In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to become prime minister for a third time, 16 months after he was ousted from office amid a series of corruption scandals. Results from Tuesday’s election show Netanyahu’s Likud party and its far-right allies won 64 seats in the Knesset, enough to form a parliamentary majority. A key member of Netanyahu’s government will likely be Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist lawmaker who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

This comes as Israeli security forces killed four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Thursday while Israeli fighter jets bombed the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces have killed at least 130 Palestinians in the West Bank this year. We’ll have the latest from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories after headlines.

U.S. intelligence officials say Russian troops are poised for a complete withdrawal from Kherson, as Ukrainian forces advance on the city which Russia has occupied since early March. Russian forces have withdrawn to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, and earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin said civilians should evacuate the Kherson region. It’s one of four Ukrainian territories which Russia claimed to have annexed in September.

Elsewhere, Russia and Ukraine completed another prisoner swap on Thursday with each side releasing 107 POWs.

United Nations nuclear inspectors have found no evidence to back Russia’s claims that Ukraine is building a radiological weapon known as a “dirty bomb.” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke Thursday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky: “We have invited the IAEA to check. We have given them complete freedom of action at the relevant facilities. And we have clear and irrefutable evidence that no one in Ukraine has created or is creating any dirty bomb.”

In Zaporizhzhia, the operator of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant says the facility has two weeks of diesel fuel for its backup generators. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has reiterated calls for a security protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant after fighting once again severed outside power to the plant’s cooling systems, which are critical to preventing a radiation disaster. Grossi said Thursday that reliance on diesel generators is “clearly not a sustainable way to operate a major nuclear facility.” 

In Pakistan, former Prime Minister Imran Khan is in stable condition after he was shot in the leg Thursday at a rally in Wazirabad. One person was killed and at least 10 others injured in the apparent assassination attempt. Khan has accused top government officials, including the prime minister, of being behind the attack. Local police released a video of the alleged gunman, who said he acted alone, though the confession’s authenticity has not been verified. 

Unidentified: “Imran Khan was misleading people, and I could not bear that. That is why I did this. So I killed him — tried to kill him. I tried my best to kill him, only Imran Khan. I did not want to kill anyone else.”

The attack on Khan came one week into his high-profile journey across Pakistan to demand snap elections, after he was removed from power in April.

The U.N. is calling on nations to agree to a historic new agreement at the COP27 climate summit, which opens in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Sunday. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday nations will face climate catastrophe unless they rapidly deliver on commitments made at the 2015 Paris climate summit.  

Secretary-General António Guterres: “COP27 must be the place to rebuild trust and reestablish the ambition needed to avoid driving our planet over the climate cliff. In the last few weeks, report after report has painted a clear and bleak picture.”

In one new report, UNESCO warns one-third of the glaciers that have been declared World Heritage sites will disappear by 2050, even if nations take dramatic action to curb emissions. That includes glaciers in Yosemite National Park in California and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Meanwhile, the U.N.’s Environment Program warns in a new report that wealthy countries are falling far short of their commitments to help communities adapt to a warming world. The report finds the cost of adapting to climate change could top a half-trillion dollars annually by mid-century — dwarfing the less than $30 billion countries have so far received to adapt to the climate crisis.

In Egypt, the Egyptian-British writer, philosopher and political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah is poised to escalate his hunger strike into a water strike when the COP27 climate summit gets underway on Sunday. Abd El-Fattah has already been on a hunger strike for more than 200 days to demand his freedom, after he was jailed over much of the last nine years for his role in the 2011 revolution that ousted Egypt’s longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. Alaa’s sister, Mona Seif, spoke from London Thursday after meeting with Britain’s Middle East minister and the British foreign secretary earlier this week. 

Mona Seif: “Once he starts the water strike, the body can only sustain itself so much, so we are talking about a few days in which either the U.K. government has to step up what they are doing, and the U.K. government and the Egyptian government have to agree on a solution to that situation, or we are going to lose Alaa in prison.”

Another of Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s sisters, Sanaa Seif, says she plans to attend the COP27 talks next week. Click here for our coverage of Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s case.

Canada is continuing to press for foreign military intervention in Haiti amid worsening political, economic and gang crises. This is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “We understand how many Haitians there are who don’t want to see international intervention. It’s a reality. At the same time, we look at the crisis, rapes, the violence, the poverty and the cholera and the health crisis, and then we say to ourselves, 'We have to intervene in one way or another.'”

This week over 90 civil society groups wrote a letter to President Biden urging him to reject outside military intervention in Haiti and instead pursue diplomacy and support “Haitian-led political dialogue.” They write, “We were heartened to see in your 2022 National Security Strategy a commitment to 'not use our military to change regimes or remake societies,' and we encourage you to follow through on that commitment in Haiti.”

The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the United States’ embargo on Cuba. One hundred eighty-five countries on Thursday voted in favor of lifting the decades-old sanctions which have devastated Cuba’s economy since the 1960s. Only the U.S. and Israel voted against the motion, while Brazil and Ukraine abstained.

Billionaire Elon Musk has met with over half a dozen civil rights groups amid concerns the new owner of Twitter will let misinformation and hate speech go unchecked. Media Matters, Free Press and dozens more groups urged Twitter’s top advertisers to remove their ads from the platform if proper safety standards are not imposed. Meanwhile, Musk is reportedly firing thousands of employees — about half of Twitter’s workforce — starting today, and requiring remaining employees to return to on-site work. Some Twitter employees filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the firings are unlawful.

Nearly 50,000 University of California student workers are set to go on strike if a deal isn’t reached with university officials on higher wages and other demands. On Wednesday, over 35,000 UC student workers voted in favor of authorizing a strike beginning on November 14. They’re demanding salary increases that keep pace with the skyrocketing cost of living in California, as well as free public transit passes and reimbursement of child care costs.

Human rights activists led an 18-hour protest Thursday outside New York City Hall as they continue to demand officials shut down the Rikers Island jail complex. The demonstration was in response to the death this week of 26-year-old Gilberto Garcia, the 18th person to die at Rikers so far this year. Garcia had been jailed at Rikers for three years as he awaited trial. He died of an apparent drug overdose, but a cause of death has not been confirmed.