Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is scheduled to travel to Washington on Monday at the head of an official delegation for talks aimed at strengthening Iraq’s strategic and economic relationship with the United States.

Iraqi government spokesperson Haider al-Aboudi said the visit is expected to include the signing of several memorandums of understanding in the oil and gas sector, as Baghdad seeks to attract additional U.S. companies and expand its crude-production capacity.

The trip follows recent Iraqi approvals involving American energy firms, including Chevron, Halliburton and HKN, and comes as the government pursues greater foreign investment.

Israeli Tal Yinon Dardik, a resident of Kfar Tapuach in the Binyamin region in Judea & Samaria (West Bank) and father of 4, was arrested after violating a six-month administrative restriction order issued by Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Blot.

Dardik is being targeted by the leftist judicial system after establishing a strategically significant outpost about a year ago that helped prevent the takeover by Arabs of thousands of dunams of land in the area that are in administrative limbo.

Rather than allowing him to remain at home with his family, the order required him to live under full house arrest at his deaf mother-in-law's home. According to his lawyers from the Honenu legal organization, the order is impossible to implement because his mother-in-law, an elderly widow who communicates only through lip reading, was never even asked whether she agreed to host him for six months under restrictive conditions.

Attorney Adi Kedar appealed for the order to be canceled, arguing it was arbitrary, unfounded and unenforceable, but after Dardik refused to comply he was arrested.

Dardik, whose arrest came just over a week after the birth of his son, has since launched a hunger strike in protest, while Honenu has accused Israeli authorities of abusing administrative orders against Jewish settlers despite no public criminal charges having been filed.

The decision to keep Dardik in custody was made by Jerusalem District Court Judge Hagit Mack-Kalmanovitz who in a 2016 court ruling approved a request allowing convicted terrorist Musbah Abu Sbeih to postpone the start of his prison sentence by several days despite police objections, enabling him to remain free temporarily under the terms of a plea agreement supported by prosecutors.

During that period, Abu Sbeih carried out a shooting terrorist attack near Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill, killing police officer Yosef Kirma and civilian Levana Malihi before being shot dead by Israeli security forces.

Critics have since cited that decision as one of the most controversial rulings of her judicial career, and her latest decision to overturn a lower court's order releasing Tal Yinon Dardik has renewed scrutiny from activists and politicians.

🇬🇧 An Islamist terrorist linked to the 7/7 London bombings has reportedly been released from a secure mental health hospital in Britain after completing treatment.

Haroon Aswat, 50, was sentenced in the U.S. to 20 years in prison for conspiring to establish an al-Qaeda terrorist training camp in Oregon in 1999 under the direction of Abu Hamza. His sentence was later reduced after time already spent in custody before extradition.

Authorities linked Aswat to the 7/7 attacks, the coordinated suicide attacks on London's public transport system on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 people and injured more than 800, after police traced 20 phone calls between a phone associated with him and the bombers in the hours before the attacks. While in U.S. custody, he reportedly confessed to involvement in both the 7/7 London bombings and the September 11 attacks.

After being deported back to the UK in 2022, Aswat was detained at Bethlem Royal Hospital under the Mental Health Act. Court documents stated he has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, but a psychiatrist also warned that even during periods of mental stability he continued to express violent Islamist extremist ideology, concluding that "there remains the risk of Islamic violent extremism."

Despite police assessments that he "remains a risk to national security," the High Court ruled he could be released after completing treatment. The UK Home Office says appropriate measures are in place to monitor and manage any ongoing risk to public safety.

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Israel’s next Knesset (Parliament) election day has been scheduled for October 27, 2026, setting the country on course for its first national vote held on the originally prescribed date since 1988 and allowing the current parliament to complete a full four-year term.

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered that all American flags throughout the country be lowered to half-mast until 6 P.M. on Saturday, in honor of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Survivors of the March 1 Iranian Shahed-drone strike on the U.S. military operations center at Kuwait’s Port Shuaiba have accused senior Army leaders of disregarding intelligence and force-protection assessments warning that the site was a probable Iranian target and lacked adequate defenses against one-way attack drones.

The strike killed 6 Army reservists and wounded more than 30 others, while soldiers said that commanders pressured personnel to return to the operations building shortly before the attack, failed to assist visibly with rescue efforts afterward, and mishandled the evacuation and classification of wounded troops.

Army Central disputes parts of their account, saying the facility had layered defenses and that commanders assisted before being medically evacuated, but a U.S. official familiar with the completed internal review said it currently assigns no fault and recommends no punitive action, fueling survivors’ concerns that the vulnerabilities and command failures they state may go unaddressed.