CR MAG

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Rifles are lifted from display racks, drones hover above exhibition stands and large screens loop footage of missile launches inside the halls of Expo Tel Aviv convention center as it hosts the Defense Tech Expo Israel 2026.

The gathering brings together Israeli defense companies, foreign delegations and investors to present technologies ranging from small arms and robotics to air and missile defense systems and cyber tools.

Booths display large models of interceptors and unmanned aircraft, while representatives describe operational capabilities to potential buyers. Business meetings unfold beside screens showing battlefield simulations and promotional footage.

This year's expo reflected growing international interest in Israel's defense sector, with manufacturers promoting equipment shaped by recent conflicts.

Outside the venue, a small group of activists protested the defense and arms industry. Some demonstrators linked the exhibition to the war in Gaza, holding signs that described the territory as a "testing lab" for weapons.

Together, the scenes highlight the tension between the commercial showcase of military technology and the political debate surrounding its use.

This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

The Rev.Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and shamed corporations for their lack of corporate diversity and failure to support voting rights, has died.

Jackson was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a Democratic presidential candidate and one of the world's best-known Black activists.

He was 84 and had suffered from progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare disease that causes a decline similar to Parkinson's disease but accelerated.

"It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.," said a statement from the organization. "He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family."

Despite the illness that softened his voice and weakened his steps, Jackson had continued to advocate for civil rights and was arrested twice in 2021 over his objection to the Senate filibuster rule. That same year, he and his wife, Jacqueline,were hospitalizedwith COVID-19 complications at a Chicago hospital.

"His longevity is part of the story," said Rashad Robinson, the former president of the 7-million-member online justice organization Color of Change. "This is someone who had so many chances to do something else. And this is what he chose to do with his life."

Jackson's death comes amidst a rising tide of white nationalism and voting-rights access issues, and follows the loss of other civil rights icons, including former Rep.John Lewis, who died in 2020.

PresidentDonald Trumpsaid he'd worked with Jackson for decades, providing office space for his coalition. Jackson had previously said he and Trump had split over the fate of the Central Park Five ‒ the group of Hispanic and Black teens convicted but ultimately exonerated in the 1989 sexual assault of a woman in New York City's Central Park. Trump had taken out newspaper advertisements calling for the teens to be executed.

"Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him," Trump said in a social media post. "He loved his family greatly, and to them I send my deepest sympathies and condolences. Jesse will be missed!"

The making of a Civil Rights icon

Born in Greenville, South Carolina,Jackson's rise to prominencebegan after he and seven other men were arrested in 1960 ‒ he was 18 at the time ‒ for protesting segregation at their town's public library. He then joined King's burgeoning civil rights fight and was just feet away when King was assassinated in 1968.

Jackson founded what would ultimately become the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and ran for president as a Democrat in 1984 and 1988, energizing and registering millions of Black voters.

"As we continue in the struggle for human rights, remember that God will see us through, even in our midnight moments," Jackson said in 2017 as he announced his neuromuscular disease diagnosis.

Jackson visited Minneapolis in 2021 to support protesters awaiting the verdict in the trial ofDerek Chauvin, the former police officer who was convicted days later of killing George Floyd in an incident that set off national protests and violence.

While there, he also attended services for Daunte Wright, a Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer during a protest against police violence in a nearby suburb. Speaking in a subdued voice, Jackson reminded the young activists leading a protest march that their cause was just.

In a statement, civil rights attorney Ben Crump mourned his friend as someone who helped shape his own life. Crump has become the go-to lawyer for Black families seeking justice and represented some of Floyd's family members. Crump said Jackson helped broaden the path for people of color to shape America through politics and public life.

"Rev. Jackson conceived of a more just and inclusive America, believed in it with unwavering faith, and dedicated his entire life to achieving it – all while teaching the next generation how to carry the torch forward," Crump said. "He was an unstoppable and formidable force, proving that no opponent or battle was too big."

Born in the fall of 1941 to a teenage mother and her married neighbor, Jackson was adopted by the man his mother married, and he considered both to be his fathers. He attended a segregated high school and played football in college, dropping out a few credits short of his master's degree in divinity in 1966 to join the Civil Rights Movement full time.

By 1965, he'd marched with King and others from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to push for Black voting rights, and by 1967 was running operations for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago, the city that would become his home.

Under Jackson, the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket used boycotts and public attention to pressure companies to hire more Black workers. Jackson ultimately earned his divinity degree after being ordained a minister in 1968.

More:America was born in protest. What's changed 250 years later?

In 1983, shortly before announcing his run for president, Jackson traveled to Syria to negotiate the release of an American pilot shot down over Lebanon, and the next summer, he negotiated the release of 22 Americans and 26 political prisoners from Cuba after meeting with former dictator Fidel Castro.

His successes bolstered his presidential campaign, although he lost the 1984 Democratic primary to Walter Mondale, who went on to lose toRonald Reagan. Jackson ran again for president in 1988, putting on a strong showing but ultimately falling to Mike Dukakis, who lost to Republican George H.W. Bush.

After that second loss, Jackson shelved his own political aspirations but continued his efforts for civil rights and justice.

In 1990, Jackson opposed the pending invasion of Iraq and negotiated the release of hundreds of people whom Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had threatened to use as human shields, and then in 1999 won the release of three U.S. POWs during the Kosovo War.

'There certainly would have been no Barack Obama … no Bill Clinton either'

Robinson, the former president of Color of Change, remembers listening and watching as his family members made their first political donations after listening to one of Jackson's presidential campaign speeches.

"I didn't understand everything he said, but I understood what it meant," said Robinson, who later wrote a college paper on Jackson's campaigns. "He was such a possibility model. There are so many people who are in politics today who would not be where they are today thanks to Jesse Jackson. There certainly would be no Barack Obama if there was no Jesse Jackson. And there would have been no Bill Clinton either."

In 2000, Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his decades of work to make the world a better place.

More:Jesse Jackson: Five key moments in Civil Rights icon's career

"It's hard to imagine how we could have come as far as we have without the creative power, the keen intellect, the loving heart, and the relentless passion of Jesse Lewis Jackson," Clinton said.

Trahern Crews, who helped found the Black Lives Matter-Minnesota chapter, said he grew up with Jackson's "I am Somebody" recitations ringing in his ears. Jackson often led crowds in a call-and-answer chant that usually included variations on "I may be poor … but I am … Somebody. I may be young … but I am … Somebody."

"That allowed future generations to stand up and follow and his footsteps and declare Black Lives Matter and recognize our humanity," Crews said. "When we go back and watch videos of Rev. Jesse Jackson marching and fighting for housing rights, voting rights, ending housing discrimination, and said, 'I am Somebody,' that encouraged activists of today to stand up and fight against 400 years of racist policies in the United States."

Jackson's family includes his wife of 63 years, Jacqueline "Jackie" Jackson, and six children: Santita, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Yusef, Jacqueline and Ashley. In 1999,he fathered a childwith Karin Stanford, the director of the Washington bureau of his organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He first publicly acknowledged his daughter, Ashley, in 2001 and apologized for his affair.

Kristen Clarke, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights under the Biden-era Department of Justice, said in a statement that Jackson helped make America a more just nation.

"A tireless and extraordinary public servant, his charge to all of us was to stay hopeful, keep up the good fight and respect the dignity and humanity of all people," Clarke said. "Jackson has been, and will always be, a central part of the story regarding America's ongoing quest for justice and equality.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Jesse Jackson dies after long illness. Civil Rights icon was 84.

By Matthias Williams

Feb 17 (Reuters) - Migrants in Libya, including young girls, are at risk of being killed, tortured, raped or put into domestic slavery, according to a U.N. report that called for ‌a moratorium on the return of migrant boats to the country until human rights are ensured.

Libya has ‌become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the Mediterranean since the fall in 2011 of dictator Muammar Gaddafi ​to a NATO-backed uprising. Factional conflict has split the country into western and eastern factions since 2014.

In recent years, the EU and EU member states have supported and trained the Libyan coastguard, which returns migrants stopped at sea to detention centres, and have funded Libyan border management programmes.

A report published on Tuesday by the U.N. Human Rights Office and the U.N. ‌Support Mission said migrants are rounded up ⁠and abducted by criminal trafficking networks, often with ties to the Libyan authorities and criminal networks abroad.

"They are separated from their families, arrested, and transferred to detention facilities without due ⁠process, often at gunpoint, in what amounts to arbitrary detention," Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson of the U.N. Human Rights Office, told a briefing in Geneva.

The Libya mission in Geneva and the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity did not immediately respond to a request ​for ​comment. Libyan authorities have previously denied any systematic abuse of migrants.

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A ​spokesperson for the EU Commission did not immediately ‌respond to a request for comment.

The report is based on interviews with almost 100 migrants, asylum seekers and refugees from 16 countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. They were interviewed inside and outside Libya.

It cited an Eritrean woman who was detained for over six weeks at a trafficking house in Tobruk, in eastern Libya. "I wish I died. It was a journey of hell," she said.

"Different men raped me many times. Girls as young as ‌14 were raped daily," she said. The perpetrators released her after ​her family paid a ransom.

The report, covering the period January 2024 ​to December 2025, described instances of a man being ​forced to work without pay or enough food, and of girls being separated from their ‌mothers.

"Men used humiliating methods with women, making them, ​for example, take their clothes ​off in front of other men and women migrants before raping them publicly, torturing them, and beating them," Suki Nagra, U.N. Human Rights representative at the U.N. mission in Libya, told the Geneva briefing.

The report ​emphasised the importance of life-saving search and ‌rescue operations for migrants at sea but urged the international community to halt returns to Libya ​until adequate human rights safeguards are ensured.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Matthias Williams, additional reporting by ​Amina Ismail in Brussels, editing by Thomas Seythal, Alexandra Hudson)

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru's Congress was set to vote Tuesday on a motion to remove interim President José Jerí as prosecutors look intoallegations of corruption involving unreported meetingsbetween Jerí and two Chinese businessmen.

If the legislators secure a majority, Jerí will be ousted from the presidency a mere four months into his term. His removal would trigger yet another transition, forcing the legislature to appoint a new leader and marking a volatile new chapter in Peruvian politics just two months before national elections.

Jerí is the seventh president to lead the nation in the past decade. Hewas sworn into office in October, after his predecessor was ousted by Congress over corruption allegations and a rise in violent crime. He now faces removal from office from his former colleagues in Congress, who have accused him of misconduct and lack of capacity to carry out his presidential duties.

The 39-year-old interim president said he was hopeful he would survive the vote.

"I'm not dead yet," Jerí said during an interview over the weekend on Peruvian television Panamericana, insisting he would continue to serve the people of Peru until his "last day" in the presidential palace.

If he is removed from office, the legislators will choose a new president from among their members to govern until July 28, when he the interim leader will hand over the office to the winner of the April 12 presidential election.

In turn, Jerí will return to his position as a legislator until July 28, when the new Congress also takes office.

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It is also possible that the legislators will not vote for removal. The president is supported by the Fuerza Popular party, led bypresidential candidate Keiko Fujimorithe daughter of a former president who was imprisoned for human rights abuses.

The accusations against Jerí stem from a leaked report regarding a clandestine December meeting with two Chinese executives. One attendee holds active government contracts, while the other is currently under investigation for alleged involvement in an illegal logging operation.

Jerí has denied wrongdoing. He said he met the executives to organize a Peruvian-Chinese festivity, but his opponents have accused him of corruption.

The crisis is the latest chapter in a prolonged political collapse in a country that has seenseven presidents since 2016, and is about to hold a general election amid widespread public outcry over a surge in violent crime.

Despite a revolving door of presidents, Peru's economy has remained stable.

The Andean nation had an external debt to gross domestic product ratio of 32% in 2024, one of the lowest in Latin America, and the government has welcomed foreign investment in areas like mining and infrastructure.

Follow AP's coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean athttps://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The Rev.Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and shamed corporations for their lack of corporate diversity and failure to support voting rights, has died.

Jackson was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a Democratic presidential candidate and one of the world's best-known Black activists.

He was 84 and had suffered from progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare disease that causes a decline similar to Parkinson's disease but accelerated.

"It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.," said a statement from the organization. "He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family."

Despite the illness that softened his voice and weakened his steps, Jackson had continued to advocate for civil rights and was arrested twice in 2021 over his objection to the Senate filibuster rule. That same year, he and his wife, Jacqueline,were hospitalizedwith COVID-19 complications at a Chicago hospital.

"His longevity is part of the story," said Rashad Robinson, the former president of the 7-million-member online justice organization Color of Change. "This is someone who had so many chances to do something else. And this is what he chose to do with his life."

Jackson's death comes amidst a rising tide of white nationalism and voting-rights access issues, and follows the loss of other civil rights icons, including former Rep.John Lewis, who died in 2020.

PresidentDonald Trumpsaid he'd worked with Jackson for decades, providing office space for his coalition. Jackson had previously said he and Trump had split over the fate of the Central Park Five ‒ the group of Hispanic and Black teens convicted but ultimately exonerated in the 1989 sexual assault of a woman in New York City's Central Park. Trump had taken out newspaper advertisements calling for the teens to be executed.

"Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him," Trump said in a social media post. "He loved his family greatly, and to them I send my deepest sympathies and condolences. Jesse will be missed!"

The making of a Civil Rights icon

Born in Greenville, South Carolina,Jackson's rise to prominencebegan after he and seven other men were arrested in 1960 ‒ he was 18 at the time ‒ for protesting segregation at their town's public library. He then joined King's burgeoning civil rights fight and was just feet away when King was assassinated in 1968.

Jackson founded what would ultimately become the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and ran for president as a Democrat in 1984 and 1988, energizing and registering millions of Black voters.

"As we continue in the struggle for human rights, remember that God will see us through, even in our midnight moments," Jackson said in 2017 as he announced his neuromuscular disease diagnosis.

Jackson visited Minneapolis in 2021 to support protesters awaiting the verdict in the trial ofDerek Chauvin, the former police officer who was convicted days later of killing George Floyd in an incident that set off national protests and violence.

While there, he also attended services for Daunte Wright, a Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer during a protest against police violence in a nearby suburb. Speaking in a subdued voice, Jackson reminded the young activists leading a protest march that their cause was just.

In a statement, civil rights attorney Ben Crump mourned his friend as someone who helped shape his own life. Crump has become the go-to lawyer for Black families seeking justice and represented some of Floyd's family members. Crump said Jackson helped broaden the path for people of color to shape America through politics and public life.

"Rev. Jackson conceived of a more just and inclusive America, believed in it with unwavering faith, and dedicated his entire life to achieving it – all while teaching the next generation how to carry the torch forward," Crump said. "He was an unstoppable and formidable force, proving that no opponent or battle was too big."

Born in the fall of 1941 to a teenage mother and her married neighbor, Jackson was adopted by the man his mother married, and he considered both to be his fathers. He attended a segregated high school and played football in college, dropping out a few credits short of his master's degree in divinity in 1966 to join the Civil Rights Movement full time.

By 1965, he'd marched with King and others from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to push for Black voting rights, and by 1967 was running operations for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago, the city that would become his home.

Under Jackson, the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket used boycotts and public attention to pressure companies to hire more Black workers. Jackson ultimately earned his divinity degree after being ordained a minister in 1968.

More:America was born in protest. What's changed 250 years later?

In 1983, shortly before announcing his run for president, Jackson traveled to Syria to negotiate the release of an American pilot shot down over Lebanon, and the next summer, he negotiated the release of 22 Americans and 26 political prisoners from Cuba after meeting with former dictator Fidel Castro.

His successes bolstered his presidential campaign, although he lost the 1984 Democratic primary to Walter Mondale, who went on to lose toRonald Reagan. Jackson ran again for president in 1988, putting on a strong showing but ultimately falling to Mike Dukakis, who lost to Republican George H.W. Bush.

After that second loss, Jackson shelved his own political aspirations but continued his efforts for civil rights and justice.

In 1990, Jackson opposed the pending invasion of Iraq and negotiated the release of hundreds of people whom Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had threatened to use as human shields, and then in 1999 won the release of three U.S. POWs during the Kosovo War.

'There certainly would have been no Barack Obama … no Bill Clinton either'

Robinson, the former president of Color of Change, remembers listening and watching as his family members made their first political donations after listening to one of Jackson's presidential campaign speeches.

"I didn't understand everything he said, but I understood what it meant," said Robinson, who later wrote a college paper on Jackson's campaigns. "He was such a possibility model. There are so many people who are in politics today who would not be where they are today thanks to Jesse Jackson. There certainly would be no Barack Obama if there was no Jesse Jackson. And there would have been no Bill Clinton either."

In 2000, Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his decades of work to make the world a better place.

More:Jesse Jackson: Five key moments in Civil Rights icon's career

"It's hard to imagine how we could have come as far as we have without the creative power, the keen intellect, the loving heart, and the relentless passion of Jesse Lewis Jackson," Clinton said.

Trahern Crews, who helped found the Black Lives Matter-Minnesota chapter, said he grew up with Jackson's "I am Somebody" recitations ringing in his ears. Jackson often led crowds in a call-and-answer chant that usually included variations on "I may be poor … but I am … Somebody. I may be young … but I am … Somebody."

"That allowed future generations to stand up and follow and his footsteps and declare Black Lives Matter and recognize our humanity," Crews said. "When we go back and watch videos of Rev. Jesse Jackson marching and fighting for housing rights, voting rights, ending housing discrimination, and said, 'I am Somebody,' that encouraged activists of today to stand up and fight against 400 years of racist policies in the United States."

Jackson's family includes his wife of 63 years, Jacqueline "Jackie" Jackson, and six children: Santita, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Yusef, Jacqueline and Ashley. In 1999,he fathered a childwith Karin Stanford, the director of the Washington bureau of his organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He first publicly acknowledged his daughter, Ashley, in 2001 and apologized for his affair.

Kristen Clarke, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights under the Biden-era Department of Justice, said in a statement that Jackson helped make America a more just nation.

"A tireless and extraordinary public servant, his charge to all of us was to stay hopeful, keep up the good fight and respect the dignity and humanity of all people," Clarke said. "Jackson has been, and will always be, a central part of the story regarding America's ongoing quest for justice and equality.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Jesse Jackson dies after long illness. Civil Rights icon was 84.