinating his departure from Gaza with Israel.Only countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel and maintain a mission in the country capable of working with COGAT can use the mechanism to evacuate Gaza residents they have agreed to accept.Though ties between Israel and Spain have frayed significantly over the Gaza war in recent years, Madrid continues to maintain an embassy in Tel Aviv that could coordinate the departure.According to Grunberg, some countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel have refused to operate through the mechanism, meaning Gazans cannot travel there from the Strip. She declined to name the countries.She added that the level of effort and involvement varies considerably from country to country.“There are countries that have been significantly involved in evacuating residents from Gaza, and there are countries that, unless we’re talking about their actual citizens [who need to be evacuated, rather than family reunification and other cases], tend not to help,” she said.Connections needed-For Shehab, getting the scholarship was just the first step of a process that would force him to stick around Gaza for an extra year and a half.Most of the scholarship and visa application process could be completed online. But to finalize it, Shehab was required to send physical documents to the Spanish Consulate General in Jerusalem, which handles matters concerning residents of Gaza and the West Bank.For a Gaza resident, that seemingly mundane requirement presented an enormous obstacle. Since the war began, postal services connecting Gaza with the outside world have ceased operating, leaving residents unable to mail documents abroad.“The university asked me for documents that I had to send to them at the [Spanish mission] in Jerusalem. How was I supposed to send something to Jerusalem?” Shehab recalled.In the end, he relied on a chain of friends and acquaintances spanning international borders who managed to get his paperwork from Gaza to Jerusalem, normally a journey of some 70 kilometers (43 miles).“There are medical delegations, for example, that come into Gaza, so I sent documents with them and they took them to Jordan. Then I asked someone I know in Jordan to send them to Jerusalem. I knew a woman in Jerusalem who picked them up and got in touch [with the consulate],” he said.Grunberg pointed to another bureaucratic hurdle often faced by Gazans: Many countries require applicants to provide biometric data before issuing a visa, but no machines with requisite scanning capabilities exist inside Gaza. So Palestinians must appeal for an exemption.“There are countries that are willing to exempt Gaza residents from the normal procedure,” she said. “In those cases, it is sometimes possible to approve the visa application in principle in advance, evacuate the person to Jordan, and only there complete the submission of biometric data at the embassy of the receiving country.“Without such an exemption, obtaining a visa to many countries [that require biometric data] is currently impossible for residents of the Gaza Strip,” Grunberg added.Shehab finally left Gaza on July 22, alongside four other students who had also received scholarships to study in Spain and a family — a mother and her four young children — who flew to Spain under a family reunification arrangement.It remains unclear why it took 18 months for Shehab to complete the process and leave, but he thinks the delay may have been due to security screenings he was required to undergo. Because the doctor flew through Jordan, he had to be authorized by Amman as well as Israel before he could finally fly to Spain.He also thinks well-placed contacts could have expedited the process.“It’s all about connections,” he said. “I know people, but I don’t have powerful connections. Someone who can reach a senior official in the foreign ministry of some country can get out more easily.”From the safety of Spain, Shehab looks back at those months of waiting as a time that was fraught with life-threatening risk in the enclave, where military strikes have persisted even after the ceasefire.“Time costs blood in Gaza,” he said.Three of Shehab’s brothers remain in Gaza, and he is now trying to find a way to get them out as well, by obtaining student visas to study abroad.The delay in Shehab’s case is far from unique. According to the NGO Gisha, the organization has assisted with hundreds of legal cases over the past couple of years involving Gaza residents seeking to leave the Strip — whether for medical treatment, studies or family reunification. Gisha says their departures were delayed for months even after they had obtained the necessary approvals from the countries willing to receive them.Grunberg told The Times of Israel that in many cases, one of the obstacles was an unexplained Israeli “security preclusion” preventing an individual from leaving. Sometimes those restrictions would be lifted if challenged on legal grounds, including in petitions to the High Court of Justice.“This demonstrates the arbitrary way in which these security preclusions are imposed,” she argued.A security official told The Times of Israel in response that “98% of all requests for evacuation to third countries — both medical evacuations and those for other reasons — are approved, and requests for Gazans to leave are handled immediately, with a response provided within a matter of days.”The official stressed that “there is no limit on the number of people who can leave as part of these evacuations. We encourage countries to carry out more evacuations.”In the waiting room-Many Gazans who leave the Strip do so for health reasons, with the World Health Organization planning medical evacuations to third countries for patients and those wounded during the war.Even before the fighting, Gaza’s healthcare system offered a far more limited range of medical services than those available in Western countries, particularly when it came to cancer treatment and other forms of specialized care.As a result, many Gazans requiring treatment unavailable in the Strip regularly traveled to hospitals in Israel or the West Bank. Treatment was generally funded by the Palestinian Authority — or, in rarer cases, by humanitarian organizations — while their passage was coordinated between Israel and the PA through the latter’s Civil Affairs Committee.Gazans were able to leave for treatment after securing funding for their care and receiving Israeli security clearance.Following the outbreak of the war, Israel stopped allowing Gazans to travel to Israel or the West Bank for treatment. This included Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem that have dedicated funding for treating Gazans and a long history of offering them care.The process of securing a medical evacuation from Gaza involves several stages, according to officials and others familiar with the system who spoke with The Times of Israel. The most critical hurdle comes at the end: finding a country willing to accept the patient or wounded person, along with the family members accompanying them.Before reaching that point, every patient or wounded person seeking evacuation, usually for serious and life-threatening conditions, must receive approval for medical treatment abroad from a committee of specialist physicians operating under Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas. Once approved, the patient’s name is transferred to the World Health Organization, which is responsible for matching patients with countries willing to host them for treatment.According to WHO figures, as of September 24, 2026, over 13,600 patients had been medically evacuated from Gaza to third countries, with the vast majority going to Egypt.Receiving approval for a medical evacuation, however, is no guarantee that a patient will actually be able to leave.In March, the WHO said that “over 18,500 patients in Gaza remain in urgent need of medical care that is not available locally.”Since April, the number of evacuations via WHO missions has stepped up considerably, from around 100 per month to between 350 and 450.However, many continue to wait, including Saad Abu Aita, 49, who was wounded at the beginning of the war and has been waiting ever since for a medical evacuation abroad that has yet to materialize.“On October 14, 2023, a week after the war started, my home was bombed and I was wounded,” Abu Aita told The Times of Israel. “My father and two of my children were killed in the bombing. My mother, my wife, two of my other children and I survived.”“I was wounded in my arm. I have a disability in that arm today, and I still have shrapnel in my chest,” he said.Abu Aita said he was treated at several hospitals in Gaza and underwent multiple operations. After one of the procedures, he met an American doctor who told him that the surgery had not been successful and that he needed another operation.“I told him it would be difficult for me to undergo another operation [in Gaza], so he wrote me a referral for treatment abroad,” Abu Aita recalled.According to Abu Aita, the doctor helped him prepare the medical documentation needed to submit his case to the committee and obtain approval for evacuation — certifying that his medical need was serious enough to warrant treatment outside Gaza, and that his health was also stable enough to make the journey.He received the document in March 2025. But no country has agreed to receive him.How countries select the care-seeking Gazans they are willing to receive is not transparent, and varies country to country. Announcements about individual evacuation missions to select countries usually include information about what types of patients the receiving country wishes to prioritize at that time.“There are a lot of problems with the countries that receive people. There is a lack of willingness to accept people from Gaza,” said Abu Aita. “I think the Israeli side is willing to open the crossings and let people out, but there is a problem with the countries that receive them.”Abu Aita said restrictions imposed by receiving countries on the number of relatives permitted to accompany a patient can also leave families facing an agonizing choice.“There are [countries] that say only two people can accompany a wounded person,” he said. “Someone leaves with an escort and leaves their family in Gaza – and then families are split up.”A source familiar with the evacuation process confirmed to The Times of Israel that receiving countries themselves determine which categories of patients or wounded people they are willing to accept. Their participation also entails agreeing to cover the costs of treatment and the patients’ stay in the country, as well as those of their accompanying relatives.In July 2024, for example, the United Arab Emirates received 85 sick and severely wounded patients from Gaza. According to the WHO, 53 of the patients had cancer, while 20 had trauma injuries and the remainder suffered from a range of other conditions.According to UN data, around half of all patients evacuated in WHO missions have been listed as suffering “trauma” or cancer.Abu Aita said living with his injuries in Gaza has been a struggle as he waits for someplace to take him in.“The situation is extremely difficult. I’m an injured person living in a tent in central Gaza. I can’t work, I can’t provide anything [for my family],” he said. “In the morning, you have to go get water [from a water tank]. My children – my 14-year-old son and my 18-year-old daughter – go with me because, because of my injury, I can’t go and get the water myself.”‘Let us leave’For Gazans, the prospect of leaving the Strip for safety, a better life, health reasons or otherwise can be weighted with political significance.Despite catastrophic living conditions in the enclave, Palestinians, as well as many Arab leaders, have an interest in making sure Gazans maintain their hold on the territory, thwarting plans espoused by some far-right Israeli politicians to thin out Gaza’s population and repopulate the Strip with settlers, neutralizing Palestinian national aspirations.“The Palestinian Authority and Arab countries don’t want Palestinians from Gaza to leave, because then it becomes an issue of migration,” Shehab said.The PA did not respond to a request for comment.Countries that might otherwise be willing to take in refugees are likewise reluctant to cooperate with a process that could bolster Israeli settler revanchists and undermine movement toward Palestinian statehood.Of those Gazans who have left by virtue of ties to a third country, some receive temporary visas for periods of months or years, while others may be able to begin a process toward citizenship should they so choose. Much depends on the country and on the circumstances under which they arrived.As for medical evacuees, the receiving country commits to the World Health Organization to host the patient for the entire duration of their treatment. After that, that country’s immigration laws determine whether the evacuees, if they wish, can transition to a path toward citizenship or some other form of permanent residency. The only countries that have sent patients back to Gaza after their treatments were completed are Egypt and Jordan.Rather than permanently moving Palestinians elsewhere, international players, particularly through the Board of Peace, are pursuing a strategy that will improve Gazans’ lives by rehabilitating the Strip.Early in the war, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi warned that allowing mass Gazan migration would “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region,” an idea he has continued to espouse in the three years since the attack.In the meantime, though, Gazans say they are suffering and desperate for a reprieve, even if an exodus is not politically convenient.“I’m telling you what people on the street [in Gaza] are saying, not as someone who hates the land,” said Shehab. “We love the land. We are Palestinians and we grew up there. But enough – let us leave.”
Herzog: Riot a 'moral stain,' contrary to values of Judaism-Over 100 settlers attack West Bank village, block Palestinian family’s return home IDF accused of failing to coordinate with police, after rioters burn homes and cars, attack security forces in Jalud; Haredi men assault Arabs outside Jerusalem’s Old City By Emanuel Fabian, Nurit Yohanan, Lazar Berman and ToI Staff 29 September 2026, 10:53 am-SEP 30,26
More than 100 Israeli settlers rioted in the West Bank village of Jalud overnight Monday-Tuesday, preventing Israeli forces from enabling a displaced Palestinian family from returning to their home.The Tubasi family was forced to leave their home in Jalud, near Nablus, in July, following repeated harassment and violence by settlers. In September, the High Court of Justice ordered that their safe return be ensured, in a scathing decision that castigated authorities for failing to crack down on the attacks.Israeli forces tried to coordinate the return of the family to their home overnight, but “more than 100 Israeli rioters were present in the village, blocking roads, setting tires on fire, and throwing stones at security forces,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.The army said the settlers also set fire to Palestinian homes, cars, and other property in the village, including, according to reports, the Tubasi family home.Three Border Police officers were lightly injured by the settlers, and damage was caused to a vehicle belonging to the Israeli security forces, according to the military.The IDF said that “due to the violence, the mission to return the family to their home was not completed.”More than 100 Israeli settlers rioted in the West Bank village of Jalud overnight, preventing Israeli forces from enabling a displaced Palestinian family from returning to their home, the military says. The Tubasi family was forced to leave their home in Jalud in July, following… pic.twitter.com/yKpxfnDJso Advertisement — Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 29, 2026-The forces used riot dispersal means against the settlers, and two suspects were detained, who the military says were handed over to the police for questioning.Police officers planned to enter the village later on Tuesday with an IDF escort to collect findings, evidence, and take testimony for an investigation into the incident.“The security establishment strongly condemns any harm to security personnel while carrying out their duties, as well as acts of vandalism and damage to property,” the statement said.“Such incidents divert attention [from operational needs], undermine stability, and hinder the security forces’ defensive and counterterrorism activities,” the army added.The rioters had arrived in Jalud after an alert was posted in several WhatsApp groups for extremist settlers, calling on them to rush to the village to prevent security forces from escorting the evicted Palestinians back to their homes.Herzog: Riot a ‘moral stain,’ contrary to Judaism-President Isaac Herzog called on X for law enforcement authorities to act “decisively” against the perpetrators of the attack.The violence is “of utmost severity,” Herzog said, and a “moral stain [and] an attack on the rule of law and our most basic values as a nation.”The rioters, he said, have “caused harm to the holiday of Sukkot, to the settling of the land and to the nation as a whole,” adding: “The violence is deeply contradictory to the values of Judaism.”Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, responding to the incident, wrote: “The riot that took place last night in Jalud village, which included arson and injury to Border Police, is serious and abhorrent.”“Anyone who commits these criminal offenses and assaults Border Police fighters and IDF soldiers, and even harms them, are criminals who must be dealt with to the full severity of the law,” he said. “They harm our values. They harm Jewish settlement. They harm Israel.”Rioters set fire to expelled homeowner’s house-The expelled homeowner, Mohammed Tubasi, told The Times of Israel on Tuesday that around midnight, the Civil Administration called the family and told them they would be able to return to their home.In July, he and others living in three homes on the outskirts of Jalud were violently expelled by extremist settlers who set up an illegal outpost close to the village and besieged the petitioners’ homes. On September 6, the High Court ordered Israeli forces to ensure their return. They were supposed to have done so by September 20.When they tried to reach the house together with IDF troops, they were attacked by settlers, he said.According to Tubasi, the Palestinians escaped without injury because IDF troops rescued them during the incident and moved them into a military vehicle.He said the Palestinian vehicle they had arrived in was set on fire by settlers, and that their house was also burned down — completely, according to him.BREAKING: Israeli settler terrorists set both Tubasi family homes on fire in the village of Jalud in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/T8QPuygCwh — Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) September 29, 2026-Footage published by Palestinian media showed an attempt to set the house on fire, though it was unclear how extensive the blaze was. Footage also showed extensive damage inside the house, including smashed stairs, after settlers had stayed there for several weeks.Three arrested so far, including two minors-Two settlers from the northern and central West Bank, aged 15 and 17, were detained by IDF troops in Jalud and handed over to the police for questioning overnight.A third Israeli, a resident of Jerusalem, was detained Tuesday morning on suspicion of participating in the violence.Police said that during a search for suspects who participated in the rioting and arson in the village, officers inspected a suspicious vehicle in the area, which was found to contain balaclavas and a club.The vehicle also contained “findings” apparently linked to a suspect, an 18-year-old resident of Jerusalem, who was arrested, police said.The suspect’s vehicle was seized, along with another car belonging to an Israeli found in the area, which police said was suspected to have been used by the assailants.Shin Bet, police sources say IDF didn’t coordinate with them-Police and Shin Bet sources cited by Hebrew media accused the IDF of failing to notify them of its plan to bring the family home overnight.Because of the lack of coordination, just 12 Border Police officers were on call to provide backup for soldiers escorting the family, reported the Haaretz daily.“The IDF failed massively in one of the most important tests and acted of its own accord with a small force,” the newspaper quoted a senior law enforcement official as saying.Sources cited by Channel 12 said the small force that was securing the operation sheltered with the Palestinian family on the second floor of the home they were attempting to return to.Troops fired rubber bullets at the rioting settlers to keep them at bay until reinforcements began to arrive from the police and Shin Bet, the report said.Settlers firebomb family home in al-Mughayyir-Separately, in the village of al-Mughayyir in the central West Bank overnight, a Molotov cocktail was reportedly hurled through the window of a family’s home while they were sleeping inside. There were no immediate reports of injuries.Footage showed members of the family trying to put out the fire. Other clips showed parked cars that were also torched in the attack.Police said they were investigating the attack, which they said included “damage to cars and graffiti being sprayed.” Officers entered the village on Tuesday morning with an IDF escort to collect evidence and testimonies.BREAKING: Dozens of Israeli settler terrorists attacked the village of Al-Mughayyir in the West Bank, setting homes and vehicles on fire. They threw a Molotov cocktail into a house in an attempt to burn a family alive. pic.twitter.com/0UP23ajmqg — Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) September 29, 2026-Another reported attack targeted the northern West Bank village of Qaryut. During the raid, settlers assaulted an elderly woman, Palestinian media reported. Footage appeared to show the woman being placed into an ambulance on a stretcher due to a head injury.Earlier Monday, Palestinian news sites aired several clips of what they said were Israeli settlers stealing olives from groves belonging to Palestinians, days before the start of the harvest.Settler violence in the West Bank has risen sharply since the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.The attacks occur daily but perpetrators are rarely caught and prosecuted. Critics accuse the government of condoning and even encouraging the violence, which has led to the displacement of dozens of Palestinian families.Haredi men assault Arabs outside Jerusalem’s Old City-In Jerusalem overnight, dozens of Jews in Haredi garb attempted to attack two Arabs passing through the Old City’s Damascus Gate, according to footage published by Palestinian media.In recent days, there has been a large presence of Jews in Jerusalem’s Old City, particularly around Damascus Gate, due to the Sukkot holiday.The targeted Arab men could be seen fleeing as dozens of people chased them, after which police forces arrived at the scene.The Israel Police told The Times of Israel: “11 people were arrested during disturbances at the site.”The Old City is part of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967, and formally annexed later, though much of the world does not recognize Israeli sovereignty there. Most of its Arab residents have permanent residency status, though they are eligible to apply for citizenship.
Leftist LA mayoral candidate defends genocide charge, Hasan Piker meeting in Jewish forum-Asked to define ‘genocide,’ DSA’s Nithya Raman says she’s ‘not an expert on those issues’ while citing ‘other experts’ who have used term to describe Israeli actions in Gaza against Hamas-By ryan torok Today, 3:58 am-SEP 30,26
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Mayoral candidates grappled with the use of the word “genocide” to describe the Gaza war and how Israel’s foreign policy intersects with domestic issues as they vied Tuesday night for votes at at an event organized by the Jewish community.City Council member Nithya Raman told the packed audience at the Skirball Cultural Center that she understood that the word “genocide” was painful to many Jewish people.“I understand its historical context and the weight of that historical context for the world, not just for the room but for the entire world,” said Raman, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that has campaigned for candidates who are strongly critical of Israel.“I used it because other experts have used it to describe what’s happening and because I felt compelled to speak out about issues that we saw, the images that are coming, the targeting of hospitals, the deaths of children.” Israel denies deliberately targeting hospitals, and rejects the charge of genocide.With mail-in ballots headed to voters this week and the November 3 runoff election approaching, the forum gave Jewish voters a chance to hear directly from Raman and her Democratic incumbent opponent Karen Bass. California has a “jungle primary” system, in which the top two candidates in the primary – whatever their party – advance to the runoff, which means Democrats frequently face off in the general election.Alongside issues like Jewish safety, antisemitism and Israel, the candidates also spoke of their views homelessness, disaster preparedness and the city’s strained social safety net.Raman is vying to unseat Bass, a Democrat who has led America’s second-largest city since 2022. A recent poll showed Raman leading Bass by 11 points, though roughly a third of voters remain undecided.The forum — organized by the Jewish Federation Los Angeles — featured back-to-back 45-minute conversations between each candidate and the local journalist Alex Cohen. About 1,000 people attended the event, which was also livestreamed.The sharpest exchanges centered on Israel and antisemitism. Raman as she has in the past called the war in Gaza a genocide. Bass said she rejected that characterization.When asked to define genocide, Raman said she was “not an expert on those issues,” but added that she had relied on genocide scholars, including Israeli scholars, who have used the term.Raman, interviewed first, was asked about her characterization of Israel’s actions and her appearance on left-wing streamer Hasan Piker’s show. Piker has been a vocal critic of Israel and has made derogatory statements about the country, such as calling it “Jewish ISIS.”Raman said political candidates need to reach voters wherever they are, noting that Piker’s audience includes many young Angelenos.Raman went on to discuss her response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, saying she was the first person at LA City Hall to condemn what happened. Raman said she wants Jewish and Israeli-American residents to feel safe in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is believed to have the largest Israeli-American population in the country.“This city deserves to feel safe for every single resident,” said Raman, who represents Council District 4, which includes neighborhoods such as Silver Lake and Los Feliz as well as portions of the San Fernando Valley, one of Los Angeles’ major Jewish population centers.Asked about Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a protest movement targeting Israel’s economy, Raman said, “I think boycott, divestment and sanctions, the BDS movement, is a legitimate form of peaceful protest. I support people’s ability to protest,” and she cited the First Amendment.Bass , when asked what she would do if an Israel sanctions policy came before the City Council, said, “the pencil would hit,” an apparent reference to a veto.Asked if she thought Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide, Bass said, “No, I don’t.” But she also emphasized the limits of the mayor’s role in international affairs. “When I think of foreign affairs, especially conflicts, my focus is on how they impact the city of LA,” she said, adding that her responsibility as mayor is to keep Angelenos safe.She also referenced her personal connections to Los Angeles’ Jewish community, noting that growing up she attended public schools alongside many Jewish peers, where she encountered her friends’ Holocaust survivor parents and grandparents with numbers tattooed on their arms.The candidates also addressed antisemitism and Jewish communal security.Bass said Los Angeles does not have enough police officers and described public safety as “the No. 1 issue” she must address as mayor. She said her administration has pursued LAPD recruitment while also expanding alternative responses for situations that do not require armed officers.Asked specifically about implementing California’s new Safe Worship Zone Act, which bars protests within 100 feet of religious institutions, Bass said she would convene the city’s working group on Jewish community safety and its interfaith council, then work with LAPD to determine how to implement it. Much of the organized Jewish community began advocating for the state law after a pro-Palestinian protest targeted Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard Temple, while children were on campus.Bass said her administration had already called for increased patrols and security around Jewish holidays and community events. Raman similarly condemned the rise in antisemitism, including in her own district, and said antisemitic hatred comes from “every side of the political spectrum.”Raman said, “As a progressive elected representative, as someone who’s more on the leftward side of the spectrum, I never want progressive politics to be conflated with antisemitism.”Throughout her 45-minute conversation, Raman repeatedly sought to shift the discussion toward local issues, including housing, homelessness and disaster response.Bass devoted much of her time to those same issues, including lessons from the January 2025 Palisades wildfire and the need for better disaster prevention. She called the fire one of the worst moments she had experienced and said the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County had not been adequately prepared for the extreme weather event. Bass was out of town when the fire started, and her initial response to it has drawn widespread criticism.She also acknowledged shortcomings in her administration’s handling of homelessness, saying she entered office knowing the system was dysfunctional but did not realize “how profoundly dysfunctional” it was. She said she now supports making the city more independent from the county when it comes to homeless services. (There are some 45,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, and many live on city streets.) Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, said the forum “gave attendees a deeper understanding of where the candidates stand on key priorities facing our city and community,” and “will help them make the most informed choice at the ballot box on November 3.”Los Angeles is home to the nation’s second-largest Jewish community, with about 600,000 Jews residing in the metro area. The local Jewish federation organized Tuesday’s forum in partnership with Skirball and the local branches of the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Family Service.
PM, Trump said due to speak later-Netanyahu, Sa’ar speak to Emirati counterparts, vow cooperation after flydubai attack-Foreign Ministry briefs Israeli diplomats that attemped hijacking was attack on Abraham Accords; US AG says Washington coordinating with Mideast counterparts; flydubai temporarily suspends route By Nava Freiberg, Jacob Magid, ToI Staff and Agencies 30 September 2026, 11:52 pm
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed on Wednesday evening amid the fallout caused by the alleged attempted deliberate crashing of a flydubai flight FZ1073 to Tel Aviv by the copilot on Wednesday morning.The copilot stabbed and seriously injured the pilot and sent the jet plunging nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before being subdued and tied up by passengers. Two off-duty pilots who were aboard the flight took over the cockpit to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.The incident has left many questions unanswered, including how the copilot, an Omani national, received clearance to fly the plane and how he managed to get hold of a weapon. As investigations into these issues got underway, flydubai confirmed that flights to Israel had been temporarily suspended.Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also spoke to his Emirati counterpart, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on Wednesday evening about the attempted hijacking.During the conversation, described as “warm” by the Foreign Ministry, the two expressed “a mutual determination to strengthen relations between the countries at all levels and to cooperate against extremist elements seeking to harm security and undermine stability in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.Sa’ar updated his Emirati counterpart on the return of the Israeli passengers, and Nayhan told him he was pleased that they all had returned home safely, the ministry added.Separately, the Foreign Ministry told its diplomats that the incident was an attack aimed at undermining ties between Israel and its Abraham Accords partner, the UAE.The ministry’s director general, Eden Bar Tal, briefed “all Israeli ambassadors and heads of representations around the world [during which] the message was emphasized that this was an attempted terrorist attack against Israelis, the United Arab Emirates and the Abraham Accords,” a ministry statement read, referring to the US-brokered normalization deal the two countries signed in 2020.Netanyahu was also expected to speak to US President Donald Trump later on Wednesday night, according to an Israeli official cited by Channel 12, and US Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that Washington was coordinating “very closely” with counterparts overseas, including Israel, on the incident.US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee expressed relief that the incident had ended with the passengers safe.“We thank God and breathe a deep sigh of relief that the passengers of flydubai FZ1073 are now safely in Israel,” the ambassador wrote on X.“Their heroism in the face of terror averted catastrophe,” he wrote. “Israel endures because its people refuse to surrender. And tonight we are even more proud to call this extraordinary nation our true partner.”There has been no public comment from the UAE on the incident, although its aviation regulator, the GCAA, said the flight “experienced a security incident that was brought under control.”Riyadh reportedly refuses Israeli request to send planes-While communication between Israel and its Abraham Accords partner appeared to be open, any contact between the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia over the incident was likely being conducted in secret, as although the Gulf kingdom has deep intelligence ties with Israel, there is no formal diplomatic relationship.According to the Ynet news outlet, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency was in contact with Saudi authorities throughout the incident.Passengers reported that they had been treated well by Saudi authorities upon landing at Tabuk airport and were offered food, drink, and medical care. One passenger told The Times of Israel that they were “really amazing and generous.”But in parallel to the warm treatment of stranded passengers, Saudi Arabia reportedly refused a request by Israel to allow its military planes to bring them back, resulting in another flydubai plane being dispatched to fly the remainder of the route.The Israeli air force was preparing to send Super Hercules planes to pick up Israeli passengers, one of the sources said, but was ultimately not allowed to.Riyadh reportedly considered the possibility of allowing unmarked, unidentifiable Israeli planes into the country to pick up the passengers, Ynet alleged, but this ended up being unnecessary, as all stranded passengers ultimately agreed to take the replacement flydubai flight.Some passengers said they were wary about getting aboard another flydubai plane, delaying their takeoff, but were reportedly reassured after Israeli authorities vetted the new crew.Saudi Arabia’s government media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Although the investigation into the incident was ongoing and a clear motive had yet to be established, Israel reportedly believed that the copilot was a “lone wolf” attacker.There is currently no indication that the attacker was directed by Iran or another organized entity, Channel 12 stated.A fellow pilot described the attacking pilot as a religious extremist, telling Israel’s Channel 16 that the Omani national joined flydubai just eight months ago.“He prayed excessively throughout the day and refused to shake hands with women,” the pilot told the network.El Al prepares to resume Dubai flights as flydubai hits pause-In the aftermath of the bloody incident, flydubai confirmed that it would be temporarily suspending its Tel Aviv route, which sees as many as eight flights per day.“This temporary suspension will allow the relevant authorities to continue their work and establish all the facts surrounding the incident,” a flydubai spokesperson said. “We are fully committed to supporting the ongoing investigation and maintaining the highest safety standards across our network.”“We remain in close coordination with government authorities, regulators and airport stakeholders and will review the suspension as more information becomes available,” the spokesperson added.To fill the gap, Israel’s flag carrier El Al said it was preparing to resume flights to Dubai.“El Al announces preparations to resume its operations on the Tel Aviv–Dubai route during the month of November,” the company wrote in a statement, noting that an eight-month suspension was due to the war the US and Israel launched against Iran in late February.Budget airline Arkia also announced that it was gearing up to resume its Dubai route.It said it would start operating two daily direct flights on the route as soon as operational and logistical conditions are met.The resumption of operations is subject to obtaining all necessary approvals from state and security authorities, Arkia said.Sharon Wrobel contributed to this report.
Israelis rescued from northern Ethiopia after days trapped by rebel advance-Foreign Ministry says some 20 citizens extracted from Tigray region, in coordination with embassy in Addis Ababa, after they requested help due to heavy clashes in area-By Nava Freiberg and AFP 30 September 2026, 7:01 pm
Some 20 Israeli citizens who were stuck in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region amid a rebel advance in the area have been rescued after three days of “intensive efforts,” the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.The ministry said it worked in coordination with the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa and other relevant authorities to extract the stranded Israelis from the area.“The group of Israelis who had become stranded in Lalibela in northern Ethiopia amid the security escalation in the area were evacuated yesterday and today by helicopter,” the ministry said in a statement.“Helicopters transported the group to a safe area, from which they will continue on to Addis Ababa,” the ministry continued.It said representatives would continue to accompany and assist the group until they arrive safely in Addis Ababa.The Israelis became trapped in the Tigray region as a result of heavy clashes that erupted last week between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government.The fighting has raised fears of a return to the full-blown civil war of 2020-2022, in which an estimated 600,000 people died.The Israelis were stuck in the city of Lalibela, where airports are reportedly closed and road travel is dangerous.The stranded Israelis wrote to the Foreign Ministry to request help, the Ynet news site reported earlier this week.The letter reportedly informed the ministry that “flights have been canceled indefinitely, and this is no longer just a delay of a few days” and that “the city’s fuel, food and cash stocks are extremely limited.”Dozens of civilians, including children, have been killed in the renewed fighting as Ethiopian government forces bombard towns in Tigray and push north towards the rebel-held capital, health workers and locals told AFP on Tuesday.Fighting is ongoing along several fronts, but government forces appear to be pushing north into Tigray, towards the regional capital of Mekelle.Pro-government forces said they took control of the strategic town of Alamata in southern Tigray on Monday, while locals interviewed by AFP at a hospital said there had been heavy shelling on the town of Maychew further north.A senior health worker in the Aydar Referral Hospital, Mekelle’s biggest medical facility, said they had received 44 critically injured civilians, including 33 children, wounded by shelling on Maychew and Alamata between Saturday and Monday.“Some are blinded, some have their legs and hands amputated from the bombing,” the health worker said, adding that at least four people had died en route to the hospital from the towns.The casualty numbers could not be independently verified by AFP, and reporting is highly constrained by the conflict and extensive telecoms disruptions.A resident of Maychew who accompanied his wounded sister to the hospital told AFP that the town was bombed six times and the shelling struck a residential area, killing two people he knew.The previous civil war between the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF, which dominates politics in Tigray, ended with the Pretoria Peace Agreement of 2022.But it was never fully implemented, and since late 2025, the government has launched multiple drone strikes in Tigray and massed troops at the border, while the TPLF kicked out a government-appointed administration.On September 23, the TPLF seized Tigrayan airports from federal police and launched attacks into neighbouring Amhara and Afar states, operating alongside local militias.A humanitarian source in Afar confirmed that rebel forces had taken control of the town of Erebti, which had then been shelled by government forces, leading to an unconfirmed number of civilian casualties.
Ex-Fatah strongman Dahlan may join with Hamas to challenge PA’s Abbas at ballot box-Talks underway with exiled power broker for creation of unified Palestinian list to run in November election, including members of Islamic Jihad, though unclear if slate will get go-ahead, or vote will even occur
By Nurit Yohanan and Jacob Magid 30 September 2026, 6:02 pm
A former Fatah strongman exiled from Gaza is in talks to form a political alliance with leading terror organizations Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to run in planned Palestinian elections, a spokesperson for Dahlan’s breakaway faction has confirmed to The Times of Israel.Dahlan, once a top figure in Fatah, was ousted from the political movement led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas nearly two decades ago, but continues to play an outsized role as a powerful fixer in Palestinian and Gulf politics.Though the leading Abbas critic would likely remain behind the scenes from his Emirates perch, the formation of an alliance under his Fatah Reformist Democratic Faction could give Hamas and other armed groups that could be banned from the vote an avenue to participate under another name, creating a significant challenge to Abbas’s long-running rule over the PA.This week, Islamic Jihad Deputy Secretary General Mohammed al-Hindi told the AP that his group had agreed to form a unified slate with Hamas as well as Dahlan.And in an interview on September 26, Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said his movement would participate in parliamentary elections scheduled for late November as part of a “national coalition,” but did not elaborate.Abbas has said parliamentary elections will be held November 28 in Gaza and the West Bank. But he has repeatedly delayed elections, most recently in 2021, when Fatah appeared headed for defeat.When Hamas won the last elections, in 2006, Israel and Western countries boycotted its government, fueling months of unrest that led to its takeover of Gaza the following year.An overt alliance between Hamas and Dahlan would mark an unusual turn for the longtime foes.Dahlan, who once served as the PA’s security chief in Gaza, spent years hunting down Hamas members, and remains critical of the group. But the sides have also maintained behind-the-scenes ties in recent years, particularly given that Dahlan retains a base of supporters in Gaza that has persisted throughout nearly two decades of Hamas rule.Hamas said in August that al-Hayya had met Dahlan in Cairo and discussed ways to “end the monopolization of national decision-making and formulate a comprehensive national strategy.”The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad has a long history of working alongside Hamas. Its participation in elections, however, would mark a departure from its previous position eschewing Palestinian elections as part of a hardline stance that wholly rejects the Palestinian Authority framework.“We have initiated efforts that included Hamas, PIJ, the PFLP and other factions and independent professionals to rally around one national recovery and rebuilding program,” Dimitri Diliani, a spokesperson for Dahlan’s faction, told The Times of Israel.He said that while there may be political differences with Hamas, the latter’s ideology is a part of Palestinian society and therefore cannot be completely ignored.He also noted that Hamas has already agreed to US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the Gaza war, which bars it from having any role in the governance of Gaza.Diliani indicated that any list backed by the emerging alliance would not necessarily include Hamas members, but could instead comprise independent candidates supported by the participating factions.“An inclusive electoral list is the most appropriate political vehicle for us to unite in facing these challenges and in protecting our people and our national cause. The PA has failed Gaza and the Palestinian people everywhere,” Diliani said.Al-Hindi as well told the AP the alliance will support a “unified national list” that could be made up of independent figures rather than members of the groups themselves.However, it is unclear whether the Palestinian Authority will allow the list to run in the elections.Challenge to Abbas-Dahlan has been based in Abu Dhabi since breaking with Abbas in 2010, serving as a top adviser to United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed. He has also become a behind-the-scenes powerbroker with close ties to the US officials trying to advance Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.Egypt recently made an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile Abbas and Dahlan, with the aim of bringing the latter back into mainstream Palestinian political fold, including Fatah.The Times of Israel has learned that the efforts failed due to Abbas refusing to meet what he saw as excessive demands from Dahlan for representation in Palestine Liberation Organization bodies.While Diliani said that the Reformist Democratic Faction would like to see Dahlan return from the UAE, he acknowledged that the former strongman has made clear that he does not intend to take an official role in Palestinian politics for the time being.“Our people know the cost of weakened national institutions and a frail leadership,” Diliani said. “Our vision returns law, accountability and the ballot box to national decision-making.”The challenge to Abbas posed by the alliance may make it more likely for him to seek its disqualification from elections.Registration for electoral lists opened several days ago. The Palestinian Central Elections Commission said on September 26 that six lists have already submitted applications to participate, some of them little-known and others representing factions within the PLO, such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian National Initiative.One list, Masar Jadid, is associated with Fatah figures who oppose Abbas’s current policies.Samer Sinijlawi, who heads the list, told the Times of Israel that “we are challenging entrenched political forces and trying to create meaningful space for a new generation of Palestinians, particularly young people and women.”None of the lists have thus far been approved.The Palestinian Authority has not explicitly addressed whether Hamas will be allowed to run in the elections. However, Hamas did not participate as an organization in the local elections held several months ago, and the prevailing assessment is that the PA will not allow Hamas to run as an organization in the parliamentary elections either.PLO pledge-Holding elections is among a package of reforms that the international community — led by the United States and the European Union — has demanded of the PA over the past year, as part of efforts to strengthen its standing as the body representing the Palestinians in the context of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Under electoral regulations amended by Abbas, candidates are now required to pledge allegiance to the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and to commit to its political and national program and relevant international resolutions.There have been multiple attempts over the years to bring Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Fatah-led PLO, but all have foundered.A main sticking point has been the PLO’s recognition of Israel. Hamas officials have said they are willing to accept a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but have stopped short of recognizing Israel, while Islamic Jihad takes a harder line.It also remains unclear whether the election itself will take place. The last Palestinian parliamentary election was held in January 2006, and the legislature effectively ceased functioning after Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. Abbas has since announced elections several times, only for them to be called off before voting took place.PA officials have continued publicly preparing for the November vote, but have also repeatedly said there can be “no elections without Jerusalem and Gaza” — conditions that could provide grounds for another postponement.Holding elections in Gaza could face several obstacles — technical ones, such as bringing in the necessary equipment, as well as political ones, including the need for Hamas’s agreement, as the terror group still rules the populated portion of the Strip.As for Jerusalem, Israel has in the past strongly opposed holding Palestinian elections in East Jerusalem. The issue has been officially cited as the reason for canceling previous elections.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Dutch Jewish leader says settlement ban another sign of Netherlands’ growing hostility-Jewish community leader says restrictions on goods from the West Bank are part of a wider pattern that has made life in the Netherlands ‘uneasy and unpleasant’ for Jews-By Zev Stub 30 September 2026, 5:57 pm
The Dutch import ban that went into effect last week on products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank will have limited effects on the buying habits of Jews in the Netherlands, a community leader said Wednesday, but noted that it added to the unease of local Jews amid mounting antisemitism.The symbolic impact of the new restrictions, coming after nearly three years of continued antagonism against the Jewish community, is part of a trend that has made life in the country “uneasy and unpleasant,” Jigal Markuszower, president of the Jewish Communities in the Netherlands (NIK), told The Times of Israel.“The law means we’re not free to buy whatever we want, even if we are shopping in the market in Jerusalem,” said Markuszower, noting that the prohibition applies not only to commercial imports but also to products brought in by private travelers as souvenirs or gifts. “But the bigger problem is that such a ban exists, and that other similar things are happening all the time.”The market for exports from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights to the Netherlands is small, estimated at about $50 million a year and consisting primarily of agricultural products. Total Israeli exports to the country were $2.65 billion during 2025, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.But the gesture is a clear diplomatic message to Israel amid mounting anger in Europe over the surge in Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and spiraling violence by settler extremists against Palestinians.Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced earlier this week that in retaliation, Dutch diplomats serving in Ramallah would have to return their Israeli-issued diplomatic credentials following the start of the ban.For the Jewish community of the Netherlands, which totals between 30,000 and 50,000 people, it’s yet another reminder of what Markuszower described as increasing hostility against them on the streets. He cited the cancellation — and then downgrading — of a Hanukkah concert with IDF chief cantor Shai Abramson last year, and academic boycotts by Dutch universities against Israeli academia, as examples of the harassment Jews there face.Interactions with police over security at Jewish schools and synagogues have gotten more difficult over the past six months, Markuszower said. One officer spoke harshly to him even as he was speaking to The Times of Israel from his cellphone.“Just now, a police officer overheard me mentioning Jerusalem on our call, and he said something unpleasant,” he said.Dutch Jewry is largely secular but quite diverse, Markuszower said, noting that around 35% to 40% of Amsterdam’s Jewish population consists of Israelis who have moved there in recent years. Other Jews, meanwhile, condemn Israel’s policies and protest its military actions in Gaza, he noted.Among the Zionist community, some people are considering immigrating to Israel, or have children trying to build a life there, Markuszower said. The threat of rising antisemitism is tempered by concerns of Israel’s cost of living and the prospect of compulsory military service, he said.“For those considering making aliya (immigrating), there’s not only a pull factor of Israel now,” he said, noting that his own children are currently studying at Israeli universities. “There’s also a push factor from Europe.”Most of the people who attack Israel have no idea what actually happens on the ground in the Jewish state or Gaza, and are merely repeating propaganda, Markuszower claimed. He compared them to the “fools” described in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, read in synagogue on Sukkot.“Unfortunately, I don’t see it getting better anytime soon,” he said.
US leaves Iraq 23 years after fall of Saddam Hussein, stoking fear of vacuum emboldening ISIS, militias-Withdrawal fulfills 2024 agreement reached under Biden; Tehran hails departure as victory, Iraqi security officials warn ISIS could regroup without a Western military presence-By Ahmed Rasheed and Muayad Hameed 30 September 2026, 10:58 am
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) — US forces withdrew from their remaining bases in Iraq on Wednesday, raising fears they will leave behind a security vacuum, further embolden Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias and give the resurgent Islamic State organization an opening to regroup.The departure, celebrated as a victory by Tehran and its allies, was agreed to in 2024 under US President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration even as it wages war against Iran.It comes 23 years after US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, then triggered upheaval and chaos, culminating with the rise of Islamic State.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps urged Americans to vote out Trump’s allies in Congress as US forces exit from neighboring Iraq, where Tehran has steadily entrenched itself through proxies since the Iraqi dictator’s fall.While the departure of US forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, some worry that security forces trained and funded by the United States still can’t protect the country, where 4,500 American forces died in more than 20 years of war.“The lesson from the past two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous,” said Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who advises the security forces.After US forces invaded in 2003, it went on to occupy the country, install a Shiite-led government and fight a years-long insurgency — first by Saddam loyalists, then al-Qaeda, as a sectarian civil war devastated Iraq — before withdrawing at the end of 2011. They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group Islamic State, which terrorized millions, in a major war from 2014 to 2017.Around twice as many Americans died in “Operation Iraqi Freedom” as in the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with an abrupt US withdrawal in 2021.In this year’s conflict with Iran, 7 of the 18 US service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the last an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July.Iran, allies are the winners-Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces to leave the entire Middle East, casts the US pullout from Iraq as a triumph for its “axis of resistance” of allied armed groups across the region.“What is further concerning is not necessarily direct Iranian intervention, but the possibility that Iran’s proxies will feel increasingly empowered in the absence of a Western military presence. These groups may attempt to expand their role in shaping state policies and consolidating their presence within key institutions,” said Baghdad-based political analyst Ahmed Younis.Some Iraqi security officials, both in the federal government and the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, say the US pullout also risks giving new life to Islamic State fighters, who, despite the defeat of their self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago, retain a sleeper cell network.At their height, the militants occupied a third of Iraq and slaughtered thousands of people, including hundreds they videotaped themselves gunning down inside a former US military base.US troops had been providing Iraqi security forces with critical intelligence on Islamic State movements, aerial surveillance and reconnaissance.“The most important question now is whether Iraq’s security institutions have prepared a viable Plan B for the post-coalition phase,” said retired Iraqi Army General Mohammed al-Jubouri, who led a brigade in the war against Islamic State.“One of the worst-case scenarios would be Islamic State obtaining armed drones or improvised explosive drones at a time when Iraq still lacks sufficient air defense capabilities to counter such threats effectively.”
Iraqis celebrate final US troop withdrawal as government takes charge of security-Military parades mark departure while PM says fight against terrorism continues; Washington pledges targeted training and intelligence support will continue as concerns rise over militias and Islamic State-By Ahmed Rasheed and Muayad Hameed 30 September 2026, 4:49 pm
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) — Iraqis celebrated the departure of US forces after more than two decades on Wednesday, though many were worried that a security vacuum could increase the power of Iran-backed militias or provide an opening for the return of Islamic State.The withdrawal of the final troops, mainly from an airbase in Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, ended the biggest US war of the century, which brought widespread devastation and chaos from which Iraq has yet to fully emerge.Tehran and its allies hailed the withdrawal as a victory in their campaign to drive US forces from the Middle East. However, the pullout was agreed in 2024 under US president Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration even as it wages war against Iran next door.Iraqi troops paraded in vehicles through the streets of Baghdad and the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf to mark the pullout.The withdrawal “fills our hearts with joy,” said Baghdad resident Ahmed Salah, who said he felt reborn at the age of 70.But he also said it was now time for powerful militia groups to surrender their weapons, “and let the government be the one responsible to protect me and you on the ground, sky and water.”US forces invaded to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, triggering years of upheaval and chaos. US troops initially left at the end of 2011 but came back less than three years later to assist Iraqi forces after Islamic State fighters seized a third of Iraq and imposed violent rule.More than 4,500 US troops died in Iraq, around twice as many as in the parallel war in Afghanistan. The Iraq Body Count project says more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed.The Pentagon said the United States and its coalition partners formally concluded “Operation Inherent Resolve” and Washington would continue to provide targeted training and intelligence support to Iraqi partners.The Iraqis are expected to lead the effort to secure the country, an ally of both Washington and Tehran, and keep the remnants of Islamic State suppressed.“The end of the international coalition’s mission does not mean the end of our battle against terrorism, but rather Iraq’s transition to a phase in which it assumes full responsibility for its security and stability,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi in a statement.‘Security vacuums can be extremely dangerous’While the departure of US forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, some worry that security forces trained and funded by the United States still can’t protect the country.“The lesson from the past two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous,” said Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who advises the security forces.Adil Salman, 45, a high school English teacher, said Iraqis “should not rush to celebrate” the withdrawal.“Militias still operate outside the state’s control and (Islamic State) still has not disappeared,” he said. “I’m concerned that the US departure could lead to a new period of instability. In the end, people will judge this decision by one thing: whether security remains stable in the coming years.”With US forces present alongside armed groups allied to Iran, Iraq has been caught up in this year’s war.Of the 18 US service members listed as killed since Trump launched “Operation Epic Fury” alongside Israel in February, seven died in Iraq. The last was an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July.Iran, allies are the winners-Iran, which has entrenched its influence in Iraq through allied armed groups since Saddam’s fall, casts the US pullout as a triumph for its “axis of resistance” of allied armed groups across the region.The withdrawal raises “the possibility that Iran’s proxies will feel increasingly empowered in the absence of a Western military presence. These groups may attempt to expand their role in shaping state policies and consolidating their presence within key institutions,” said Baghdad-based political analyst Ahmed Younis.Some Iraqi security officials, both in the federal government and the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, say the US pullout also risks giving new life to Islamic State fighters, who, despite the defeat of their self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago, retain a sleeper cell network.The last time the US withdrew, the Iraqi army proved no match for Islamic State: soldiers took off their uniforms and fled when the group captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in 2014.Since Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate was defeated in 2017, US troops have been providing Iraqi security forces with critical intelligence on the group’s movements, aerial surveillance and reconnaissance.“The most important question now is whether Iraq’s security institutions have prepared a viable Plan B for the post-coalition phase,” said retired Iraqi Army General Mohammed al-Jubouri, who led a brigade in the war against Islamic State.“One of the worst-case scenarios would be Islamic State obtaining armed drones or improvised explosive drones at a time when Iraq still lacks sufficient air defense capabilities to counter such threats effectively.”
Syria says it dismantled Hezbollah-linked cell preparing rocket launchers-Terror group denies connection to arrested operatives, insisting it has no presence or military activity in Syria; accuses Israel of seeking to disrupt Lebanon-Syria relations-By AFP and ToI Staff 30 September 2026, 2:56 pm
Hezbollah denied on Wednesday any connection to a cell that Syrian authorities said they had dismantled in the country’s south the day before and which they accused of being affiliated with the Iran-backed terror group.A statement from the Lebanon-based movement’s media office said it “categorically denies any relationship or connection between Hezbollah and the alleged cell” and emphasized that “it has no presence whatsoever on Syrian territory and has no involvement in any security or military activity there.”On Tuesday, Syria said intelligence services and security forces “thwarted a sabotage plot in the Yarmuk basin in Daraa (province) and arrested a Hezbollah-affiliated cell composed of three n dividuals.”Authorities said the cell attempted “to prepare rocket launch platforms with the aim of carrying out attacks to destabilize security and stability,” without specifying the target.The Yarmuk basin area, where Syrian state media has previously reported Israeli incursions and shelling, borders the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981, as well as Jordan.Earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had claimed there were “indications” that Israel’s enemies could try to attack ahead of elections scheduled for late October.Syria’s new authorities, who ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024, are hostile to Hezbollah, which is a sworn enemy of Israel and fought on Assad’s side during the Syrian civil war.Authorities have previously said they dismantled several Hezbollah-linked cells preparing attacks in Syria, accusations the group has denied.In Wednesday’s statement, Hezbollah accused Israel of seeking to disrupt ties between Lebanon and Syria.It called on Syrian authorities “to identify the real beneficiary of escalating tensions between the two countries, namely the Israeli enemy.”Last month, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said he had no objection to meeting openly with Syria’s leadership.In June, responding to a question about whether he would sit at the table with Hezbollah, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said that “if this serves Lebanon’s interests and safeguards Syria’s interests, why not.”
