“At the start of the war, we bombed everything,” one soldier says. “ [collateral damage] wasn’t an issue.”
The goal, says another soldier, “was quantity, not quality”.
This is some of the gripping testimony from Israeli soldiers who appear in the new documentary , filmed on rooftops in Tel Aviv, their faces in shadow to conceal their identities.
Elon Musk unveils ‘flying’ Tesla
Tesla has showcased its latest iteration of its Roadster electric sports car. Elon Musk says the vehicle, which could become the fastest car ever made, can “fly”.
New features
Livestreamed online, the reveal showcased the at a test site in Texas on Thursday evening. The roadster was equipped with , designed in partnership with Musk’s aerospace company, Space X.
It also features an which allowed the car to cling to a vertical ramp and even drive upside down, as well as a and a with a and .
How fast will it go?
Tesla claims
0.81 secs
Tesla says the Roadster 2 will boast a 0-60 mile per hour (mph) time of 0.81 seconds.
If achieved, that would put it ever made.
230mph
It also claims the car will have a top speed of over 230 mph (370 km per hour)
Can it fly? Sort of…
During Thursday’s demonstration, the thrusters were used to lift the car off the ground, before it rotated in mid-air over a row of other vehicles and landed back down to earth on all four wheels.
The car also used its thrusters to control its landing after driving up and launching off a vertical ramp.
Musk hails ‘flying car’
- “Turns out the future does have flying cars,” Musk said afterwards.
- The original Roadster, released in 2008 and on sale until 2012, was Tesla’s first electric vehicle.
- This model, first teased in 2017 but routinely delayed, is said to be focused on ultra-high performance.
- Tesla has claimed production, originally slated for 2020 will commence in 2028.
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What else do we know?
In 2017, Musk claimed the Roadster 2 would be “the fastest sports car ever made, period”. In 2024, he said it would travel 1,000km (620 miles) on a single charge.
Aside from the production timeline of 2028, no further information on pricing or powertrain has been revealed. Some reports suggest it is set to be priced at upwards of $200,000 (upwards of £150,000).
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Watch: Musk unveils ‘flying’ car
All you need to know as Trump brands Zelensky ‘a disgrace’
Ukraine’s resumptions of strikes on Russian refineries is a “disgrace” that keeps global energy prices high, Donald Trump has said.
Ukraine renews strikes
The deteriorating relationship between Ukraine and the US hit another low on Thursday. Declaring that Kyiv was breaking a ceasefire covering energy sites that Trump had announced, in order to renew strikes on Russian oil refineries, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticised his American counterpart’s deal-making with Moscow.
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After Ukraine struck a Rosneft refinery southeast of Moscow which helps supply the Russian capital, Trump said of Zelensky: “All he’s doing is making the world oil price higher. Well, I think that’s a disgrace.”
“There are a lot of targets you can hit, but when you shoot at diesel refineries where you make, you know, diesel oil, and we need that, the world needs that, he’s not doing a good service for the world,” he added.
Ukraine’s patience runs out
- Trump also said he is “not a big fan” of Zelensky, who he finds “more difficult to deal with than Putin.”
- Zelensky said Ukraine’s patience ran out as Russia continued to strike energy facilities in spite of Trump’s supposed ceasefire.
- It also came after Ukraine claimed earlier this week that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had imposed a speed limit on its Starlink terminals mounted on Ukrainian drones.
Inside Trump’s destructive feud with Zelensky
The great personal clash of this conflict is not between the entrenched protagonists, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, but between a Ukrainian leader facing a fifth winter of war and a US President whose tepid support for Kyiv has morphed into all-out hostility.
Norwegian teen hitman hired by Iran-backed gang jailed for 20 years
A teenage hitman from Norway has been locked up for 20 years for plotting a murder on British soil on behalf of an Iran-backed international crime gang.
What happened?
was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court on Friday to 20 years in prison for plotting a killing on British soil on behalf of an Iran-backed international crime gang.
Natland, 19, had agreed to shoot an unknown target for 25,000 euros (£21,500) in March last year. The court heard Natland was a “popular” student and talented footballer before he “went off the rails”.
How it unfolded
Natland is said to have been controlled by an English-speaking boss called Agent 47.
- He took a flight from Stavanger to Manchester Airport on a temporary passport on .
- Natland was stopped by Border Force officials, who bailed him to return to the airport for the next direct flight home.
- He instead took a taxi to Huddersfield, where he picked up £2,000 in cash, two guns and bullets.
- Natland was directed to a stolen Nissan with false plates for use in the killing.
- In his hotel room, he bragged of having “bangs in the bag” to his girlfriend and took selfies with the guns and cash.
- At 5.15am the next day, armed police arrived to arrest him.
In a ‘pickle’
- Natland, who emerged smiling in boxer shorts, pretended to shoot an officer with his empty hands.
- Police seized a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, 12 rounds of live ammunition, gloves and the cash.
- Natland admitted possessing the firearms and ammunition.
- He claimed he would have shot himself in the foot to get out of the “pickle” he was in.
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Who was Natland working for?
The court heard Natland was referred to as “Generalen” who was working for the proscribed Swedish Foxtrot gang, which is backed by the Iranian regime and is known for deploying children as young as 13 in drug smuggling and violent crimes.
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Giving evidence before he was found guilty of conspiracy to murder, Natland claimed he wanted to look “cool” to his peers, but it was just “bravado” and .
Despite having supportive parents, Natland’s life went downhill after he became addicted to drugs and he was placed in rehab and a care home, the court heard. Paul Hynes KC, defending, highlighted Natland’s young age at the time of the offending and claimed he did not present a danger in the future.
Other charges
- “Generalen”, Natland’s 17-year-old recruiter, was convicted in Norway of attempting to “contribute to murder” in May last year.
- Three more people have been charged by Norwegian police. A decision is yet to be taken by prosecutors on indicting them.
- The identity and whereabouts of Agent 47 remain unknown.
Father fined after son’s fatal fall from Cyprus hotel
A British man has been handed a 3,000-euro (£2,500) fine after his two-year-old son fell nearly 40 feet to his death from the fourth-floor window of a hotel in Cyprus.
What happened?
Joshua Foster thought the window of their holiday apartment was closed when he placed the boy on a sill to show him the view of a waterpark and “lost control” of him, the court previously heard.
The boy fell from the fourth floor of the five-star on 12 July, the first day of the family’s holiday.
More details
- Foster’s lawyer told the court the boy noticed a waterpark outside as the family waited for an elevator.
- The lawyer said Foster pushed the lift button, placed the child on the windowsill and the “inconceivable” unfolded before he could react.
- Foster thought there was protective glass and did not realise that section of the 2.85 metre (9.3ft) wide, 1.2 metre (3.9ft) high window was open, it was said.
- The boy was taken to hospital but despite efforts to resuscitate him, he was pronounced dead.
The 37-year-old auditor, whose lawyer said he has no previous convictions and showed “clear” remorse, was held in custody for eight days immediately after the incident.
Foster appeared at Paphos District Court on Friday for sentencing having pleaded guilty to a charge of causing death through a reckless, rash or dangerous act.
After holding back tears as his sentence was read out at the 25-minute hearing, Foster hugged his lawyer and parents.
Why heat pump prices are set to fall
Boiler manufacturers could face having their targets for selling heat pumps more than doubled by 2030-31 – even as ministers consider cutting the grants that help households pay for them.
What’s the latest?
It was reported on Monday that Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has been asked to identify savings at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), with hundreds of millions of pounds potentially coming from the .
The scheme offers towards eligible heat-pump installations – which can cost up to £15,000 – off the gas grid that replace oil or LPG heating.
Potential impact
80,000
Since 2022, the scheme has supported nearly 80,000 heat pump installations.
Heat pumps can involve higher upfront costs than conventional gas boilers.
What now?
The potential cuts could make heat pumps harder for some households to afford.
That’s because it comes as manufacturers face stronger incentives to obtain credits for qualifying installations.
Proposed changes
- Ministers have proposed raising the target for heat pump installations in proportion to boiler sales – with payments required for falling short.
- The proposed changes would raise the target from 8 per cent of relevant boiler sales in 2026-27 to 18 per cent by 2030-31.
- Part of the Clean Heat Market Mechanism, the plans are subject to consultation and not yet final.
Lower prices?
However, industry insiders said that increased targets could actually lead to lower prices as manufacturers compete.
This happened with the electric vehicle mandate as makers offered bigger discounts if they were failing to reach their targets.
Part of wider plans
The Government says the targets were set on the basis that they could be met through supported installations in existing buildings, with eligible new-build installations providing an additional route to compliance.
The DESNZ estimates the proposed 18 per cent target would equate to up to 236,000 heat pumps in 2030-31. The Government’s wider ambition is to install over 450,000 heat pumps a year by 2030, including about 250,000 in existing homes.
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The numbers that show where Trump has really damaged his own party
Donald Trump’s popularity has plummeted this year, as the repercussions of his war with Iran drag on, hitting his Republican Party’s chances of holding on to power in next month’s crucial midterm elections.
Where Trump’s approval has fallen the most
In ruby red Texas, Trump has dropped 27 per cent from a net positive approval rating to a net negative of 21 per cent.
- 55 per cent of voters in Ohio opted
for Trump in 2024. Now polling shows
55 per cent disapprove of his performance. Other states like Kentucky, Wyoming and Oklahoma have also seen sharp drops for the President.
A knock-on effect for Republican candidates
Trump’s popularity has taken a hit in every US state, but the most dramatic declines have been in parts of the country that backed him in 2024, leaving Republican strategists scrambling to manage the fallout.
In every key battleground state, his abysmal approval ratings seem to be harming Republican candidates, while boosting their Democrat rivals.
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Which seats are up for election?
Thirty-five of 100 seats in the Senate are being contested this year, with Democrats needing to make a net gain of four to take control of the upper chamber.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, with
the Democrats likely to win a majority. Trump’s Republican Party currently holds
a majority in both chambers.
Meet the youngest generation of Trump voters now turning their backs on Maga
For the young people whose first ever presidential vote was in 2024, the past few years have proved a brutal lesson in the realities of national politics.
Why everyone seems to be sick right now
In the past few weeks, more and more people have reported coming down with a bug – complaining of a streaming nose, cough, or temperature. I wasn’t imagining it: the flu season has started earlier this year.
Early flu season
- Rates of flu infections in the UK are still relatively low, but they are rising, the UK Health Security Agency said – even though it is only October.
It means GPs – on top of the usual surge
in coughs and colds that happens when children go back to school – have seen
a broader rise in consultations for
respiratory viruses.
Why is there a winter peak?
Scientists still debate why respiratory viruses peak every winter. There are several possible reasons:
- Viruses survive for longer in colder air
- Human nasal cells may function less well in the cold
- Our tendency to mix socially indoors rather than outdoors
- Drier winter air may cause virus-laden moisture droplets to evaporate, shrink into tiny particles and float further
Global influence
Peak flu season is usually in December or January, but what’s going on in other parts
of the world can change that. Temperate countries in the Southern Hemisphere experience the same cycle in reverse,
with a flu peak in their winter – June, July
and August.
This is important because the circulating flu viruses accumulate small mutations all the time, called . The mix that predominates in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter predicts to some extent the mix that arrives in the UK a few months later.
Possible reasons
- 1One reason for flu starting early this year could be that there has been a , one of the three main circulating flu strains, said Dr Jamie Lopez Bernal, a UKHSA epidemiologist.
- 2Another explanation could be that Southern Hemisphere countries had a relatively late flu season in 2026, resulting in more people carrying the flu into the UK.
Keep an eye on it
An early start doesn’t mean the UK is necessarily headed for a worse flu season overall. The same happened last winter, yet the country ended up with a lower number of flu deaths than average.
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Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has demanded urgent action to identify and prosecute them. He has seized on the film as an issue to motivate his Likud base, with less than two weeks to go until the country’s general election on 27 October.
comes from , Hebrew for “collateral damage”. The film is a record of conversations with 24 members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), mostly, in the directors’ words, “intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians”. They used high-tech systems, including AI, to gather information, and direct the planes and drones where to bomb. We are inside the brain of the military machine that flattened Gaza and killed more than 74,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
How do you kill so many? The answer, according to the documentary, is 20 at a time. Or occasionally, 100 at a time. Twenty is said to be the number of civilian deaths Israel’s military would accept to get even a low-ranking member of Hamas; 100 for a senior member.
The interviewer, Yuval Abraham, broke the story of the kill ratio for the Tel Aviv magazine in 2024. He puts it to a silhouetted figure on a rooftop: 20 dead for each junior member of Hamas, multiplied by tens of thousands. “You end up with all of Gaza, yes,” the man replies.
One soldier describes his role in the IDF’s Unit 8200, the elite corps responsible for cyber warfare and electronic surveillance. He says he helped design the machine-learning algorithm that identifies mobile phones that may belong to Hamas operatives. Bombs were dropped where the phones were located. But in around 15 per cent of cases, the system picked out someone who had nothing to do with Hamas. He directed one strike to a phone that turned out to belong to a grandmother at home with her family.
The IDF could hack into phones and listen through their microphones. “You feel a bit like God because you hear everything they say.” One soldier describes hearing the sound of a baby inside an apartment. He directed a strike there. Another talks about hacking a 12-year-old girl’s phone to find out when her father – who was on the target list – would be home. The bomb killed the whole family. The soldier was still listening as the girl burned to death. In another case the target had gone out, leaving his phone at home. The bomb killed his family and missed him.
Israel has collected huge amounts of data on the Palestinians, who are perhaps the most surveilled people in the world. An AI system named Lavender would identify a Palestinian as a member of Hamas, and another system – called “Where’s Daddy?” – would tell the soldiers when he had come home. Bombing usually happened at night, when it was more likely the target would be at home, sleeping. But killing Hamas members in this way multiplied civilian casualties.
This did not seem to matter. Hardly anyone refused orders. One soldier recalls the atmosphere in his unit and in the country: “Everyone kept saying: ‘There are no innocent people in Gaza.’” It was a case of “whatever we do, they deserve it”. The film cuts to President Isaac Herzog, on television five days after the October 7 attack: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.”
Some of those interviewed in are stricken about what they did – some feel nothing. One soldier talks of the “insane fun” of planning air strikes – for another it was like a “video game”. A third says they were simply completing their mission. “We never thought about the people in the buildings.”
One soldier recalls a school trip to Poland, where during the Second World War the Jewish population was almost wiped out. “I asked myself how Germans could live with themselves. Now I understand… I still see the Nazis as evil… But what does that make me?”
With such sentiments voiced aloud, it is not surprising there has been a furious reaction from the Israeli government. Netanyahu has promised a bill in the Knesset to remove Israeli citizenship from anyone who “defames” the IDF. The soldiers in the film are, he maintains, at once both lying and revealing state secrets. He said: “It’s shocking. We are fighting global antisemitic incitement and when it comes from within us it is intolerable.”
Netanyahu compared the film to “dozens of ballistic missiles” fired at Israel. Abraham, the journalist behind it, accuses him of incitement to murder. “It’s obvious what you do to people who launch ballistic missiles. You kill them.”
Israeli cinemas are so far refusing to show . As Kat Lonsdorf of NPR reported, the film “has rocked the country” even though hardly anyone there has seen it.
Former hostages held in Gaza have expressed fury. Among them was Liri Albag, a soldier who was 18 when she was taken and was held for 477 days. She posted on Instagram: “You sold out your own people for people who wish for your death. And for that, there is no forgiveness.” Eliya Cohen – taken hostage at the Nova music festival – said in a video: “People need to spit on them in the streets.”
The IDF, meanwhile, issued a statement of some 4,000 words in an effort to rebut the film’s claims. It said the soldiers’ accounts dealt mainly with the “limited, initial stages” of the targeting process. An earlier IDF response had said that claims in the film were “clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers”. Discussion of inside the IDF reflected an effort “to mitigate the possibility of harm to civilians”, the statement said. It accused the filmmakers of “distorting facts, omitting essential context, ignoring previous IDF publications and explanations, and adding emotional manipulation and scripted effects”.
It concluded: “The IDF has acted and continues to act humanely, even if the filmmakers have done everything they can to conceal that fact.”
The film does paint a picture in broad strokes. There are no dates, no precise locations, no identifiable incidents to follow up and investigate. But I found the picture that emerged of the targeting process in Gaza convincing, the soldiers’ testimony believable. The film ends with video from Gaza, a father desperately calling out to his children buried under tonnes of rubble.
At the press screening, nobody moved or spoke for several minutes as the credits rolled. is hard to watch – it should be impossible to ignore.
Naza is in cinemas from 16 October