VIJAY PRASHAD looks at the web of militias and drug-trafficking gangs that emerged in the Sweida region through the Syrian civil war, and how they relate to recent clashes and Israel’s intervention

MARTIN SHEEN has seen the apocalypse at close range and has been president of the United States. But all of that was in his acting career.
On Friday, Sheen, 79, showed up in Washington DC to protest against the most apocalyptical event of our times — the climate crisis.
Sheen is best known for his lead role in the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam war epic, Apocalypse Now, and for playing the US president in the popular television series, The West Wing, which ran from 1999-2006.

The crew of the Freedom Flotilla boat, Handala, warned Israel to obey international law but are now in captivity, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Waves of protesters are refusing to comply with the latest crackdowns on dissent, but the penalties are higher in Starmer’s Labour Britain than in Trump’s autocratic United States, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Funds are being raised to bring the bombed al-Shifa hospital back from the ashes, reports Linda Pentz Gunter

From Labour’s panic over the Corbyn-Sultana formation to Democratic Party grandees distancing themselves from Zohran Mamdani, centrist cliques on both sides of the Atlantic are quick to throw the same old insult, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER