By Steven Scheer and Pesha Magid JERUSALEM, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a fight for political survival on Tuesday in an election seen by many Israelis as the most consequential in the country’s history and a referendum on his leadership since the 2023 Hamas-led attacks. The vote follows a turbulent period for Israel, shaped by the ‌trauma of the October 7 attacks, wars in Gaza, Lebanon and with Iran, deepening international isolation, and the divisive policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition. Yet Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader with 19 years ‌in office, remains a formidable survivor, with nationalist politics increasingly entrenched and Israel’s fragmented system potentially leaving him best placed to form a government. Opinion polls show a close race between Netanyahu’s Likud party and its right-wing allies and a rival alliance led ​by Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff and security hawk with backers on the right and in the centre. Voters began casting ballots after polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT). The polls close at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT). Netanyahu has campaigned on his wartime leadership and his alliance with US President Donald Trump, who has endorsed him and joined Israel in waging war on Iran. Netanyahu said on Sunday that Trump was prepared to act again to “finally” remove the Iranian threat, but only if Netanyahu remained in power. Eisenkot has accused Netanyahu of “relying on a campaign of fear-mongering, lies and threats” and said he was confident Trump would work “in full cooperation with ‌any leader chosen by the people.” Netanyahu may again depend on far-right leaders ⁠Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to form a government. Both have faced sanctions from some Western countries that accuse them of inciting violence against Palestinians, while Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party has gained support in opinion polls. Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot has a clear path to power. If neither can form a governing coalition in the ⁠120-seat parliament, Netanyahu could stay on as caretaker until another election is held next year. The Israeli Central Election Committee said 7.3 million Israelis are eligible to vote, some 330,000 of them for the first time. SEEKING A ‘NEW DAY’ For many of Netanyahu’s opponents, the election turns on accountability for the security failures of October 7, Israel’s deadliest day. Opposition groups have promised a national inquiry. Eldad Shaaltiel, a volunteer with Eisenkot’s Yashar party, said he had come early to hang ​campaign ​posters outside a Jerusalem polling station, aiming to sway the potentially critical pool of still wavering voters. Some 13% of ​Israeli voters have yet to decide how they will vote, according to data collected ‌by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute. Nilli Mor, a volunteer for the Democrats party led by former general Yair Golan, another opponent of Netanyahu, said she was campaigning “to try and bring a new day to Israel, a better day with hope and great change for this country”. A high turnout among voters from Israel’s Arab minority — Israeli by citizenship but Palestinian by heritage — could help nudge Israel’s complex coalition arithmetic in favour of Eisenkot. Though Eisenkot has ruled out partnering with Arab parties, citing a lack of shared values, analysts see a scenario where they could prop up a minority government he leads in order to ensure Netanyahu is removed from office. But Ben-Gvir, casting his vote in the Kiryat Arba settlement in the occupied West Bank early on Tuesday, predicted Netanyahu would return ‌as prime minister, adding: “We will serve as the right-wing anchor of that government”. In some bastions of Likud support, disenchanted ​voters have been going door to door to turn voters against Netanyahu. Some have turned away from Netanyahu as he battles ​corruption charges he denies in a long-running criminal trial. “My expectation is that we will have ​only a slight majority either way. No landslide,” said Israeli political analyst Amotz Asa-El of the Shalom Hartman Institute. THE WARTIME RECORD Eisenkot joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet after the October ‌7 attacks but quit after eight months, criticising his leadership. Israel flattened much of ​Gaza in the offensive launched after October 7, when ​Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage. Gaza health authorities say Israeli attacks killed 74,000 people. Israel also dealt heavy blows to Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and traded strikes with Iran before a 12-day aerial campaign against Iranian nuclear sites in 2025 and this year’s joint US-Israeli war. Eisenkot has said Israel’s next government must prevent Iran from acquiring a military nuclear ​capability, either by force or through an “arrangement” such as a US-backed diplomatic ‌solution. Like nearly all Jewish-led parties in Israel, Eisenkot opposes the two-state solution that underpinned decades of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. But he has criticised Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in ​the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has surged since 2023 and strained Israel’s ties with Western states. And he opposes Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. (Additional reporting by Maayan ​Lubell and Pesha Magid in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Howard Goller and Joe Bavier) This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/netanyahus-political-survival-line-israel-000240854.html

The Justice Department took steps to charge James Comey with leaking classified information earlier this month, court records show, in its third attempt to bring criminal charges against the former FBI director and Trump foe.Prosecutors are seeking to charge Comey with two counts of violating the Espionage Act by transmitting national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it. He has not been indicted by a grand jury or charged by criminal complaint, and was instead targeted through a criminal information filing.In this case, the information was filed in order to preserve the statute of limitations before it expires, according to a Justice Department spokesperson. The official added that “this is an ongoing criminal investigation, and we will not comment further.”A criminal information does not require approval by a grand jury, or a finding by a magistrate judge of probable cause that there is evidence to establish that a crime was committed.Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, said Comey “steadfastly maintains his innocence.”The latest effort by the Justice Department stems from allegations that Comey gave national defense information to an unnamed individual for disclosure in a newspaper in October 2016.According to court filings in the case, The New York Times published an article on Oct. 5, 2016, titled, “Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance By Adapting Spam Filter.” The article cited two unnamed government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.The Justice Department alleges that it has uncovered evidence that Comey sought to “correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before” and that Comey “directed staff” to speak with the Times reporter about the accuracy of the Reuters article.Fitzgerald said the information “purports to charge Mr. Comey with crimes that he did not commit,” adding that investigators looked into the matter twice during the first Trump administration and “determined that no charges should be brought against anyone.”In a separate video statement, Comey said, “well, they’re back again” — a reference to the two prior attempts to charge Comey, including a dismissed indictment accusing him of lying to Congress and a still-pending indictment accusing him of threatening President Trump via a social media post of a photo of seashells arranged to say “86 47.””It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to,” Comey said. “Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”Asked about the case late Monday, Mr. Trump told reporters he’d “just heard about it.””I think he’s a dirty cop, James Comey, but I know nothing about it,” the president said.In a statement posted to social media, the Justice Department said: “Filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court and has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals.”Former prosecutors and defense attorneys told CBS News they had not seen a criminal information filed in a felony case in this manner before, and called the maneuver highly unusual. The practice had been approved in other federal appellate court districts in some cases, but is less common in Washington, D.C.Greg Rosen, a former federal prosecutor who helped lead Jan. 6 cases, told CBS News: “In years of practicing in D.C., I never saw one used this way, let alone in the third attempt by the same Department to charge the same man.”Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who is now a defense attorney, told CBS News that he has never encountered a situation where a criminal information was filed to pause the statute of limitations. Normally, such charging documents are filed when a defendant plans to waive their right to have a grand jury weigh charges and opts to plead guilty.”I have never heard of proceeding by information to toll the statute of limitations. Most prosecutors you have ever dealt with have never heard of that. This seems to be a way to do an end-run around the statute of limitations and keep a case alive that deserved to die 9 years ago,” Bromwich said. “This is just absolutely bizarro world stuff.”DOJ and Comey fought in secret over charging effortsThe criminal information were filed under seal in early October, and were unsealed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden on Monday at Comey’s request.For much of this month, Comey’s attorneys and federal prosecutors waged a behind-the-scenes fight over whether the Justice Department’s effort to charge him should be dismissed.In an Oct. 9 court filing, Comey’s legal team argued the government “filed a faulty information under seal … in an effort to toll the applicable statute of limitations.” The crime that the government is seeking to charge Comey under has a 10-year statute of limitations, which would run out in October of this year — but the ex-FBI director’s lawyers say the statute of limitations applies to indictments and can’t be extended if the government files a criminal information.They also said Comey had “reason to believe that the government plans to use that information to seek an arrest warrant as soon as today, which could result in an after-hours arrest that would ensure Mr. Comey sits in jail over a holiday weekend.””Mr. Comey has reason to believe multiple federal law enforcement officers have surveilled his whereabouts while traveling to a family members’ residence and around his own neighborhood throughout the week,” Comey’s lawyers wrote on Oct. 9, just before Columbus Day weekend.In an emergency court hearing, the government agreed to hold off on seeking an indictment for 30 days, attorneys for Comey later wrote.The Justice Department argued that Comey’s efforts to dismiss the criminal information was premature because no indictment has been returned. “This is not the proper time for him to file pretrial motions or attempt to chip away at charging documents before he subjects himself to the Court’s jurisdiction,” the government said.Further, the department said the law allows the government to proceed because it permits prosecutors to meet the deadline if the “indictment is found or the information is instituted.”In an unusual move, the criminal information filed by the department were signed by two senior officials — acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh — as well as several special assistant U.S. attorneys who are not originally from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C.McFadden, the Trump-nominated judge overseeing the case, ordered the court docket to be unsealed Monday, writing: “Criminal charges against a former FBI director for his conduct while in office are of significant public interest.” He also said Comey “is aware of the criminal information and has offered to ‘self-surrender,'” so there is no need to keep the case secret in order to help the government apprehend him.The judge did not rule on the merits of the case.Two prior investigations into FBI leaksThis is not the first time that the Justice Department has sought to investigate the disclosure of classified information in connection with a 2016 Times article.Former U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, who was later appointed special counsel by Attorney General William Barr, investigated the matter in 2017, according to court filings in the case from Comey’s defense team. At the time, he determined there were two sources for the article, including James Baker, the former FBI general counsel.As part of that investigation, Baker said the FBI’s chief of staff instructed him to provide the information and he understood it was being conveyed at Comey’s instruction.Durham ultimately did not recommend Baker or anyone else for prosecution.Baker could not be immediately reached for comment.The matter was later investigated a second time — in that case by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia under an investigation code-named Tropic Vortex. That was closed in February 2020, also without charges, according to court papers.Comey and TrumpThe Justice Department filed the criminal information in early October, about a month before the midterm elections. It marks the latest overt investigative step taken by the Justice Department in a politically charged case, a maneuver that runs counter to longstanding norms.Mr. Trump and Comey have had a contentious relationship for nearly a decade, dating back to when the president fired the former FBI chief early in his first term. His firing is what prompted then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation dogged Mr. Trump for much of his first term.The two have exchanged barbs since then, with Mr. Trump calling Comey a “dirty cop” and repeatedly arguing he should be prosecuted, while Comey called Mr. Trump “morally unfit” to be president.In September 2025, the Justice Department obtained an indictment against Comey that charged him with lying to Congress, alleging he falsely told lawmakers in a 2020 hearing that he had never authorized an FBI employee to serve as an anonymous source.The indictment was personally signed by Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump White House aide who had been sworn in as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia days earlier. Beforehand, staff in that office circulated a memo that argued charges should not be brought against Comey, CBS News has previously reported.A judge dismissed the charges on the grounds that Halligan was improperly appointed.Then, in April of this year, Comey was indicted in North Carolina on allegations that he threatened to kill Mr. Trump by posting to Instagram a photo of seashells arranged to form the numbers “86 47.” (Mr. Trump is the 47th president.)Comey has long denied wrongdoing, and his attorneys have argued the charges against him are politically motivated. They are currently seeking to have the North Carolina charges dismissed on several grounds, including that his prosecution is vindictive and selective. That matter is currently pending.Comey isn’t the only Trump foe to face criminal scrutiny. New York Attorney General Letitia James was also charged by Halligan’s office with bank fraud last year. Her indictment was tossed out along with the first Comey indictment. Prosecutors presented her case to grand juries at least twice after that, but the grand jurors declined to re-indict her.Attorney General Todd Blanche has long denied that the charges against Comey and other Trump adversaries are driven by politics. In an interview with CBS News earlier this year, he said the “86 47” indictment was driven by “local prosecutors” and “local agents.”Asked if Mr. Trump has called him up and ordered him to prosecute certain individuals, Blanche told CBS News he wouldn’t discuss his conversations with the president, but “rest assured, he has much better, bigger and important things to do than to worry about me doing my job.”This article originally appeared on CBS News at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doj-takes-steps-to-charge-james-comey/

This booking photo released by the Tennessee Department of Correction on July 24, 2025, shows Jacob Morley. – Tennessee Department of Correction/AP A 28-year-old convicted murderer serving a life sentence escaped through a Tennessee prison’s fence Sunday evening before stealing a truck and driving off — and has not yet been located, according to Tennessee authorities. Around 11:30 p.m. on October 25, staff at the Northwest Correctional Complex learned Jacob Morley was missing, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. He had been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, evading arrest and vandalism. Security camera footage later revealed Morley “breached the perimeter fence” and left the facility wearing his prison uniform, the department said. It remains unclear how he escaped through the fence. Video obtained by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation shows Morley stealing a white 2008 Ford F-350 with Tennessee plates around 1 a.m. on October 26, the agency said. unknown content item – The Hornbeak Fire Department, which is about 15 miles from the Northwest Correctional Complex, said it captured video of Morley passing in front of the fire department building in the stolen truck around 1:18 a.m. Morley is the second inmate to escape from the Tennessee Department of Correction’s custody in the past week. Morley was convicted of first-degree murder for the killing of Cody Birchfield, who was initially reported missing in February 2022, according to the Carter County Sheriff’s Office. Birchfield’s body was found in a box under Morley’s house weeks after he went missing, The Associated Press reported. Morley also led police on a chase that ended in North Carolina after he found deputies at his home in 2022, according to authorities. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which has added Morley to its “Most Wanted” list, is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to his arrest. The Northwest Correctional Complex can house up to 1,776 male inmates, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. CNN’s Amanda Jackson contributed to this report. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.comThis article originally appeared on CNN at https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/26/us/convicted-murder-serving-life-sentence-escapes-from-tennessee-prison

Smoke rises from a residential neighborhood in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in the Kherson region of Ukraine in a video the Ukrainian 34th Separate Marine Brigade released Sept. 22. (Ukrainian 34th Separate Marine Brigade / via AP)A rare humanitarian ceasefire brokered by first lady Melania Trump to save people trapped in a Russian-occupied Ukrainian town went into effect early Tuesday.After months of warnings from Ukrainian officials about an unraveling humanitarian catastrophe in the front-line town of Oleshky, in the southern Kherson region, the White House announced last week that the first lady had secured a pause in the fighting. The agreement would “temporarily stop all military action in Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid to enter and to prepare a civilian evacuation through a designated safe passageway,” it said. Hours after it began at 3 a.m. local time (9 p.m. ET Monday) the ceasefire appeared to be holding, with the two sides conducting attacks elsewhere but not in Oleshky. Neither side has indicated when the temporary truce would end. “An important humanitarian mission has begun in Oleshky. A bilateral ceasefire has been declared in the area where the mission is taking place,” the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Kyrylo Budanov, said Tuesday in a post on X. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement that its forces had ceased firing at the agreed time “in connection with preparations for a humanitarian operation” in Oleshky.Destroyed cars on a highway from Oleshky on Sept. 30. (Ukrainian 34th Separate Marine Brigade “Borysfen” via AP)The rare humanitarian agreement comes amid renewed pressure from President Donald Trump on Kyiv to agree to a deal to end the war, which began when Russia ⁠invaded Ukraine in February 2022.Ukraine complained of gaps in intelligence sharing from the U.S. and a slowdown of Elon Musk’s Starlink service, both of which it says have now been restored. It has also said the U.S. is holding up supplies of crucial interceptor missiles.Earlier this month, Trump also agreed a deal allowing Russia to supply diesel to the global market, in an apparent bid to lower prices ahead of the midterm elections. The move, and his later waiving of sanctions, reversed years of American policy and raised alarm in Ukraine and Europe.But in a rare intervention from the first lady, the White House quoted her as saying last week that Oleshky was “on the brink of disaster” and its remaining population, composed primarily of elderly residents, was in urgent need of medical attention, medicine, food and clean water.“The people of Oleshky have limited electricity, live amid mined roads, and endure regular military attacks,” she said. “It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible.”Civilian representatives from both sides will visit the town, which had a population of around 24,000 people before the war, to determine the level of assistance the remaining residents require, the statement said. An “impartial American media organization” will document the process to ensure “that the wishes of each family are faithfully respected,” it added. Both sides blame each other for the crisis in Oleshky.Kyiv has accused Russian forces of mining nearby roads and using the remaining residents as human shields to prevent Ukraine’s army from conducting offensive operations in the town. Meanwhile, Russia has blamed Ukraine for “laying siege to the town” with drone strikes and preventing humanitarian aid from getting in. Last month, the Kremlin acknowledged problems with food and medical ​supplies getting into Oleshky, saying its military was working to resolve them. Ukrainian media has for months been featuring interviews with people who have managed to escape Oleshky and spoken to relatives of those who remain there — an estimated 2,000 people, including children. Some said the town was on the verge of starvation and residents were relying on homegrown produce to survive. Others had reportedly resorted to eating grass. With winter looming, fears of famine are growing in the town where communication is difficult because of a severely compromised internet and cellphone service in the area. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which has been documenting the crisis for months, said there have been no food deliveries to the town since the end of May. The ceasefire is likely to last several days as the Russian side has to “clear the roads of mines,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview with Ukraine’s TSN TV channel Sunday, adding that his forces would have to verify the area is clear. “There is no doubt that Russia will do everything it can to clear the roads of mines so that these people head toward Russia and stay there. They are not going to simply let people go,” he said. Oleshky, like a large portion of the Kherson region, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early weeks of the invasion. Drone footage of the town, shared by Ukraine’s 34th Separate Marine Brigade “Borysfen” last month and verified by NBC News, shows the charred ruins of desolate residential and administrative buildings inside the town, in a rare look at the level of destruction.Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, shared another video earlier this month, geolocated by NBC News, showing residents leaving Oleshky on foot, bicycles and mopeds in what he said was a desperate search for food. He said they faced the impossible choice of being blown up on a mine or dying from hunger.Their plight received international attention in recent weeks after Pope Leo XIV directly raised the growing crisis with Putin, and European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno went on a hunger strike, saying “the people of Oleshky cannot be abandoned.”While both Kyiv and Moscow have unilaterally announced Easter or Christmas ceasefires before, they did not revolve around a humanitarian crisis and have not involved open mediation by the U.S., making the Oleshky ceasefire an unprecedented halting of fire between the two sides. The ceasefire could serve as a model for similar humanitarian arrangements in other areas, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, especially given the “highly positive” American involvement, including the first lady. Melania Trump has been involved in the humanitarian campaign to bring back Ukrainian children taken by Russia, and the White House statement said she leveraged the “communication channel” established through those efforts to bring about a humanitarian ceasefire in Oleshky. This article was originally published on NBCNews.comThis article originally appeared on NBC News at https://www.nbcnews.com/world/ukraine/ceasefire-brokered-melania-trump-comes-effect-russian-occupied-town-br-rcna605667

A federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration’s late-breaking effort to force California to separate mail-in ballots from 20,000 purported noncitizens.A 2-1 ruling from a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Justice Department improperly circumvented a lower-court judge who had scheduled a hearing on the matter on Tuesday and moved too slowly to seek emergency relief.“[T]he United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application for a Temporary Restraining Order,” the majority wrote. “The United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one.”Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, joined Judge Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, in turning down the administration’s emergency appeal. Judge Patrick Bumatay, another Trump appointee, dissented and said he would have granted the request.Though the outcome was foreshadowed in a hearing Sunday in which the judges appeared skeptical of their power to take up the Trump administration’s case, the dissent by Bumatay created a surprising split.Bumatay said the Trump administration’s view — that a federal criminal law barring voting by noncitizens superseded California’s election procedures — would likely prevail in the end, and that every day without relief from the courts increased the likelihood that noncitizens’ votes would be improperly counted in the midterm elections.“The question—does the federal government have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections?” Bumatay wrote. “Under both federal law and the Constitution, the answer must be “yes.” Simply, the federal government has a sovereign interest in safeguarding federal elections and ensuring that the votes of noncitizens do not undermine our electoral results.”In a separate concurrence, Bennett rebutted Bumatay’s position, arguing that the Justice Department would likely fail on the substance of its lawsuit. Bennett said the Trump administration “has offered no workable plan of any kind as to how the remedy it seeks could be accomplished in practice without potential catastrophic consequences to California’s ongoing election.”California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and 2028 presidential contender, called the ruling “a positive development and a welcome speed bump to Trump’s disgusting attacks on the Constitution and our country’s democracy.”“Trump is illegally trying to seize powers in the Constitution entrusted to others so he can stay in power,” Newsom said in a statement. “This lawsuit is just the latest step.”U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, has scheduled a hearing on the Trump administration’s restraining order request for Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles.The Trump administration had the opportunity to ask a larger group of 9th Circuit judges to take up the appeal, but did not do so before a deadline the court set. The appeals court formally released the case back to Carter Monday night, allowing him to proceed with his hearing as planned.The Justice Department could still file an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court or launch a new round of appeals if Carter turns down the administration’s request.A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.This article originally appeared on Politico at https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/26/california-election-ballots-justice-department-ruling