Crypto News: Barriers to peace

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Benjamin Netanyahu's government, the most nationalist in Israel's history, is growing a network of physical and virtual barriers in the West Bank that makes it increasingly difficult for the 3 million Palestinians living there to move around and work.

Those curbs, along with plans for more Jewish Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law, also complicate the prospects of an independent Palestinian state one day.

The territory's changing geographic, social and economic landscape means the path to statehood, as outlined in past peace accords, has never looked so far away.

Extra restrictions, road blocks and raids by Israeli forces mean travel within the West Bank, for decades seen as the core of any future Palestinian state including Gaza, is more of a hassle and more hazardous than it has been in decades.

Palestinians survey a destroyed pavement following an Israeli raid in Nur Shams in March. Photographer: Sergey Ponomarev/Getty Images Europe

Around 150,000 Palestinians are no longer able to work in Israel. It's having a crushing effect on the West Bank's economy and also hurting Israel's construction industry. Before Hamas' attack on Israel from Gaza last year, around one-third of people on Israeli building sites were Palestinian.

Netanyahu and his ministers justify the ratcheting up of obstacles, surveillance and raids as key to protecting Israel from ever experiencing another attack like the one on Oct. 7, 2023.

At least 767 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since then — the highest toll in the territory in a calendar year, according to local health officials. Israel says most of the dead were rioters, gunmen killed in shootouts, and militants.

Critics of Israel's government say its plan is to make it impossible for a Palestinian state to take root. Some of Netanyahu's far-right coalition members openly call for annexing the West Bank and Gaza.

So far, the former territory has avoided the kind of chaos that many observers thought would be unleashed by the war in Gaza. But there's a real risk that a new generation in the West Bank, too, will be radicalized by Israel's actions.— Paul Wallace

Israeli soldiers in the West Bank last month. Photographer: Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris seized on a remark from Donald Trump that he would "protect" women if elected — whether they "like it or not" — to assail her Republican rival's stance on reproductive rights and other freedoms in an appeal to suburban and independent women.

Both campaigns are making last-ditch efforts to identify and mobilize potential supporters in the final days before what's likely to be another incredibly close election — Black women in Georgia, Latino men in Nevada or working class White people in Pennsylvania. People of Indian descent, now the biggest Asian-American group in the US, have become a compelling target as the cohort takes on a more prominent role in politics.

Russia's army is gaining speed in its advance in eastern Ukraine, seizing more land last week than at any point this year and increasing pressure on Kyiv's US and European allies to bolster its defenses. The gain of more than 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) builds on territory taken in a grinding summer offensive that's adding to deepening despondency in Ukraine about the course of the war.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves sought to reassure investors after the scale of borrowing implied in her budget plans prompted a selloff in UK bonds. The Labour government's No. 1 commitment is to "economic and fiscal stability," Reeves said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, arguing that she had put Britain's public finances "on a stable and a solid trajectory."

Affinity for the US in China is fading fast. The increased vitriol and suspicion emanating from Americans since Trump entered the White House nearly eight years ago is quickly eroding an advantage for the US: soft power influence among China's 1.4 billion people. It's also creating a wider chasm that risks pushing the nations further toward a devastating clash as tensions rise over AI chips, Russia's war in Ukraine and Taiwan.

A severe brain drain in Pakistan is hollowing out one of the world's most populous nations during its most tumultuous period in decades, pushing out accomplished citizens across industries and starving banks, hospitals and multinationals of talent and resources.

Botswana's president conceded defeat in this week's parliamentary elections, a shock outcome for Mokgweetsi Masisi that ends his party's 58-year grip on power in the diamond-rich southern African nation.

Singapore's government ramped up criticism of Lee Hsien Yang, who was recently granted asylum in the UK, accusing him of seeking to tarnish the city-state with an "international smear campaign."

The US and South Korea conducted joint air drills in a show of force after North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew longer than any previous test by Kim Jong Un's regime, adding to the tensions over its dispatch of troops to Russia.

Republican lawmakers stepped up their campaign to pressure colleges including Harvard, Northwestern and Columbia to take a stronger stance against antisemitism with a report that scrutinizes their responses to protests that erupted after last year's Hamas attack on Israel.

The 325-page document released by the House Education and the Workforce committee sought to expose what it presented as failures by elite schools to adhere to their own rules. The committee gathered more than 400,000 pages of text messages, emails and documents, some collected by subpoena.

"For over a year, the American people have watched antisemitic mobs rule over so-called elite universities, but what was happening behind the scenes is arguably worse," US Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, said yesterday.

One thing to watch today: Forecasters anticipate that the final monthly jobs report before the election will show a steady unemployment rate even as storms and strikes put a temporary dent in hiring.

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Bitcoin's push toward a record high is fizzling as Trump's election odds drop in betting markets. The digital asset sank below $69,000 today after sliding 4% — the most in a month — in the US a day earlier. Bitcoin has been dubbed a Trump trade because of the former president's tight embrace of the crypto industry, which spent big on promoting its agenda during campaigning.

Floods that killed more than 150 people in eastern Spain this week were caused by a storm that dumped a year's worth of rainfall in less than 24 hours. The tragedy has raised questions about whether earlier warnings could have prevented so many deaths, while the widespread damage shows how many cities aren't adapted to withstand rainfall amplified by climate change.

Cars piled in the street following floods in the Sedaví area of Valencia on Wednesday. Photographer: David Ramos/Getty Images Europe

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