“Netanyahu knew.” That was the verdict of Israeli newspaper Haaretz on allegations that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned about the 7 October attacks. The longtime prime minister is on the defensive less than 30 days before crucial elections, amid a string of claims that Arab officials told him a violent assault was being plotted. Netanyahu has dismissed the reports as an “absolute lie” and threatened to sue the paper.

What are the claims?
The allegations “began to trickle out” last month, when Haaretz published an excerpt from a book called “Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment”, said The Washington Post. Written by two Israeli journalists, the book details an encrypted call reportedly made by the Emirati president, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, also known as MBZ, less than two weeks before 7 October 2023 to warn Netanyahu about a planned attack. Netanyahu did not pass on the warnings to his security aides, according to the journalists, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval.

The PM also got an attack warning from Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, according to The Wall Street Journal. Kamel is said to have flown to Israel to inform security officials in person that Hamas was planning a major assault and then allegedly phoned Netanyahu just days before 7 October.

What does Netanyahu say?
Netanyahu has strongly denied ever receiving any warning of an attack. The Israeli leader said the report that he was warned by MBZ was an “absolute lie” and denies having spoken to the Emirati leader at that time.

Netanyahu has tried to “shift the blame” for not being alerted of the attacks to the former head of Israel’s internal security service, Ronen Bar, said Al Jazeera. Bar announced last month that he would sue the PM, a “longtime political nemesis”, for defamation over the claims.

How might they affect the election?
Polling suggests the events surrounding the attacks, and “questions over responsibility for security failures that preceded them”, are “important issues” for voters ahead of this month’s parliamentary elections, said Al Jazeera. Many of Netanyahu’s electoral rivals have promised to immediately establish an independent commission of inquiry if elected. 

Formula 1 will race in Africa for the first time since 1993, as Rwanda lands a 10-year deal to stage the African Grand Prix from the early 2030s. Both Morocco and South Africa also harboured ambitions to host a Grand Prix on the continent, but Rwanda was the first to produce a coherent and viable plan. Yet the country is a “political hot potato”, with “question marks” over its human rights record, said The Telegraph. Some critics of the “landmark deal” are accusing F1 organisers of being “morally tone-deaf”.

‘Expanding markets’
Over the past decade, F1 has “dramatically changed its approach” to its racing calendar and started “to focus on expanding markets” amid a “boom in popularity”, said The Athletic. Three races are now run in the US, and this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix was hosted in Malaysia. With more than 100 million fans across Africa, a return to the continent has been on the organisation’s radar “for a number of years”.

“There is little doubt that courting international sport is central to promoting Rwanda’s regional and global aspirations,” said The Telegraph. The country has already spent more than £190 million on international standard facilities that include a national sports stadium, a basketball arena, a golf course and a cricket stadium. And the investment has already paid “dividends”. Rwanda has hosted the NBA’s Basketball Africa League since 2021 and was the stage for the annual Fifa Congress in 2023. Last year, it became the first African nation to host cycling’s Road World Championships.

‘Accusations of sportswashing’
“Of more relevance” is “Rwanda’s human rights record and long-held accusations of sportswashing”, said The Independent. It’s “far from the only country on the F1 calendar” with questions over its human rights record, said The Telegraph. The sport has also “come under fire” for racing in China, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Other major sports that have done deals with Rwanda include football. Arsenal only recently ended a partnership deal with Visit Rwanda “following intense pressure”, not least from fans, over the country’s support of the M23 militia in conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But Aston Villa, Paris Saint-Germain, Atlético Madrid and Bayern Munich all have ongoing deals, as do US basketball team the LA Clippers and American football’s LA Rams.

A young bull elephant sprays zebras at a waterhole in the Kenyan Chyulu Hills, in a photograph by the UK’s James Lewin. The image topped the Animals in their Environment category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year and will be displayed alongside the other winners at London’s Natural History Museum from Friday.

James Lewin / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Jimmy McGovern’s prison dramas are always a “difficult watch”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph, but his third and final instalment of “Time” is a “horror story”.  The new series is set in the “roiling hell” of a young offenders’ institution, where the inmates are routinely locked up for 23 hours a day to stop them from attacking each other. The only returning character is Marie-Louise (Siobhan Finneran), the “non-judgemental” prison chaplain who brings a “stillness and kindness which act as much-needed respite from the chaos”.

David Tennant gives “one of his best-ever performances” as corrections officer Bobby Bailey, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Although “wearied by the job” and returning home each day to an unhappy marriage, he is “not entirely devoid of compassion for the lads in his care”. Many of the young actors are making their TV debut, but the quality of their performances is “astonishing”. This portrait of masculinity “probably won’t garner the attention that Jack Thorne’s ‘Adolescence’ did. But it should.”

The series is “not entirely without fault”, said Abby Robinson in Radio Times. Some of the dialogue in the closing scenes feels “at odds with the more grounded style” of the rest of the show, and there is one “unforeseen moment that feels unnecessarily cruel and designed to provoke a reaction, rather than further” the key themes. In all, though, “Time” is a “moving, tense and riveting watch”. This latest “urgent” instalment “cements its place as one of the most important shows on British television”.

Trump turns to the politics of fear as GOP hopes darken
Stephen Collinson on CNN
The US midterms are “getting ugly”, writes Stephen Collinson. As Republicans’ prospects wither, they’re singling out Democratic candidates “as weird” or “threatening”. Donald Trump keeps claiming a Texan nominee is a vegan, which is “incompatible with the carnivorous Lone Star State”. And in “searing racially derogatory rhetoric”, he’s called Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed “a jihadist”, in a bid “to frighten voters into thinking” the Democrat is “a security threat”. It’s “an intellectually low form of politics”, but “Republicans lack a better story to tell”.

In a dismal job market for young people, parental anxiety isn’t helping
Philippa Perry on The Nerve
Parents “don’t understand” how sharply graduate hiring has fallen, writes psychotherapist Philippa Perry. Some “assume their kids can’t be trying hard enough”, but the “old advice” to “get your foot in the door” and work up is pointless when the ladder has no bottom rung. So cheer your child on, but resist the urge to rescue: the last thing “someone whose confidence is already being knocked about by rejection” needs is “evidence that their parents can manage adult life better than they can”.

So, perhaps I was a little too generous to Jeffrey Archer
Matthew Parris in The Times
“Crikey! I had no idea what a tsunami of indignation I was inviting” when I said the late Jeffrey Archer was “devoid of malice”, writes Matthew Parris. I’ve been inundated with stories of his “vindictiveness” towards those “who got on the wrong side of him”. Clearly, he could “be very nasty indeed”, and “he behaved like a cad” in lying about “the sex worker he consorted with”. But I still think we often “have a soft spot” for “rascals who radiate cheerfulness”.