In Israel, there’s no clear winner so far in Tuesday’s national election. The final tally could take days. It was Israel’s first election since the October 7, 2023, attack and the ensuing wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. With over 70% of the vote counted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party leads with 27 seats, ahead of former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at 22. Neither candidate is on track to form a governing majority of 61 seats in the Knesset. According to Haaretz, a possible pro-Netanyahu coalition currently has 54 seats, while a possible pro-Eisenkot bloc has 49 seats. Palestinian parties — the Joint List and Ra’am — have won 17 seats, their strongest showing ever. But both Netanyahu and Eisenkot have ruled out governing with Palestinian-led parties. Meanwhile, millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza were ineligible to vote. This is Netanyahu speaking on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “We must form a right-wing, national, strong government. That is what must be done. We must not — must not — endanger Israel and establish a government that is backed by anti-Zionist Arab parties.”

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops violently dispersed a protest in Hebron against Israel’s military operation to displace thousands of Palestinians in the region. This comes after the deaths of two Israeli soldiers shot by Palestinian gunmen last week. This is a displaced Palestinian who attended Tuesday’s protest.

Noura Nassar: “I don’t know how to get to my home. I had to take alternative routes to get to my doctor, because I had an appointment and I had to go. I am shocked that these are people who call for democracy. Where is the democracy in all of this? Their elections are today, but what about us? Aren’t we human beings? We want to go out. We want to visit the doctor. It’s shameful.”

In Iran, the Oscar-nominated director Jafar Panahi has been sentenced in absentia by a Tehran court to five years and one month in prison. He was already facing a one-year sentence. The court also issued an order to confiscate Panahi’s assets, and put in place a two-year ban on using social media and a two-year travel ban. The charges are unclear. Panahi’s lawyer said that he learned of this latest sentence when he went to the prosecutor’s office after Panahi’s bank accounts were frozen. The prosecutor’s case file stated incorrectly that Panahi was living outside Iran, when in fact he returned in March. Panahi was on Democracy Now!, here in our studio in New York, back in January when we asked him about returning to Iran.

Jafar Panahi: “I will return to Iran in any possible way, under any circumstances, because it is there that I know I have to exist. It is there where I know I can make films and do what I like to do. Yes, I will return. I will definitely return.”

In Egypt, the editor of the independent outlet Mada Masr, Lina Attalah, was released from police detention Tuesday after several hours in custody. Attalah was also reportedly informed of a one-year prison sentence issued against her in absentia back in 2024, on charges of publishing false news and managing an unlicensed website — charges she previously did not know about. She faces a retrial in the 2024 case in two weeks. This comes after an Egyptian court ordered the closure of Mada Masr, one of Egypt’s last independent news outlets, and fined Attalah over $50,000 after a sham hearing where her lawyers could not present evidence.

In Saudi Arabia, Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis, say they have hit the kingdom’s largest oil refinery with a ballistic missile. It comes as fighting has escalated in Yemen between the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthis since the outbreak of the U.S. war on Iran. Meanwhile, Drop Site News is reporting that the United Arab Emirates is now backing Ansar Allah in its conflict against Saudi-backed forces inside Yemen. This follows recent news that Egypt’s Parliament authorized Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to help Saudi Arabia in its fight against Ansar Allah.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia’s government investment fund headed by Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev. That’s according to The New York Times, which spoke to an unnamed U.S. official who said the Treasury Department is looking to remove restrictions on the fund as part of Trump’s major energy deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import millions of tons of Russian diesel. The Biden administration first imposed sanctions on the fund in 2022, just days after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This comes as the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Russia warns the Kremlin is persecuting critics both at home and abroad. This is U.N. Special Rapporteur Mariana Katzarova.

Mariana Katzarova: “Russia is one of — Russia is in third place out of 10 states that are responsible for 70% of the physical attacks on critics abroad in the past decade. That’s quite a serious place that Russia is holding in the world as a perpetrator of transnational repression. And the machine that produces these enemies of the state is a strategy by the Russian government. And this is what I devoted my report on at the General Assembly.”

Flávio Bolsonaro has fled to the United States following his defeat in Brazil’s presidential election against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro reportedly left Brazil after Brazilian police this week asked him to turn over his passport as he’s being investigated in a money laundering case. Flávio Bolsonaro is the son of former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for orchestrating a failed coup attempt after he lost the 2022 election to Lula. The State Department has confirmed it will issue Flávio Bolsonaro and his family U.S. visas. President Lula responded to the news.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: “This act of leaving Brazil is shameful. When I was asked to surrender my passport, I did so. He should have done the same. If the Federal Police suspected he was going to leave Brazil, he ought to have surrendered his. Regrettably, that is the Bolsonaro family for you. Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is the United States.”

The Pentagon struck another boat in the eastern Pacific, killing at least five people on Tuesday. The U.S. military again claimed, without providing any evidence, that the vessel was transporting drugs. Since President Trump returned to office, there have been more than 70 boat strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing more than 240 people. Human rights advocates have condemned the attacks as illegal extrajudicial killings at sea.

Alex Pretti’s parents have accused the federal government of protecting the Customs and Border Protection agents who fatally shot their son in January in Minneapolis, and said the Trump administration has stonewalled them from the investigation in the nine months since Pretti was killed. This is Alex Pretti’s father, Michael, who spoke alongside his wife, Susan, from Minneapolis on Tuesday.

Michael Pretti: “We believe in the rule of law and that people should be held accountable through that law. However, our experience with the Department of Justice has left us wondering how Alex will ever get justice. We hear the federal government is not sharing information. Then we hear that they are sharing information. Then, last week, we learned again that they said in court documents they are not sharing evidence. This is not normal. This is not justice. It is morally wrong.”

Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who worked at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System. Click here to see our coverage of this case.

In California, another immigrant has been confirmed dead in ICE custody. Roberto Jimenez Gutierrez was found unresponsive while jailed at the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. The 43-year-old immigrant from Guatemala was being held in solitary confinement, awaiting deportation to Mexico despite not being a citizen of that country. This marks at least 61 deaths in ICE custody during Trump’s second term and comes just days after an immigrant from El Salvador died at an ICE processing center in Folkston, Georgia, last week.

In more related news, the Associated Press reports ICE has detained a mentally ill U.S. citizen for nearly one year. The Trump administration is seeking to deport Phillip James to Jamaica, even though public records show he was born in Florida. The 39-year-old is being detained at an ICE jail in Indiana dubbed “Speedway Slammer.” James suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and reportedly mistakenly told federal immigration officers he’d been born in Jamaica and was the illegitimate son of a former Jamaican prime minister. His mother and legal team are urging for his release.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to restore a Biden-era rule that allowed immigration judges to temporarily suspend some deportation cases, a practice known as “administrative closure.” In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court rejected a request from three U.S. cities that have large immigrant populations: Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; and New Haven, Connecticut. Back in June, Texas filed a lawsuit petitioning the Trump administration to block the policy. Judges used the discretion to temporarily prevent the deportation of asylum seekers and others in need of relief and protection.

Dr. Jennifer Shuford, the deputy director and chief medical officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that she’s resigning after just four months on the job. Dr. Shuford was appointed by President Trump. During her tenure, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 of the CDC’s expert vaccine advisory panel members and replaced them with his appointees. The CDC also lost one-third of its workforce during a measles outbreak in the U.S.