Nationwide support for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance has collapsed to a historic low following a series of defeats in regional elections, a new poll has suggested.

The bloc’s popular backing stood at just 18%, its worst result in Germany’s postwar history, according to a survey conducted by the INSA polling institution on behalf of Bild.

The poll put the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 30%, its highest result since the party was established in 2013. It remains the most popular party in Germany by a wide margin, the poll suggested. The CDU/CSU’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats and the Greens are polling at 14% each, and the Left Party is at 10%.

The survey was conducted between September 28 and October 2 among 1,202 eligible voters, with the results published on Saturday.

Merz has been described as Germany’s least popular head of government in some 30 years. He came to power following snap elections in February 2025, promising to revive Germany’s struggling economy, but has since poured more money into the military while blaming some of the country’s economic problems on Germans themselves.

The survey also came after the CDU suffered defeats to the AfD in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, results Merz described as a “disaster.” The right-wing party won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt and 38.3% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The CDU finished a distant second in Saxony-Anhalt with 17.5% and failed to clear the electoral threshold in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where it received just 4.9%.

Despite the defeats, Merz maintained he would not change trajectory and will keep focusing on military buildup and antagonizing Moscow. “I will not deviate by a single millimeter from my fundamental conviction that, especially now, we must defend our freedom against Russia,” he stated in early September.

Moscow has repeatedly dismissed Berlin’s claims about an alleged “Russian threat” as “nonsense.”

Journalists and public figures from nearly 40 countries gathered at this year’s Valdai Club conference to discuss how the world is responding to a growing number of crises, and one conclusion stood out – the world has become more complex and there will be no return to an age of simple solutions.

The 20th century gave humanity a great deal, but it also encouraged the belief that fundamental political and social questions can be settled by choosing the correct ideology. Capitalism and communism competed to provide the answer, and after the Cold War, liberal globalism made its own attempt to reduce international affairs to a common set of rules and assumptions, but this has also failed.

We are therefore learning to live in a world where even the most dangerous developments need not produce panic or despair. This was reflected in the agenda at Valdai as participants discussed issues that would have seemed extraordinary 15 or 20 years ago about how societies withstand prolonged war, the increasingly impersonal nature of modern warfare, the military use of AI, and the uncertain future of nuclear deterrence.

Yet these discussions took place without a sense of panic, and without attempts to frighten participants with the prospect of a world in which the US and Europe can no longer set the rules. As Russian President Vladimir Putin argued in the closing session, the global situation under these circumstances could instead change for the better.

One reason is that the overwhelming majority of participants come from countries outside the West, and their perspective is often quite different from that which prevails in Europe, as rather than seeking to restore an international order that is disappearing, they’re trying to understand what will replace it.

In this respect, Valdai provides a useful snapshot of the intellectual debate taking place beyond the Western world.

For Russia, this matters enormously, given new ideas and alternative approaches to development are increasingly being debated in China, India, Iran, and the Arab world, and across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and Russia has much to learn from these discussions.

It’s equally important to understand the thinking of countries that have resisted pressure from the US and Europe and maintained relations with Russia during the past four years. These countries constitute much of the ‘global majority’ with which Russia hopes to build a multipolar international order.

The exchange also gives Russia the opportunity to explain its own perspective, not only on the Ukraine conflict but on broader questions that will shape international affairs for decades, and the first is war.

The second question is how international rules will be established and maintained as Western influence declines.

Russia, China, and other countries have long promoted multipolarity as an alternative model of international order. Putin used his Valdai appearance to call for reform of the UN system and a greater role for developing countries and the Global South in making important international decisions.

The third challenge is older but no less pressing because climate change, environmental degradation, inequality, and poverty have not disappeared, and while the struggle by the US and Europe to preserve their international position has increasingly pushed these questions into the background, they will eventually have to be addressed.

This raises two difficult questions regarding the role China and other Asian powers will play, and which institutions will be capable of coordinating international action.

There is still no clear answer to the first, and Asian countries show little enthusiasm for simply replacing the West as global leaders, but on the second, BRICS increasingly appears capable of playing an important role.

Its weaknesses should not be ignored, because BRICS lacks the internal discipline characteristic of traditional Western alliances, and two of its members, Iran and the UAE, came dangerously close to conflict this spring, yet the organization is increasingly discussed as a source of mutually beneficial ideas and practical solutions.

Another challenge is AI, and this goes far beyond its military uses. Fundamental questions concern the ethical limits of AI, the preservation of humanism, and the danger of what Putin calls “digital totalitarianism.” Technological progress is moving faster than the political and social institutions that are expected to regulate it.

For Russia, perhaps the most important lesson is that the economic and social problems it faces aren’t uniquely Russian, given that countries everywhere are struggling with economic imbalance, technological disruption, and rapid social change, and this is both good and bad news.

It’s good news for Russia because it demonstrates the failure of Western attempts since 2022 to isolate the country from the wider world, but it’s bad news because nobody has discovered universal solutions to these problems.

Economic and social resilience will therefore be critical, as the international system is undergoing changes on a scale rarely seen in modern history. An era lasting more than 500 years, during which Western civilization progressively acquired the ability to determine much of humanity’s political and economic development, is coming to an end, and this transformation coincides with extraordinary advances in technology, medicine, and genetics.

Every major civilization is searching for answers, but the fundamental disagreement concerns how these answers should be found, as Western countries are attempting to preserve the international positions they have accumulated over centuries, while Russia and its partners in BRICS argue instead for an order based on sovereign choice and mutual benefit.

The clash between these two approaches may prove to be the defining conflict of our time.

This article was first published by Vzglyad.ru, translated and edited by the RT team.

Iran has the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program as a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Beijing has said.

China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Sun Lei, made the statement to the General Assembly on Thursday.

“As a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the NPT, Iran should honor its commitment not to develop nuclear weapons, and its legitimate right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy should be respected,” Sun said in a plenary meeting on the use of the veto.

The monitoring body was reinstated as part of the ‘snapback’ mechanism invoked in August by the UK, France, and Germany (the E3), aimed at reimposing sanctions. China and Russia consider the snapback legally invalid and maintain that the sanctions were not restored.

According to Sun, China used its veto to “uphold a correct understanding of right and wrong,” support a political settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue, address non-proliferation concerns, and promote long-term peace and stability in the Middle East.

Under the 2015 agreement, Iran agreed to curtail its enrichment activities in exchange for sanctions relief. President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the agreement in 2018 during his first term and reimposed sanctions on Iran.

In February, the US and Israel attacked Iran in what Trump described as an effort to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

President Vladimir Putin, speaking at the annual Valdai forum on Thursday, said a Russian proposal to transfer Iran’s enriched uranium to Russia remains on the table. The US initially agreed to this but later toughened its position and refused, he said.

“If all the participants in this process ultimately conclude that this would help defuse tensions in any way, we are ready to engage in that work,” Putin stated.

The partner of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a prominent US true-crime figure known for her role in the 2015 killing of her abusive mother, has been found dead at his Louisiana home in a suspected drug overdose.

Ken Urker was discovered unresponsive at his Raceland residence on October 1, the day he turned 34 years old, after relatives requested a welfare check when he stopped answering calls and failed to show up for work. Family members said he had seemed depressed and upset the previous evening and later appeared on TikTok Live driving without speaking.

Relatives and Urker’s boss found him lying on his bed, cold to the touch and not breathing, before police arrived. Deputies later found syringes and a spoon near a “brown powdery substance” in the bathroom, along with another syringe, two shot glasses and a holstered handgun on the nightstand. The police report said Urker was “dead upon arrival.”

In a statement to the media on Friday, the local sheriff’s office said there were no signs of foul play but that the death remained under investigation.

The case that made Blanchard famous

Blanchard became the focus of intense media attention after the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who had abused her.

According to well-documented accounts, Dee Dee portrayed her daughter as seriously ill and disabled for much of her childhood, isolating her and forcing her to use a wheelchair and undergo unnecessary medical procedures, while obtaining donations and other benefits based on her supposed illnesses. As she grew older, Blanchard began secretly communicating online and met her future boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, with whose help she plotted Dee Dee’s killing. Blanchard provided Godejohn with a knife he used to stab her mother to death at their home in Springfield, Missouri, on June 14, 2015.

Prosecutors took Blanchard’s circumstances into account when she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2016. She was sentenced to ten years in prison and served more than seven before being released on parole in 2023. Godejohn was separately convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The case attracted widespread attention while Blanchard was still incarcerated and resulted in multiple screen adaptations, including HBO’s 2017 documentary ‘Mommy Dead and Dearest’ and Hulu’s 2019 drama series ‘The Act’. Interest further intensified after her release: she gained millions of social media followers, made numerous media appearances and became the subject of Lifetime’s reality show ‘Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up’, which followed her adjustment to life outside prison.

A relationship that began in prison

Urker first contacted Blanchard in 2017, while she was serving her sentence, after watching a documentary about her. He sent what she later described as a “supportive letter” along with his phone number. Their friendship eventually became romantic, and Urker proposed during a prison visit in 2018, but the couple called off their engagement the following year and later separated.

Blanchard rekindled her relationship with Urker in 2024. In December of that year, a year after she had left prison, the couple had a daughter. Blanchard earlier acknowledged that her relationship with Urker had faced difficulties, including the pressure of constant public attention.

By the time of Urker’s death, the couple had reportedly separated again. Accounts citing family sources claim they began living apart roughly two months earlier and ended their romantic relationship about a month before his death, though they continued co-parenting their daughter. Some reports attributed the breakup to Urker’s mental health struggles.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has announced plans to launch a probe into a new religious affairs office recently unveiled by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit said on Thursday that it is seeking transparency into the office’s funding, operations and plans to assess troops’ “spiritual fitness.”

The announcement came shortly after Hegseth said the Pentagon was establishing the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA) to address what he described as a decline in religious community in the military following an era of “political correctness.”

In his State of the Force address on Wednesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Hegseth said the new office’s head is expected to serve as the secretary and deputy secretary’s chief adviser on religious affairs.

According to the memorandum signed by the secretary earlier this week, the office is tasked with aligning religious-affairs policy, overseeing the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, representing the department to civilian religious endorsing organizations, and sponsoring research and tools to “support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.”

The FFRF said it will use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows the public to request records from US government agencies, to seek documents on the office’s funding, budget and staffing. The group also wants records on how the Pentagon defines and plans to assess “spiritual fitness,” “spiritual readiness” and “spiritual resilience,” including any technologies or tools being considered. The requests will also cover ties to outside religious groups and records concerning atheist, humanist and other nonreligious service members and potential First Amendment issues.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser said Hegseth’s new office would elevate Christianity’s role in shaping US military policy. She also accused him of using his position to advance what she described as a “Christian Nationalist agenda” in the military.

In March, The Washington Post cited former senior military officials and experts on religion and law as saying that Hegseth’s religious policies had challenged longstanding norms limiting the promotion of a particular faith. The war secretary reportedly held monthly evangelical services at the Pentagon at the time, while department employees were reluctant to discuss concerns related to his religious campaign.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon, at Hegseth’s initiative, cut the number of recognized religious denominations and belief systems for service members from 211 to 31. The department’s latest official breakdown from 2019 shows that about 70% of active-duty service members identified as Christian, 2% as atheist or agnostic, and 24% as having no religious affiliation or an unknown religious affiliation.

The US has delivered Taiwan’s first two newly built F-16 fighter jets, part of an $8 billion order that has repeatedly drawn condemnation from Beijing.

The two aircraft, the modern F-16V Block 70 variant, arrived in Taiwan on Friday. They are the first of 66 new fighters approved for sale by Washington in 2019.

Beijing has long opposed US arms sales to Taiwan, which it considers part of China. The delivery came a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Washington and urged US President Donald Trump to oppose “Taiwan independence” and “handle the Taiwan question with caution.”

The new jets will join Taiwan’s existing fleet of older F-16 variants, which Taipei has operated since the late 1990s. The first aircraft from the 66-plane order were initially expected in 2023, but deliveries were delayed by software development and production issues.

The US maintains a one-China policy but remains Taiwan’s primary foreign arms supplier.

Under the Trump administration, Washington has approved its largest military packages for Taiwan to date, greenlighting an unprecedented $11 billion in arms last December. Trump has also stalled an even larger $14 billion military package for months, openly describing the sale as a “very good negotiating chip” in talks with Beijing.

Beijing regards Taiwan as part of its territory under the One China principle, a position recognized in varying formulations by most UN member states, including Russia. China has said it prefers peaceful reunification but has not ruled out the use of force.

A US appeals court has blocked Minnesota’s ban on AI-generated fake nude images, handing Elon Musk’s xAI an early victory in its free-speech challenge to the law.

The state’s anti-nudification legislation – the first in the nation – which took effect last month, targets apps and websites that enable non-consensual sexualized deepfakes, with fines of up to $500,000 per image. It was spearheaded by state Senator Erin Maye Quade after a man allegedly used social media photos to create explicit images of more than 80 women without their consent. Quade likened the measure to longstanding laws against peeping through windows to take photographs.

Musk’s xAI challenged the law in July on First Amendment grounds, calling it an “overbroad, content-based ban on free speech” and warning that penalties could run into the billions of dollars.

This comes as the company faces allegations involving the content the law targets. A class-action lawsuit proposed earlier this year claims that xAI’s Grok Imagine was used to create and distribute child sexual abuse material from real images, and accuses xAI of failing to provide the authorities with information on users who allegedly ‘nudified’ them.

Minnesota urged the court to keep the law in place, arguing that it is needed to combat the “staggering amount” of child sexual abuse material generated by AI products such as Grok Imagine. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office said it is disappointed by the ruling and will continue defending the law.

XAI previously mounted a similar First Amendment challenge to a California law restricting AI-generated election deepfakes. A federal judge struck it down last year, finding the restrictions, as written, amounted to unconstitutional censorship. XAI also argues that Grok Imagine has “rigorous protections” against illegal content and has begun suing users it accuses of bypassing safeguards to create non-consensual sexual images.

Losing control of AI?

The news comes amid broader unease over rapidly advancing AI, from privacy and copyright risks to threats to the livelihoods of human creators, with copyright disputes already sparking dozens of lawsuits.

Recently, attention has shifted to increasingly autonomous models going rogue and acting outside their intended environments. Since ChatGPT creator OpenAI’s agents escaped a test environment and accessed Hugging Face servers over the summer, models from companies such as Google, Anthropic, and Meta have gained unauthorized access to or attempted to breach systems belonging to businesses, governments, and international organizations.

AI companies have begun reporting rogue behavior by their models with growing frequency. OpenAI said on Wednesday that its models may have bypassed safeguards or negatively affected systems at more than 100 organizations, significantly expanding the known scale of incidents. Though AI companies say the the breaches have so far caused little or no harm, they have raised questions over whether developers can maintain control as models gain greater autonomy. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for a “balanced rate” of development to give safeguards time to catch up – an appeal backed by Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“What’s good for a Russian is death to a German.” Russian speakers often use this tongue-in-cheek saying to explain the differences between the Russian and German mindsets, whether in everyday matters – such as how mustard should taste – or in deeper questions of worldview and existence.

Many scholars, including the distinguished Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky, have attributed this unmistakable civilizational divide between Europe’s two largest peoples to geography, climate, and landscape, which shaped different ways of life. Living in a predictable climate, Germans developed a habit of methodical, steady work. They could plan ahead because their surroundings allowed them to anticipate the results of their efforts with considerable certainty. Russians, by contrast, inhabit a land of unpredictable conditions stretching, in the words of Russia’s modern national anthem, “from the southern seas to the polar frontier.” They have often found that planning ahead can prove utterly futile. As a result, they frequently have to work at a furious pace within tight deadlines, relying on the distinctly Russian notion of avos: the hope that somehow, things will work out.

Germany’s current leadership views Russia as a threat to national security, much as its predecessors did on the eve of the First and Second World Wars. It is methodically remilitarizing the economy and expanding military assistance to Ukraine in an effort to weaken Russia across the board. In 2022-2023, at the beginning of the special military operation, aid packages were limited in scale and narrowly targeted. Starting in 2024, however, Berlin shifted toward long-term contracts for equipment and drones worth more than $10 billion a year, making Germany the EU’s largest provider of bilateral military assistance to Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, formerly Germany’s defense minister, has quietly emerged as the chief overseer of how German funds are distributed. Meanwhile, in keeping with this gradual drift toward military confrontation with our country, Friedrich Merz’s government is continuing Olaf Scholz’s policy of dismantling Russia’s diplomatic presence in Germany. After forcing the closure of Russian consulates general in Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Leipzig in May 2023, Berlin decided this September to shut down the consulate general in Bonn and the Russian House cultural center in Berlin.

Recognizing that their government has set the country on a dead-end course, ordinary German citizens are beginning to push back, increasingly throwing their support behind Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party promises a 180-degree turn in both foreign and domestic policy – not a “360-degree” turn, as former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock once proposed, inadvertently producing Germany’s defining political meme of the past decade. In the 2021 election, the main opposition party won just 10% of the vote. Four years later, in the snap election of 2025, its share reached 28.5%. For the first time since German reunification in 1990, it came out on top in every eastern state of the former East Germany. This year, AfD consolidated its gains with victories in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

To be sure, the party’s victories remain regional, and Germany’s other political parties refuse to consider the movement led by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla even as a hypothetical coalition partner. But if its electoral base continues to expand, drawing support not only from native-born Germans but eventually from immigrant communities as well, AfD could have a chance of securing more than 50% of the vote nationwide. That would allow it to form a government on its own.

”As for German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, he requested a meeting at the last minute. We had an opening this morning, before my address to the General Assembly. We never refuse to hear out any of our colleagues, including those who accuse Russia of every sin imaginable… When we met, I invited Foreign Minister Wadephul to explain what he had come to discuss. He took out his notes and read a text that repeated, word for word, what Germany’s leaders say publicly and officially every day. I told him as much. I learned nothing new… I told him frankly that I had thought he might have something interesting or out of the ordinary to say. They could simply have called and told us to read their official statements…”

Why have relations between Moscow and Berlin deteriorated so profoundly that even meetings between their foreign ministers have become fruitless exchanges of prepared talking points, rather than negotiations aimed at a breakthrough? At least three factors deserve attention.

1) Berlin’s unconstructive role in efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine

From the earliest days of the Ukraine crisis, Germany sought to control the diplomatic process in order to put the country firmly on an anti-Russian course. In February 2014, after unrest broke out on the Maidan, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his French and Polish counterparts, Laurent Fabius and Radoslaw Sikorski, acted as guarantors of an agreement between President Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition. It called for a national unity government, early elections, and an end to all forms of violence. As we know, the protesters soon violated the agreement, took up arms, and staged the ‘Revolution of Dignity’.

A year later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande joined Russia as mediators in talks between Kiev and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, culminating in the signing of the package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements. After leaving office, Merkel admitted that Minsk II had been needed not to end Ukraine’s civil war, but to provide cover for further arming the Ukrainian military.

2) The severing of trade and economic ties with Russia

Apart from brief recessions associated with global upheavals such as the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021, Germany’s economy recorded steady annual growth of 1-3.5% in the 21st century. Cheap Russian energy, which helped fuel industrial expansion, was one of the most important ingredients in that success. Another was access to Russia’s sizable market, where more than 6,000 German companies were doing business at the peak of commercial ties.

Germany’s modern ‘economic miracle’ came to an end when its government became a driving force behind the EU’s adoption of a 21st sanctions package, prompting a mass exodus of German capital from Russia. Berlin then refused to investigate the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which damaged the country’s industrial capacity and helped drive some German manufacturing operations outside the EU.

As a result, the economy has stagnated since 2022, with an annual shortfall of around 1%. The broader social and political climate offers little cause for optimism, as low birth rates and an influx of illegal immigrants put growing pressure on public finances. All of this invites grim thoughts about the inevitability of Germany’s “self-destruction,” to borrow the term used by German commentator Thilo Sarrazin. At least, that is, Germany as it has existed since reunification – a process that essentially amounted to West Germany economically ‘devouring’ the East, an approach that reached its natural limits in the early 2020s.

3) Confidence that Russia will act responsibly

Russia has long served as a bogeyman in the German media. Yet, paradoxically, Germany’s government is militarizing the economy in the belief that an actual shooting war may never materialize.

First, the longer Germany uses Ukraine as a military and political battering ram against Russia, the longer Russian forces will remain focused on the special military operation. That spares Germany’s regular armed forces from having to fight Russia directly with everything at their disposal.

Finally, however belligerent some German politicians may sound, they cannot simply switch off their historical memory. It reminds them that over the past three centuries alone, the Russian army has liberated Berlin – Germany’s present-day capital – three times, exactly once per century. It is hard to imagine a German politician today eager to play ‘Russian roulette’ a fourth time. And that brings us back to a defining difference between Russians and Germans: we may take a long time to harness the horses, but once we get moving, we move fast – especially in times of great geopolitical upheaval.

The man accused of murdering former UK Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe has also been charged with preparing a terrorist attack on Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

Joshua Kerry, 28, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire was charged on Friday under the Terrorism Act 2006 and will appear in court on Wednesday, police said. The new charge relates to activities that allegedly took place May 31 to July 8.

“We have been running a hugely intensive and complex investigation for some time. The charge announced today is a result of the tireless work of investigators across the Counter Terrorism Policing network,” Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for counter terrorism policing, said.

“My profound sympathies are with Nigel Farage and his family. Let no one make any mistake: an attack on anyone in politics is an attack on us all,” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood wrote on X. She added that the case “raises serious questions about the security of those in public life.”

Kerry was arrested shortly after Widdecombe’s body was found on July 9 at her rural home in southwest England. Prosecutors allege that the suspect struck the 78-year-old politician 21 times with a hammer in an attack that was caught on camera. No motive has yet been made public.

A Conservative MP for more than two decades, Widdecombe served as employment minister and later as prisons minister. From 2019 to 2020, she was a member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party, which Farage co-founded.

She was known for her socially conservative views, opposing same-sex marriage and abortion. In 2019, a theater show featuring Widdecombe was canceled after critics accused her of endorsing conversion therapy, the controversial practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Widdecombe argued that her comments were misconstrued.

He was doused with milkshakes while campaigning in 2019 and again in 2024, and has also had eggs and other objects thrown at him.

In April 2025, a suspected incendiary device was pushed through the letterbox of his home and burned itself out. Counter-terrorism police reopened the investigation this year after identifying a previously missed line of inquiry. No one has been charged over the incident.

Reform UK said Farage’s publicly funded security was cut by 75% last year, forcing the party and private donors to fund additional protection. Parliamentary authorities have declined to confirm the figure, citing security concerns.

Saudi Arabia is planning a major offensive in civil war-torn Yemen, hoping to reverse gains made by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who seized a strategic Red Sea chokepoint last month, Reuters reported on Friday, citing Gulf and Yemeni officials and Western diplomats.

More than 100,000 Yemeni government troops could be mobilized for the offensive, depending on the scale, according to Reuters. The operation would be overseen by Saudi Arabia and supported by Saudi airstrikes. The US and other Western countries providing intelligence and material support to Riyadh are not expected to take part in combat operations.

According to Reuters, the Saudis are considering two options: an attack focused on recapturing the coastal area around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, or a broader offensive involving synchronized attacks on multiple fronts in Al-Bayda, Marib, Taiz, and Al-Jawf.

The fighting escalated again last month, with the Houthis accusing Riyadh of imposing an illegal siege on Yemen. The rebels have since captured the strategic port of Mokha and Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The Houthis said on Friday that Saudi forces carried out 94 strikes on areas under their control over the previous 24 hours. Omar al-Bukhaiti, a spokesman for the Houthi-run government in Sanaa, accused the kingdom of deliberately targeting civilian sites, including schools and health facilities.

The group earlier fired drones and missiles at Saudi Arabia, targeting energy facilities, but denied striking a power station in Medina, one of Islam’s holiest cities, dismissing the Saudi claim as a “lie.”

Several Saudi allies have stepped up military support for the kingdom. Britain has agreed to provide air-to-air refueling for Saudi warplanes, while France is sending troops, radar, and air-defense systems to help protect the Red Sea oil hub of Yanbu.

Pakistan has deployed 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Saudi Arabia to help defend its borders and intercept missiles and drones, Reuters reported, citing a Pakistani official. Islamabad has also supplied air-defense systems, artillery, drones, and anti-drone equipment, while Pakistani military advisers are working alongside Saudi personnel supporting Yemeni forces. Pakistan has not, however, decided to send troops into Yemen for combat operations.

Pope Leo XIV has called on artists to join forces to protect human creativity in the age of AI.

Speaking to cultural figures at the Vatican on Friday, the Pope said the Catholic Church hopes to renew its alliance with them to safeguard “what is human.”

“We live in the age of search engines that offer us thousands of instantaneous answers,” he said, contrasting them with art, which he described as a different kind of “search engine” that “does not proceed by indexing but by inquiry.”

He warned that one of the dangers facing modern culture is “homogenization,” arguing that art can provide a counterweight by challenging people rather than simply giving them what they expect.

”Your art… when it draws our gaze, when it compels us to pause before that which cannot be consumed, is a form of cultural and spiritual regeneration,” he said.

Turning directly to AI, the Pope said it is becoming increasingly important to distinguish human art from machine-generated works.

“The Church needs you,” he said. “Algorithms lack the spark of the human, whereas authentic culture and art preserve this spark.”

He told reporters this week that he is not in “panic mode” over AI and can still “sleep at night,” but said warnings from experts about the potential dangers should be taken seriously.

Artists and other creative professionals have increasingly pushed back against generative AI, arguing that developers have trained models on copyrighted works without permission or compensation. They have also raised concerns that AI-generated images, music, and writing could displace human creators, drive down the value of their work, and make it increasingly difficult to distinguish original art from machine-generated imitations.

Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger said last month that he believes there is a greater than 10% chance that AI “could kill all humans” within the next decade.

Others have expressed optimism, with US President Donald Trump dismissing concerns over an AI takeover as a “hoax.” On Tuesday, he signed a deal with executives from Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Nvidia aimed at introducing safeguards to ensure that “their technology behaves as intended.”

Yemen’s Houthis have denied targeting a power station in the city of Medina. A Saudi-led coalition earlier accused the militant group of targeting the facility supplying power to the Prophet’s Mosque – one of the holiest sites in the Muslim world.

A senior Houthi official branded the accusation a “lie” aimed at tarnishing the group’s image and reinforcing similar claims made by the coalition in the past.

On Thursday, the Saudi coalition’s spokesman, Major General Turki al-Maliki, accused the Yemeni militants of striking the Taibah electricity distribution station in Medina earlier this week in what he called a “cowardly terrorist act” and a part of an alleged broader campaign by the Houthis to “target the Two Holy Mosques.”

In mid-September, Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of launching a drone towards the holy city of Mecca. The unmanned aerial vehicle was intercepted and destroyed, it added. The Yemeni movement’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, dismissed that claim as a “heinous lie” in a televised address at the time, claiming Riyadh was “weaponizing lies” to advance its own agenda.

Ankara denounced this week’s alleged Medina attack. “Any attack targeting the sanctity, peace, and security of the Two Holy Mosques is an unacceptable affront directed at the shared sensitivities of the entire Islamic world,” the Turkish government spokesman, Burhanettin Duran, said on X on Friday. He vowed that Türkiye “will continue to stand by Saudi Arabia.”

The developments come amid the continued escalation between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition. Riyadh has backed Yemen’s internationally recognized government against the Houthis since intervening in the country’s civil war in 2015.

Large-scale fighting largely subsided after a UN-brokered truce in 2022, but the conflict erupted again this summer after an airport in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital of Sanaa was bombed to prevent a returning Houthi delegation that had flown to Iran from landing.

The terror plot that wasn’t 

The arrest of five men at RAF Fairford in the UK on Sunday sparked a terror panic whose consequences are still playing out almost a week later. Shortly after the arrests, British Foreign Secretary Ed Milliband described the incident as an example of “the threats our country faces,” while the British media’s ‘security experts’ pinned the blame on Iran – or in some cases Russia.

“Our belief that we believe” is not the most confident assertion, and this was immediately picked up in Tehran. “I can confirm Iran’s belief that releasing supposed terrorists working for foreign states really says it all. You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X.

Counterterror police arrested a British-Iranian dual national in connection with the supposed plot on Thursday, but it’s still unclear whether he’ll be charged. 

Russia reveals its red lines

It is unsurprising that the British media immediately used the incident to escalate tensions with Iran and Russia. After days of intensifying war rhetoric from Ukraine’s British and European backers – which RT is tracking in our ‘Escalation Watch’ special – Russia definitively restated its red lines this week.

In a statement released by three of its embassies on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow “would be ready to use all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons, to defend its territory if NATO countries try to isolate Kaliningrad region from the rest of the country.”

⚡️ Statement by the Embassy of Russia in Ireland (September 29, 2026)

There has been an abundance of talk, recently, from the European political circles that Russia somehow is planning to launch a military invasion of Europe, escalate its alleged hybrid campaign against… pic.twitter.com/eQsrIUFwmL

— Russia in Ireland (@Rus_Emb_Ireland) September 30, 2026

NATO has carried out several military exercises near Kaliningrad this year, and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski recently called on the bloc’s military chiefs to surge troops to the Kaliningrad border so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.” 

Western “hotheads,” however, would do well to consider that NATO’s Article 5 – the bloc’s mutual-defense clause – isn’t as clear-cut as it’s sometimes portrayed. As Russian International Affairs Council President Dmitry Trenin wrote for RT this week, it’s “deliberately ambiguous,” heavily mythologized, and doesn’t guarantee US intervention.

Meanwhile, Russia has continued to intensify its strikes on Ukrainian military and dual-use targets, hitting data centers and logistics hubs in Kiev, and ports and warehouses on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. 

Speaking at Valdai, Putin ruled out any kind of ‘energy ceasefire’. With Ukraine striking Russian refineries and sanctions impairing Russia’s ability to export oil, the idea that Moscow “is supposed to stop hitting things that are important to their economy” is “absurd,” the Russian president stated.

The FlyDubai emergency

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings of an imminent attack against the Jewish state were almost realized on Wednesday, when the first officer of a FlyDubai Boeing 737 en route to Tel Aviv allegedly stabbed his captain and attempted to crash the airliner. 

The pilot, Captain Smit Machchhar, has become a national hero in his native India, while the passengers who reportedly stormed the cockpit were lauded by Netanyahu upon arrival in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has claimed that the first officer had acted based on “Islamist radical indoctrination,” while his government considers the incident an attempted “terrorist attack.”

Although Netanyahu’s ministers have already used the incident to justify – in the words of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – taking their war against “Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]... to the next level”, the unanswered questions are piling up, as Middle East analyst Farhad Ibragimov wrote for RT.

Lavrov shuts down the propaganda

Another unanswered question: what exactly do Western leaders mean when they accuse Russia of waging “hybrid war?” The accusation, typically leveled at Russia after drone sightings, fires and accidents at weapons factories, and even natural disasters, is almost never substantiated, yet serves to justify the West’s rearmament and escalating war rhetoric against Moscow. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov refused to play into the narrative when he was questioned by the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg on Tuesday. The British state journalist asked Lavrov if he would admit “that Russia is waging a covert hybrid war against European countries,” but Lavrov flipped the questioning.

“Are you referring to when we destroy the drones and missiles that Britain and continental Europe supply to Ukraine, which are then fired at us?” the Russian foreign minister retorted. “Is that what you mean by hybrid war?” 

Rosenberg wasn’t the only Western antagonist humiliated this week. On Tuesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered the indignity of having to stand beside Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Berlin, as Tokayev described Putin as “an outstanding statesman” possessing “the qualities that are most essential for the leader of a great country.”

Merz, fresh from his party’s back-to-back election losses last month, then traveled to Munster on Thursday, where NATO had inexplicably been awarded the ‘Westphalian Peace Prize’. After NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte accepted the award, he and Merz were met with boos, whistles, and chants of “murderers” and “blood on your hands” when they stepped outside to greet the public.

Russia expands its Arctic footprint

Finally, while it’s easy to assume that the world’s great powers have traversed, mapped, and tamed every inch of the Earth’s surface, that’s not the case, and new milestones are still being reached. On Tuesday, the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet announced that it had traversed the iceberg-filled Shokalsky Strait for the first time in history. 

The strait runs between October Revolution Island and Bolshevik Island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, deep inside the Arctic Circle along the strategically important Northern Sea Route.

Russia is invested in the development of the Northern Sea Route, which is the shortest maritime passage between the Asia-Pacific region and northern Europe. Moscow has also renovated some of its Soviet-era military bases along its northern coast, and stepped up military exercises in the Arctic. As the Northern Fleet passed through the Shokalsky Strait this week, its reconnaissance teams practiced amphibious assault maneuvers on the western side of October Revolution Island.

The spoiled French brats are back at it again. This time burning down their own schools, at least one of which was brand new. About the only thing these kids are good for is giving taxpayers an effective visual of where their tax dollars have been going: up in flames.

French teenagers nationwide have been staging a full-scale insurrection over government budget-slashing, flipping out alongside public servants demanding more money, with banners screaming, “Less police, more money” – apparently ignoring the fact that the cops are also public servants – while barricading gates, burning garbage bins, and hurling hydrochloric acid at the cops. They’ve contributed to bleeding France dry, and now they’re complaining that the blood bank is empty. Unfortunately for the broke French state, it hasn’t yet found a way to have Russia pay for it by stealing the cash interest from frozen Russian assets held in the West. Only the poor defense contractors standing on the street corner with an eye-patch and shaking a tin cup get to benefit from that. Nothing to do with the fact that it’s an “investment” that boosts GDP on a euro-for-euro basis, of course.

So how does France punish these little hooligans? By making them attend classes online from the comfort of home, with the fridge just a few feet away. All while mom and dad are probably at work. That’ll sure show them. What kid wouldn’t totally hate that and be compelled to correct their behavior?

Almost 2,000 arrests (and counting) have been made since Monday, according to French authorities. We’re told that the “little dears/loves” (as their French parents constantly call them) have some legitimate complaints. Alright, I’ll bite. Let’s sit down for a second and listen to what the little angels are upset about. If only because I’ve never met a French parent whose kid was behaving like a little hoodlum in public who didn’t loudly insist that every adult around indulge them while they exercise their “right” to “express themselves.”

They say that their schools aren’t up to snuff. And sometimes there isn’t even toilet paper in the stalls, they cry. Does the state have to wipe your behinds, too?

They say that there’s a shortage of teachers, resulting in bigger classes. And that many of the ones who are still hanging in there end up nonetheless disappearing on leave for days on end. Gee, I can’t possibly imagine why.

They also complain of poor facilities. Like not enough air conditioning. That’s less of a “problem” than a deliberate ideological choice championed by the same comrades with whom these kids are happily associating themselves on the far left in order to make it look like the leftists’ annual September freakout is actually effective this year.

Take that one up with them. They’re the ones who want you to sweat it out for the planet and get angry when any money is spent on air cooling. At least until you die from heat exhaustion and can then finally enjoy some industrial-grade post-mortem cold storage whose carbon footprint you’ll be offsetting by not breathing carbon dioxide into the air.

“This spontaneous movement was born out of exasperation with educational conditions that are absolutely unworthy,” said far-left politician and coordinator Manuel Bompard. Yeah, “spontaneous.” Just something cooked up by a few kids between swigs of Red Bull and not at all by a professional activist movement that has its annual street protests at this time every year.

Sorry, we’re all too busy trying to navigate a Grand Theft Auto style hellscape imposed by your little darlings to pursue this little chat much further right now.

What a wild coincidence that the left explicitly connects the teens’ grievances to their own pre-existing demands about education funding, staffing, class sizes, public services, social inequality, and government policy.

“We, the children of the suburbs, are abandoned and neglected,” one 16-year-old useful idiot told the press. Take it up with your parents, who enjoy every possible benefit imaginable courtesy of the French taxpayer – including having your school supplies paid for every year, with that cash-in-hand often famously misused to buy things like new TVs. Look to them, not to the state. Unless you’re talking about cops failing to crack down on the kind of destruction that you’re fueling – in which case, yes, there’s a problem. A big one. And the fact that these protests are so out of control is a testament to it.

So is the fact that these same high schoolers have recently invaded cities – big and small – with lawless electric scooters, bowling down pedestrians from behind on the sidewalks while going at road speed.

No one can be bothered doing any actual parenting in this society. The parents can’t. The teachers can’t – lest they end up with the parents on their case with zero support from the school administration. The state can’t. The cops can’t. These once unmanageable toddlers are now teenagers and having the same tantrums that used to make their parents yell at adults rolling their eyes at them in public.

We’re not going to pretend to have an adult conversation about it. Not with them. Nor with their adoptive ideological parents on the left and far left, whose only real interest is to have them serve as proxies to do their own bomb-tossing dirty work with the ultimate aim of sucking the taxpayer dry for their pet causes. We literally can’t afford to indulge your nonsense anymore.

South Korea has accused Ukraine of trying to spark war on the Korean Peninsula, with President Lee Jae-myung threatening a response unless Kiev apologizes for breaching a confidentiality agreement.

Vladimir Zelensky announced publicly last week that Ukraine had transferred two North Korean prisoners to South Korea. Seoul says the arrangement was supposed to remain secret, but Kiev has denied that claim.

Writing on X on Friday, Lee said Ukraine had initially requested secrecy, then disclosed the transfer unilaterally and made him look like “a liar” by denying the agreement.

He further accused Kiev of responding to demands for an apology by trying to shift the conversation to an imminent military clash between North and South Korea, describing its conduct as “attempting to provoke a war on the Korean Peninsula.”

“If the refusal to acknowledge the facts and issue a public apology continues, we will take additional measures,” Lee warned, stressing that South Korea’s national dignity is at stake.

The dispute began with Zelensky’s September 23 address to the UN General Assembly, when he announced the transfer of the North Korean soldiers and said it was “not easy to capture them alive.” The servicemen were reportedly taken prisoner in January 2025 in Russia’s Kursk Region, where North Korean troops helped repel a Ukrainian incursion.

According to Seoul, Kiev initially sought secrecy to avoid domestic criticism for giving up prisoners who could have been exchanged for captured Ukrainians. South Korea also cited the safety of the soldiers and their families, alongside sensitive diplomatic and security concerns.

Zelensky adviser Dmitry Litvin responded to Seoul’s apology demands by denying any secrecy agreement existed, prompting South Korea to summon Ukraine’s acting ambassador on September 28.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga subsequently tried to downplay the falling out, calling it a “diplomatic misunderstanding” and said he was working to resolve it.

South Korea has provided the country with humanitarian and financial assistance since 2022 and pledged another $100 million in July, but has drawn the line at weapons deliveries. Lee did not specified what measures he would take, but analyst Cho Han-bum told Reuters they would most likely involve assistance programs.

The Zelensky government has repeatedly clashed with countries providing substantial support throughout the conflict. In Poland, Ukraine’s continued glorification of nationalist forces responsible for massacring Poles has provoked outrage and demands from politicians to halt free weapons deliveries despite Warsaw’s extensive assistance.

Public enthusiasm for aid has also shown signs of weakening in recent years, including in Germany, where polling this year found declining support for increased military assistance. Earlier surveys in France and Italy also revealed divisions over continued support for Kiev.

Brazil is seeking to investigate allegations of US government funding for activities aimed at interfering in its elections and undermining the legitimacy of its Supreme Federal Court, public news agency Agencia Brasil reported Thursday.

Earlier this week, The Guardian cited a source familiar with the matter as saying that the White House planned to allocate $1 million for a project titled “Countering Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil.” The funds were expected to support NGOs opposing what the project described as judicial overreach and censorship by Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court.

The funding was reportedly part of a broader plan to redirect more than $175 million from the State Department’s Human Rights and Democracy Fund to finance 43 projects abroad, including in South Africa, Nigeria and several European states.

Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office (AGU) asked the Federal Police (PF) and the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR) to investigate the issue, Agencia Brasil noted.

If confirmed, the use of foreign funds to organize “coordinated and systematic attacks” on Brazil’s sovereignty and judicial institutions could amount to foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs, AGU said, as cited by the news agency. The office also said the funds in question had allegedly been diverted from international programs originally intended to protect human rights.

Last week, Lula’s election campaign warned that US President Donald Trump wanted to “colonize” the South American country and gain control of its natural resources by interfering in the upcoming vote.

US social media giant Meta, meanwhile, blocked the advertising account used by Lula’s campaign on Facebook, preventing it from running new ads just days before the first round. The campaign said the tech giant provided no explanation for the step, and demanded that access be restored, threatening legal action and describing the restriction as another example of alleged Big Tech interference in the vote.

Tensions between the US and Latin America’s largest economy have been soaring for months, as Trump fiercely backed right-wing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during his trial over a plot to overturn his 2022 election defeat and keep himself in power.

On Thursday, Washington suspended consular services at its diplomatic missions in Brazil, citing unspecified security concerns.

Crowds of protesters jeered at NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after the US-led military bloc was awarded the Westphalian Peace Prize on Thursday. 

The prize, awarded by the Economic Society for Westphalia and Lippe, commemorates the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War and legally enshrined the modern concept of the nation state. 

Rutte, known among protestors as the “Lying Dutchman,” collected the award in the German city of Munster on Thursday on behalf of the interventionist US-led military bloc. 

Speaking at the ceremony, North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Hendrik Wust declared that “military strength can prevent war and preserve peace,” and that “NATO has demonstrated for more than 75 years that strength secures peace.”

Protesters gathered outside Munster Town Hall disagreed. When the Dutchman, the German, and other dignitaries stepped onto the balcony, below which a blue-blazered band played, they were met with chants of “murderers” and “blood on your hands” from the square below (perhaps the greatest show of anger in the town since the anabaptists in 1534).

The NATO chief and the German chancellor gritted their teeth and smiled and waved through the boos and whistles.

Wust’s speech did not mention NATO’s bombing campaigns against Serbia in 1995 and 1999, or its bombing and subsequent breaking up of Libya in 2011. More recently, NATO exercises on Russia’s Kaliningrad border have been interpreted as reckless provocations by the Kremlin, with the Russian Foreign Ministry reminding NATO leadership this week that Kaliningrad is integral Russian territory, which Moscow is prepared to defend with “all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons.”

Merz took the opportunity to swipe at his political rivals too, falsely claiming the AfD – currently Germany’s most popular political party – is “Russian-backed.”  

“A peace prize for a military alliance – at first glance, that seems contradictory, but in fact it is entirely logical,” he reasoned. “It protects our freedom, it protects our security, it protects our prosperity, and it serves the cause of peace in Europe.”

The organizers of the Westphalian Peace Prize did not always share NATO’s confrontational stance toward Russia. Two years ago, the prize was awarded to French President Emmanuel Macron for “his diplomatic skill in maintaining dialogue with the Russian leadership despite serious upheavals.”

The US is pressuring France and Germany to tap emergency diesel reserves to help bring down soaring global prices, and has threatened not to export the fuel if they refuse, Reuters has reported.

Washington wants the EU to release 120 million barrels over the next six months as US President Donald Trump seeks to reduce domestic fuel costs ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Diesel prices have surged to record highs in both the US and the EU. Average US prices topped $6.50 per gallon in the third week of September, up $2.60 from a year earlier, according to the US Energy Information Administration, while EU prices climbed to €2.23 per liter, European Commission data shows.

The US fuel crunch has become particularly severe in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott declared a statewide disaster on Sunday over soaring diesel prices and supply disruptions. Some filling stations have run short of diesel, while tight supplies have forced others to ration fuel or raise prices sharply.

The order temporarily eased fuel and trucking restrictions, including allowing wider use of untaxed dyed diesel on public roads.

Washington threatens EU with diesel export ban

Washington has stepped up pressure on Paris and Berlin, with the Trump administration particularly “frustrated” with France and Germany for failing to fully follow through on earlier commitments to release emergency oil and petroleum-product stocks, the outlet said on Thursday, citing people familiar with discussions.

“It is in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States as we pursue multiple pathways to boost the supply of refined products and lower costs for consumers,” a US official told Reuters.

The threat comes as Trump said earlier this week that Washington was “very seriously” considering restricting US diesel exports to force down domestic prices ahead of the midterms.

 A ban could hit Europe particularly hard, given that the EU has mostly cut itself off from Russian fuel and become increasingly reliant on US supplies.

Europe cornered by diesel crunch

European diesel imports already fell to a record low of around 1 million barrels per day in September, with seaborne shipments more than 25% below last year’s levels, according to Vortexa data. Russia, which accounted for around 9.5% of global diesel exports before the latest restrictions, has extended its export curbs through October.

The US supplied 41% of Europe’s diesel imports in September, shipping around 400,000 barrels per day, according to Vortexa. US diesel exports themselves remained close to record levels at around 1.6 million barrels per day during the month. Soaring fuel costs have already hit several European economies particularly hard, including Finland, Denmark, Greece and Germany, while France has reported shortages at some filling stations.

European refineries are already running at near-maximum capacity, according to the European Commission. Fuel distribution is also being squeezed by exceptionally low water levels on the Rhine caused by drought, restricting tanker shipments into Europe’s interior.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Thursday he was “highly confident” Europe would release more fuel, arguing that additional supplies were needed ahead of the winter heating and harvest seasons. “Now’s the time to bring more diesel to the market, and that diesel is available,” he told Fox News.

Crisis talks turn to emergency stocks

European governments held back-to-back emergency talks as they sought a response to the deepening diesel crunch amid mounting US pressure to release reserves. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the European Commission discussed a possible drawdown on Thursday, before EU countries and the Commission reconvened for crisis talks on Friday.

European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said a fresh release was “a possibility,” while Ireland, which holds the rotating EU Council presidency, described the diesel market as “very tight.”

The requested 120 million barrels would amount to roughly 40% of the EU’s emergency diesel stocks, based on the latest available Eurostat data from May 2025. France and Germany together held about 35% of the bloc’s strategic diesel reserves.

IEA chief Fatih Birol has urged European countries to make use of their diesel stocks, while Berlin said the agency has not yet formally asked Germany to release reserves.

France is also pushing for a coordinated response. Macron spoke with Trump about the energy crisis overnight, with the French presidency saying both sides favored coordinated action “without export restrictions.” France has reportedly proposed that European countries release 50 million barrels of diesel, while IEA members would release another 50 million barrels of crude.

EU governments have also discussed making any further diesel release conditional on a US commitment not to impose a unilateral export ban.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has rewarded her personal communications adviser with a permanent job in the commission’s media department, in a move that reveals how the EU bureaucracy really works, and how von der Leyen has created a royal court in Brussels.

Von der Leyen’s College of Commissioners – the 27 unelected bureaucrats who run the EU’s executive branch – met on Wednesday and signed off on the appointment of Jens Flosdorff as the bloc’s new ‘Director for Citizens Communication’.

Flosdorff was given the role after a “merit based and very highly competitive selection procedure,” the commission said in a statement. According to the EU-focused Rapporteur news site, however, Flosdorff was parachuted into the role by von der Leyen, whom he served for more than two decades as ‘personal communications adviser’. 

Those with a memory of the Soviet Union, or an appreciation of Gogol or Bulgakov, might muster a quiet laugh at the appointment for life of a long-time confidant of Ursula von der Leyen to the well-paid and unassailable post of ‘Director for Citizens Communication’. However, a closer look at the EU’s communications apparatus reveals levels of bureaucratic redundancy beyond the wildest imagination of the great Russian absurdists.

From Byzantium to Brussels 

In his new role, Flosdorff will lead “lead the Commission’s citizens communication actions

and the analysis of public opinion,” according to the job advertisement that the commission was legally required to post before handing the sinecure to von der Leyen’s man. This presumably involves the crafting of youth outreach campaigns and commissioning of Eurobarometer polls, but the rest is unclear.

Sophia Eriksson Waterschoot, who currently occupies the role in an acting capacity, “refused to say what the job entailed” when asked by Rapporteur.

Waterschoot stepped in when previous Director for Citizens Communication Stefan de Keersmaecker was named ‘Director for Political Communication’ late last year. The differences between these two roles are blurred, with both responsible for social media campaigns, both analyzing media and public opinion, and both pushing the commission’s message (one as a ‘rapid response’ outfit, and the other organizing longer-term campaigns).

Both directors lead separate departments within the commission’s ‘Directorate-General for Communication’ (DG-COMM), and together employ around 500 people. DG-COMM has a yearly budget – excluding salaries – of €116 million, and it’s not the only communications department on the commission’s books: most of the commission’s 41 directorates-general have their own in-house spin offices too, which sometimes collaborate with the ‘citizens’ and ‘political’ bureaus of DG-COMM.

If that wasn’t complicated enough, none of these departments write von der Leyen’s speeches. That task falls to her personal speechwriter, Lorenzo Biondi, who announced his retirement on Wednesday.

This is the last speech I drafted for @vonderleyen.

After 7 years with the President and 5 with @federicamog, time for a new beginning.

Back in Rome as head of publications at @IAIonline.

So much gratitude for all that Brussels has given me… stay tuned https://t.co/dgKTZZIMhE

— Lorenzo Biondi (@lorbiondi) September 29, 2026

Biondi is leaving the commission for a job at the Institute of International Affairs, an Italian think tank. But it’s not a straightforward move from the public to the private sector. The Institute of International Affairs’ Europe-focused work is funded almost entirely by the European Commission. There is now just an extra middleman between him and his former employer.

Queen Ursula’s court

Atop this bureaucratic superstructure, von der Leyen has consolidated her power. Her efforts go beyond appointing her loyalists to lucrative lifetime gigs: von der Leyen began the year by appointing 26 commissioners without running the list past the European Parliament first, as well as deliberately withholding budget and internal market strategy documents from member states until hours before publication, making deliberation impossible.

Von der Leyen is “obsessed with demonstrating that she’s in charge,” and “is constantly jumping into the middle of the latest crisis, even when it’s outside her remit,” unnamed EU diplomats complained to Bloomberg in May. 

Some of the commission chief’s ambitions are grand – she has pushed for the creation of an intelligence agency answering to her office, and backed a Franco-German plan to strip some of chief diplomat Kaja Kallas’ foreign policy powers. Others are more petty. On the day of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, every commissioner under von der Leyen reportedly received strict instructions from Flosdorff: their own communications teams were only allowed to repost von der Leyen’s message to Trump on social media, without adding any comments of their own.

All of this is to illustrate two characteristics of the European Commission under von der Leyen. Firstly, with its jobs for life, its three-dozen communications departments, and its web of interconnected think tanks, it is a bloated organism whose reform would be a generational undertaking. 

Secondly, with its unelected president controlling everything from job appointments and social media posts to foreign policy and intelligence gathering, it is an autocracy so at odds with its democratic rhetoric that it requires 43 communications offices to explain away its contradictions to the public.

Meta Platforms is facing between $35 billion and $40 billion in civil penalties from the US state of New Mexico, Reuters has reported. At the upper end, the fine would rank as the largest financial penalty ever imposed on a US corporation.

The case stems from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, which erupted after a whistleblower revealed that the British political consulting firm had obtained data from tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent through a third-party app.

The data was used to profile voters and target them with political messaging, including during Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign. Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy months later, while Facebook faced billions of dollars in fines and compensation claims over its handling of user data.

It comes a week after a jury found the Facebook parent company liable for misleading statements about the privacy of users’ data.

The jury in Santa Fe found that Meta had willfully deceived consumers, resulting in more than 43 million breaches of the state’s consumer protection law. The violations were deemed to have affected the state’s entire population of some two million people.

The ruling marks Meta’s latest major legal defeat in New Mexico. In March, another Santa Fe jury found the company liable for 75,000 violations related to child safety and ordered $375 million in penalties. A local judge later deemed Meta’s platforms a “public nuisance” and ordered it to pay additional $567 million. The corporation has said it will appeal.

Meta’s legal exposure stretches beyond the state of New Mexico. In August, it agreed to pay roughly $17 billion to settle claims brought by dozens of US states and territories that it deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children and misled the public about the associated risks. The deal also included claims stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but New Mexico did not join the settlement, allowing its case to proceed to trial.

A US drone company linked to President Donald Trump’s sons wants to bring Ukrainian military technology to America, Reuters has reported, as Kiev pursues billions in arms exports despite multiple corruption scandals in its procurement programs.

Powerus is negotiating with Ukrainian defense firms and wants to manufacture their technology in the US, potentially including long-range attack drones. Its Guardian interceptors, introduced in March, were also jointly developed with Ukrainian partners, according to company president Brett Velicovich.

The company completed a merger with golf course operator Aureus Greenway Holdings on Thursday. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump hold an indirect investment in Aureus through American Ventures, which regulatory filings projected would own 9.9% of the combined business.

Velicovich, a former US Army Special Operations intelligence analyst, told Reuters he wants Powerus to become a “one-stop solution” for the Pentagon, offering foreign technology with an “American face.”

Powerus has secured a US Air Force contract with a ceiling of $90 million, although purchases are not guaranteed. It has also received an initial Pakistani order for drones and associated support.

Kiev has meanwhile been seeking billions in weapons-export revenue while continuing to rely heavily on Western military and financial assistance. Vladimir Zelensky has announced overseas export hubs and previously touted a proposed US drone agreement worth $10-30 billion.

Kiev’s weapons export ambitions come as multiple corruption scandals have rocked its military procurement system, including programs intended to supply drones to its own forces.

In a separate investigation, NABU said in August that suspected losses from drone purchases reached approximately $5.7 million. Investigators alleged prices were inflated by 60-90%, competing bids were staged, and illicit proceeds were transferred to company accounts, including abroad.

European officials have also raised concerns over weapons supplied to Kiev disappearing and potentially reaching criminal networks.

Washington is sending more warships and troops to the Middle East as US President Donald Trump is considering the resumption of large-scale strikes against Iran after the midterms, AP has reported.

Trump told reporters on Thursday that he has “to make a decision: either Iran signs a very fair deal, or it won’t exist any longer.” In a Time magazine interview published the same day, he said that new attacks on the Islamic Republic were “possible” after the US election on November 3, but declined to reveal any further details.

In its article on Thursday, AP said that a third aircraft carrier and some 9,000 additional service members, including 7,000 sailors and 2,000 marines, are currently on their way to the area of the conflict with Iran.

It would increase the US military presence in the Middle East to more than 20,000, which is “an unusually high number,” it stressed.

The forces on the move include the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, with the cruiser USS Chosin and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group, which includes the USS John P. Murtha and USS Anchorage amphibious landing ships, an unnamed American official told the agency.

Washington last had as many carriers in the region in April at the height of the American-Israeli missile exchanges with Iran. Before that, it happened back in 2003.

Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official, that it wasn’t yet clear if the USS Theodore Roosevelt would join the two carriers or replace one of them.

Washington also sent two additional Patriot missile batteries to protect oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar in recent weeks, according to Axios. It was done to make it easier to get permission from Riyadh to use Saudi airspace for possible strikes on Iran, the outlet explained.

When asked by Time if the conflict with Tehran would harm the Republican Party’s chances in the midterms, Trump first acknowledged that “it’s possible,” but then said that “it should help, because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

After the initial US-Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic in late February, Trump claimed that the conflict will be over in a few weeks, but it’s still ongoing, with the diplomatic process remaining in a stalemate.

Trump told Time that he rejected Iran’s latest peace proposal, made during the UN General Assembly last week, because “things that I wouldn’t have approved a year ago I wouldn’t have today.”

In September, Iranian Parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that further aggressive actions by the US will be met with “faster, heavier and more painful” retaliation by Tehran.

“The Americans have surely understood that the era of proportionate responses has come to an end and our recent strikes against aggressor bases were only a start,” Ghalibaf said.

Reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored warnings from Egypt and the UAE shortly before the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack should not be assumed to doom him politically, US President Donald Trump has said.

The Israeli leader, whose Likud party is facing a difficult election in late October, has been accused of either failing to properly assess the threat posed by Gaza militants or deliberately allowing the attack to happen in order to justify a major military campaign against the Palestinian enclave.

Trump commented on the allegations and Netanyahu’s record of political survival in an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday.

He said his primary concern is “to help them defend Israel,” and suggested that if Netanyahu knew about an imminent attack, “he would have done something about it.”

Netanyahu losing sway in US media

The latest wave of accusations against Netanyahu was triggered by a Haaretz report in early September claiming UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed had warned him that Hamas was preparing a major attack. According to the outlet, Netanyahu downplayed the warning and did not pass it on to his security chiefs. Reports about a separate Egyptian warning date back to the immediate aftermath of the incursion three years ago.

The allegations have become a major political issue in Israel and have also received significant coverage in the US mainstream and international media.

MS Now host Mika Brzezinski said Israel’s border with Gaza was “wide open, the gates were empty” on the day of the attack, arguing that the Israeli government “had practically opened the door” by moving security forces to the West Bank.

“Netanyahu was warned repeatedly that it was coming, and yet he continued funding Hamas through Qatar,” her husband and co-host Joe Scarborough added.

Brzezinski and Scarborough are part of the US media establishment and are consistent pro-Israeli voices on cable television, whose criticisms of Netanyahu indicate he is losing sway in the US.

In August, Netanyahu claimed personal credit for influencing American policy, saying that his nearly 1,000 hours of appearances on American television had helped him shape opinion in Washington and eventually bring the Trump administration around to attacking Iran.

French President Emmanuel Macron has rejected what he described as “American free speech” as he defended the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA), which US officials have branded an instrument of censorship.

Speaking to reporters during a trip to Spain on Wednesday, Macron said he had asked the EU to enforce the DSA “much more extensively, much faster and much more forcefully” to tackle the spread of misinformation.

“So-called American ‘free speech’ – at least as it exists today and has been promoted by some people – is the opposite of free speech,” Macron said, arguing that individual freedoms come with responsibilities and respect for the freedoms of others.

“I know this when I walk down the street: my freedom cannot mean that I am free to hit you, insult you or vandalize the public space that belongs to everyone. Yet that is some people’s idea of ‘free speech,’” he added.

“Until we hold those who disseminate content on social media accountable, we will not be able to regulate it,” the French leader said. “When someone writes something – when a journalist writes something completely false or an editor publishes it – they can be held accountable.”

Adopted in 2022, the DSA requires online platforms such as Facebook, X, TikTok, Google and YouTube to address illegal content, increase transparency around advertising and algorithms, protect minors, and assess and mitigate systemic risks such as disinformation. The largest platforms face additional obligations and can be fined up to 6% of their worldwide annual turnover for violations.

In December 2025, the EU imposed its first fine under the DSA, ordering Elon Musk’s X to pay €120 million ($140 million) for violating the law. Last month, the US government backed X’s appeal, arguing that the bloc had overstepped its authority in targeting an American company.

US officials have accused the EU of eroding freedom of speech and attempting to silence dissenting voices for political reasons. “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage,” US Vice President J.D. Vance wrote on X in December.

Last year, the US imposed visa restrictions on European officials and heads of online monitoring groups, including Thierry Breton, the former EU internal market commissioner and a key architect of the DSA. Breton compared the move to McCarthyism, the Cold War-era campaign in the US to purge suspected communists and alleged subversives.

US President Donald Trump has also faced accusations of restricting press freedom. Last month, he barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, accusing them of spreading “fake news.” A federal judge subsequently ordered their access restored, ruling that the outlets were likely to succeed in their claim that the ban was unconstitutional.

Riot police fired tear gas at protesting students in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, amid nationwide strikes that led to nearly 2,000 arrests across France on Thursday.

High school and university students joined striking firefighters, healthcare workers, transport staff and other civil servants, demanding the hiring of more substitute teachers and better learning conditions. They erected makeshift barricades, blockaded schools and universities, and set garbage bins on fire during standoffs with police.

A total of 1,949 people were arrested on Thursday, up from 625 the previous day. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez condemned what he described as “unrestrained violence,” while the ministry reported that 305 police officers and gendarmes were injured.

Tensions en cours à Saint-Denis : face à face entre lycéens et policiers devant le commissariat.

Usage de gaz lacrymogène pour disperser la foule. pic.twitter.com/qrJXq9xKz3

— CLPRESS / Agence de presse (@CLPRESSFR) October 1, 2026

French Education Minister Edouard Geffray said that more than 400 schools would be closed on Friday due to the unrest. He argued that the student movement had been “held hostage by violent groups.”

Mortiers d’artifice contre gaz lacrymogène ce matin aux abords du lycée Diderot dans le 19e arrondissement de Paris pic.twitter.com/6Y5JVe2JB9

— CLPRESS / Agence de presse (@CLPRESSFR) October 1, 2026

Nunez said France’s police watchdog, the General Inspectorate of the National Police, had opened three investigations into incidents in which students were injured. In one case, prosecutors said a young man in Tours sustained head injuries consistent with being struck by a projectile fired from a less-lethal police weapon, according to RFI.

The interior minister, however, defended the overall police response as proportionate.

Aujourd’hui avec les étudiants de Paris 8 on est allés rejoindre les lycéens de Saint-Denis et d’Aubervilliers pour les soutenir face à la répression. La réponse de la police ça a été de nous gazer et nous matraquer, comme ici devant Le Corbusier. 👇 pic.twitter.com/qY4x5QLgQW

— Irène Karalis (@polystirene_) October 1, 2026

In Marseille, protesters attacked firefighters responding to a blaze outside Lycee Saint-Exupéry, looting and setting fire to one of their vehicles. One firefighter was injured.

Protesters also torched a city bus near Lycee La Floride, while several other buses were attacked, prompting authorities to suspend public transport across Marseille.

🔥🇫🇷 ALERTE - Des lycéens ont INCENDIÉ un bus à Marseille. (témoins)pic.twitter.com/F2N7NdwokT

— AlertesInfos (@AlertesInfos) October 1, 2026

The government held a crisis meeting on Thursday, after which the prime minister’s office, citing intelligence services, claimed that the violence had been organized by the left-wing La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI) party and “its far-left proxies.”

🚨🇫🇷Chaos in a Paris suburbs as high school students set their school entrance on fire.

All the students at this school in Saint-Denis are from migrant backgrounds.

Yesterday, police had to use tear gas to disperse the crowd. pic.twitter.com/mHdfoTlgik

— Mario ZNA (@MarioBojic) September 29, 2026

LFI spokesman Manuel Bompard urged the government “not to descend into conspiracy theories or treat high school students like children.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, LFI’s candidate in next year’s presidential election, called on students to use only nonviolent methods.

The students are demanding more funding for public education, less overloaded timetables and smaller classes. Christelle Kauffmann, deputy secretary general of the SNPDEN-Unsa school administrators’ union, said principals lacked the resources to reduce class sizes.

Speaking to BFM TV, she condemned attacks on school principals, several of whom had been injured during the protests.

Several schools were damaged and vandalized, including Lycee Diderot in Paris, where the facade was blackened by a large fire involving garbage bins and scooters, and Lycee Nelson-Mandela in Nantes, where a deliberately set fire damaged the building.

La façade du lycée Diderot (Paris 19e) noircie après un important incendie de poubelles et de scooters aux alentours de 10h. Retour au calme pic.twitter.com/OCQNKDyrSu

— CLPRESS / Agence de presse (@CLPRESSFR) October 1, 2026

The unrest comes as French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has fallen to near-record lows, with recent polls putting his approval or confidence rating at around 16-18%.

Former US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has filed for divorce from her husband of 34 years, Bryon Noem, according to court filings seen by multiple outlets.

The former DHS chief, dubbed ‘ICE Barbie’ online over her glamorous appearance while overseeing US President Donald Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown, filed the divorce papers on Monday in Hamlin County in her home state of South Dakota, citing “irreconcilable differences.”

“Kristi Noem has filed for the dissolution of her marriage to Bryon Noem. She has great faith in the South Dakota judicial system and will reserve any further comments for the legal process,” her attorney told People magazine on Tuesday.

The couple married in 1992 and have three adult children – two daughters and a son.

Bryon Noem reportedly acknowledged receiving the divorce papers on April 8, two days after his wife’s legal team signed the complaint.

His online activity could have posed a potential blackmail risk for his wife, national security experts cited by the Daily Mail said.

Just weeks before, Trump had fired Noem as DHS secretary over several mounting controversies. He later appointed her to a diplomatic role focused on security cooperation in the Americas.

Her dismissal came a day after Noem was questioned in Congress about an alleged affair with Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski – claims she dismissed as “tabloid garbage.”

The European Commission’s attempt to bolster its “digital sovereignty” and reduce reliance on US technology has fallen flat, with its chosen “backup” internal communications app facing sharp criticism from EU officials, Politico has reported.

Dubbed ‘Element Pro’, the new app was described by the Commission as a “sovereign back-up to Teams” – the body’s main communications tool developed by US software giant Microsoft – according to an internal memo seen by the news site. Element Pro was introduced in July to help “ensure… business continuity” in the event of a potential “disruption.”

“In recent months, digital sovereignty has become increasingly important,” the Commission told staff in the memo. “In practice, this means having greater control over our data and systems so that we can reduce risks and limit disruption to our work, wherever possible.”

EU officials who have tried the new app do not consider it of much use, according to the outlet. “I don’t understand the added value here,” one of them reportedly said in internal communications, with another openly calling it “absolute sh*t.”

Element CEO Matthew Hodgson brushed off the criticism, saying that the app was still in a trial phase with the European Commission and blaming officials’ difficulties on “cognitive dissonance” linked to switching to a new app.

It comes amid broader EU efforts to develop alternatives to major US technology and social media platforms, in what Brussels’ critics describe as digital protectionism. Earlier this year, France announced plans to replace US videoconferencing platforms such as Teams and Zoom with the homegrown Visio app by 2027. The European Payments Initiative is also urging EU authorities to reduce the bloc’s reliance on Visa and Mastercard.

Swedish company W Social unveiled its Europe-focused social network, W, in early 2026 and plans to open it to the public across the bloc by the end of the year. In June, Politico reported that the European Parliament was planning to replace Google with a Franco-German backed search engine as the default tool on in-house computers.

American forces are completing their withdrawal from Iraq, yet the country that Washington once promised to turn into a model of democratic transformation in the Middle East is still facing questions that years of military presence never managed to answer.

For Iraq, this is a long-awaited political milestone, but the end of a foreign military mission does not magically fix the fragmentation of power it created. The consequences of the intervention, sectarian distrust, and competition among armed centers of influence are likely to remain part of Iraq’s political landscape for years to come.

How a military victory turned into a political dead end

Although the US had already fought Iraq in 1991, it was the invasion of March 2003 that marked the beginning of the occupation and the radical restructuring of the Iraqi state. The administration of George W. Bush justified the war primarily by pointing to the alleged threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, yet the supposed stockpiles were never found. Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown with remarkable speed, but building a stable state proved to be a challenge that American military superiority alone could not solve.

The dissolution of the Iraqi army and the sweeping process of purging the influence of Hussein’s Ba’ath party deprived the emerging political system of a substantial number of people who had previously kept the state apparatus functioning. As tens of thousands of professionals, civil servants, and military personnel found themselves excluded from the new order, social resentment merged with armed resistance, while the struggle for power became increasingly sectarian. Hussein’s dictatorship had undoubtedly left behind a deeply troubled legacy, but decisions made under the occupation catalyzed violence as a means of reclaiming lost influence.

The first withdrawal of American forces was completed in 2011, but by 2014 the US had returned at the invitation of the Iraqi government after ISIS seized Mosul and large areas of Iraqi territory. At that stage, American air power, intelligence capabilities and the training of local forces genuinely contributed to turning the course of the war. Denying that contribution would diminish both the role of the international coalition and the importance of the support it provided to Iraq. Even so, the principal burden of the fighting on the ground was carried by Iraqi forces, including the army, counterterrorism units, the Peshmerga and the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The destruction of Islamic State’s territorial rule in Iraq in 2017 was a genuine military achievement, but it did not eliminate the conditions that had previously allowed jihadist forces to establish themselves in the country. If American policy is judged against its promise of creating a stable and secure Iraq, the outcome appears considerably less impressive than one would think from all the declarations of military victory. All Washington did was help suppress a threat its own intervention had helped create.

The regional consequences were equally contradictory, since the removal of one of Tehran’s principal adversaries created new opportunities for Iran to expand its influence inside Iraq. The US invested enormous resources in building a new political order in which the position of its main regional rival ultimately became considerably stronger. This does not mean that Baghdad lost its own political agency, but it demonstrates just how far the actual consequences of the war diverged from the expectations with which Washington had entered it.

Sovereignty begins with bringing armed power under state control

The American withdrawal will inevitably be regarded by part of Iraqi society as the end of a long era of occupation, even though the military presence established after 2014 rested on a different legal and political basis and took place at Baghdad’s invitation. This distinction allows the Iraqi authorities to emphasise their sovereignty without denying that foreign assistance had been necessary at a particular stage.

This is one of the most difficult contradictions of post-war Iraq. Groups that helped save the state from jihadist forces acquired their own sources of political and economic influence, while some commanders developed an interest in preserving a system under which the state finances armed formations without exercising complete control over their decisions. Disarmament in these conditions affects the position of political parties, access to state revenues and the personal security of individuals who have become accustomed to relying on their own armed networks.

The government of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is seeking to bring weapons under state control, while Iran-linked armed groups like Kataib Hezbollah are resisting these demands. The deadline imposed by the authorities has met direct opposition from several formations, while arrests of individual militia members have already prompted threats of retaliation.

Against the backdrop of the war between the US, Israel, and Iran, there is ever less space for compromise, since some armed groups view their weapons both as a means of supporting Tehran and as protection against American pressure. Baghdad, meanwhile, risks finding itself caught between Washington’s demands and the expectations of neighboring Iran, a country whose relationship with Iraq cannot be reduced simply to its ties with armed groups.

An attempt to disarm all formations simultaneously could unite against the government commanders whose interests had previously diverged, while endless concessions would merely institutionalize the autonomy of competing armed centers. A gradual process of bringing these forces under a unified chain of command, combined with tighter control over financing and credible guarantees for ordinary fighters, appears more sustainable. Otherwise, organizational rebranding may leave old networks of loyalty intact, while sovereignty remains little more than a political slogan.

New power vacuum

The Iraqi army today possesses experience that it catastrophically lacked in 2014, which is why it would be misleading to assume that the fall of Mosul could simply repeat itself. The number of Islamic State attacks in Iraq fell to a historic low in 2025 as a result of sustained pressure from Iraqi security forces. At the same time, the organization has not disappeared and continues to exploit instability in neighboring Syria.

The most dangerous scenario would play out if confrontation between the government and armed groups began consuming the resources required for everyday security. If army units were redeployed towards the capital, intelligence services became increasingly focused on internal political opponents and local commanders stopped exchanging information, jihadist networks would gain opportunities to rebuild their supply routes and recruitment mechanisms. They would not need to seize major cities immediately. A sustained series of attacks on roads and in rural areas could already be enough to undermine public confidence in the authorities.

Such a vacuum could emerge in areas where several security structures are formally present but none assumes full responsibility for maintaining order. Territories where political rivalry obstructs cooperation between Baghdad, the Kurdish authorities and local security forces would be particularly vulnerable. If arbitrary measures and collective accusations against local communities were added to this environment, underground groups could once again attempt to present themselves as defenders of those who feel excluded or mistreated.

The central question, therefore, is whether the Iraqi leadership can preserve unity of command, public confidence and effective intelligence work while simultaneously reforming the country’s armed formations. Continued external technical assistance and intelligence sharing could make this task easier, but foreign advisers cannot substitute for a domestic political settlement. The withdrawal creates a genuine danger when it coincides with the collapse of such a settlement, although the departure of foreign troops does not in itself make another war inevitable.

At the same time, the army’s ability to conduct raids against underground cells should not automatically be equated with its ability to confront large armed formations that enjoy political protection. In the latter case, an order to use force could divide the governing coalition, while commanders would inevitably have to take into account loyalties and connections within their own political camp. It is precisely this dependence of military decisions on elite rivalry that makes the possibility of internal confrontation particularly dangerous.

Why Washington is reducing its presence

Explaining the American decision solely through the current conflict with Iran would be historically inaccurate, since the timetable for transforming the coalition mission was agreed as early as September 2024. The decision reflected the decline in the terrorist threat compared with the period when Islamic State controlled substantial territory, pressure from the Iraqi authorities and a broader intention to move towards bilateral cooperation. Washington was able to reduce its direct military involvement while maintaining its relationship with Baghdad through training programs, arms cooperation, and diplomatic instruments.

When an expensive military facility can be repeatedly targeted with comparatively inexpensive drones, protecting that facility requires a constant expenditure of resources, and every military casualty creates political pressure for another round of escalation. Under these circumstances, reducing the number of vulnerable American garrisons can be a rational choice for Washington even though the overall military capabilities of the US remain incomparably greater than those of its opponents. This, however, explains the incentives behind current American policy rather than proving that Iranian attacks were the original cause of the withdrawal.

Even after the last military unit departs, political responsibility for the consequences of the intervention will remain. The US is leaving at a moment when the Iraqi state has still not secured a complete monopoly over the use of force and when the foundations of lasting political reconciliation are still shaky. The issue is not whether American troops should remain indefinitely against the wishes of the host country, but rather that the political project proclaimed at the beginning of the intervention was never fully completed.

The Iraqi withdrawal also raises the question as to whether it is part of a wider change in the American role in the Middle East, as Washington concentrates more resources within a strategic security belt extending from Latin America to the North Atlantic and Greenland.

There are grounds for such an interpretation, since the US has increasingly emphasized the Western Hemisphere while reconsidering the geographic distribution of its military presence. The expansion of American military opportunities in Greenland is also consistent with a growing emphasis on the security of the American continent and the North Atlantic.

Yet these decisions do not mean that the US is abandoning the Middle East altogether or that it no longer has the capacity to maintain bases there. The continuing confrontation with Iran demonstrates the persistence of powerful strategic commitments, while the reduction of one military contingent can be accompanied by a stronger naval or air presence elsewhere. Rather, Washington is adopting a more selective approach, seeking to reduce the costs of prolonged deployments where military presence has failed to produce a proportionate political return.

For Iraq, the consequences of that shift will ultimately depend less on the number of American soldiers who remain than on whether Iraqi leaders can create a functioning and accountable state authority before competing armed actors begin struggling to fill the vacuum once again.

Norway’s parliament has begun a public inquiry into ties the country’s political and diplomatic elite had with US pedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein. Eleven current and former foreign and development ministers, including Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, who served as foreign minister from 2005 to 2012, will face questioning.

The Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice earlier this year revealed his often toxic connections to politicians, royals, and other prominent figures, for whom he is thought to have provided underage girls for sex. The disclosures have prompted parliamentary and police investigations in Norway.

The Norwegian parliamentary Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs is examining the Foreign Ministry’s handling of international aid funds, internal oversight mechanisms, and whether personal relationships involving Epstein may have influenced government decisions. Committee member Jonas Andersen Sayed has said the government must explain what it is doing to restore trust in the foreign service.

Norway, home to the Nobel Peace Prize and a longstanding player in international diplomacy, has faced heightened scrutiny over Epstein’s connections to its political and diplomatic circles.

Roed-Larsen, a central figure in the 1990s Middle East peace talks and a key architect of the 1993 Oslo Accords, is among several prominent Norwegians under investigation by Norway’s economic crime authority, Oekokrim, following the disclosure of the Epstein files.

Former Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland and former diplomat Mona Juul are also under investigation. Juul and Jagland are suspected of aggravated corruption, while Roed-Larsen is suspected of complicity in aggravated corruption. All three have denied wrongdoing.

Separately, the parliament has appointed an independent commission of academics and legal experts to examine matters raised by the Epstein files. The commission is due to submit its findings by January 31, 2028.

Pakistani airstrikes on Afghanistan have killed nine civilians, including women and children, and injured 11 others, Kabul said on Thursday.

The strikes hit Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar and southern Helmand provinces, Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. He condemned the attack as an “act of aggression and a crime that violates all recognized principles."

Islamabad claimed the raids killed 22 militants at hideouts in two locations. The operation was based on “credible intelligence” and selectively targeted militant camps and hideouts, Pakistan’s Information Ministry said.

"The threat to Pakistan emanates from Afghanistan. In this context, our action precisely targeted the terrorist hubs,” the ministry said, maintaining that the strikes were directed at militant hubs. Islamabad has repeatedly accused groups based in Afghanistan of carrying out attacks inside Pakistan.

The latest attack marks the third time in two weeks that Pakistan has struck targets inside Afghanistan. Last week, Pakistani airstrikes hit Kandahar and other provinces, killing four civilians, according to the Taliban government.

The renewed escalation followed a militant attack on a police facility in northwestern Pakistan last month that killed 24 people. Provincial police blamed the attack on the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban.

Commenting on the border standoff between the two neigbors in an exclusive interview with RT India, Mujahid said Afghanistan was only defending itself after Pakistan violated its territory. “Defending ourselves is our right, but we are neither the initiators nor do we want it to continue,” he emphasized.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has recorded over 1,100 deaths and injuries from cross-border violence so far this year.

A woman convicted of murder in the US state of Tennessee has been taken to hospital after surviving two doses of lethal injection drugs in a failed execution attempt, several media outlets reported Thursday, citing her lawyers and media witnesses.

Christa Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville. If carried out normally, Pike’s execution, scheduled for Wednesday, would have been the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Prosecutors said Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, lured Slemmer to a wooded area. Pike beat and cut Slemmer with a box cutter, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time, admitted carving a pentagram into her body. While Pike received the death penalty, Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Pike did not lose consciousness after two syringes of pentobarbital were administered, her attorneys said in emergency legal filings seen by the New York Times. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.

According to her lawyers, as cited by the newspaper, Pike was later taken to a nearby hospital, although they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials reportedly confirmed to a federal judge later that day that Pike was receiving medical care.

Pike was initially scheduled to be executed in the morning, but a federal appeals court issued a temporary stay to consider her lawyers’ claims that her history of childhood sexual abuse and neglect had not been adequately presented at sentencing. The US Supreme Court later lifted the obstacle, allowing Tennessee to proceed with the execution that evening.

Commenting on the apparent failure to carry out an execution, the Tennessee Department of Correction stated that it “had followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office.”

It was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. In May, officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners spent more than an hour trying unsuccessfully to place an IV for the pentobarbital.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has welcomed the US withdrawal from Iraq, adding that the Americans should also leave all other countries in the region.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the last American troops had departed from Iraq after being there for 23 years.

In its statement yesterday dedicated to the US pullout, the IRGC said that it “congratulates the proud nation of Iraq… and the revolutionary fighters of the Islamic world on this historic victory.”

The US lost a total of 4,419 troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. The Watson Institute at Brown University has estimated that the invasion cost American taxpayers some $2.8 trillion dollars. “These figures show America’s heavy and disgraceful defeat,” the IRGC statement read.

The Guard insisted that “America’s presence not only brought no security, but was itself the source of insecurity, terrorism and instability in West Asia.”

“It can be firmly said that America’s expulsion from Iraq is the prelude to its expulsion from all of West Asia… America must leave the region and leave security management to the peoples themselves,” it said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said on Wednesday that the US withdrawal signaled the beginning of a “new phase, one defined by Iraq’s sovereignty, the strength of its institutions, the readiness of its forces, the unity of its decision-making, and balanced partnerships with its friends.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform on the same day, US President Donald Trump described the American involvement in Iraq as “a very expensive excursion into Hell.” Its conclusion is a win for both Washington and Baghdad, he claimed.

It was “very bad decision-making that got us involved in this quagmire in the first place,” Trump said.

Trump himself initiated a conflict with Iran in late February on the pretext of preventing it from obtaining a nuclear bomb, despite claiming the previous June that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program had been “obliterated” by US-Israeli strikes. Tehran has repeatedly insisted that it is not working on a weapon.

Washington’s position in the Middle East has been dealt a blow during the Iran war, as Tehran has damaged or outright destroyed key US radar, communications, and other military infrastructure at bases in Gulf nations, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and others.

The Pentagon is now considering whether to reduce the US military footprint in the region after the Iran war ends, the Washington Post reported in August, citing anonymous officials. Diplomatic efforts to settle the crisis currently remain in a stalemate.

The resignation of Aleksandar Vucic as president of Serbia should be understood in the context of the internal political conflict between the ruling elites and Generation Z, which began several years ago as a result of the collapse of the newly renovated railway station building in one of Serbia’s largest cities, Novi Sad. 

Tactically, this step is connected with his aspiration to join the parliamentary election campaign (the vote is scheduled for October 25). This maneuver may indeed succeed. However, much more serious today are questions about Belgrade’s further strategic approach to young people and the patriotically minded population of the country.

For Russia, it is important to remain intellectually attractive to Serbian youth, thus denying opponents the argument that contemporary Moscow-Belgrade relations are grounded exclusively in economic benefits. It is precisely in this context that the possibility lies of preserving the special spirit of the connection between the two nations in an era when long-term alliances that previously seemed unshakeable have totally broken down.

Ahead of the snap elections, Serbia’s domestic political landscape is defined by a fierce standoff between Vucic's ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) and the opposition movement, which is rapidly gaining momentum. Experts say the election itself resembles a referendum on the ruling party.

The campaign has devolved into a fierce information and economic war, with unprecedented media polarization. In an attempt to stabilize its fluctuating ratings in major cities, the government has launched direct cash payments to citizens. The authorities are also placing emphasis on economic stability, the “Serbia 2030” program, and maintaining preferential prices for Russian gas ($318 instead of the market price of $868), which is being touted as the key to the economy’s survival.

The opposition coalition Student List – Students Win has bet on street mobilization, an aggressive media campaign, and horizontal network leadership. This coordinated movement of Generation Z is demonstratively distancing itself from the old, systemic, pro-Western opposition. By pointedly rejecting party flags in favor of the national tricolor, they have seized the patriotic agenda, demanding the depoliticization of the state apparatus and deep institutional reforms.

The movement’s growth followed a tragedy in the country’s second-largest city, Novi Sad, where 16 people died when a canopy collapsed at a recently renovated train station. Ordinary Serbians perceived the incident as a direct consequence of corruption, nepotism, and official negligence. Students led the popular outrage, turning months of protests into the largest anti-corruption movement in modern Serbian history.

It’s noteworthy that Generation Z’s share of Serbian society is small at only 15%. People over 45 are the largest cohort at 50% of the total. Therefore, in order to reach national prominence, the youth core abandoned the classic party format in favor of a “citizens’ group.” The electoral list, in addition to students, includes respected “adult” professionals, such as university professors, renowned doctors, lawyers, social activists, workers, and former train drivers. This approach has attracted voters of all ages who are tired of politics-as-usual.

According to summer polls conducted by the sociological center Crta, 44.9% of citizens were prepared to vote for the Student List, while 35.7% indicated their intention to vote for the ruling party. Currently, according to political analysts, the two forces are very close.

The right-wing forces view Russia’s veto power in the UN Security Council as the only reliable guarantor of the country’s territorial integrity and insist on formalizing the strategic alliance with Moscow, including Serbia’s integration into the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The growing popularity of the radical patriotic flank deprives the ruling coalition of its monopoly on the conservative electorate and seriously complicates Vucic’s task of forming a future government.

The external context is also raising the temperature: the cancelation of European Commissioner Marta Kos’ visit due to disputes over national heroes has given the opposition grounds to claim Serbia is isolated. However, Vucic’s team is pragmatically countering these accusations by demonstrating its continued policy of balancing between the main geopolitical powers in the Balkans. Belgrade successfully maintains contacts with both Moscow and Beijing, while simultaneously continuing dialogue with the West. A clear indication of this multi-vector approach was Vucic’s recent participation in the Ukrainian summit of the Carpathian Eight (C8), where his team demonstrated openness to initiatives supported by Brussels.

What is dangerous about what is happening 

The current situation poses a fundamental threat to Serbian statehood, as the opposition’s actions resemble a model of non-violent mass protest organized online, reflecting the methodologies used in color revolutions. In Serbia, the methodology has taken on unique characteristics, as it lacks an explicit link to Western donors and is focused on a youthful, patriotic agenda.

According to Ekaterina Entina, a professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, a new political strategy for rallying opposition forces is being developed in Serbia: “The whole intrigue from the start of the student protests has been that they haven’t revealed who’s behind them. And all attempts to uncover truly significant funding channels, significant channels of political and social influence, have come to nothing. Everyone knows who’s funding them in small ways, but the grand scheme remains unknown.”

The main question is why such a protest network is needed in the Balkans if there are no visible reasons for the country to change course. After all, the ruling party’s policy aimed at European integration has no visible alternatives. Moreover, even the administration of US President Donald Trump, while not perceiving Serbia as a powerful geopolitical player, pragmatically prioritizes Belgrade for diplomatic and economic contacts in Europe. Clearly, the goal of this network’s major but secret donors is much more far-reaching than the mere destabilization of Vucic’s system of governance, with all its pros and cons. One way or another, Vucic is a temporary variable in the equation. The primary goal is a fundamental reversal of the direction of Serbian society itself.

The organizers of the Serbian network, however, don’t need students to come to power. Their calculation is different: knowing that Serbian society is mentally oriented toward Russia, external players have hijacked patriotic, Orthodox slogans and led the Generation Z youth into a decentralized “network trap.” The goal is to accumulate all sincere, traditionally Russia-friendly conservative protesters and then trigger Castells’ paradox: discharging this energy into a senseless administrative deadlock and chaos.

As Serbian political analyst Ostoja Vojinovic notes, the practical culmination of this scheme is expected on the night of the vote count through the phenomenon of “parallel legitimacy.” When the state announces one result, the street protesters will announce another, and social media will contribute a third picture. Ballot stuffing will instantly become an “established fact” for young people, thus completely paralyzing traditional institutions of power.

This methodology of dismantling is aimed at the core of Serbian statehood. Serbian experts state:

“Serbia is, in its own way, a unique European country, where an anti-Russian course is a priori impossible – it would mean political suicide. Historical memory is too strong here for momentary circumstances to steer the country toward a destructive, hostile course toward the Russian Federation.”

Understanding that a frontal pro-Western turn in Belgrade is impossible due to public resistance, the decision has been made to scorch the very patriotic field using the hands of local youth. By driving Serbian Russophilia into a digital “network trap” and condemning the country to controlled chaos, external actors are attempting to create a landscape in which future generations of politicians will simply no longer have to take into account the electorate’s pro-Russian expectations.

Relations with Russia 

In the current reality, Moscow needs a critical analysis of the geopolitical risks, as neither shared historical memory nor traditional cultural and religious ties guarantee the long-term stability of bilateral relations. In the coming geopolitical era of collapse of previously firm alliances, Russia must be prepared for any scenario. The likelihood that, under the pressure of a generational shift, the current model of relations between Belgrade and Moscow will be transformed or temporarily weakened is high.

Russian elites need to recognize the risks of a possible political transition in Serbia now. The answer to these risks will lie in Russia’s intellectual appeal, aimed at the horizon of a shared future, a multipolar world, and a clear understanding of how to work with the new generation. A new reality will inevitably emerge from the fragments of the previous pragmatic system of maneuvering, and the extent to which Russia can maintain intellectual appeal to Generation Z will determine whether the Balkans will remain a sovereign Eurasian outpost or be completely absorbed into the Euro-Atlantic matrix.

European NATO members should have been able to attack Iran instead of relying on the US and Israel, according to Secretary-General Mark Rutte, the head of the self-described defensive alliance.

Iran has been attacked twice in two years, both times over allegations that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons, which Tehran rejects as false. Speaking at the Euronews Defence & Space Summit on Friday, Rutte endorsed the idea that European nations should acquire the military capabilities needed to carry out such wars of aggression themselves.

In the future, “the Europeans will be able to take care of their backyard themselves. It should be us doing this, not the Americans,” he said.

“Europe was not able to take out the nuclear capability of Iran. We couldn’t. We didn’t have the capabilities. In 10 years, we can and we should,” he added, referring to multi-billion euro rearmament efforts now underway in European members of the military bloc.

“Basically what we said is, ‘hey, listen, we are a defensive alliance, and stop the nuclear threat’,” he told journalists when asked about a formal warning Moscow had sent to Brussels.

Russia cited remarks by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who proposed in September deploying additional troops near the Russian border so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.” Moscow said it would use its “entire available arsenal” to defend Russian territory from a possible attack by NATO states.

NATO was created in the early years of the Cold War, ensuring a continued US military presence in Western Europe. The Soviet Union later established its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, which no longer exists.

While NATO describes itself as a defensive alliance, it has carried out military attacks against other countries, including the UK- and French-led 2011 intervention in Libya, after which the North African state was balkanized.

Rutte’s argument in support of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran echoed remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said in June 2025 that the Israelis were doing “[the] dirty work for us.”

The incident aboard FlyDubai flight FZ1073 has yielded some confirmed facts, but it is still too early to draw firm conclusions. The passenger jet was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday when a confrontation broke out in the cockpit. The aircraft then transmitted a distress signal and made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. All 174 passengers and crew members survived. According to media reports, the plane lost altitude rapidly, while passengers and airline employees aboard helped subdue the attacker and restore control to the crew. Early wire reports offered conflicting accounts, including claims of a hijacking, because the aircraft had transmitted the corresponding emergency signal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the copilot had attacked the captain and apparently tried to crash the plane. Defense Minister Israel Katz described the incident as an attempted jihadist terrorist attack. Israeli authorities have already characterized it as an attempted act of terrorism, drawing comparisons with the September 11, 2001 attacks. But the investigation is ongoing, and no final findings have been released. FlyDubai confirmed that an altercation had occurred in the cockpit and said investigators were working to establish its cause and the motives involved. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates also announced an investigation and urged the public not to spread unverified information. Saudi officials confirmed the emergency landing and said both pilots had been hospitalized.

The central question – what exactly happened – therefore remains unresolved. Israel has already said it views the incident as an act of terrorism. Yet the publicly available evidence is still insufficient to establish an ideological motive, an intention to kill Israelis specifically, or any connection between the attacker and an organization. Investigators are examining his motives, the circumstances of the attack, and whether it involved advance planning.

Media reports identified the suspect as the copilot and an Omani citizen, but those details came from Israeli sources and have not been confirmed by all parties. No information has been released about whether he made any statements, had contact with radical groups, or acted on someone else’s instructions. FlyDubai has explicitly warned against jumping to conclusions.

If investigators establish that the copilot deliberately tried to destroy the aircraft because it was headed to Tel Aviv or because Israelis were aboard, the incident could be classified as a terrorist attack carried out through access granted by his job. That would distinguish it from the more familiar scenario of an attacker trying to board a plane with a weapon. In that case, the security challenge would extend beyond passenger screening to the possibility of someone exploiting a trusted position within the aviation system.

Radicalization as the political backdrop

Still, it is also too early to dismiss the incident as a personal dispute between two crew members. The flight was bound for Israel, and the confrontation occurred in a region where protracted conflict is a fact of daily life. This week, the Israel Defense Forces again struck Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians. Under those circumstances, there can hardly be any meaningful talk of a ceasefire. In September, further attacks took place in the West Bank, where no Hamas fighters were involved: an armed assailant attacked an Israeli, while settlers attacked a Palestinian family.

Radicalization in this context is not simply a matter of new armed groups emerging. It also means a growing number of people coming to see violence as an acceptable political response, assigning collective responsibility for a government’s actions to entire populations, and treating any compromise as betrayal. The longer military operations, civilian deaths, and mutual recriminations continue, the easier it becomes for extremists to portray violence as “retribution” or “resistance” instead of a crime. Different forces employ this rhetoric, but it does not absolve individual perpetrators of responsibility for attacking civilians.

There is another side to this dynamic. Attacks on Israeli civilians and threats to Israel’s security strengthen public support within Israel for the use of force. Retaliatory measures then give fresh ammunition to those calling for radical resistance. The result is a vicious cycle in which each side invokes the other’s violence to justify its own course. The FlyDubai incident may prove to be part of that pattern, and revenge cannot be ruled out as the attacker’s motive.

Could it happen again?

There is no guarantee that similar attempts will not occur, especially if investigators confirm that the attack was ideologically motivated and deliberately targeted a flight to Israel. Such a finding would likely lead to tighter security for flights serving Israel, including more rigorous personnel vetting, revised cockpit access procedures, and closer monitoring of crew behavior. Israeli authorities have already announced stronger aviation security measures, while FlyDubai has suspended flights to Israel pending the investigation.

But a single incident is not enough to predict a “wave” of similar attacks. That would require evidence of preparations, organizers, connected perpetrators, or at least statements from groups claiming responsibility. None of that has been made public so far. What we have is an incident that was averted almost miraculously, a possible terrorist motive, and a persistently unstable regional backdrop.

It bears repeating that it is too early to state conclusively that this was a terrorist attack. Investigators have yet to establish a motive or reconstruct the full sequence of events. But there is also no basis for explaining it away as an ordinary quarrel between pilots. The aircraft was headed to Tel Aviv; one pilot attacked the other, and the plane subsequently lost altitude rapidly. Investigators are closely examining the possibility of terrorism alongside other explanations. For now, all that is known is that the attacker acted alone aboard the aircraft – if this was indeed a terrorist attack. Whether he had ties to a group, and what drove him, remain to be determined.

Radicalization is intensifying across the region. That does not mean every new incident is part of a wider conspiracy, or that attacks on Israeli targets will inevitably become more frequent. But the possibility of further violence will remain as long as wars, repression, mutual dehumanization, and political mobilization fueled by hatred continue – a process at which Israel’s far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have proved all too “successful.”

The Pentagon will set up a new Autonomous Warfare Command to design, produce and field robotic systems across the military, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said in his ‘State of the Force’ address.

The announcement comes as experts sound the alarm about the threat posed by military AI, saying that over-reliance on it could lead to the erosion of human critical thinking, increase the risk of accidental escalation due to the unpredictability of the decision-making by the algorithms and make warfare even more dangerous for civilians.

During his speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Wednesday, Hegseth said that the AutoWarCom would be granted “service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.”

“Drone warfare supercharged by SI-enabled targeting is the biggest battlefield revolution in generations,” he stressed.

A day earlier, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order replacing the term “Artificial Intelligence” (“AI”) with “Super Intelligence” (“SI”) in the US government’s vocabulary.

In a memo published the same day, Hegseth noted that the Pentagon’s long-time strategy “of buying fewer, increasingly sophisticated weapons” has lost its effectiveness.

“Warfare… has changed dramatically and suddenly. Advanced computing now enables precise, low-cost weapons to be produced at massive scale. These systems increasingly threaten our costly legacy platforms and disrupt our force projection. Urgent change is required,” he wrote.

The Autonomous Warfare Command, which will be led by a four-star general, should become operational by October 1, 2027, the secretary of war said.

Bloomberg reported last month that heavy reliance on AI, staff cuts and rushed targeting procedures contributed to a US missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school in Minab on February 28, in which at least 157 people, including 123 children, were killed.

Last week, CNN reported that AI almost caused a serious incident between US and China in spring. The American forces were about to intercept a Chinese vessel, which, according to an intelligence report, was carrying components for a nuclear weapon to Iran. The mission was called off at the last moment when it became clear that a chatbot used by the analyst misidentified the cargo, according to the broadcaster.

During a defense conference in Beijing in mid-September, Thailand’s Defense Minister Adul Boonthumjaroen warned that the world was at “a critical turning point” due to the emergence of the military AI. “The most pressing is not who will be the most powerful, but rather, how can we build an international order,” he said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has rejected claims by UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham that Tehran is linked to the recent security scare near the RAF Fairford airbase in southwestern England.

Police arrested five men on Sunday near the military facility that hosts US bombers used in missions against Iran. The suspects turned out to be British citizens in their early 20s and were released on bail the following day.

“There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford,” Burnham told the BBC on Wednesday, marking the first time UK authorities have publicly linked the incident to a foreign actor.

He declined to provide further details, promising to “say more in due course.”

PM Burnham says the UK Government "can confirm our belief that we believe Iran to have played a part" in the RAF Fairford incident.

I can confirm Iran's belief that releasing supposed terrorists working for foreign states really says it all.

You're barking up the wrong tree.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) September 30, 2026

Araghchi responded to Burnham’s claims on social media.

“I can confirm Iran’s belief that releasing supposed terrorists working for foreign states really says it all. You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he wrote on X.

Burnham also defended the decision to release the suspects, which had been questioned by US President Donald Trump, insisting that the men were subject to the “strictest possible bail conditions.”

The American leader claimed the suspects were known to the law enforcement.

“I would have said, ‘Don’t let them have bail.’ I’m surprised that they released them. I wouldn’t have done that,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

The case has fueled much speculation in Western media, including theories that Russia or unspecified Islamist extremists may have been behind the incident. Police initially believed the suspects illegally held explosives, but none were found in three vans found in the vicinity of the base.

In another twist, the BBC reported on Wednesday that one of the five suspects had called the police himself shortly before the arrests – and about an hour before local residents alerted authorities to suspicious vehicles near the base. According to the Daily Mail, masked men reported by locals in the woods were apparently armed police responding to the initial tip.

Dubai-based airline FlyDubai has suspended flights to and from Israel after a Tel Aviv-bound passenger jet was diverted and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia following an apparent hijacking attempt.

Direct air travel has been one of the most visible signs of normalized relations between Israel and the UAE since the countries signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020.

“Following the incident involving flight FZ 1073 on 30 September, and in coordination with the relevant authorities, Flydubai flights to and from Israel will be suspended while the investigation continues,” the airline said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The safety and wellbeing of our passengers, crew and operations remain our highest priority. This temporary suspension will allow the relevant authorities to continue their work and establish all the facts surrounding the incident,” Flydubai added.

According to Israeli officials and passengers, most of whom were Israeli nationals, a fight broke out in the cockpit during which the co-pilot stabbed the captain, causing the plane to plunge. Passengers and crew members eventually subdued the assailant, after which the aircraft landed safely, with no fatalities among the 174 people on board. The captain was reportedly seriously injured during the altercation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker had apparently planned to crash the plane and that the actions of the captain and passengers prevented “a 9/11 disaster.”

US President Donald Trump, who discussed the incident with Netanyahu by phone, suggested that the co-pilot was “perhaps a terrorist, or perhaps a whack-job.”

Emirati-Israeli relations have faced growing strains since the start of the Gaza war in 2023, despite the two countries maintaining diplomatic, commercial and security ties.

Regional tensions escalated further after the US and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February. Tehran retaliated by firing thousands of missiles and drones at the UAE, which hosts US military forces.

Netanyahu visited the UAE on Sunday for talks with President Mohamed bin Zayed on bilateral ties and the war with Iran. Tehran condemned the visit and warned of “highly dangerous consequences,” arguing that Netanyahu’s presence threatened regional peace and security.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius has said there is no evidence that Russia is preparing an attack on NATO territory, following a meeting with the military bloc’s chief, Mark Rutte, in Brussels.

His remarks came amid heightened tensions between Russia and NATO, as some Western officials and intelligence agencies have warned that Moscow could be preparing operations against member states in Europe.

At a press conference on Tuesday, an AFP reporter asked Sinkevicius, whose Baltic country borders Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and Moscow’s close ally Belarus, whether the “increasing hysteria and fear of hybrid attacks” could undermine Europe’s confidence and play into Russia’s hands.

“We’re not shaking. We’re not shivering. We are investing hugely in our defense capabilities,” Sinkevicius replied.

“I think it’s a must to say if the threat is there for the society. But you can’t exaggerate and say, ‘Oh, something is happening in the upcoming months or weeks,’” he added.

“I was addressing the secretary general [Rutte, asking] ‘Is there any proof, real proof intelligence services are providing, something on the table, that Russia is getting ready for something?’ And there is actually none,” Sinkevicius said.

“The risk remains but it is not fluctuating, increasing or decreasing. We have to calmly do our work, and we’re doing it,” he added. 

👀 Lithuanian PM: "I was addressing the secretary general [Mark Rutte asking,] 'Is there any proof, real proof intelligence services are providing, something on the table, that Russia is getting ready for something?' And there is actually none."

In other words, most of the “OMG!… pic.twitter.com/2UdYUWWKPR

— 1g0r.B0hm (@1g0rB0hm) September 30, 2026

Rutte said the bloc should respond to potential threats by strengthening its own defenses and doing “even more for Ukraine, and not less.”

Speaking at the Euronews Defence & Space Summit in Brussels the following day, the NATO chief similarly sought to play down fears of an imminent Russian attack.

“There is no imminent threat to NATO territory. If there is a build-up, we will see it and we will deal with it,” Rutte said.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys argued in May that NATO must demonstrate its ability to “break into” the Russian exclave and destroy its air-defense and missile systems if necessary. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said last month that NATO members should closely monitor Russian forces in Kaliningrad and conduct exercises “so aggressively” that Moscow would be forced to divert troops from Ukraine to defend the region.

The Kremlin has described remarks about Kaliningrad as “borderline crazy,” while the Russian Embassy in Belgium condemned what it called “an unprecedented surge” in NATO military activity along Russia’s western borders.

“The Alliance is conducting a large-scale information campaign to propagate the myth of the ‘Russian threat’ and spread false information about Moscow’s alleged ‘intentions’ to attack one of the Baltic states by 2029 at the latest, or even sooner,” the Russian Embassy said on X on Monday.

It warned NATO members that “reckless and irresponsible” actions risked triggering a direct armed conflict.

Patrick Branco Ruivo, the director general of the company operating the Eiffel Tower, has said he will step down amid controversy over female employees being replaced by men during a visit by Hindu dignitaries.

According to French media, Branco Ruivo told staff and the board of directors of the Societe d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE) on Tuesday that he would leave by the end of the year. However, he denied issuing “any instruction aimed at sidelining or replacing women” during a September 5 tour of the monument by members of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a global conservative Hindu religious organization.

“Nevertheless, women were indeed sidelined, and I regret that,” Branco Ruivo said, as cited by Le Figaro.

His decision followed an internal investigation that uncovered “a series of dysfunctions and failures” in the organization of protocol visits, which SETE said had led to the “unacceptable” sidelining of female employees.

A separate investigation launched by the City of Paris is still underway, according to French media.

The scandal broke after Eiffel Tower employees said management had issued instructions that led to female staff “being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex” during the BAPS delegation’s visit in early September.

“Some [women] were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present,” staff at the iconic landmark said.

SETE said at the time that the Hindu delegation had requested arrangements limiting “interactions with women,” adding that “these conditions should not have been accepted.”

BAPS, however, denied asking for “female employees to be hidden, removed or excluded from the visit,” insisting that its monks observe their “personal spiritual commitments” without seeking to impose them on others. The organization nevertheless apologized for “any pain or inconvenience caused” by the incident.

BAPS is known for building large Hindu temples and cultural complexes around the world, including in London, Abu Dhabi and Robbinsville, New Jersey. The delegation’s Eiffel Tower visit coincided with celebrations surrounding the inauguration of a new BAPS temple in the Paris suburb of Bussy-Saint-Georges.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the UK could eventually rejoin the European Union as his government considers options for reshaping relations with the bloc a decade after the Brexit referendum.

In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Burnham said Brexit had done “more harm than good,” arguing that the current settlement was holding back economic growth and had failed to deliver the promised control over immigration.

He said the government would examine alternatives ranging from maintaining the status quo to joining a customs union or the single market, or even potentially going “all the way” and returning to the EU. 

Why did Britain leave the EU in the first place?

Britons voted 52% to 48% to leave the EU in June 2016, triggering years of negotiations over the terms of Brexit. The UK formally left the bloc in January 2020 and exited the single market and customs union at the end of that year.

For many Leave voters, Brexit was primarily about sovereignty and immigration rather than economics. An Ashcroft poll conducted immediately after the referendum found that 49% of Leave voters said their main reason was wanting decisions about the UK to be made in Britain, while 33% pointed to regaining control over immigration and borders. Only 6% primarily cited expected benefits from leaving the EU for trade and the economy. By contrast, 43% of Remain voters said their main concern was the risk Brexit posed to the economy, jobs, and prices.

What did Brexit achieve?

Brexit ended EU free movement and gave London control over who could move to Britain from the bloc. That did not, however, translate into lower overall immigration. Net migration instead surged as arrivals from outside the EU increased, reaching a record 944,000 in the year to March 2023 before falling sharply following tighter visa rules. Non-EU nationals continue to account for most immigration.

The change also worked both ways. British citizens lost EU freedom-of-movement rights and are now subject to the entry requirements that apply to non-EU travelers in the Schengen area.

Why is the issue being reopened now?

Critics contend that the economic costs of Brexit have overshadowed its benefits. The OBR estimates that Brexit will ultimately reduce the trade intensity of the British economy by around 15% and productivity by about 4% relative to remaining in the EU. These are long-term modeling assumptions rather than directly observed losses, while Britain’s economic performance since Brexit has also been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine conflict, and wider disruptions to global trade. 

Is preserving the UK part of the calculation?

Burnham has not explicitly linked his EU rethink to preserving the United Kingdom. But it comes as pro-independence and Irish nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland push for independence or Irish reunification while presenting closer integration with the EU as part of their preferred future.

This month, the pro-independence SNP and Plaid Cymru, together with the pro-Irish-unification Sinn Fein, jointly asserted their nations’ right to self-determination and called on London to facilitate a constitutional change, declaring that their future “belongs in the European Union.” 

Burnham, meanwhile, has made preserving the UK an explicit priority. Responding on Tuesday to Scottish First Minister John Swinney’s prediction that he would be the UK’s last prime minister, he vowed to “fight with everything I’ve got to keep it together.”

Haven’t Britain and the EU already been moving closer?

In security policy, Britain and the EU have already moved significantly closer despite Brexit. The UK remains one of NATO’s leading European military powers, while the 2025 UK-EU Security and Defense Partnership established regular strategic consultations and expanded cooperation on Ukraine, sanctions against Russia, military mobility, and arms production. It also opened the way for greater British involvement in EU defense initiatives.

Could Britain simply rejoin the EU?

Any return would be neither automatic nor a restoration of Britain’s previous membership terms. The UK would have to formally reapply and go through the EU accession process, requiring unanimous approval from member states and the consent of the European Parliament. Nor would Britain be guaranteed the opt-outs and special arrangements it enjoyed before Brexit; the terms of any renewed membership would have to be negotiated.

Immediately after the 2016 referendum, EU leaders said they regretted Britain’s decision but respected the result. During the subsequent withdrawal negotiations, Brussels took a firm line, insisting that Britain could not retain the benefits of EU membership from outside the bloc and rejecting “cherry picking” from the single market.

A decade later, however, Brussels is not ruling out London’s return. In July, EU Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said applying for membership was “entirely a prerogative” of the UK. Former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said in June that the EU’s “door is open,” while stressing that Britain could not simply choose which EU rules to follow.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that the last American troops had left Iraq, more than two decades after the US invaded the country.

A handover ceremony at Erbil Air Base in the northern Kurdish region marked the end of the US military presence.

The administration of then-President George W. Bush justified the 2003 invasion by claiming that longtime Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington never substantiated the allegations, while Iraq descended into a quagmire of violence involving Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as Kurds.

US forces pulled out in 2011 amid a slew of war crimes allegations, including the killing of unarmed civilians.

According to some estimates, more than a million Iraqis lost their lives as a result of the conflict, with millions more displaced.

Washington intervened again in 2014 with a deployment code-named Operation Inherent Resolve.

RT correspondent Steve Sweeny took a look back at an intervention that upended the delicate balance between Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups, plunging the country into years of chaos and violence.

Shiite militias hailed the complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq on Wednesday as a “historic victory” over Washington, which maintained a military presence in the country for a combined 20 years.

Commenting on the departure of US service members from Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq, Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, claimed that the event represented a “crushing defeat for the American project.”

Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, a senior representative of another Shiite militia, Kataib Hezbollah, echoed his sentiment, saying that the “expulsion of the occupation forces, defeated, from the land of Iraq is the beginning of full sovereignty.”

Unlike in 2011, this time around US troops are leaving Iraq for good, retired US Air Force Command Chief Master Sergeant Dennis Fritz told RT, predicting that the American military footprint in the broader Middle East is bound to significantly diminish as well.

A number of Iraqi Shiite armed groups backed Iran after the US and Israel attacked the Islamic Republic in late February, firing missiles and drones at US military installations.

In its latest statement, Kataib Hezbollah warned the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi against complying with US sanctions targeting Iranian airlines that were introduced last week, as RT’s Salman Kujari reports.

A 15-meter-high bronze memorial towers over the Amur River embankment: a Soviet soldier swings his rifle butt, smashing a Japanese border marker bearing the Imperial Chrysanthemum emblem – a symbol held sacred in Japan.

On September 4 – the day following Victory Day over Militaristic Japan and the End of WWII (as observed in Russia) – the Victory in the East memorial was unveiled at the highest point of the Amur River embankment in Khabarovsk. The monument was created at the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the participation of the Russian Military Historical Society and the government of Khabarovsk Krai. The stone border post is an exact replica of a border stone erected by Japan on Sakhalin after the Russo-Japanese War.

The following day, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi demanded the removal of the monument. The depiction of the smashed chrysanthemum, she wrote on X, was absolutely unacceptable and was an affront to the national sentiments of the Japanese people. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi called the monument “unacceptable” and deeply regrettable, and said that Tokyo would continue to press for its removal.

Beijing seized the opportunity to remind its neighbor of past crimes: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning advised Japan to learn from history, make a definitive break with militarism, and earn the trust of its neighbors through concrete actions.

At first glance, the situation appears unprecedented. In the span of a single month, the Russian president made a historic visit to Iturup; both sides summoned ambassadors; Japan, the US, and Australia held military exercises just 20 kilometers from the Russian border; and now, there’s the issue with the monument and the demand to tear it down. Media outlets speak of a “sharp chill” in relations, a new wave of confrontation in the Russian Far East, and even a potential “second front” of the Cold War.

However, Russian experts who spoke to RT view the situation differently.

A series of coincidences

The situation was triggered not by Russia’s actions, but by the Japanese Ministry of Defense. 

On August 4, the Cabinet of Japan approved its annual Defense of Japan White Paper – a record-breaking 598 pages featuring an anime-style cover showing a group of smiling young people against the backdrop of a futuristic city. This year’s theme was “Security for the Future.” The content of the whitepaper was quite pragmatic, however. China was identified as Japan’s greatest strategic challenge; on this list, China was followed by Russia and North Korea; for the first time, the buildup of military power was directly linked to economic prosperity (hence the peaceful cover design).

There is a section on Russian military activity in the Far East: the document notes Tu-95 flights, 214 interceptions of Russian aircraft over the course of the year, the expansion of joint naval patrols with China (in August 2025, a submarine participated in these patrols for the first time), as well as a flight by Russian and Chinese bombers to the area near Shikoku Island in December. There is also a chapter on new methods of warfare, such as the use of mass-produced, low-cost drones and AI in decision-making. For the second consecutive year, the document characterizes Russian military actions in the Southern Kuril Islands as “illegal occupation.”

Nine days later, on August 13, Vladimir Putin visited Iturup. Throughout his years in office, the Russian president had never visited the southern islands of the Kuril chain, which are also claimed by Japan.

On August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII, Takaichi sent a ‘tamagushi’ (ritual offering) to the Yasukuni Shrine. However, she refrained from going there personally, and the ruling party clarified that the donation was made from personal funds and in Takaichi’s capacity as LDP leader, rather than as head of government. The gesture was calculated to satisfy the domestic audience, without triggering a diplomatic row with Beijing and Seoul.

On August 18, Japanese Ambassador to Russia Akira Muto was summoned to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin lodged a strong protest regarding statements made by the Japanese prime minister and foreign minister, asserting that Russia’s sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Southern Kuril Islands are inviolable, and that any attempts to call this reality into question are unacceptable and illegitimate.

On August 31, another incident occurred, this time involving military exercises. From September 8-24, Japan, the US, and Australia conducted Exercises Orient Shield with some operations taking place on Hokkaido Island, near the Russian border. The Japanese side was informed that provocative military activity near Russia’s Far Eastern borders is absolutely unacceptable; Zakharova specifically noted plans to deploy US land-based Typhon missile systems – capable of firing medium-and shorter-range missiles – during the exercises and warned of compensatory countermeasures.

On September 4, the monument was unveiled in Khabarovsk. That same day, the UN General Assembly voted to adopt the Equal Earth Projection. Japan voted in favor. But a few days later, it demanded a correction: on the online version of the new map, the four Southern Kuril Islands were shaded the same color as the rest of Russia, which Japan found unacceptable.

So there we have it – six incidents in 30 days. Each incident compounds the previous one, and together they form a picture of rapidly deteriorating relations.

Below, Russian experts analyze the situation. 

Vasily Shchepkin – a Japanologist with a PhD in History, senior researcher of the Far East Department at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and an associate professor at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg – suggests reframing the question. 

“In my view, relations between Russia and Japan have not cooled suddenly; they have been in this state for over four years, since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Japan joined Western sanctions, and everything that has happened over the past four years is largely a consequence of that,” he said. 

Therefore, the rift happened not in September 2026, but in March 2022 – when Tokyo backed the collective West’s sanctions regime, and Moscow responded by withdrawing from peace treaty negotiations, cancelling visa-free travel for Japanese citizens to the Kuril Islands, and halting dialogue on joint economic activity there. Everything that followed was the consequence of that single decision.

So, what happened in August? According to Shchepkin, the current chain of events was a direct result of Putin’s visit to Iturup. Tokyo’s reaction was inevitable. However, he draws attention to a neglected detail. “Aside from statements, no concrete measures have followed so far.”

No actions were undertaken by Japan in September. No new sanctions packages were adopted; diplomats were not expelled, and the remaining projects were not cancelled. As for démarches, the summoning of diplomats, and declarations of unacceptable behavior, all this is standard diplomatic procedure. 

“Neither Tokyo nor Moscow seeks to aggravate relations further,” Shchepkin says. “In my view, [relations] are unlikely to deteriorate further, because, speaking of bilateral interaction, neither side wants to halt it or escalate tensions.”

Therefore, we may conclude that Russia-Japan relations, in their current form, are a dependent variable. 

“The current state of relations is rather a consequence of other events, which are not directly tied to the Russian-Japanese agenda,” the expert says. 

“We are currently in a sort of deadlock which we return to whenever the global situation gets worse – and particularly when relations between Russia and the US deteriorate,” the expert says. “The US has long been the ‘third force’ on which Russia-Japan relations largely depended.”

Who started it?

While it’s true that relations are frozen, there is no consensus among the parties on who is to blame for this. Russian experts, however, have a clear opinion. 

Olga Bonch-Osmolovskaya, a Japanologist with a PhD in History, describes the reasons behind Tokyo’s decision. According to her, after 2022, Japan’s policy ceased to be truly independent. But that is only part of the story.

“It is one thing to politically condemn a distant war and state one’s position for the sake of appearances, given the existence of a sort of ‘suzerain’; it is quite another to actively integrate oneself into the corresponding policy,” she says. Japan chose the latter option. And it did so with particular zeal. 

“Driven by what one might call the ‘straight-A student complex’ of the Japanese and their tendency to be highly conscientious, sometimes even fanatical in executing tasks, Japan closely aligned itself with this course, joining the full package of sanctions against Moscow and withdrawing from various forms of cooperation,” Bonch-Osmolovskaya says.

The former policy – one that allowed Tokyo to balance between allied obligations and its own interests in the north – was curtailed. Along with it, all the achievements of the previous decade came to naught.

“Russia did not initiate the deterioration of relations with Japan,” Bonch-Osmolovskaya says. “It responded and continues to respond to Japanese sanctions and to the increased US military presence.”

There is a fine line between words and capabilities, however. Take Exercises Orient Shield, for example. “During the exercises, all sorts of maneuvers are practiced – the landing of troops, the transfer of ammunition, the deployment of HIMARS systems, air defense systems, etc.” 

Intentions change along with governments, but military infrastructure remains. And military officials all over the world take this into account.

The result is a vicious circle: Japan builds up its military potential jointly with the US; in response, Russia strengthens its position in the Far East; then, Tokyo presents this strengthening as an additional justification for further militarization. And the circle repeats itself. 

This is confirmed by Japan’s military spending. Japan crossed the 2% defense spending threshold ahead of schedule, a year earlier than the mark outlined in the 2022 strategy. For the current fiscal year, defense spending amounted to a record 8.8 trillion yen, and the request for the next year is already a record 8.9 trillion yen (about $56 billion). In June, the parliament renamed the Air Self-Defense Force into the Air and Space Self-Defense Force; this was the first renaming of one of the three branches of the Self-Defense Forces since their creation in 1954. In August, Takaichi announced further changes: the creation of a Space Operations Group, a Space Domain Awareness (SDA) satellite, and the expansion of the Okinawa Ground Self-Defense Force’s 15th Brigade into a division.

These actions are mainly directed against Beijing. But considering the geography, they are also directed against Moscow. 

Energy instead of diplomacy

Despite all this, there is something that balances the dramatic picture. While diplomats are exchanging demarches, gas carriers are departing from Sakhalin and transporting LNG to Japan. 

The Sakhalin-2 project survived sanctions, frozen political dialogue, and demands to dismantle the monument. In June, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control once again extended the special license until December 18, 2026. Such an exception has been issued annually since 2022, and each time it was preceded by negotiations between Tokyo and Washington. Russian LNG, according to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, provided about 9% of Japanese liquefied gas imports in 2025; According to Bonch-Osmolovskaya, the inverse relationship is even stronger – Japan accounted for about 58% of the project’s exports.

“Severing diplomatic relations would be disproportionate,” he says. “The possibilities for introducing additional economic sanctions are also limited: Japan does not have much leverage. For example, it remains involved in Sakhalin oil and gas projects and, I believe, is not ready to sacrifice them.”

Notably, the US administration insisted on Japan’s withdrawal from the Sakhalin projects. However, Tokyo remained. “As far as we can judge, Takaichi either convinced the US or insisted [on doing things her way] and so, despite the position of its senior ally, Japan remained in the projects.”

The second possible lever is humanitarian. Tokyo tries to preserve it, too. “The Japanese side has invested a lot of effort in humanitarian cooperation with Russia. Before the current escalation, the Japanese even proudly said that, despite the lack of political dialogue, cultural festivals and other events continue between the countries.” And Nelidov adds, “in the long term, Japan has perhaps more need for such contacts than Russia.”

Shchepkin supports this idea, adding that even in the past four years, and thanks to the efforts of the pro-Russia lobby within the Japanese Foreign Ministry, cooperation has been preserved in areas like culture, education, and tourism. The current flow of Russian tourists to Japan, the expert adds, is largely a legacy of the Shinzo Abe administration, when the parties agreed to put the territorial issue aside and focus on the economy, culture, and visas.

The general picture is quite clear. Bonch-Osmolovskaya calls it “cold peace” and warns that a complete rupture of relations would not benefit either country: while Japan could technically replace Sakhalin gas, doing so would require time, money, and even greater dependence on US suppliers, whereas Russia would lose revenue from the project. “A definitive break, should it occur, would come at too high a price for both sides,” she says.

Therefore, the limit to how far relations can deteriorate is not determined by diplomacy. It is dictated by the energy balance, and this applies to both parties.

Why Takaichi could not remain silent

A pressing question remains: why did the Japanese Prime Minister issue all these loud statements if no concrete measures were to follow?

“Had she failed to react to the Russian president’s visit to the territory claimed by Japan, to the installation of the monument – which [Russia] views as fine, necessary, and valuable, but which the Japanese see as a desecration of a state symbol – or to the military exercises, she would have been torn apart, figuratively speaking, by her own party,” the expert says.

For example, when the US administration imposed sanctions against the International Criminal Court – including its presiding judge, Japanese national Tomoko Akane – Takaichi faced criticism for not standing up for her compatriot firmly enough. “If public opinion and fellow party members demand decisive action from her even in dealings with the US, then what would they say about Russia?”

A scenario in which Tokyo would have remained silent to avoid damaging relations with Moscow is virtually impossible. 

Valery Kistanov, head of the Center for Japanese Studies at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, drew attention to the details of the protest against the monument in Khabarovsk. Takaichi posted her comment on social media but did not issue an official statement, and major Japanese media outlets (except for right-wing conservative publications) barely covered the story. It didn’t cause a nationwide outcry.

In other words, the statement was addressed not to Moscow, but to fellow party members and the segment of the Japanese electorate for whom the events of 1945 remain an enduring historical wound. The offering made at Yasukuni on August 15 followed the same logic: made from personal funds and without Takaichi herself present, it was intended as a signal to the domestic audience, but was carefully calibrated to avoid provoking a new crisis in relations with Beijing.

The fact that the series of incidents was not followed by any practical actions holds the key to understanding the events of September. This means that a large part of what happened did not concern bilateral relations but was intended for domestic audiences. 

However, this does not render the situation entirely harmless. Symbolic commitments tend to become entrenched: a prime minister who has demanded the dismantling of a monument cannot refute their own statement, and a successor would have to start from the same position.

Experts agree on who benefits from the conflict, though they differ on the implications. “It is clear that the US is the primary beneficiary,” says Bonch-Osmolovskaya. “The worse relations between Moscow and Tokyo become, the stronger Japan’s existing dependence on the US grows in all aspects: weaponry, intelligence, supplies, and security guarantees.” Washington gains a disciplined ally, additional bases for the deployment of forces, and another tool for exerting pressure on the Russian Far East.

However, she adds, “It is important not to reduce the situation to a scenario where the US is some sort of ‘dark empire’ and Japan is merely its puppet.”

In Japan, there are certain beneficiaries of this confrontation as well. Among the proponents of revising post-war restrictions is the defense establishment, which Bonch-Osmolovskaya characterizes as revanchist and nationalistic, and arms manufacturers, for whom expanded exports open up markets that had been closed for nearly 80 years. The image of an external threat serves as a mechanism for legitimization: the longer the list of threats, the easier it is for the parliament to increase military spending and lift export restrictions. 

Bonch-Osmolovskaya gives a rather harsh assessment and makes a historical analogy. She believes that the current propaganda is reminiscent of the decades preceding WWII, when Japan designated China as its primary adversary and demonized it; today, a similar process is unfolding regarding Russia. At the root of this, she sees the unresolved trauma of 1945: while the cult of the emperor was formally dismantled and the atrocities of the military machine were acknowledged, the defeat was never truly accepted, and strategic sovereignty was lost.

Nelidov takes a more measured approach, offering a different view that does not suggest malicious intent. The problem, he believes, is the so-called ‘security dilemma’ – a long-standing concept in international relations theory. A state strengthens its defenses; its neighbors, unaware of its true intentions, interpret this as preparation for aggression and arm themselves in response; the first state observes these preparations and continues its military buildup. “The paradox of the security dilemma is that in seeking to protect itself, the state ultimately finds itself in an even more dangerous situation,” he explains.

Another factor also comes into play. “Most Japanese diplomats, politicians, and even military officials have no desire to develop an independent view of the global situation,” Nelidov says, describing Japanese political circles as highly compliant pupils of the West; the few who acknowledge that the situation in Ukraine might be more complex than the prevailing narrative risk becoming outcasts. These sentiments did not emerge in 2022; they were shaped throughout the post-war period by the media and the education system, initially as anti-Soviet views. In Japanese opinion polls, Russia consistently ranks low in terms of public favorability, alongside China and North Korea.

If the current situation resembles ‘freezing point’, it is logical to ask what might drive the relations between Japan and Russia below freezing. 

Bonch-Osmolovskaya mentions a specific threshold. “The next stage of deterioration could be the deployment of US long-range systems in Japan,” she says. Russia’s reaction would be predictable: a further military buildup on the Kuril Islands and in Sakhalin. A further contraction of economic ties is also likely; she believes that the fishing industry would suffer first, followed by what remains of trade.

Bonch-Osmolovskaya does not predict a direct military conflict. According to her, if it were to occur at all, it would happen only as part of a larger clash between Russia and the US or a major crisis surrounding Taiwan that dragged in all the neighboring states. In other words, a Russo-Japanese war is impossible as a standalone event – it could only be an episode within someone else’s war.

Nelidov views the situation somewhat differently. He points out that Japan’s defense policy identifies China and North Korea as the primary threats, with Russia ranking third on the list. But even when it comes to China and North Korea, it’s not about direct confrontation but rather an arms race. While this is certainly a negative phenomenon, it is fundamentally different from a direct conflict. 

The comparison the expert draws with Europe is interesting. He considers the rhetoric of Berlin, London, Helsinki, and Stockholm far more threatening than that of Tokyo, which demonstrates “virtually no real readiness for aggressive action against Russia.” He is convinced there are certain limits the Japanese side will not cross.

He attributes East Asia’s greater reluctance to engage in direct conflict to accumulated experience: territorial disputes and mutual historical grievances are common in the region, and the elites have learned to manage such crises. For example, following Takaichi’s November statement regarding potential intervention in Taiwan, Tokyo’s relations with Beijing plummeted to their lowest point in a decade, and China imposed economic restrictions; yet within a few months, the situation had stabilized.

“In East Asia, I don’t see the kind of crazy Russophobia and readiness to direct all resources into the conflict that we’re witnessing in Europe,” says Nelidov. “Japan doesn’t intend to go to war with Russia; and neither does Russia want war with Japan. Both sides realize it is not in their interests. There are no strategically vital or fundamental contradictions between them.”

However, the opinions of experts diverge when it comes to assessing the current pause in relations. For Nelidov, it is merely another fluctuation in a long history of regional squabbles. For Bonch-Osmolovskaya, it represents a deeper rift: Russia is asserting itself as an independent civilization, while Japan, in response, is becoming increasingly integrated into the US system of control over Eurasia. She advocates neither for reconciliation at any cost nor for territorial concessions, but rather for maintaining energy, economic, and cultural ties as a bridge – “not so much with the Japan of today, but with the Japan that might one day become more independent.”

As Bonch-Osmolovskaya concludes, “Japan cannot simultaneously be an independent civilization and America’s forward military outpost. It will have to make a choice.”

Thousands of Haredi Jews marched through the streets of Jerusalem overnight, protesting the Israeli military conscription and honoring incarcerated draft dodgers from the ultra-Orthodox community.

The march began in Jerusalem’s Geula neighborhood, with many streets in the area cordoned off. The police, however, avoided deploying officers into the crowds in an apparent attempt to avoid provoking violence. The demonstration was organized by multiple hardline Haredi anti-draft groups, including the Jerusalem Faction and other anti-conscription activists, who expressed hope the event would be peaceful. No major incidents were reported.

Some 50 formerly jailed draft evaders reportedly showed up at the event, with the crowds celebrating them as true martyrs who had suffered for what the event organizers described as their adherence to Judaism. The ultra-Orthodox community overwhelmingly opposes compulsory military conscription into the IDF, viewing full-time Torah study as their primary duty.

Demonstrators carried assorted placards and banners during the march, including signs equating Haredi military prisoners to “hostages.” Some placards even condemned the IDF as an “enemy army” and reiterated the Haredi refusal to sacrifice their children “on the altar of Zionism,” footage from the scene shows.

♦️ תהלוכת העריקים בירושלים. צילום: יאיר לוי

📌 יו"ר ישר איזנקוט בתגובה לתהלוכת העריקים בירושלים: "הבחירות הקרובות הן בין ממשלת השתמטות לממשלת גיוס ציונית. מדינת ישראל לא יכולה להרשות לעצמה עוד קדנציה של ממשלת השתמטות" pic.twitter.com/iDZ7n1Nb6V

— Asslan Khalil (@KhalilAsslan) September 29, 2026

Some protesters were seen riding an open-roof double-decker bus, blasting traditional songs and dancing in the streets.

הפרגוד: תהלוכת העריקים על אוטובוס 2 קומות. בתקווה שבחג הבא לא יצטרכו רכבת שלמה pic.twitter.com/apEQkwAUml

— הפרגוד (@moshepargod) September 29, 2026

While military service is mandatory for most Israeli citizens, both men and women, members of the Haredi community have enjoyed an exemption for decades. The arrangement ended in 2014, resulting in repeated clashes between the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Israeli authorities.

Tensions escalated amid the Gaza war, with the Supreme Court ruling in 2024 that thousands from the community were subject to conscription. The mass draft of ultra-Orthodox, however, has been repeatedly delayed, with the authorities reportedly winding down the conscription effort recently ahead of parliamentary elections.

The Kremlin has categorically denied that Moscow and Washington discussed a plan whereby sanctions targeting Russia could be eased in return for the release of US nationals imprisoned in Russia. 

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday responded to a question about an article in the Atlantic citing anonymous sources that claimed the administration of US President Donald Trump was considering relaxing some economic restrictions if Moscow would release individuals Washington considers unjustly imprisoned.

“The issue was not discussed in those terms and could not have been, because we categorically reject the notion that there are any political prisoners in Russia and consider framing the issue in this way entirely inappropriate,” Peskov told journalists.

Russian and US special services continue regular contacts concerning various prisoner exchanges, he added.

According to The Atlantic, the proposal was advanced by White House envoy John Coale and approved by Trump for exploration several months ago. The initiative, the outlet's sources speculate, could have reportedly allowed Washington to broaden its engagement with Moscow beyond negotiations over Ukraine and pursue deals involving Russian oil, diesel, rare earth minerals and other commodities.

Trump’s envoys have been exploring ways to revive economic ties with Russia but have so far viewed at least a partial ceasefire in Ukraine as a prerequisite, the outlet wrote on Tuesday.

The Atlantic also claimed that Washington is seeking to arrange lower-level talks between the US, Russia and Ukraine as early as next month, could focus on a limited ceasefire covering energy infrastructure, potentially in the UAE. 

Moscow has repeatedly said it opposes a temporary truce that would allow Ukraine to regroup and rearm, insisting that hostilities can end only through a comprehensive settlement that addresses the root causes of the conflict. Peskov was not asked to respond to the claim.

Speaking at the UN Security Council last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would not agree to pause military operation because such a step could be used by Ukraine’s European backers to supply Kiev with more weapons.

The prospect of renewing US-Russian business ties before the Ukraine conflict is resolved has been sharply criticized by Vladimir Zelensky, who told The Atlantic he would try to “block” any sanctions relief for Moscow before hostilities end.

Over the past few months, there’s been a noticeable surge in reports regarding Germany’s interest in missiles – ranging from ballistic and cruise missiles to land- and sea-based systems. Various partners are involved in the initiative, including the US, Ukraine, Türkiye, and Israel. It looks like Germany intends to spend its entire budget on missiles, aiming to become the leading missile power in Western Europe.

Berlin’s financial commitment to advancing military programs has reached unprecedented levels. The country is significantly ramping up defense spending. Between 2024 and 2025, approximately 200 new defense industry companies emerged in Germany, and another 100 have appeared since November 2025. A notable example is Rheinmetall, which has dramatically increased its artillery ammunition production from about 70,000 units to 1.5 million shells per year. Over the next six years, the company plans to invest around €30 billion ($34 billion) into arms and munitions manufacturing. Moreover, Germany is actively seeking to procure ready-made missile systems and is interested in establishing joint production facilities.

Aligned with these initiatives, Germany is establishing new ground forces capable of striking military targets deep within potential enemy territory, essentially creating missile troops within the Bundeswehr. On the one hand, this expansion enhances NATO’s strike capabilities and allows for flexible responses to any external threats over distances of thousands of kilometers. On the other hand, such offensive capabilities could easily inspire ideas of military dominance and hegemony. Historically, we’ve already seen this in Germany.

At the forefront of this new German strategy will be American Typhon MRC (Mid-Range Capability) missile systems, equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of up to 1,600 km. The Bundeswehr plans to allocate nearly €3.4 billion for the procurement of these missiles. They will provide the German military with a strategic edge, enabling strikes against command centers, airbases, missile units, logistical hubs, and other critical targets far beyond the potential front lines. 

Germany’s interest in missiles has grown to such an extent that the Bundeswehr is exploring even some rather unconventional projects, such as Ukraine’s Flamingo and Bars cruise missiles, as well as the Anthem missile project. In fact, the Ukrainian Flamingo missile was considered a potential alternative to the US Tomahawk. With a range of 3,000 km, the Flamingo surpasses the Tomahawk in terms of range. Additionally, it boasts an impressive warhead weighing 1,150 kg – a record in its class. The only real question is whether the 10-meter-long missile can successfully hit targets. So far, experience has shown that most of the Flamingos launched by Ukrainian forces are intercepted by air defense systems.

Germany is also ready to produce Bars missiles on its soil, but primarily for export purposes. It remains unclear whether this initiative leans more toward a business venture or a strategic investment in domestic armaments. Bars missiles might not be of much interest to German military officials since they essentially function as a cheap and simple alternative to more costly missiles. 

Another notable project is the Anthem long-range cruise missile developed by the US-Israeli startup Covenant. Recently, Reuters reported that Germany is interested in a missile with a range exceeding 1,500 km and a warhead weighing over 200 kg. What’s more, Covenant is willing to establish production of Anthem missiles in Germany. This likely piqued the interest of Bundeswehr officials, especially considering the impressive promised production output of 1,000 units per year. So many missiles can be produced by relying on a simplified design and fairly modest performance specifications. Naturally, there’s no talk of stealth technology here; it’s essentially an alternative to inexpensive long-range kamikaze drones. If this contract goes through, Germany would acquire its own surface-to-surface missile system. 

At the beginning of September, the German Navy conducted its first test launches of Israeli LORA (Long Range Attack) ballistic missiles from an F125-class frigate. These launches were primarily demonstrative, with missile containers temporarily mounted on the stern of the Sachsen-Anhalt frigate. Two missiles were fired during the tests. The sight of Israeli ballistic missiles similar to American ATACMS aboard a German frigate is quite unusual. This notable experiment illustrates that the Bundeswehr is open to exploring alternatives to US weapons systems. Furthermore, Israeli missiles are modern and highly accurate, boasting ranges from 90 to 430 km and a circular error probable (CEP) of under 10 meters. It’s also quite possible that such missiles could soon be integrated into the Bundeswehr’s land forces.

Simultaneously, Germany is preparing to begin production of ATACMS ballistic missiles in collaboration with US company Lockheed Martin. Rheinmetall expects to receive its first order by late 2026 or early 2027, with a memorandum already signed to establish production at its facility in Unterluess, Germany. This will mark the first production of ATACMS missiles outside the US. Production is anticipated to start between 2028 and 2029. European demand is estimated at 600-800 units.

Additionally, Berlin is showing interest in Türkiye’s missile programs. Reports indicate that Germany is interested in Turkish hypersonic projects and specifically the Yildirimhan long-range ballistic missile with a range of up to 6,000 km. For Türkiye, having Germany as a customer is a compelling prospect, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish companies would be eager to secure such an order.

But why is Germany showing such interest in missiles? And behind the facade of nuclear cooperation with the UK, does a part of the Berlin establishment harbor nuclear ambitions? Ideas to replace the American nuclear umbrella amid a perceived “threat from the East” are still popular; and defense companies and war hawks certainly welcome these initiatives. But what will happen if the funding runs dry? Or worse – if this ‘Chekhov’s gun’ goes off in the ‘next act’?

More than 170 passengers have arrived safely in Israel after a FlyDubai airliner went into a death-dive over Saudi Arabia following an alleged attempted hijacking on board. 

The Boeing 737 was reportedly carrying 174 passengers, including 27 children. About two hours into the flight, the aircraft transmitted emergency signals, including a code indicating possible hijacking, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24. The plane went into a steep dive, losing some 4,500 meters in altitude in a minute, according to tracking data.

Israel scrambled fighter jets, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held urgent security consultations.

After an apparent struggle in which passengers regained control of the aircraft, the 737 landed at Tabuk airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia, before all passengers boarded a replacement aircraft bound for Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was waiting to meet them.

According to interviews with the passengers, the plane's first officer stabbed the pilot and attempted to crash the aircraft. They said that a group of three Israeli passengers subdued the first officer, pulled the plane out of its dive, and handed control back to the wounded pilot.

This live feed has now ended.

Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) has called for a formal review that could pave the way for a ban on Alternative for Germany (AfD), as the right-wing party leads national polls following major regional election victories.

The push follows the AfD’s sweeping victories in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania earlier this month, where it secured 43.8% and 38.2%, respectively. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered heavy losses, including failing to clear the 5% threshold in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

On Tuesday, SPD parliamentary leaders from the Bundestag, Germany’s state legislatures and the European Parliament wrapped up a two-day summit in Bremen by again labeling the AfD a “right-wing extremist party.” They accused it of threatening democracy “from within” and “normalizing racism.”

The Eurosceptic party advocates tougher immigration controls and opposes Berlin’s support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.

At the federal level, the AfD remains classified by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency as a suspected right-wing extremist organization.
In February, a Cologne court blocked an attempt by the agency to upgrade the AfD to confirmed right-wing extremist status, pending the outcome of the main proceedings. Several AfD state branches carry the stronger classification.

The SPD wants federal and state governments to set up a joint working group by year-end to examine whether legal grounds exist to seek a ban. Launching the review “is a legal necessity” and a “democratic duty,” it said.

Under German law, only the Federal Constitutional Court can outlaw a party. A ban requires more than anti-constitutional views: a party must actively seek to undermine the democratic order and have the potential to achieve its aims.

The push comes as the AfD has opened up a record polling lead over Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc. An INSA survey put the AfD at 29.5%, compared with 19% for the CDU/CSU and just 14.5% for the SPD. The two governing parties together stood at 33.5%, only four points ahead of the AfD alone.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel reacted to the poll by accusing the CDU of “clinging to the undemocratic firewall,” saying the policy was ultimately “destroying Germany.” The ‘firewall’ refers to the refusal by other major German parties to cooperate with the AfD.

American officials believe US President Donald Trump could order a resumption of major combat operations against Iran after the midterm elections in November, as renewed indirect negotiations produced no results, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Qatari mediators, who met separately with US and Iranian negotiators in New York on Monday, are reportedly growing increasingly frustrated that neither side is willing to make concessions.

“It is stuck. The Iranians are asking for things the US can’t accept and the US thinks it is winning so there is no need for compromise,” Axios cited a source as saying.

Trump rejected Iran’s latest proposal last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG deliveries. He has since denied reports that he was ready to provide sanctions relief and release frozen Iranian assets in exchange for concessions on Iran’s nuclear program. “I offered them NOTHING,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

The war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on February 28 has been unpopular among American voters overall. It sharply divided Trump’s base, with some critics arguing that the president violated his promise of “no new wars” and his stated opposition to “forever wars.”

The relentless bombing campaign failed to subdue Iran and, according to the Pentagon’s inspector general, significantly depleted US ammunition stockpiles. Disruptions to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz continue to drive energy prices, which Trump recently attempted to blame on the Ukraine conflict.

“Donald Trump cannot calm energy markets or conceal the costs of his blockade and hostile policies through show-off and social media posts,” an Iranian security official told RT last week.

According to a recent Fox News poll, 71% of registered voters in the US believed that the Trump administration lacked “a clear strategy for ending the war with Iran,” while 60% said the US had made the wrong decision to launch military action.

The poll also found that 47% of respondents believed military action against Iran would make the US less safe, while 32% said it would make the country safer.

The heads of six top US-based AI companies signed a pledge at the White House on Tuesday to introduce stronger controls to ensure that their technology does not go rogue.

The document, titled the White House Accord on Super Intelligence – Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities, was signed by US President Donald Trump, as well as Google’s Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, xAI’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

The signatories agreed that every company developing advanced artificial intelligence models should have “robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended and that any issues are promptly identified and resolved.”

The companies pledged to ensure that their models “do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways” and said they would “empower an internal team to ensure all of the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended, and that any issues are remediated.”

They also pledged to allow independent external audits of their safeguards and designate “an independent committee of the board of directors” to evaluate compliance.

TRUMP releases ‘ACCORD on SUPER INTELLIGENCE’ signed by AI BILLIONAIRES

- Companies ‘RESPONSIBLE’ for ‘DEVELOPING its own tech safely’

- LAYERS of ‘CONTROLS’

- Internal CYBERSECURITY, BIOSECURITY and CHEMICAL THREAT controls
Auditors

- Independent board

- INDUSTRY… https://t.co/LTwCA0eequ pic.twitter.com/H6FP5HsdT9

— RTVisual (@RT_Visual_on_X) September 29, 2026

The deal is aimed at addressing concerns among developers and the general public about AI models’ ability to self-improve much faster than expected and a growing number of cases in which they have hacked into external systems without authorization.

“The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in a way that we intend,” Zuckerberg told reporters on the White House lawn.

“The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do. This is a start and an accord that the whole industry can come to,” he added.

WATCH: Mark Zuckerberg outlines the AI framework tech leaders agreed to after meeting with President Trump at the White House.

The Meta CEO says the principles center on robust internal controls, internal risk reviews, outside auditors and evaluators, and independent reviews of… pic.twitter.com/mQmE5822FG

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 29, 2026

During the same meeting, Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to use the terms “super intelligence” and “SI” instead of “artificial intelligence” and “AI.”

Debate over AI safeguards was reignited this month when Amodei called for a slowing of the development of AI models to find “a balanced rate” that would give researchers time to develop the necessary controls. Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly backed his appeal.

Over the summer, OpenAI agents escaped their testing environment and hacked into the servers of Hugging Face, an online repository for AI models and datasets. Since then, AI agents have gained unauthorized access to or attempted to breach websites belonging to US federal agencies, the Australian government and the UN.

“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier this month.

Huang has supported calls for stronger safeguards but voiced skepticism about slowing AI development. “We should go as fast as we can, irrespective of anyone else. But we would never ever, and never should, ship products before they’re ready and deliver products that are unsafe,” he told CBS.

The US and China agreed to set up a hotline for AI incidents following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Trump at the White House last week. 

China has similarly called for stronger safeguards but stopped short of supporting a slowdown in AI development. Beijing said this month that regulation and governance should keep pace with rapidly advancing models to prevent AI from “getting out of control,” while criticizing what it described as “fearmongering” and technological competition between countries.

Artificial intelligence could develop beyond human control unless governments and private companies work together to establish safeguards, the head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Karen Hallberg, has told RT.

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club outside of Moscow on Tuesday, Hallberg compared AI with nuclear technology, saying both can bring major benefits while also posing serious dangers.

“AI is also a dual-use technology because AI has brought a lot of benefit for humanity,” she said, citing the technology’s use in medicine and everyday life.

However, she warned that AI capable of recursively improving itself could develop in unpredictable ways. “We have to really listen to the experts of these big corporations when they say that this is already happening – spiraling out of control,” Hallberg said.

Governments must work directly with companies developing AI to establish common rules, she added, noting that unlike during the early nuclear era, much of the technology is being developed by private corporations.

“The human being has to have total control,” Hallberg said, calling for safeguards to be built into AI algorithms.

Warnings over the potential consequences of increasingly powerful AI have also come from the companies developing it. US firm Anthropic, which is expected to go public as early as mid-October, has warned prospective investors that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” According to Reuters, around 80 pages of its 261-page IPO prospectus are devoted to risk factors.

Pugwash brings together scientists and public figures seeking to reduce threats from armed conflict and weapons of mass destruction. The organization was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 with its co-founder Joseph Rotblat.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Dutch police have announced the arrest of a high-profile hacker suspected of being a leader of ShinyHunters, a cybercrime group that recently claimed to have stolen data on “almost all” FBI agents.

Dutch authorities first disclosed the arrest on Monday, before officials in both countries confirmed it on Tuesday. Patel described ShinyHunters as a “global cybercrime and threat actor group linked to cyberattacks in the United States, the Netherlands, and around the world.”

Dutch police said the suspect was arrested on September 15 on suspicion of cybercrime offenses and attempting to instigate at least two murders abroad. US and Dutch officials said further arrests in the case could follow.

Neither agency identified the suspect. However, Benjamin Korper, head of Amsterdam-based cybersecurity firm Neo Security, said the person arrested was the company’s offensive security lead, Pepijn van der Stap.

The supposedly reformed 24-year-old hacker gained international notoriety back in 2023 when he was convicted of data theft and extortion. He subsequently publicly disavowed cybercrime. Van der Stap has claimed his cybercriminal background ultimately gave him knowledge useful “for building and protecting, not breaking.”

The ShinyHunters group, however, has denied any connection to Van der Stap. “That individual has no association with us. Frankly, we are laughing,” the group told Cybernews in a statement, mocking Dutch police as “unskilled and incompetent.”

“Dutch police are chasing attention and public favor after the massive embarrassment as a result of the Odido hack. They want to seem like they are ahead of the FBI in investigating ShinyHunters,” the group added, referring to a major breach and subsequent extortion attempt suffered by the Netherlands’ largest mobile operator this February.

Sources told Krebs that the faction may have deliberately used Van der Stap’s former alias ‘Umbreon’ – a popular Pokemon character – to implicate him. Namely, the Umbreon imagery was used by the group during a recent attack on a rival ransomware gang and the targeted attack on the FBI, with both incidents occurring after Van der Stap’s arrest and now suspected of being a part of the ruse.

Previously, the group said that the alleged FBI breach, during which personal data of “almost all” agents was stolen, was “not financially motivated.” Instead, ShinyHunters demanded the agency pull a cybersecurity advisory, claiming it contains false allegations about the group. The group originally set up a one-week deadline for the FBI to heed the demand but ultimately dropped it and said it was never a “threat” and “nothing” would happen should the agency refuse to accept their demands.

Domestic products now account for 45% of the Russian light industry market, Russian Industry and Trade Minister Anton Alikhanov said on September 29 at the BRICS+ Fashion Summit in Moscow.

According to the minister, that figure is close to the current target of 50% set out in Russia’s Light Industry Development Strategy through 2035. He added that in the updated version of the strategy, which is expected to be approved by the end of 2026, the target share is likely to be raised to at least 60%.

The minister said the clothing manufacturing segment is now entering a phase of market saturation. Production growth, which began after the departure of global brands from Russia, gave way to a 3% decline in 2025.

“We are reaching a plateau,” Alikhanov said.

He noted that the market niches vacated by international brands had been filled partly by Russian producers and partly by imports from what Moscow describes as “friendly countries.”

Even so, foreign-made goods still dominate the Russian market overall. In the minister’s view, one reason is that around half of Russian brands are concentrated in narrow niches, including makers of high-tech clothing, as well as ethnic and regional labels.

Addressing broader technological trends, the minister said the Russian market is largely keeping pace with global developments, particularly in the changing balance between natural and synthetic materials.

“As far as technological trends are concerned, our market is broadly moving in step with the international one: there is a transformation and a reduction in the consumption of natural fabrics and fibers,” he said. “Thirty years ago, half the market was cotton and 39% synthetics. Now cotton accounts for 25–26%, while synthetics have risen to 60%.”

Russia, he added, still remains heavily dependent on supplies of synthetic materials, including polyamides and polyesters. At the same time, he said Russian producers have opportunities to expand output of viscose and lyocell, an artificial cellulose fiber made from wood.

To support those sectors, the government is relying on a new national project called “New Materials and Chemistry.” Enterprises in the field can also apply for support from the Industrial Development Fund and the cluster investment platform, according to the minister.

“After the start of sanctions pressure, we also introduced support measures for equipment leasing. Next year, we hope to double financing in order to meet the demand of all manufacturers,” he said.

The comments came during the BRICS+ Fashion Summit, which is being held as part of Moscow Fashion Week and has focused on industrial development, local production, technology, and the future of the fashion market in BRICS and other emerging economies.

A series of mass protests has gripped France ahead of the French government’s plans to slash some €56 billion from its social spending. 

Firefighters, healthcare workers, transport staff and other civil servants took part in a nationwide strike on Tuesday, backed by all of the country’s major public-sector unions. More than 170 marches were planned across France, with demonstrators blocking roads and scuffling with police in Paris, and firefighters setting flares alight atop the iconic July Column at the Place de la Bastille – built to commemorate the overthrow of King Charles X in 1830. French students also clashed with police outside schools across the country.

Une Marseillaise est entonnée par les pompiers sur la place de la Bastille à Paris.#greve29septembre #29septembre #pompiers pic.twitter.com/fbvrjx9RrO

— Luc Auffret (@LucAuffret) September 29, 2026

The protesters’ demands are familiar: higher wages, better working conditions, and more funding for public services. However, while public sector employees have accused President Emmanuel Macron’s government of underfunding and dismantling their departments for years, they argue that their situation has recently been made unbearable by record fuel prices and wages that have failed to keep pace with inflation.

France has raised public sector pay by 5% since Macron took power in 2017, while cumulative inflation has risen 24% in the same time period.

The SNUipp-FSU teachers’ union has claimed that 40% of primary school teachers are on strike, while one in four firefighters have walked off the job, according to government estimates. France’s left-wing CGT union described the day’s strikes as a “black day,” intended to “truly express our anger.”

Macron, who has served two terms and cannot contest April’s election, is currently polling at less than 18% approval, according to an Ifop poll published earlier this month. Although the French president has seen worse approval numbers in other polls, 18% is an historic low in an Ifop survey.

Tuesday’s strikes are compounded by a growing student protest movement. High school students complaining about overcrowded and neglected classrooms have blockaded more than 300 schools in multiple cities, according to media reports. 

🇫🇷 A major fire has struck Aimé-Césaire High School in France following a blaze deliberately set by high school students.

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/n0UYs2SEi8

— Europa.com (@europa) September 28, 2026

The students – predominantly black and Middle-Eastern teenagers from deprived suburbs – set dumpsters on fire outside a school in Lille on Monday and clashed with police in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. In some areas, the protests have degenerated into riots, with youths shooting fireworks and engaging in running battles with riot police. 

🇫🇷 Police in Lyon, France, are targeted with mortar fire by high school students during clashes outside a school.

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/K3klBV2mHS

— Europa.com (@europa) September 29, 2026

Police arrested 164 students and rioters on Monday, and at least 40 on Tuesday, according to the latest figures from French media. 

Artificial intelligence is becoming a defining force in economic development, international competition, and national security. While striving to develop more powerful AI systems, China also seeks to determine how they should be governed, shared, and secured in a rapidly changing world.

A technology shaping China – and the world

By June 2026, the number of users of AI products in China had exceeded 500 million, underscoring the technology’s growing reach in one of the world’s largest digital economies. Together with the US, China is a key engine of AI development and innovation. Its domestic choices and international initiatives have consequences well beyond its borders.

At the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Chinese President Xi Jinping advanced proposals for more inclusive AI cooperation, industrial development, and technological exchange. At the same time, State Security Minister Chen Yixin set out a national security perspective that places AI at the center of strategic competition and calls for stronger safeguards.

China’s AI policy combines the pursuit of international openness with domestic security governance. Understanding how Beijing seeks to reconcile these objectives is essential to understanding its ambitions for AI – and the emerging global order around it.

Xi’s proposals at the New Delhi summit place AI cooperation within a broader effort to connect technological development with economic growth and international inclusion. The emphasis is on widening access to the capabilities, skills, and industrial networks that make AI economically useful.

China has proposed taking a pioneering role in establishing a BRICS AI open-source community, supporting cooperation on the development and application of large language models, and organizing specialized seminars and training courses. The stated objective is to build an open ecosystem in which countries can exchange knowledge and expand their capacity to develop and use AI.

This approach is particularly relevant for emerging economies. Access to AI requires not only the availability of software, but also computing infrastructure, technical expertise, investment, and the ability to adapt technologies to local needs. Open-source collaboration and skills development can help accessibility, although they cannot by themselves eliminate disparities in resources or technological capabilities.

Xi’s digital industry cooperation initiative extends the same idea into the infrastructure and skills underpinning the digital economy. China has proposed a BRICS digital ecosystem cloud platform, alongside digital skills training, technological exchange, and industrial alignment.

A third proposal focuses on AI-enabled new industrialization. Here, the objective is to deepen cooperation in research and development, practical applications, and industrial and supply chains.

Taken together, these initiatives present AI as a means of expanding productive capacity. For BRICS members, the proposals raise practical questions about how to share expertise, develop compatible infrastructure, and translate technological cooperation into tangible industrial outcomes.

Xi’s international cooperation agenda coincides with a more security-focused assessment from Chen Yixin, China’s minister of state security. In an article published during the summit, Chen described AI as a central arena of global scientific and technological competition and a new front in strategic rivalry among major powers.

Chen’s argument begins with a dual imperative: innovation must be the primary driving force, while security must remain a bottom-line requirement. In this framing, AI is simultaneously an engine of economic and social transformation and a technology capable of changing the conditions of national security.

His assessment identifies several interconnected risks. AI-generated content, including deepfakes and automated online activity, could affect political security by enabling the rapid production and dissemination of misleading information. Chen also warns that AI may transform cyber operations, making it easier to identify vulnerabilities, develop malicious software, and automate elements of complex attacks.

Another concern is the potential for AI-assisted data collection and analysis to amplify espionage and information-security risks. Chen points to the possibility of sensitive government data, commercial secrets, and personal information being gathered or exposed through intelligent crawling, data mining, and profiling.

He also identifies structural challenges: concentration of technological capabilities could deepen inequalities between countries, while AI-driven decision-making could strain existing systems of social governance. In the military sphere, he argues that AI is helping move warfare toward an increasingly intelligent era, with implications for sensing, decision-making, and targeting.

These concerns are not confined to China. Cybersecurity, data protection, misinformation, military applications, and the concentration of technological power are subjects of international debate. What distinguishes Chen’s article is the way it brings them together under a comprehensive national security framework.

Chen calls for AI security to be integrated into other key areas of national security, supported by stronger cross-sector cooperation and improved capacity to identify and anticipate emerging risks. He also calls for an AI safety supervision platform, expanded risk assessment and monitoring, and greater investment in fundamental research and core technologies, including computing chips, development frameworks, and application software. His article advocates strengthening AI infrastructure while reducing vulnerabilities associated with dependence on critical technologies.

Chen advocates the implementation of China’s Cybersecurity Law and Counter-Espionage Law, alongside further development of rules addressing AI research, applications, data protection, algorithmic security, and accountability. He also emphasizes public communication and national security awareness.

These measures reflect Beijing’s view that AI governance cannot be separated from overarching questions of technological self-reliance, data control, and national security, and that when it comes to AI, innovation has to be inseparable from oversight.

A global governance agenda

China’s domestic security priorities sit alongside an international agenda that predates the New Delhi summit. Its 2023 Global AI Governance Initiative calls for people-centered development, international cooperation, respect for national sovereignty, and broader access to AI technologies. It also advocates risk-based governance, privacy and data protection, human oversight, and greater representation for developing countries.

The initiative supports discussions within the United Nations framework on establishing an international institution for AI governance. Chen’s article echoes several of these themes, describing AI as an international public good and calling for cooperation that helps Global South countries strengthen their technological capabilities and bridge the global intelligence gap.

China recently released its AI Safety Governance Framework 3.0, following earlier versions issued in 2024 and 2025. The updated framework revises risk classifications and adjusts technical and governance measures in response to emerging challenges.

China’s international and domestic AI agendas may seem to be contradictory, but a country can support international technology exchange while seeking to protect sensitive data, strengthen infrastructure, and manage risks. The challenge is determining where legitimate safeguards end and restrictions on cooperation begin.

For China, the task is to demonstrate that its security framework can support innovation and international engagement without unnecessarily constraining them. For its partners, the task is to assess how cooperation will work in practice: what technologies will be accessible, how data will be protected, and how shared initiatives will be governed.

BRICS member countries have different development priorities, regulatory systems, and strategic interests. A common AI ecosystem will require practical arrangements that accommodate those differences while delivering measurable benefits.

A defining question for the AI era

Xi Jinping’s BRICS proposals and Chen Yixin’s national security assessment capture two dimensions of China’s AI strategy: expanding the technology’s reach internationally while strengthening its governance at home.

AI cooperation could widen access to technological capabilities and support industrial development. Security governance could help address genuine risks involving cyber operations, sensitive data, and increasingly autonomous systems. Yet both agendas also raise questions about implementation, institutional accountability, and the balance between openness and control.

China’s approach will be judged by the practical outcomes it delivers: whether cooperation is genuinely inclusive, whether safeguards are effective and proportionate, and whether international partners can participate on mutually understood terms.

The underlying proposition is that artificial intelligence need not be treated as a domain of zero-sum competition. When innovation is prioritized and security requirements are treated as non-negotiable, the technology can be steered toward benefit for all.

The Netherlands on Monday said it had summoned Israeli Ambassador Zvi Aviner Vapni over a decision to revoke the diplomatic status of Dutch representatives at the mission in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen condemned the Israeli decision as an “unnecessary” measure, warning it was bound to have “extremely serious consequences.” The move was announced by his Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar on Sunday, with the top diplomat stripping the Dutch diplomats of their “Israeli-issued diplomatic documentation,” which must be returned within seven days.

The Israeli foreign minister cited the enactment of a Dutch import ban on Israeli goods originating from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as well as from the Golan Heights, as the pretext for the latest move.

“If the Netherlands wishes to continue representing its interests with the Palestinians, it may do so from Palestinian Authority territory, rather than from the territory of the State of Israel,” Sa’ar said in a statement, accusing The Hague of pursuing “anti-Israel policies.” Access to the West Bank is only possible via Israel or the border checkpoints it controls.

Last month, when the import ban was adopted by the Dutch government, West Jerusalem expelled representatives of the Netherlands from Kiryat Gat’s International Support Center for Gaza. “Our message is clear: Those who act against Israel will have no foothold in the region. Israel will not allow measures to be taken against it without a response,” Sa’ar said at the time. 

Ties between Israel and the Netherlands, as well as many other EU nations, have gradually worsened in recent years. Israel’s heavy-handed campaign in Gaza, prompted by the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, as well as rapid state-sponsored expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, have impacted relations. While individual members have introduced certain restrictions against Israel, the bloc has failed to provide a unified response to the situation in Palestine, with Brussels repeatedly facing criticism for applying “double standards” in its policies.

California has become the second US state to recognize the major Muslim festivals of Eid as official holidays, according to local authorities.

The state is home to one of the country’s largest Muslim communities, estimated at up to one million people.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the measure into law over the weekend, adding Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha to California’s list of state holidays.

Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, while Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, is observed during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Both holidays typically begin with communal prayers and are celebrated with gatherings of family and friends.

The measure was introduced by California lawmaker Matt Haney and backed by Muslim community groups. Haney said recognizing Eid would allow people to celebrate with their families without being forced to make “unnecessary sacrifices.”

Under the new law, workers do not automatically receive a paid day off, nor are government offices, courts, schools, or businesses required to close. State employees can use existing leave to observe Eid, while public schools and community colleges can close under agreements reached with employees.

Washington became the first US state to recognize both Eid holidays in 2025, although its law likewise did not make them mandatory paid days off. Eid has long been observed locally elsewhere in the country, with New York City public schools adding both festivals to their calendar in 2015.

The Muslim population in the US has more than doubled in less than two decades, rising from an estimated 2.4 million in 2007 to around 5.5 million this year, according to the Pew Research Center.

The EU’s next budget should be cut by hundreds of billions of euros and shift funding away from agricultural subsidies and towards military spending, Germany and five other member states have demanded, threatening to block a deal unless Brussels agrees to the reductions.

The ultimatum was set out in a letter, seen by the Financial Times, to Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and is overseeing the budget negotiations.

It was signed by the leaders of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Finland, which argued the EU must spend more on defense and other new priorities while reducing the European Commission’s proposed €2 trillion budget for 2028–2034.

The budget “must be fundamentally reformed. We must make choices,” the leaders wrote, according to the Financial Times. A diplomat from one of the six countries told the newspaper there would be no agreement this year unless spending was cut.

The EU’s seven-year budget requires unanimous approval from all 27 member states. However, 17 others, including Spain and Italy, have opposed the German-led group’s demands and have demanded that farm and regional funding be increased.

Berlin’s defense push comes as part of a wider military buildup across Europe, driven by unsubstantiated claims that Russia could attack NATO countries, which Moscow has repeatedly rejected.

The prospect of an imminent Russian attack has been challenged even within the six-country group. Finnish President Alexander Stubb said last week that Helsinki’s intelligence sees “no imminent military threat” from Moscow and he has urged European leaders to remain calm.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it has no reason or intention to attack Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that claims to the contrary are “nonsense” that is meant to ramp up anti-Russian hysteria and justify inflated military budgets and continued spending on Ukraine.

Addressing the UN General Assembly last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the sheer scale of Europe’s military buildup could itself lead to a confrontation. He also accused the EU’s ruling elites of being infected with “the virus of racial superiority” and espousing extremist Russophobic ideas, while noting that Berlin’s attempts to achieve military primacy on the continent is an attempt to create a “Fourth Reich.”

Europe’s political order is changing rapidly, but Germany remains constrained by the security system established after 1945.

Current developments in European politics can appear deeply alarming when set against the relative stability that has prevailed since the Second World War, and this is particularly true of Germany, where memories of armed aggression against its neighbors during the first half of the 20th century remain vivid.

But history doesn’t simply repeat itself, so any discussion of the profound transformation now taking place within Western Europe’s political systems must begin with the circumstances in which those countries find themselves today, because while comparing Germany in 2026 with Germany a century ago may be tempting, it risks obscuring more than it reveals.

As the saying goes, God is in the details, and without examining what has changed in Europe itself, it’s impossible to understand either the opportunities or the dangers that its present upheaval creates for Russia.

Certain features of German and broader Western European political culture have proved remarkably durable. One is a deeply rooted conviction in the superiority of the European political and social model, accompanied by a tendency to regard its values as universal and therefore suitable for export.

A third characteristic is foreign policy adventurism, given that European powers have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to undertake extraordinarily risky projects abroad, but the relevant question today isn’t whether such traditions exist, but whether modern circumstances allow them to run riot once again.

The answer depends on both external and internal factors. Externally, Western European states operate beneath the overwhelming military power of the United States and alongside a nuclear-armed Russia. Internally, however, Germany and its neighbors are experiencing political changes unlike anything seen for decades.

Germany’s traditional party system is eroding rapidly, and the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, which dominated the Federal Republic for generations, increasingly struggle to offer either themselves or the electorate a convincing answer to the country’s problems.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s declining popularity, disappointing regional election results and the absence of an obvious successor all point towards a deeper crisis, as long-standing structural problems have combined with the economic consequences of losing access to cheap Russian energy and Germany’s growing dependence on the United States.

More important than the rise of any individual party may be the fragmentation of the system itself, given political life in the European Union’s largest economy is losing the stability and bourgeois tranquility to which several post-war generations became accustomed.

This inevitably causes anxiety outside Germany, because the country has 83.5 million inhabitants and a historical record that makes political instability there impossible for its neighbors simply to ignore.

There’s an obvious temptation to reach for comparisons with the interwar period, when Germany also experienced the disintegration of an established political order and the rise of movements that exploited popular resentment over economic hardship and national humiliation. The eventual consequences are well known, nowhere more so than in Russia, which suffered the most destructive consequences of German aggression, but there is one enormous difference between Germany then and Germany now.

Modern Germany doesn’t possess the strategic independence of its predecessor and more than any other major European country, it remains embedded within the American-led security system created after the Second World War.

That arrangement has endured for more than 80 years and American troops remain stationed on German territory, while NATO places Germany within a military structure whose ultimate center of gravity is the United States. Whatever terminology one chooses to describe this relationship, Germany’s freedom of strategic action is plainly very different from what it was during the first half of the 20th century.

The American presence in Europe, however, has never been primarily about the preferences of Europeans themselves. From Washington’s perspective, Europe is also a strategic platform from which to manage its relationship, whether confrontational or diplomatic, with Russia.

As long as the United States regards containing Russia as a major strategic objective, it has every reason to preserve its influence over Germany regardless of the political transformations taking place inside the country, and this is what fundamentally distinguishes the present from the interwar period.

Germany may become more nationalist, and its party system may fragment further, while its defense spending may rise dramatically, and German politicians may once again become comfortable speaking the language of military power.

From Moscow, none of these developments can reasonably be ignored, yet Germany is also not an autonomous military power capable of deciding entirely for itself whether Europe goes to war.

The instability now developing within Western European societies is certainly one of the factors increasing the danger of confrontation as political upheaval can produce radicalization and an increasingly adventurous foreign policy.

The EU’s internal politics, however, are only part of the equation, so the decisive constraint remains external and for better or worse, these Western Europeans,  and the Germans above all, have long since lost the exclusive right to decide for themselves whether a major European war begins.

This article was first published by Vzglyad.ru, translated and edited by the RT team.

Five young men from London who were caught near a British airbase heavily used by the US in its war against Iran have triggered a media frenzy across the London establishment's mainstream media. The so-called “Fairford incident” lit up the British deep state media echo chamber.

However, what was initially reported as a possible Iranian or Russian-backed plot to blow up the RAF’s Fairford airbase, has so far revealed a farcical attempt to warn the British Army of a possible threat, and produced complaints from Washington, a lot of unanswered questions, and no explosives.

What happened at Fairford?

Having failed to get an answer at the Ministry of Defence security hotline she dialed 999 and alerted police to “three suspicious vehicles.” 

Armed counter-terror police swooped in, detained five men near the nearby village of Whelford, and found three white vans bearing fuel company insignia, raising fears they could contain explosives.

How did British security services react?

A counter-terrorism emergency was declared. About 85 local homes were evacuated, a 400-meter cordon was thrown around the scene, and military bomb disposal experts sent in a robot to examine the vehicles – which found no viable explosives.

Video of British military EOD robots defusing suspected bomb vans near RAF Fairford courtesy of SkyNews. pic.twitter.com/C9TuKlCRoL

— Exposing Corruption🇺🇸 (@Exposing74) September 27, 2026

The British mainstream security state press went into speculative overdrive, “monitoring” an incident near the key RAF base.

Who are the Fairford incident suspects?

Police have not named the five men but say all – photographed while sitting shirtless after their arrest – are British nationals from London aged between 23 and 25. They were initially arrested on suspicion of offenses under the Explosives Act and were later detained on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act.

RAF Fairford suspects are British men in their 20s, police say, as Iran denies involvement pic.twitter.com/JNhWtijJLM

— Victoria Derbyshire (@vicderbyshire) September 28, 2026

Then, less than 24 hours after their detention, all five were released on bail.

What do British police officially suspect?

UK counterterrorism chief Laurence Taylor stressed that releasing the men did not mean the case was over. The suspects remain under “stringent” restrictions while investigators pursue “multiple new lines of enquiry,” he insisted.

US President Donald Trump, who initially claimed the men had already been under observation and were “looking to do big damage,” later complained about their release.

Britain can hold terrorism suspects without charge for up to 14 days, meaning police were not legally forced to release the five when they did.

Who declared a foreign power was involved?

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that the incident “clearly involves the hands ‌of a foreign actor.” 

Tehran has warned that military facilities used for US attacks on Iran could be treated as legitimate military targets. However, it has never claimed responsibility for any strikes outside of the Middle East.

British media reports have cited anonymous sources suggesting investigators were examining possible Iranian involvement. Russia and an “islamist state” were also mentioned by Reuters, citing anonymous sources.

Tehran’s embassy in London slammed the suggestions of Iranian involvement as “unfounded and malicious speculations” that fueled Iranophobia in Britain.

How is Britain escalating war rhetoric?

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband used his Labour Party conference speech on Monday to call for more preparedness against growing security threats, opening his speech by pointing directly to the Fairford incident.

British authorities last year arrested four Iranian nationals over what was described as a major suspected terrorist plot. Police eventually released all four from custody without charge.

Is the Fairford incident a false flag?

There is no evidence of that, and watching the story move from a worrying local incident, through to a counter-terror operation involving “possible truck bombs,” to the release of five men on bail within 24 hours and an admission that the vans involved contained no explosives, can hardly count as a well-executed false flag plot.

Can the British government be believed?

That does not mean the British government deserves blind trust on intelligence claims.

Trump may be saying plenty about Tehran that echoes Bush’s rhetoric. But there is currently no evidence that UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has decided to follow Blair down the same road.

What is the last refuge of a scoundrel?

When facts run out of road the British commentariat will reach the Hybrid War refueling post.

Hybrid war is by definition almost impossible to verify. Sky News, for instance, interviewed Martin Gallagher, a former police superintendent, who argued that masterminds are trying to manipulate British authorities by making them “cry wolf” now, before a “real attack” could happen in the future

Is Western Europe caught in its own echo-chamber?

Last week, Spain’s El Mundo, citing anonymous Lithuanian security sources, reported that the CIA had warned of a Russian kamikaze drone plot targeting Spain, France or Italy, involving merchant ships in the Mediterranean. The story raced around Europe before senior officials in Italy and France debunked it.

Germany has taken a much firmer line over an August drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport, which Berlin formally called a failed hybrid attack carried out by Russia. The German government has refused to disclose the evidence underlying its claim, however, fuelling speculation that the situation was staged for political reasons.

The great European drone scare of 2025 also produced some awkward endings. No evidence has been produced of any malign operation around the multiple allegations, and most have been disproven by mainstream journalists in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, where the army is thought to have actually shot at a passenger plane.

And then there is “Havana Syndrome.” US officials were looking for some kind of Russian, Chinese or other foreign directed-energy weapon, but only found an argument that CIA agents who were purportedly victimized should be paid compensations for the damage they suffered, regardless of its cause.

More than 100 Israeli settlers have staged a riot in the West Bank village of Jalud, burning Palestinian homes and vehicles and throwing stones at Israeli forces, after the Jewish state’s High Court ordered that Palestinian families the mob had targeted and evicted weeks earlier be returned to their homes.

In a report filed from Jalud on Tuesday, RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij details the extremists’ response.

A transgender New York Times executive allegedly killed by his in-laws over the weekend in California was facing child-abuse charges amid a bitter family battle, newly reported court documents have revealed.

Jonathan McKinsey, 40, director of engineering for NYT Games, was gunned down on Saturday at a sports complex east of San Francisco. Police arrested his parents-in-law, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both in their late 70s, near the scene on suspicion of murder.

The pair are being held without bail and are due to appear in court on Wednesday. Police said McKinsey was deliberately targeted but have not linked the killing to the family dispute.

The incident came a week before a scheduled hearing in McKinsey’s contentious divorce and custody fight with his estranged wife, Candice Jang, according to court records cited by AP.

McKinsey transitioned from female to male in 2010, according to the Mercury News, citing court filings. The documents indicate that McKinsey and Jang were already close during his transition-related medical treatment that year. The couple subsequently married and had three children.

40-year-old Jonathan McKinsey was fatally shot over the weekend in a parking lot near the Dublin Sports Grounds, and police arrested his parents-in-law at the scene, according to city officials. https://t.co/e9denPzy74 pic.twitter.com/7yc1g2aFLm

— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) September 28, 2026

There is no public information on how McKinsey and Jang had their children or which person gave birth. A couple consisting of a transgender man and a biological woman would need donor sperm to conceive. Depending on the circumstances, either could provide the egg and carry the pregnancy.

The court battle featured competing allegations of abuse. Jang accused McKinsey of years of violence against her and their children. McKinsey was charged with two misdemeanor child-abuse offenses for allegedly hitting his six-year-old son in the face and leaving another child, then aged two, home alone while he went shopping. He pleaded not guilty to both charges and was seeking admission to a mental-health diversion program.

McKinsey, in turn, sought a restraining order against Jang. He claimed she tried to pull medical tubes from his body following a transition-related procedure and later struck him with a frying pan. He also alleged that his father-in-law punched him while he was recovering from a double mastectomy and that his mother-in-law directed anti-LGBTQ slurs at him and one of the children.

The US, Denmark, and Greenland have signed a new agreement to expand American military activity on the island. Washington calls Greenland vital to its security, but an expanded military presence also raises an older question: What risks does the Arctic island take on in return?

The agreement builds on a defense partnership dating back to 1951. That history includes an episode that brought the risks of Washington’s Cold War strategy into sharp focus: An American mission over Greenland that ended in a nuclear disaster.

The nuclear patrols over Greenland

In the 1960s, in the middle of the Cold War, the US Air Force launched Operation Chrome Dome. This mission implied keeping bombers armed with nuclear weapons on continuous airborne alert, ready to strike the USSR if necessary. If you’ve seen the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’, you’ll remember that Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong’s crew was involved in such a patrol mission. 

Then-US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advocated for ending this program, arguing that Americans had already established an effective early warning system for ballistic missile launches, so the US could take fewer risks and cut costs. However, the Strategic Air Command resisted this idea, fearing it would decrease their importance and result in budget cuts. 

A horrific incident occurred in 1966 over Spain when a bomber collided with a refueling tanker aircraft, resulting in several fatalities and nuclear bombs landing on beaches and in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this incident, the US considered the nuclear threat from the USSR a matter of primary importance, one which justified any security measures. 

Eventually, after intense debates, a compromise was reached: The number of patrolling bombers would be reduced, but the airborne patrols would continue.

Thule Air Base in northern Greenland was established in the 1950s. A Mercator projection map gives a distorted sense of distance; in reality, its location was very convenient for potentially launching missiles at the USSR and monitoring missile launches from there. It also provided a convenient vantage point for reconnaissance of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet nuclear test site. 

Thus, the US Strategic Air Command built a military base in northern Greenland. The name referred to ‘Ultima Thule’ (farthest Thule) – a mythical island at the edge of the world. The base housed bombers, reconnaissance planes, radar systems, missile launch sites, and early-warning radars. In its most active period, Thule base housed about 10,000 personnel. Additionally, the US launched the highly classified Project Iceworm, which aimed to build a wide network of nuclear missile launch sites concealed in tunnels beneath the ice. One could say Greenland became thoroughly inhabited.

Seven men, four hydrogen bombs, and a fire in the sky

On January 21, 1968, a B-52 bomber rose into the air, carrying four megaton bombs. It took off from New York to visually monitor the nuclear alert system, bearing four thermonuclear bombs, each with a yield exceeding one megaton. 

Everything started out smoothly. But eventually, the factor of human error came into play.

The third pilot, Major Alfred d’Amario, took aboard a few cloth-covered foam cushions to make his flight more comfortable. He placed the cushions under the instructor navigator’s seat and went to replace co-pilot Leonard Svitenko, who went to take his rest period. The cushions remained in place. 

Not long after, the pilots opened an engine bleed valve which channeled hot air from the engine to the heater. Unfortunately, the heater was defective and quickly became dangerously hot. 

At some point, the pilots noticed the smell of burning rubber filling the cockpit. While they searched for the source of the burning, a fire had already started onboard. The navigator went looking for the flames, and, on discovering the fire, attempted to extinguish it using two fire extinguishers. However, he was unable to put it out. 

Captain Haug, the aircraft commander, requested an emergency landing at the airbase. All the extinguishers had been used, but the fire continued to spread. Smoke thickened to the point that the crew could hardly see each other in the cockpit. Ultimately, as the plane neared Thule Air Base, Haug ordered everyone to abandon it. 

Out of the seven crew members, six managed to eject relatively safely. Tragically, co-pilot Leonard Svitenko sustained fatal head injuries while trying to escape.  

Haug and d’Amario landed directly on the airbase grounds. The base personnel immediately mobilized to search for the remaining crew. A polar night enveloped Greenland, and the weather was dreadful. A representative of the Royal Greenland Trade Department, Jens Zinglersen, significantly eased the search efforts by contacting local Inuit residents who organized dog sled teams. Thanks to their collective efforts, three other aviators were found – they had landed within a mile and a half of the base and were quickly located.

But the worst was yet to come. The aircraft carrying thermonuclear munitions was still flying northward and burning up. Finally, it crashed onto the ice about 12 km west of the airbase. There was still plenty of fuel onboard; it ignited on the ice, causing spectacular pyrotechnic effects. The bomb’s non-nuclear explosives detonated, partially melting the ice and scattering radioactive debris everywhere.

There was another poignant detail, however. Greenland belonged to Denmark, which had declared its entire territory a nuclear-free zone. And now, a bomber armed with nuclear weapons had crashed there – though the Danes (at least those who didn’t work in the government) were unaware that there was also radioactive debris all over the ground. The Danish government quickly issued a statement claiming that the aircraft was not in Greenland’s airspace and had only entered it due to an onboard emergency. This was a complete fabrication, but it served as a cover-up for the situation. 

The US found itself in a delicate situation that urgently needed fixing.

Cleaning up a nuclear disaster in the Arctic night

The cleanup operation was dubbed Project Crested Ice (or unofficially, ‘Project Doctor Freezelove’). The operation was led by General Richard Overton Hunziker, a seasoned veteran and WWII hero. 

A team of scientists, nuclear specialists, and a massive number of troops were dispatched to Greenland. Their mission was to remove all radioactive materials before spring arrived and the contaminated ice would be carried off into the ocean. The polar night brought fierce winds and bitterly cold temperatures, making the task even more challenging. 

Radioactive elements were scattered across a 1-mile (1.6 km) by 3-mile (4.8 km) area. In the midst of it was an ice hole measuring 50 meters in diameter. A blackened patch measuring 670 by 120 meters and heavily contaminated with uranium and plutonium was clearly visible from the air.

It must be said that Hunziker and his team worked heroically. They established a small town on the ice, complete with igloos, a power station, a runway, a communications hub, and a decontamination chamber. An icy road connected them to the airbase.

Thousands of people toiled under the harsh conditions, illuminated by floodlights as they cut through the contaminated ice, loaded it onto transports, and hauled it to storage, where it was boxed up in tanks for shipping back to the US. Ice was collected using graders, packed into wooden crates, which were then loaded into steel tanks and onto ships. Debris was recovered manually – some pieces were sizable, but the smallest were no bigger than a battery. Contaminated areas were identified using simple Geiger counters.

The cleanup crew worked with minimal protective clothing. Most people simply wore their regular Arctic expedition clothing. 

By mid-September 1968, the operation was officially concluded. In total, 1,700 Danes and 700 Americans participated in it. While the disaster was a stark illustration of the consequences of foolish and irresponsible behavior, the cleanup crew – which braved the harsh cold and literally gathered radioactive waste by hand – accomplished real feats, which, however, remained largely forgotten.

What the ice couldn’t bury

It’s believed that around 93% of the radioactive materials were collected, but some remnants remained on the seabed. One hydrogen bomb likely sank among other debris. Attempts to locate it with a submersible were unsuccessful. A heap of wreckage was discovered on the ocean floor, and somewhere down there, it appears that the remains of the nuclear weapon still lie undisturbed. 

A heated debate arose around the actions of Danish prime ministers Jens Otto Krag and H. C. Hansen. Krag portrayed himself as a naïve yet honest figure, insisting that he wasn’t aware of aircraft carrying nuclear weapons over Greenland. However, declassified US documents indicated that the Danish government was aware of everything. As for Hansen, he was the one who secretly approved the US to use Thule Air Base as part of its nuclear shield. However, by then, both prime ministers had passed away, and were unable to answer to the population. 

After the incident, Operation Chrome Dome was officially shut down. After all, it was the second nuclear disaster in three years, and that was too much even for the ‘hawks’. Secondly, both Russians and Americans already had plenty of missiles, and the use of bombers seemed somewhat archaic. Finally, the USSR and the US initiated another period of détente and developed protocols for handling any accidental incidents involving nuclear weapons. While this didn’t help those who suffered or died from cancer as a result of the accident in Greenland, it did significantly reduce the risk of similar events in the future.

Anthropic is telling potential investors that its advanced AI could cause “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” in a prospectus intended to boost the company’s value to $2 trillion.

The company’s IPO prospectus, seen by Reuters, claims that its AI models exhibit “self-preserving behaviors,” including attempts to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and “blackmail”  researchers.

“Our development of highly advanced models, platforms, and applications and expansion of use cases could further increase the risk that our models cause harm,” Anthropic, which is best known for its Claude large language model (LLM) added.

Earlier this month, company CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for a government-enforced slowdown of cutting-edge AI development. Amodei outlined “serious” dangers – including loss of control over AI systems, their misuse for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and major economic disruption – and warned that “a race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.”

However, Amodei has for years used such warnings to drive interest in his products. Amodei was still working for OpenAI in 2019 when he declared its fledgling GPT-2 model, which struggled to generate coherent text, “too dangerous to release.” 

Furthermore, Anthropic stands to benefit from government regulation. Anthropic and OpenAI – which also reported a laboratory “escape” earlier this year and scrapped the planned release of a new model over safety concerns last week – sell closed-source AI models.

A ban on open-source models, which the US government has reportedly considered, would place Anthropic and OpenAI in a dominant position. Several tech insiders interviewed by the New York Post last week said that they believe both companies are exaggerating the security risks posed by their models in order to pressure the government into regulating the industry.

A Pentagon personnel system breach has reportedly exposed sensitive data on more than three million people, including military personnel and their families, several media outlets have reported, citing US defense officials. The disclosure follows a separate breach of the FBI’s jobs website.

The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) system was reportedly accessed by a small number of unauthorized users between October 2025 and July 2026, affecting some 2.76 million living people and another 294,000 who are deceased, unidentified Pentagon officials have told CNN and ABC News.

According to them, the exposed files include Social Security numbers and other personal details, as well as information about military jobs and occupational specialties.

DMDC maintains more than 60 million records overall, including on active-duty and reserve troops, civilian employees, contractors, retirees, veterans, and military family members.

The leak was initially reported by the Military Times last week citing an internal breach notice received by one of the affected individuals. The publication said two unnamed defense officials had confirmed the authenticity of the letter.

Heads up! This is coming down. pic.twitter.com/nKawhTNX5h

— U.S Army WTF! moments (@usawtfm) September 22, 2026

According to the notice, DMDC said that a “security vulnerability” in a file-sharing system allowed unauthorized users to gain access to unencrypted personal information. The system was said to have been patched “immediately” after it was discovered – nearly nine months after the unauthorized access began.

The notice offered affected individuals a year of free credit monitoring services.

Meanwhile, the FBI is dealing with an unrelated breach claim involving its recruitment website. Last week, the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed it had stolen personal data on nearly all FBI agents, their spouses, and job applicants.

The group said that the attack was “not financially motivated” and instead of a ransom, demanded that the FBI remove a cybersecurity advisory published in May that ShinyHunters says contains false allegations about them.

The FBI has said it is investigating and has notified employees, but has not yet established where the breach occurred or confirmed the scale of the theft.

Argentinian President Javier Milei has demanded that Britain cease oil exploration near the disputed Falkland Islands, threatening legal action if London fails to comply.

Buenos Aires maintains that the South Atlantic archipelago, which it calls the Malvinas, is part of its territory, despite it being administered by the UK since 1833.

The two countries fought a brief war over the territory in 1982 after Argentine forces seized the islands and Britain sent a naval task force to retake them. In a 2013 referendum, Falkland Islanders overwhelmingly voted to remain a British overseas territory, a vote Buenos Aires does not recognize as resolving the sovereignty dispute.

Milei said in a post on X on Monday that he had given instructions to the Foreign Ministry and legal experts “to initiate international arbitration against the UK for the illegal plundering of our resources through the Sea Lion Project.”

The Sea Lion oil field lies around 220 km (137 miles) north of the Falkland Islands and is estimated to hold around 1.7 billion barrels of oil. British company Rockhopper and Israeli firm Navitas, which are developing the $2.2 billion project, are planning to begin drilling on site in early 2028.

ITLOS is an independent court established under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Decisions by the Hamburg-based tribunal are legally binding, although it lacks the means to make countries comply with them.

The British government has said it fully supports the companies involved in the Sea Lion project, insisting that the people of the Falklands have the “right to develop their natural resources as they see fit.” Rockhopper and Navitas also previously shrugged off Argentina’s complaints about the project, arguing that they are operating under a valid license issued by the UK.

The Argentinean government has doubled down on its claim to the islands after US President Donald Trump, who previously called Milei his “favorite president,” said in late August that Washington’s longstanding neutral stance on the status of the Falklands was under review.

Milei dedicated most of his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York last week to the Falklands, saying that Argentina could “take matters into our own hands” if the global body fails to act against the Sea Lion Project.

UK Defense Secretary Wes Streeting responded by accusing the Argentinean leader of reciting the “same old bogus propaganda” and insisting that Britain has “the ability to defend” the Falklands militarily.

The US faces a major hurdle replenishing key missile stocks after burning through huge quantities of Tomahawks and Patriot interceptors during the Iran war, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. According to the paper, the manufacturing push is coming “too late,” with the industry hollowed out by years of underinvestment.

The US fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iranian targets, or around one-third of its prewar inventory, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated in late May, adding the stocks are expected to be replenished only by late 2030 or early 2031.

CSIS also estimated that Washington has used roughly half of its high-end Patriot interceptors, with the stockpile below 1,000 as of late July.

“Ministers of defense have fat wallets – they walk into the shops, and there are empty shelves,” Rob Bauer, former chair of the NATO Military Committee, told the newspaper.

For instance, Pentagon orders for the Tucson, Arizona factory – a key facility producing Tomahawks – plunged so low that the line producing the missiles was at risk of being completely shut down. In August, the facility received a $23 billion seven-year Tomahawk order, but it took more than a year to negotiate the terms, and the final agreement is still pending congressional approval.

Washington has also awarded RTX a provisional $20.7 billion multiyear contract for AMRAAM medium-range missiles as part of the Pentagon’s “Arsenal of Freedom” initiative. RTX earlier said it has invested about $900 million in three missile production facilities over the past three years.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon also struck a $58.6 billion deal for Patriot interceptors with Lockheed Martin.

The Iran war has been a costly affair for the Pentagon, with a US Central Command estimate putting the overall expenditure at $43.6 billion as of early September, including $28.1 billion to replace expended ammunition. However, unnamed US officials told NBC in July that overall cost could be nearing $100 billion if damaged bases and destroyed aircraft are taken into account.

OpenAI has scrapped the planned release of a new artificial intelligence model after internal testing found it to be more deceptive than its predecessors and below the company’s safety standards, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The GPT-6.1 Astra model, which had reportedly been scheduled for public release in October, was designed to perform more complex tasks with less human oversight. It was expected to be incorporated into ChatGPT and Codex.

Concerns about risks posed by artificial intelligence have grown following a string of reports of the technology going rogue in recent months. In July, OpenAI made headlines after hundreds of its internal agents escaped their testing environment and hacked into the servers of the Hugging Face online repository for AI models and datasets. Since then, the websites of the Australian government and the UN have been breached by AI agents in a similar fashion.

During testing, GPT-6.1 Astra failed to accurately disclose actions that it had performed to its human operators on a number of occasions, Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, told the WSJ.

“For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade-off. You really do need to find what’s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction,” Jain explained.

OpenAI will now focus on improving the safety of its future models, which it expects to be even more capable than GPT-6.1 Astra, according to the WSJ.

Earlier in September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on key AI players to slow the development ‌of more advanced models to allow for proper safety measures to be developed, with his stance shared by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Trump proclaimed earlier this month that he will now allow the “decimation” of AI to happen on his watch, saying that “we will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows.”

The US president is set to meet with heads of major tech firms, including Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, later on Tuesday, with House Speaker Mike Johnson saying the discussion will focus on finding a balance between innovation and oversight over AI. “We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this, because we’ll lose the race to China,” Johnson suggested.

Iran has denied any ties to the Fairford Airbase incident in the UK, denouncing evidence-free claims that it was involved as “Iranophobia.”

Hours after call from a farmer to the military airbase at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, southwestern England, on Saturday night, police arrested five men driving three white vans, on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. 

Britain has ramped up pro-war rhetoric in the last week, with the BBC running an article titled “Are you psychologically prepared for war?” while Sky UK ran a reality show ‘The Wargame’ featuring politicians defining strategy in a ‘war room’ following a hypothetical attack by Russia. London’s belligerent media thus went into overdrive upon reports of a possible incident near the airbase.

Police cordoned off the vicinity of the base and evacuated over 80 homes. According to the BBC, a bomb squad worked at the scene, using a remote-controlled robot to inspect the vans, which were parked in a wooded area. 

Taylor said police had begun investigating whether the offense was “committed by proxies, or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state” including “Russia, Iran or an Islamist state,” according to Reuters citing an anonymous security source. 

Iran’s mission in London said in a statement on X on Monday that “The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in London categorically rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets attempting to link Iran to [the] arrest of five suspects in the vicinity of RAF Fairford base.”

“Such fabricated speculations” would only “fuel Iranophobia propaganda in the UK.”

Although Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned in July that the UK would become a “definite and legitimate target” if it supported the US bombing campaign, Tehran has not claimed responsibility for any attacks outside the Middle East.

Iran has fired missiles and drones at Gulf states, which it described as legitimate targets for retaliation because they host American bases used to launch attacks against Iran.

US President Donald Trump has denied offering any concessions to Iran after indirect negotiations resumed in New York on Monday in the hopes of ending the war he launched alongside Israel against the Islamic Republic seven months ago.

Trump took to social media to refute an Axios report claiming that he was prepared to lift some sanctions and release frozen Iranian funds in return for “concrete Iranian steps” regarding its nuclear program. AP published similar claims early Tuesday morning, also citing US officials.

“This is untrue. I offered them NOTHING! Axios’ story, like most others, is a HOAX, used only for purposes of satisfying their Trump Derangement Syndrome,” he wrote on Truth Social, demanding that the “fake story” be taken down.

US and Iranian officials met separately with mediators on the sidelines and are expected to focus on a revised proposal submitted by Tehran last week during the UN General Assembly, according to Reuters.

Iran, meanwhile, has maintained that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that uranium enrichment is its right as a sovereign state.

The situation remains tense around the Strait of Hormuz, where disruptions to shipping are driving up energy prices worldwide. On Wednesday, an Indian sailor was killed after a projectile struck the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged cargo ship Cape Dao. Although Iran has not claimed responsibility for the attack, it has previously warned vessels passing through the strait not to use the “illegal” routes designated by the US Navy.

China has vowed to support Cuba against external interference after US President Donald Trump said Havana “will fall” and called for “fundamental change” on the island.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun made the pledge on Monday as Beijing and Havana marked 66 years of diplomatic relations, saying China will support Cuba in “safeguarding its national sovereignty” and pursuing a “development path suited to its national conditions.”

In an address to the UN General Assembly last week, Trump described Cuba as an “absolutely failed state” and “a haven for foreign adversaries” on America’s doorstep.

What’s happening in Cuba?

Cuba is enduring its worst economic crisis in decades, marked by chronic fuel and food shortages and prolonged blackouts. Decades of US sanctions have restricted access to financing, fuel, and equipment, compounding low domestic production, dependence on imports, and aging energy infrastructure.

The crisis intensified sharply this year after oil deliveries from Venezuela and Mexico, which together accounted for around 86% of Cuba’s imported crude oil last year, dried up, according to S&P Global. Venezuelan shipments stopped following the US military operation that removed President Nicolas Maduro in January, while Mexico paused deliveries as Washington threatened tariffs on countries that supply Cuba with oil.

Pressure intensified after Trump returned to office. In a January 2026 executive order, he declared Havana’s policies an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security and foreign policy. The order accuses Havana of aligning itself with and supporting Russia, China, and Iran, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah. The administration says its policy is aimed at countering these perceived threats while promoting democracy and greater economic freedom in Cuba.

What does Havana say?

Cuba rejects Washington’s characterization of the island as a threat to US national security and argues that the pressure campaign is intended to force political change by worsening its economic crisis. Havana has accused the US of waging a “multidimensional” economic war and says restrictions designed to deter other countries from supplying it with fuel amount to an “energy blockade.” At the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez likened the measures to a naval blockade and called them an “act of war.”

What is China’s position?

China has framed its support for Cuba as part of a broader foreign-policy approach of defending national sovereignty, opposing external interference and sanctions, and favoring diplomacy over military coercion and regime change.

Beijing has invoked similar principles during the US-Israeli war against Iran this year, opposing attempts at regime change and calling for disputes to be settled through negotiations.

Beijing has pursued what it describes as a multipolar international order based on greater sovereign equality and a stronger voice for developing nations.

Addressing the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng urged the “relevant country” to “immediately stop using threat of force against Cuba” and “completely lift the blockade and sanctions.”

How is China aiding Cuba?

China has played a major role in the island’s rapid expansion of solar power, supplying equipment and financing. Solar accounted for just 2% of Cuba’s average daily electricity generation in January 2025; by September 2026, renewables as a whole were generating 21.4% of the country’s electricity, according to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Beijing has also provided emergency food aid, while previously restructuring Cuban debt and extending financing.

What’s in it for China?

Cuba gives Beijing a close political partner and a foothold for expanding Chinese trade, investment, and infrastructure projects in Latin America. The island has taken part in the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure and investment program, since 2018.

Havana supports Beijing on key diplomatic issues, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, and has endorsed Xi Jinping’s global initiatives. The partnership also gives China another supportive voice as it seeks greater coordination and influence in developing countries.

Who else supports Cuba?

Cuba has enjoyed overwhelming international support at the UN for ending the US embargo. In the latest General Assembly vote in October 2025, 165 countries backed a resolution calling for an end to the embargo; seven voted against and 12 abstained.

Several countries stepped up assistance as Cuba’s crisis deepened. Mexico has sent hundreds of tonnes of food and essential supplies, Spain has reactivated a debt-conversion program, and the EU has provided funding for humanitarian aid.

Russia reiterated its political backing at the UN on Saturday, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov describing Cuba’s humanitarian situation as desperate and calling on Washington to lift the restrictions on the country and remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Iranian women have been flocking to Imam Hossein Square in central Tehran to receive basic military and first-aid training as part of the ‘Sacrifice for Iran’ campaign.

The training center was inaugurated there last Wednesday, with the commander of the Basij paramilitary force, Hojjatoleslam Hossein Taeb, attending the opening ceremony.

According to Iranian media, the movement emerged as a grassroots initiative in late March, at the height of the US-Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic. Its work reflects the concept of ‘popular defense,’ which traces its roots to the bloody Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

Participants register online and first receive basic training in handling weapons, including firearms, small drones, and shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles, as well as in tactical medicine. Volunteers subsequently have the option to progress to more advanced training.

At ‘Smart Shopping: How Can Brands Navigate the Revolution in Consumer Behavior?’, one of the sessions held as part of the ongoing BRICS+ Fashion Summit, participants discussed the influence of artificial intelligence on the consumer journey, as well as how the functions of offline retail are changing.

Among those taking part in the session were Huu Nguyen Canh, head of the fashion division of the Vietnam Design Association, and Mohsen Gorji, head of the Fashion Department at Iran’s Ministry of Culture.

Huu Nguyen Canh noted that when there is a huge volume of content and recommendations, a brand’s task is no longer only to show a product, but also to help a person make a choice. For this reason, digital platforms are gradually moving from simply displaying a product range to creating ready-made consumption scenarios. According to him, a significant share of consumer behavior in Vietnam today is shaped by TikTok and other online platforms.

Mohsen Gorji named digital characters as another important tool of new consumer behavior, saying they allow brands to build more personalized communication and create sustained contact with audiences.

“By creating a closer connection with consumers, virtual influencers are becoming an important tool for e-commerce and online business,” Gorji said.

In addition, at the session ‘Investments in Creative Industries: Can Fashion Compete with Startups?’, participants discussed the criteria by which investors evaluate fashion businesses, the role played by brand and cultural capital in investment appeal, and what companies need in order to scale up and enter international markets.

Meanwhile, during the session ‘Production Technologies: What Will Change in the Next 5 Years’, the discussion focused on the impact of digitalization, artificial intelligence, automation, and the use of big data on production processes in the fashion industry.

The BRICS+ Fashion Summit opened on Monday, September 28, at the Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow and will run until September 30.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the UAE on Sunday to ask President Mohamed bin Zayed to deny that he had warned Israel of a major Hamas operation ahead of the deadly October 7 attack, according to the Associated Press.

AP reported on Monday that Netanyahu had traveled to Abu Dhabi to seek a denial of the warning claim, citing a person said to have firsthand information about the meeting. A second regional official briefed on the meeting also spoke to the agency.

The UAE and Netanyahu’s office have since confirmed the visit. Emirati state news agency WAM said the leaders discussed bilateral relations, while Netanyahu’s office said the talks focused on strengthening ties and regional challenges. Netanyahu’s office has denied that the visit was intended to obtain a denial from bin Zayed.

Haaretz reported earlier this month that bin Zayed called Netanyahu about ten days before the October 7 assault and warned that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation. The Emirati leader reportedly warned that it could lead to bloodshed and destabilize the region.

The UAE has neither confirmed nor denied the alleged warning. Its Foreign Ministry has said it does not comment on reports concerning conversations between government leaders, while noting that Abu Dhabi and Israel maintain “open and direct lines of communication” and share relevant intelligence when necessary.

Netanyahu has faced growing scrutiny over reports that Israel received other warnings in the run-up to the Hamas-led incursion, which killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, triggering the Gaza war.

The Atlantic reported that then-Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel traveled to Israel less than two weeks before the attack and warned senior officials that Hamas appeared to be mobilizing for a major operation. The outlet said it remains unclear whether the warning was relayed to Netanyahu.

The Wall Street Journal separately reported that Cairo issued multiple warnings ahead of the assault, including one to Netanyahu shortly before October 7. The Israeli prime minister has denied receiving advance warning from Egypt.

Former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz has accused Netanyahu of concealing information about warnings ahead of the attack and said the failure was “total, broad, and included everyone.” He argued that the prime minister ultimately bore responsibility.

Earlier this month, families of Israelis killed or abducted in the attack unveiled a 12-page dossier arguing that the massacre was not merely the result of intelligence and operational failures, but the culmination of a years-long policy that allowed Hamas to strengthen.

The controversy comes ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for October 27. Netanyahu has described the reports about the alleged UAE warning as politically motivated and linked them to the election campaign.

Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) and an allied party have won enough seats in the French Senate to form a group for the first time. The breakthrough comes months before a presidential election in which polls currently put Le Pen in the lead.

RN and the Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR) will together hold at least 15 seats in the 348-seat upper house following Sunday’s vote. A group requires a minimum of ten members and gives its lawmakers a greater role in Senate committees, where legislation is examined.

“This is a historic victory, and a major milestone with the formation for the first time of a group in the Senate,” Le Pen wrote on X. She said the result showed the party gaining support across France and that its senators would carry the concerns of local communities into the presidential campaign.

Despite RN’s latest gains, the Senate will remain controlled by the conservative Republicans and their centrist allies.

RN president Jordan Bardella has nevertheless called the result a sign of the party’s momentum ahead of what he described as “the mother of all battles,” referring to the upcoming presidential election.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has led a major incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.

Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, showed up at the compound on Sunday to mark the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Jews call the area around the mosque Temple Mount, as it used to house two Jewish temples in ancient times before becoming the third holiest site for Muslims.

The minister was accompanied by a heavily armed security detail, as well as backed up by crowds of Israeli civilians. A total of 1,143 Israelis breached the compound in several successive groups, according to the Jerusalem Governorate of the Palestinian Authority.

Ben-Gvir was seen brandishing a massive Torah scroll and performing Talmudic rituals while onlookers cheered, footage from the scene shows.

BREAKING 🚨

Itamar Ben-Gvir raises a Torah scroll during Sukkot at the Al-Buraq Wall in occupied Jerusalem.

You do not follow the Torah.

Stop using our holy Torah for national gains and your
g-dless political movement of Zionism.

pic.twitter.com/QQoirPrDj3

— Voice of Rabbis (@voiceofrabbis) September 28, 2026

Shortly after entering the compound, Ben-Gvir stirred up further controversy, releasing on X footage of him confronting Hassan Salameh, a high-profile Palestinian prisoner, in jail. Salameh, believed to be a senior Hamas figure, has been held by Israel for three decades over the 1996 terrorist attacks, including a bus bombing.

Footage released by Ben-Gvir shows him alongside multiple guards armed with assault rifles meeting shackled Salameh inside a small room. “I want to kill you. I want to execute you,” Ben-Gvir told Salameh. The encounter left the prisoner “trembled and terrified,” the minister claimed.

סגירת מעגל ענקית עבורי!

כנער עמדתי ברחובות והפגנתי אחרי פיגועי התופת הנוראיים בקו 18 בירושלים. עשרות חפים מפשע נרצחו, ומשפחות שלמות נחרבו.

לפני כשבועיים הגעתי לכלא ופגשתי פנים אל פנים את הארכי מחבל חסאן סאלמה - מבכירי חמאס, חברו ושותפו של יחיא סינוואר ימ״ש, שנשלח בידי הצורר… pic.twitter.com/6HvGFKAroJ

— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) September 27, 2026

Ben-Gvir has been the key proponent of the recently adopted Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, which gives Israel broad powers to execute alleged “terrorists.” The legislation mandates the death penalty for those convicted of deadly terrorist attacks aimed at “ending Israel’s existence” – a provision critics say effectively exempts Jewish Israelis, making the law applicable almost exclusively to Palestinians. The death penalty must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, with no right of appeal.

The far-right minister is known for inflammatory rhetoric toward Palestinians and heavy-handed treatment of prisoners, including international activists, and has been sanctioned by multiple countries for repeatedly inciting violence against them.

As war rhetoric from the UK and its Western European allies reaches a fever pitch, Russia has warned of nuclear consequences if the West follows through on its threats. With no letup in sight, RT is tracking the escalation and debunking the psyops in real time.

In a statement described by the Kremlin as an attempt to “cool down hot heads” in Europe, three Russian embassies warned on Wednesday that Russia is willing to use its entire arsenal, “including nuclear weapons,” if NATO takes military action against Kaliningrad or blockades the Russian exclave.

Tensions are currently high after a week of intense fearmongering from British officials and journalists, in which retired generals told the BBC that the public must be “psychologically prepared” for conflict with Russia, a Labour Party thought leader suggested that dissidents and Russia sympathizers be “locked up,” and former Brexit Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told British men and women that they “may have to die” in a cataclysmic European war.

This was a marked shift in rhetoric from the British elite. Since 2022, five successive prime ministers have insisted that the UK will arm Ukraine “for as long as it takes” to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, but only a handful of bellicose generals and analysts have predicted an imminent military clash with Moscow. The tactical situation has not changed, and Russia has repeatedly insisted it has no interest in a wider conflict with NATO, but talking heads from both the Labour and Conservative parties are now speaking of war as a done deal.

Britain’s political and media class also attempted to spin the arrest of five men near a US airbase on Sunday as an “attack” on the country, until the men were let go after counterterror police found no explosives, and apparently no evidence of a terrorist plot. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has leveled a shaky accusation at Tehran, saying that 

BREAKING: 🇬🇧🇮🇷 UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham officially accuses Iran of involvement in the RAF Fairford incident

Despite that the UK authorities announced that it was just random thieves smuggling oil and they were released. pic.twitter.com/tkhARyKDih

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) September 30, 2026

On the continent, Lithuania, Estonia, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte are accusing Russia of waging a "hybrid war," but none have managed to substantiate their accusations yet.

The stakes – and the likelihood of miscalculation – are high. RT is watching and listening, and debunking the most outrageous war propaganda in real time.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully put Starship into orbit for the first time, deploying 26 next-generation Starlink satellites. However, the mission was cut short and the spacecraft erupted in a fireball following its splashdown in the Pacific.

The spacecraft blasted off from Starbase, Texas, at about 7:49 AM local time on Monday, before reaching space roughly eight minutes later. During the ascent, one of the six engines shut down early, prompting SpaceX to assess whether the spacecraft was healthy enough to continue with the orbital portion of the mission.

Despite the hiccup, controllers ultimately gave a “go for orbit” command, with a single engine restarting for a 19-second burn, placing the Starship roughly 275 km above Earth.

Starship subsequently deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites it was carrying. Each is rated for around 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity and 160 gigabits per second uplink, roughly ten and 22 times the respective capacity of V2 satellites. The new generation is designed to provide about ten times the download capacity of its predecessor, according to SpaceX, allowing each satellite to handle significantly more internet traffic.

Sky News science and technology editor Tom Clarke said the spacecraft would not be recovered “because it’s just blown up, quite spectacularly” as it landed in the Pacific.

Monday’s mission was originally expected to see Starship circle Earth six times over about ten hours. SpaceX later cut the flight short, saying the spacecraft would instead reenter after around three hours and target a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.

All 13 previous Starship flights had followed deliberately suborbital paths that would naturally bring the spacecraft back into the atmosphere. The Starship was expected to make six full laps of Earth over about 10 hours and perform a controlled splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile.

SpaceX encountered major problems during the previous test mission in late July, with the booster suffering ice-related engine issues during its return, with only eight of 13 planned engines reigniting for its landing burn, resulting in a hard splashdown.

The @Starlink team has made contact with all 26 satellites https://t.co/qiAubuhytS

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 28, 2026

Reaching stable orbit marks a fundamental step for SpaceX because Starship is no longer simply following a high-speed arc that inevitably ends with reentry. Once in orbit, the spacecraft can remain circling Earth, which is essential to SpaceX’s plans to use Starship for large-scale satellite launches and eventually missions beyond Earth orbit.

SpaceX says future Starship missions could carry up to 60 V3 satellites and add more than 20 times as much capacity to the Starlink network in a single launch as current Falcon 9 missions.

The satellites are expected to reinforce the Starlink global network, which has been actively used by Ukraine in its conflict with Russia for piloting drones, targeting artillery, and maintaining battlefield connectivity.

The EU has greenlit a slew of new joint defense-industrial initiatives, with Ukraine joining most of them, as Brussels presses ahead with its defense buildup despite Russia’s warnings against the bloc’s “rabid” militarization.

The initiatives are part of the European Defense Projects of Common Interest (EDPCIs), large-scale industrial programs pitched as a way for groups of countries to jointly develop, manufacture, and deploy military capabilities too big or complex to tackle alone. The projects fall under the €1.5 billion European Defense Industry Program (EDIP), one of the EU’s mechanisms for expanding weapons production.

The Council formally endorsed the first five megaprojects within the framework on Monday, including:

• Drones and counter-drone systems (DECODER): scaling up and deploying military drones, along with systems to detect and neutralize UAVs;

• Maritime and seabed defense (IMSD): creating joint systems to detect and respond to threats at sea and on the seabed;

• SPACE: expanding military space capabilities, including missile-launch early warning, satellite communications, intelligence, and surveillance;

• Integrated air and missile defense (EU-FIAMD): linking participating countries’ air and missile defenses, early-warning capabilities, and command systems;

• Eastern Flank Watch (EFW): strengthening defenses along participating countries’ eastern territories.

On average, 18 member states will be involved in each project.

The European Commission has already earmarked €325 million to support the five initiatives. While the money has not yet been handed out, the decision on Monday makes the projects eligible to apply for this funding and opens the door to further EU financing later.

The initial sum is only a fraction of Brussels’ longer-term ambitions: EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius earlier put their combined funding at around €190 billion ($216 billion) by 2036. He hailed the decision as a “major breakthrough” aimed at closing critical gaps in the EU’s defenses.

The European Commission said it will help participating countries get the projects running and coordinate their work. Brussels has also left the door open to more initiatives under the framework in the future.

The EU believes its military buildup is needed to counter what it describes as a growing ‘Russian threat’. Moscow has dismissed the claims as “nonsense,” accusing European governments of using them to justify bloated military budgets and continued weapons supplies to Ukraine. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev slammed the EU’s militarization as “rabid.”

Switzerland has shown that it is “not a neutral state anymore” by rejecting a proposal to tighten the country’s neutrality rules, Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov has said.

Swiss voters on Sunday rejected the ‘Safeguard Swiss Neutrality’ initiative, which would have barred Bern from imposing sanctions on states involved in armed conflicts unless mandated by the UN. It would also have restricted cooperation with military alliances unless Switzerland faced a direct or imminent attack.

In a post on X following the vote, Ulyanov said the result “simply proved that Switzerland is not strong enough to be really neutral and that neutrality is wishful thinking but not a principle of this country.”

According to the provisional official final tally, 70.15% voted against the initiative, while 29.85% supported it. The proposal was rejected in every canton.

The initiative was launched by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and the Pro Schweiz sovereignty movement. Its supporters argued that Bern had moved “dangerously close” to the EU and NATO, particularly since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, undermining Switzerland’s independence and credibility as a mediator.

The Swiss government, however, maintains that adopting sanctions does not violate the country’s neutrality. Ahead of the referendum, the Federal Council argued that the existing policy gives Bern the flexibility to respond to international developments while safeguarding its security and independence.

Switzerland’s neutrality has been enshrined in its federal constitution since 1848. The country is not a member of NATO but has cooperated with the US-led military bloc for decades, with ties expanding in recent years.

Both the Federal Council and parliament had urged voters to reject the initiative, arguing that a more rigid neutrality policy would restrict Switzerland’s ability to respond to international crises.

Many people think that diabetes is something like gout – that it primarily affects people with a poor diet or a sweet tooth.

The idea, besides being annoying for doctors and diabetics themselves, is also dangerous. It leads many to believe that only those who eat donuts and drink coffee with lots of sugar are at risk. In reality, diabetes poses a threat to almost everyone in the modern world.

According to the World Health Organization, the number of people worldwide with diabetes rose from 200 million to 830 million between 1990 and 2022, and the number of adults diagnosed with diabetes doubled from 7% to 14%. The number of cases is expected to surge further, driven by the realities of modern life.

This presents a genuine challenge for public health officials worldwide. Some nations are already managing the crisis more effectively than others.

To begin with, it is important to note that there are two types of diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakenly destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The body virtually stops producing insulin, and the person requires daily insulin injections. 

Type 1 diabetes often develops during childhood or young adulthood, though it can appear at any age. It is not caused by a high-sugar diet or excess weight.

In type 2 diabetes, the body typically continues to produce insulin, but the cells respond poorly to it – a condition known as insulin resistance. Over time, the pancreas may become exhausted and produce progressively less insulin.

While a poor diet can contribute to the disease, factors like genetics, being overweight, a sedentary lifestyle, and age put one at greater risk, though young or slim individuals increasingly suffer from diabetes as well.

The key difference is that in type 1 diabetes, the body produces virtually no insulin, whereas in type 2, insulin is present but the body fails to utilize it effectively. Type 1 diabetes always requires insulin therapy; type 2 diabetes can sometimes be managed for a long time through diet, physical activity, and oral medication, though some patients eventually require insulin as well.

Type 1 diabetes is virtually impossible to prevent. Type 2 is technically preventable, but difficult to avoid, because most people are even unaware of the danger it poses. Furthermore, its development is fueled by modern lifestyles. 

Such a diagnosis is by no means a death sentence. In reality, having diabetes means a person must regularly monitor their blood sugar levels and make timely adjustments to their diet and medication. Moreover, a person often doesn’t have to totally exclude the consumption of sugar; sometimes, it is even necessary to maintain balance.

If acute crises are avoided, the life of a diabetic differs little from that of other people. However, this requires the right infrastructure.

Since a lot depends on healthcare institutions, one might expect Western countries to be good at managing diabetes. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

In the US, for example, due to the national healthcare model, insulin rationing is common. CDC studies have shown that approximately 25% of adults with diabetes reported cutting back on insulin use due to its cost. Skipping or reducing insulin doses leaves diabetics vulnerable and increases the risk of hospitalization, a sharp decline in health, and even death.

Complaints regarding a shortage of glucose meters, test strips, and other diabetic supplies are common in the US. Yet, even if patients had everything they needed, the problem would remain acute.

The US medical system is geared toward diagnosing and treating diseases rather than providing long-term patient support. Diabetes, however, cannot be cured; it stays with a person for life. The duration – and comfort – of life largely depends on regular check-ups and medical consultations. 

Wealthy patients can secure a relatively safe and comfortable existence for themselves. However, those on a tighter budget and people without medical insurance (about 11% of Americans) remain highly vulnerable.

Lack of access to doctors isn’t the only problem. Studies show that in many parts of the US, living conditions contribute to diabetes. For example, insufficient dietary variety, a lack of large retailers, high electricity costs, and other factors can increase the risk of developing the disease.

And, of course, a sedentary lifestyle poses a major threat. About a quarter of Americans engage in no physical activity outside of work. Many also sit for more than eight hours a day. With such a lifestyle, diabetes is almost guaranteed. 

Europe faces the same issues, plus two others: a shortage of doctors and a rapidly aging population. According to OECD estimates, over 40% of Europeans over the age of 65 suffer from at least two chronic conditions. The number of patients is rising, while the time for long-term monitoring and preventive care is shrinking.

However, the battle is far from lost. Around the world, there are examples of countries that successfully manage diabetes. Russia is one of them.

Unsugared pill

In Russia, approximately 6 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes. Russia is not immune to the problems of the West, such as sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, and inconsistent infrastructure. The differences lie in the approach to managing the disease.

Firstly, while free medicine has its shortcomings, few would dispute its effectiveness in managing chronic conditions. Patients can schedule doctor appointments or lab tests at any time to check their health status and receive medical advice – all at no cost. It is also worth noting that many medications and medical supplies are provided to patients free of charge.

Secondly, the government has recognized the problem. The authorities realized that without active intervention, millions more could be diagnosed with diabetes, and took matters into their own hands. And the effort goes beyond simply promoting a healthy lifestyle and revising school cafeteria menus.

One of the key government initiatives was the launch of the Combating Diabetes federal project in 2023. All 89 regions are required to implement their own programs integrating diabetes prevention, early diagnosis, ongoing clinical monitoring, the treatment of complications, patient education, and the development of endocrinology services.

Additionally, Russia has opened over 1,600 “diabetes schools,” purchased more than 1,200 glycated hemoglobin analyzers, and trained over 1,000 doctors and mid-level medical specialists. Furthermore, 262 district and inter-district endocrinology centers are set to be equipped by 2030.

However, Russia’s strategy relies not only on institutions but also on technology.

Every diabetic is familiar with the glucometer – a device that draws blood from the fingertip and quickly analyzes glucose levels. It is a convenient, reliable way to assess health status and determine whether medical intervention is needed.

Glucometers have two downsides, though. First, the test requires a clean, quiet environment; checking one’s glucose levels outdoors or in the middle of an office is inconvenient and potentially risky. Plus, the test reflects the patient’s condition at a single moment in time, without showing the dynamics over time. Not to mention that many people hate pricking their fingers.

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices solve these problems. The small sensors are attached to the skin and passively track sugar levels, which can be viewed via an app. A sensor has to be replaced about every two weeks.

As a rule, these wearables are slightly less accurate than glucometers. However, their purpose is different: They track how glucose levels change over time. This allows doctors and patients to observe the body’s individual reactions to food, physical activity, and other stimuli, making adjustments to ensure the most comfortable lifestyle. CGM devices are also highly popular among parents of children with diabetes, as they allow them to monitor their child’s health remotely via an app.

Overall, glucose monitoring devices are one of the best ways to care for people with diabetes. They simplify health monitoring, eliminate the risk of sudden crises, and allow patients to live with greater peace of mind. In Russia, these devices are provided free of charge to children and pregnant women.

However, other diabetics need these devices as well, and shortages sometimes occur in certain regions. This is where the business sector steps in.

For a long time, the Russian CGM market relied on imports. This situation was often exploited to inflate prices. Recently, however, the company Sinocare Rus opened a large CGM manufacturing facility in Primorsky Region (in the Russian Far East) with the support of the local authorities. 

The company acquired the technology from China and subsequently adapted production to utilize Russian machinery and software. The company plans to focus on the domestic market, aiming to provide Russians with affordable, reliable, and low-cost sensors.

“If we know that this technology helps people and improves their lives, how can we fail to provide it to everyone who needs it?” 
–
Viktor Valuev, Sinocare Rus CEO. 

We tend to think that we live in the safest and healthiest era in human history. And indeed, modern medicine can treat many diseases that were once fatal. 

At the same time, however, this new world has made us vulnerable to other risks – ones that many people are unwilling to acknowledge. This is partly because modern living conditions foster diseases that appear harmless at first. 

A great deal depends on the plans governments choose now to fight diabetes, from the size of their healthcare budgets to the health of entire generations. And as time goes on, it is becoming increasingly clear that neoliberal healthcare is failing to meet the challenge.

The Russian authorities have announced a terrorism-related criminal case against a Russian-British woman who serves as a councilor in the London borough of Ealing.

Moscow has accused Ksenia Maximova of lobbying the British government to advance an anti-Russian government agenda, potentially in coordination with British Intelligence services and collaborating with a London law firm run by Ukrainian-British citizens allegedly on behalf of Kiev.

Maximova is associated with the Russian Anti-War Committee, backed by exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and is an active participant in a network of groups based in the West that seeks to overthrow the Russian government and fracture the country by promoting Western military support for Ukraine, among other things.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Monday that it opened a criminal case against her over alleged participation in an organization designated as ‘terrorist’ under Russian law.

She is also ‘consul’ for the Russian Anti-War Committee, which was declared a ‘terrorist organization’ by the Russian Supreme Court in March.

The RDS presents itself as “an alternative Russia,” and has lobbied for additional sanctions, including measures targeting Russia’s oil trade, the FSB said.

London has for decades harbored rich individuals who acquired their wealth abroad under shady circumstances, including Russian businessmen who amassed fortunes during the privatizations that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Former oligarchs, including Khodorkovsky, have used their resources and connections to support Russian opposition groups and undermine the Russian government.

Eight US Marines were injured when an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz that they were operating on earlier this month, NBC News reported on Sunday, citing sources. The Pentagon has not offered an account of the incident and is facing scrutiny over whether it is downplaying the number of casualties and costs in the war with Iran.

The Marines – seven enlisted personnel and one officer – were operating as part of a landing team when the missile hit, unnamed US officials told the network. The personnel suffered smoke inhalation and possible traumatic brain injuries, but none were seriously wounded, the report claims.

NBC sources said the Marines were not aboard a US Navy ship but did not identify the type of vessel.

The Pentagon did not provide an explanation for the incident. It took it nearly ten days to quietly add the Marines into the Defense Casualty Analysis System, a database that tracks injuries and deaths in the conflict.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post also reported that at least 22 service members died in the Middle East since the war began, compared with 18 acknowledged by the Pentagon at the time.

The dispute over the human toll has been accompanied by questions over the financial costs of the conflict. CENTCOM estimates the costs of military operations against Iran at around $43.6 billion, but the figure does not include the potential multi-billion-dollar cost of repairing US military facilities hit in retaliatory strikes.

NBC reported in July, citing people familiar with Pentagon assessments, that the overall cost could already be $80 billion to $100 billion when repairing bases, replacing destroyed aircraft, and fully replenishing weapons are included.

Iran has warned that it has “unforgettable lessons” in store for the US if it continues the escalation, saying it will only lead to “heavier costs and further humiliation.” Last week, President Masoud Pezeshkian told Fox News that Iran “does not seek to kill Americans” but will resist the pressure campaign.

The fourth BRICS+ Fashion Summit opens in Moscow on September 28, bringing together industry professionals from more than 60 countries for three days of discussions on design, technology, retail, and the future of global fashion.

The event is taking place at Zaryadye Concert Hall as part of the 7th Moscow Fashion Week, which runs from September 26 to October 1 at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall. Organizers say the summit is designed to highlight the growing influence of fast-developing economies in shaping the global fashion market.

The business program, now published on the summit’s official website, spans topics including marketplaces, artificial intelligence, wearable technology, jewelry, local brand development, and investment in creative industries. Major Russian speakers include Tatyana Kim, founder of Wildberries and head of RWB, Anton Letushev, chief executive of Melon Fashion Group, Alyona Akhmadullina, and Olga Buzylyova, who heads the consumer goods division at Sibur.

International speakers include Kanika Goyal of India, Jenke Ahmed Tally of Côte d’Ivoire, and Aline Souza de Oliveira of Brazil’s FARM Rio, among others.

“This experience significantly expanded my understanding of the global fashion community and helped me move beyond seeing Western fashion systems as the only benchmark,” said Xie Fangming, vice president of the China Fashion Association, who previously took part in the summit. He said the event helped reveal “unique craft resources, forms of design expression and industry priorities” in BRICS and other fast-growing markets.

That theme of a more multi-centered fashion world also runs through the summit’s wider message. Ely Gu, founder of the Ontimeshow exhibition in China, argued that the future is not about one fashion capital replacing another, but about more places becoming globally relevant. “For me, the future is not about Moscow replacing Paris or Shanghai replacing Milan,” she said. “It is about fashion becoming more multi-centered.”

Ahead of the summit, industry representatives from China, the United States, Egypt, Ecuador, and Botswana also commented on the prospects for BRICS+ brands. Many said local labels are increasingly well placed to compete internationally, but only if they build a clear identity, stable quality, investment backing, and strong distribution networks.

Alongside the policy discussions, the summit will also showcase traditional culture in a modern form. One of the featured projects is ‘Khokhloma × Russian Designers,’ where the Khokhloma brand will present both contemporary collections and traditional decorative wooden goods.

The project aims to reinterpret one of Russia’s best-known folk art traditions through fashion, accessories, interiors, and design objects. “It is important for us that tradition not remain a museum object, but become part of modern culture, design, and business,” said Sofya Yudina, head of ANO Khokhloma.

Visitors will also be able to buy products directly at the venue.

The summit is organized by the Fashion Foundation, with support from the Government of Moscow. Sber is the strategic partner, Wildberries the general partner, and GigaChat AI the technology partner.

Admission to all events is free with advance registration.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has rejected US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of artificial intelligence safety concerns, arguing that Washington should impose mandatory safeguards on the rapidly advancing technology.

Trump has resisted calls to slow AI development, arguing that restrictions could allow China to overtake the US and dismissing fears surrounding the technology as a “hoax.”

Gates, however, has criticized what he described as a “nationalistic” approach to the issue and said safeguards would not undermine Washington’s technological advantage.

“No. It’s not a hoax at all,” Gates said when asked about Trump’s position in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press aired on Sunday.

Earlier this month, Trump dismissed warnings that AI could escape human control and destroy humanity. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” he wrote, adding that the US is leading China and other countries.

Gates argued that treating the technology primarily as a geopolitical competition was encouraging a potentially dangerous rush to develop increasingly powerful systems.

Gates acknowledged that the US government has “so little expertise” regarding some of the capabilities recently developed by private AI companies, but nevertheless insisted that government involvement is necessary.

“No one thinks self-regulation is enough,” he said, calling for legislation and mandatory monitoring of advanced models.

Gates also predicted Trump could ultimately change his position once convinced that such measures would not damage Washington’s standing against Beijing.

“I think after he hears from me and other people, including that this does not handicap us in whatever he thinks the nation-state race is, that, you know, we will come to a consensus,” Gates said.

Trump, however, doubled down on his position on Sunday. Asked about reports of rogue AI agents, he told Fox News: “I don’t worry about it.” The president argued that slowing development could sacrifice Washington’s technological advantage, which he estimated at around 18 months.

“We’re about maybe a year and a half up on China,” Trump said. “We’re leading... And why should we give that up?” He also confirmed plans to have dinner with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the leading advocates of slowing development of increasingly capable AI systems.

Gates, meanwhile, disputed suggestions that Beijing would reject safeguards, arguing that China itself has an interest in preventing attacks involving advanced AI.

He nevertheless acknowledged that reaching an international agreement could prove more difficult than Cold War negotiations on nuclear weapons. Asked whether US-Soviet arms-control talks could serve as a model for Washington and Beijing, Gates replied: “Yeah, absolutely. This is more difficult than that was.”

The US and China have recently taken initial steps toward cooperation on AI risks, agreeing following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington to launch a bilateral dialogue on the technology.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing a potential International Criminal Court (ICC) case against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seeking to use it as leverage in their escalating dispute, i24NEWS has reported, citing sources.

The move follows Türkiye’s announcement last month that it had asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for Netanyahu after a Turkish court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges including genocide over Israel’s interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla earlier this year.

Netanyahu responded by lashing out at the Turkish leader, calling him “an anti-Semitic dictator” and accusing him of massacring Kurds and harboring Hamas members. He repeated his allegations in his UN General Assembly speech last week, describing Türkiye as “the latest country to become a super spreader of antisemitic lies.” Türkiye’s communications director, Burhanettin Duran, dismissed the remarks as “baseless accusations.”

The Hague-based ICC was established under the Rome Statute, which entered into force in 2002, to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to i24NEWS, Israel is more likely to pursue the case through a third party, although there is also a possibility that it could file the case directly.

Israel, however, hopes to avoid taking either step and “aims to use the existence of the case as leverage against Erdogan, effectively using it as a deterrent,” according to sources cited by the outlet.

Neither Israel nor Türkiye is a party to the Rome Statute, while the United States – Israel’s closest ally and a vocal opponent of the Netanyahu warrant – is likewise not a party. Washington sanctioned ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, accusing the court of exceeding its mandate. The ICC said it “strongly rejects” the designations, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.”

US President Donald Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping whether Beijing would be interested in buying US weapons, according to Washington’s ambassador to China, despite longstanding restrictions on military exports to the country.

Ambassador David Perdue revealed the exchange during an interview with Fox News Sunday while discussing Trump’s approach to China and continued US weapons sales to Taiwan.

“President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” Perdue said. “He actually asked President Xi if he would like to buy some at one point.”

The ambassador did not say when Trump raised the idea, what weapons were discussed, or how Xi responded. The two leaders have met twice this year – in Beijing in May and during Xi’s three-day state visit to Washington last week.

Washington nevertheless remains Taiwan’s principal foreign weapons supplier while officially maintaining its one-China policy. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act states that the US will make defense articles and services available to the island in quantities deemed necessary for it to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”

China considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory and has demanded that the US end military support, arguing that the sales violate its sovereignty and destabilize relations across the Taiwan Strait. Ahead of Xi’s Washington visit, the Chinese Defense Ministry urged the US to exercise “extreme caution” on the issue.

Perdue made his remark while defending Trump’s record on Taiwan, claiming the president has already authorized substantially more weapons for the island than his predecessors. The ambassador portrayed Trump’s question to Xi as characteristic of his deal-making approach rather than evidence that a formal sale was being considered.

In shipbuilding, where production can be compared more directly, China’s industrial capacity is estimated at around 230 times that of the US, while congressional testimony has put its small-drone output at more than 100 times the US level. This leaves cutting-edge technologies and know-how in areas where the US still retains an advantage – precisely the capabilities the US treats as highly sensitive and is unlikely to share with its principal strategic rival.

South Korea has demanded an official explanation and apology from Ukraine over Vladimir Zelensky’s disclosure of a secret transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war captured in Russia, accusing Kiev of breaking a confidentiality agreement and then falsely denying that it existed.

Seoul’s presidential office escalated the diplomatic row in a statement on Sunday, expressing “strong regret” over Ukraine’s attempt to downplay Zelensky’s blunder at the UN General Assembly last week.

“We express strong regret over the Ukrainian government’s unilateral disclosure in violation of the confidentiality agreement, and its subsequent false public statement denying the existence of an agreement, and demand an official explanation and apology,” senior presidential secretary for public relations Seong Ghi-hong said. Seoul is also reviewing unspecified “further necessary measures,” he added.

Zelensky bragged during his UN address on September 23 that Ukraine recently sent the two men to South Korea, saying it was “not easy to capture them alive.” Pyongyang deployed troops to assist Russia in repelling a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Region, Russia in 2024-25.

The disclosure drew a sharp rebuke from South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who said the transfer was an exceptionally sensitive matter affecting security on the Korean Peninsula. Lee accused Zelensky of putting short-term political interests ahead of national interests and said breaching the confidentiality arrangement was “deeply regrettable.”

Kiev subsequently denied that any secrecy agreement existed. Zelensky adviser Dmitry Litvin insisted that “there was no agreement to remain silent.” A source in the Ukrainian presidential office told local media that Ukrainians have the right to know what happens to prisoners captured by their forces.

Oksana Torop, a media adviser to Ukraine’s former top commander-turned-ambassador to Britain, Valery Zaluzhny, said a confidentiality agreement did exist and criticized Zelensky’s announcement as a “show” and “exaggerated publicity.”

US President Donald Trump said he expects more talks with Iran as soon as this week, reiterating his claim that Tehran desperately wants to “make a deal.” An Iranian security official called Trump’s rhetoric an attempt to manipulate the oil market.

Trump made the remarks in a phone interview with Axios on Sunday, a day after dismissing the latest Iranian peace proposal as unacceptable. Tehran has proposed reopening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the US naval blockade and resuming nuclear negotiations.

“I expect more talks with Iran. They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make. It is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago. They overplayed their hand,” Trump told Axios.

He also confirmed that resuming full-scale hostilities with Iran remains an option, telling the outlet he has been considering renewed strikes. Trump also claimed that over the weekend, the US facilitated the transfer of “more than 20 million barrels” of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which would be the largest amount in months but still below pre-war levels.

Speaking to RT, an Iranian security official dismissed Trump’s remarks as “media rhetoric” which does not change the “realities on the ground.”

“The operational reality is that over the past 48 hours, a total of 20 vessels – including seven last night and 13 the night before – were halted while transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” the official said, suggesting that Trump’s claims are an attempt to manipulate the oil market.

“There is no operational and sustainable mechanism for safe navigation through this strategic waterway outside the framework established and approved by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated the terms of the country’s peace plan, signaling openness to further negotiations and readiness to continue the conflict “even if it comes to a doomsday war.”

“We want our assets, which are illegally frozen, to be released. We want to be able to sell our oil. We want certain things that the US has already committed itself [to] in the previous deals,” Araghchi said in an interview with NBC, referring to the June memorandum of understanding.

Five men detained over a suspected terrorist plot near RAF Fairford, an airbase used by US warplanes involved in strikes on Iran, are British nationals from London aged between 23 and 25, UK counter-terrorism police said on Monday.

Investigators have developed “multiple new lines of enquiry” as they seek to establish the suspects’ activities and motivation, counter-terrorism police have added. A source familiar with the investigation has told Reuters that an Iran-linked motive was considered the most likely line of inquiry.

Iran has denied any involvement. Its embassy in London said on Monday that it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” what it called “unfounded and malicious speculations” linking Tehran to the arrests, saying they served to fuel “Iranophobia propaganda” in Britain.

The men were detained early on Sunday after police received a report of three suspicious vehicles travelling toward the base. They were initially arrested on suspicion of explosives offenses and later on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. They have since been released on police bail while the investigation continues.

A British Army bomb disposal unit was sent to examine the vehicles, and around 85 households were evacuated as a precaution, Ocone told reporters. UK media outlets have shown what appears to be helicopter footage depicting a specialized wheeled robot operating near the vans.

Commenting on the incident in a post on X, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham urged “people not to speculate while the authorities establish the full facts.”

The US Air Force has operated out of RAF Fairford for decades, with heavy bombers stationed at the base, including bombers used in strikes against Iran.

In July, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement warning the UK specifically that “any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory is a legitimate target for our forces.”

Commenting on the incident, a US military spokesperson told local media that the Pentagon is “working closely with our UK counterparts to monitor this situation.”

US President Donald Trump told reporters that the suspects “were looking to do big damage to our fort.”

“We had them under investigation… We had them under view for a long time, and we got them,” he said.

There are few myths as captivating and durable as that of Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty. Proponents of the myth are convinced that, thanks to this provision, NATO is like Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers, in which an attack against one is an attack against all, and the US would automatically come in full force to the rescue of any of the allies under attack.

It’s debatable and essentially unknowable to what extent that would have worked in the situation of the Cold War, when the US genuinely feared the Soviet/Communist threat, because the bloc was never tested to that extent. But it certainly is utterly false under present conditions and likely future circumstances, and America’s allies and partners need to pay attention and be careful.

The wording of the article itself is deliberately ambiguous. Clearly, there’s no automaticity there in the use of force, and such careful formulation was a condition for the treaty’s ratification by the US Senate because American policymakers at the time abhorred entering into entangling alliances. 

So much for the automatic use of US military force.

Later, after the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles in the mid-to-late 1950s, American military strategy sought to avoid a direct nuclear exchange. Nuclear war, if it were to be fought, was to stay limited, confined to Europe, east and west. 

During the Cold War, recurrent crises around West Berlin were considered in Washington as a likely casus belli, but West Berlin was formally an occupied territory, rather than an allied country. It was safeguarded by American, British, and French military garrisons, and a move against the city (which was never attempted) would have been an attack on US military personnel. The situation along the German-German, Czechoslovak-West German, or Norway’s and Türkiye’s borders with the Soviet Union, though tense, was invariably stable. Elsewhere, NATO and the Warsaw Pact were separated by wide swaths of neutral territory. 

So much for the likelihood of military conflicts which would have triggered Article 5.

The current US National Defense Strategy doesn’t view Russia as a major threat, with the Trump administration busy shifting the focus of US forces to East Asia and the Pacific. President Donald Trump has shifted the burden of NATO’s defense onto the European members themselves. If his performance in the Ukraine conflict is a gauge, he has no wish and no inclination to commit US forces to defending America’s allies and clients. Selling arms to them and sharing intelligence is the limit.

Washington also probably takes seriously Moscow’s warning that a NATO-Russia war would be different from the Ukraine conflict, and that it “would be short.” This logically means, in plain English, that it would be nuclear. Americans who studiously avoided a nuclear war with the Soviet Union when they felt genuinely threatened cannot be expected now to allow themselves to be dragged, on behalf of their European allies, into a nuclear conflict with Russia – still the only country in the world that has the capability to annihilate the US.

US security guarantees, though admittedly not Article 5-type, have been exposed as less than hollow in the ongoing US war against Iran. Instead of protecting the Gulf Arab countries, the American bases in the region acted like magnets, drawing Iranian drones and missiles which damaged the host countries’ infrastructure. Those in Eastern and Northern Europe who think they will be better off hosting American (or French, for that matter) nuclear facilities should think again.

Ukraine lost its way and brought untold calamities upon itself when its leaders made NATO membership their goal. They didn’t realize that Washington never intended to give them even a symbolic guarantee of protection. Security in the 21st century world can’t be delegated to foreign powers, it can only rest on one’s own resources and stable relations with neighbors. This is the lesson not just for Ukraine and Europe, but also for the Gulf Arab states and East Asia.

US President Donald Trump has effectively abandoned Saudi Arabia, a key ally in the Middle East, leaving it to face “almost a full-blown war” with Yemen’s Houthis, political scientist and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer said in an interview with RT.

Hostilities between Riyadh and the Shiite militant group, officially known as Ansarullah, have flared up in recent weeks after several years of relative calm. The Houthis have launched missile and drone attacks on Saudi territory, while Riyadh-backed government forces have tried to hold off the group’s advances inside Yemen.

Earlier this month, the Houthis seized control over Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taking positions around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait – a key waterway which Saudi Arabia has increasingly relied on for oil exports since navigation through the Strait of Hormuz was reduced to a trickle amid the US-Israeli war against Iran.

He went on to suggest, citing media reports, that Trump encouraged Riyadh to strike an airport in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in mid-July. The attack, which was apparently meant to prevent an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation from Tehran from landing, shattered the UN-brokered 2022 truce between the Saudis and the Houthis, triggering the current escalation.

Mearsheimer gave credence to claims made earlier this month by the New York Times, which said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman phoned Trump on multiple occasions in recent weeks, asking for military support against the Houthis. The president decided, however, not to intervene, according to the NYT.
Trump was reportedly close to authorizing strikes on the Houthis last weekend, but reversed his decision at the last minute.

According to Mearsheimer, “the last thing [Trump] wants to do is get into a fight with [the Houthis] to try to rescue Saudi Arabia” – not least because of how badly America’s attempt to bomb the Houthis into submission went last year.

Less than two months into the campaign, Trump abruptly announced a ceasefire, declaring victory and saying the Houthis promised not to attack US ships.

“But in fact, the Houthis beat the United States. We did not defeat the Houthis,” Mearsheimer said.

Speaking to Al-Mayadeen on Saturday, the head of the National Security Committee in the Iranian Parliament, Ibrahim Azizi, warned neighboring Arab nations against cooperating with the US and allowing it to use their territory as a launchpad for attacks.

Azizi added that the US security umbrella in the Middle East has proven to be ineffective.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic resigned from office on Sunday ahead of snap parliamentary elections. The outgoing president is set to run for re-election as the candidate for the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), seeking the prime minister office instead.

Vucic announced the move from the presidential palace, stating that his address would be the last in his current capacity. He is stepping down during his second presidential term and, under the Serbian constitution, cannot seek another one. A new election must be held within three months of the president’s resignation.

Vucic first announced his intent to leave his post at a rally in June.

The impending snap presidential vote means Serbs will have to go to the polls twice this year. The snap parliamentary election is set to be held on October 25, with Vucic expected to run as the head of his SNS party, potentially taking the prime minister post should it emerge victorious.

“This evening marks my last chance, the final time I am here in this beautiful building as president. I have held the office of president longer than anyone else in Serbia’s history since the establishment of multi-party democracy. I am proud to have achieved this thanks to your votes and support,” Vucic said in his address.

Vucic’s second term, originally set to run until May 2027, has been overshadowed over the past two years by recurring anti-government protests and sporadic clashes between demonstrators and police. The unrest was sparked by the 2024 railway station disaster in Novi Sad, where the collapse of a concrete canopy killed 16 people.

The tragedy gave rise to a broader anti-government movement that has accused the authorities of negligence and misuse of public funds, allegedly leaving Yugoslav-era infrastructure to deteriorate. Vucic has consistently denied the allegations, arguing instead that the unrest was incited by Brussels as part of a pressure campaign aimed at pushing Belgrade to align its foreign policy more closely with the EU.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has captured a US autonomous underwater vehicle in the Strait of Hormuz, the second such incident reported this month.

According to an IRGC Navy statement carried by Iranian media, the military UROV was conducting espionage in the strategic waterway.

The IRGC identified the vessel as a Remus 600, an advanced autonomous underwater vehicle used by the US Navy for mine detection, surveillance, and reconnaissance. It released footage of the vehicle being lifted from the water and said specialists are now working to recover its data.

The IRGC also warned that the Strait of Hormuz remains “closed,” saying it will continue confronting what it described as “dangerous movements and unauthorized” vessel activity. The US has not yet commented on the incident.

First Footage
Iran has captured a second US unmanned underwater vehicle intact in the Strait of Hormuz. pic.twitter.com/XP343uFzoU

— IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) (@iribnews_irib) September 27, 2026

The claim follows a series of drone incidents in the Strait of Hormuz this month.

The incidents come amid an escalating maritime standoff between Washington and Tehran. The US has destroyed several Iranian oil tankers after accusing the IRGC of firing ballistic missiles at US warships. Iran, meanwhile, has targeted US vessels and commercial tankers it accused of violating restrictions around the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier this week, reports claimed that Washington had increased military activity around the waterway, with reconnaissance aircraft spotted near Iranian territory and additional fighter jets reportedly deployed to the region.

“I reject their proposal,” he told reporters outside the White House on Saturday, claiming Tehran wants a deal “because they’re losing so badly.” At the UN gathering, he also said he faced a “big decision” over whether to “annihilate” Iran if negotiations failed.

Iran’s top army commander, Major General Amir Hatami, on Sunday argued that the “war is not over,” insisting Tehran had won the initial phase of the conflict but now needs to “consolidate its victory.”

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul arrived at last-minute talks with Moscow with Berlin’s familiar anti-Russia script firmly in hand, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Wadephul requested the meeting on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly at short notice, Lavrov said. Moscow squeezed him into the Russian diplomat’s packed Saturday schedule before his address.

Asked about the encounter, Lavrov said he invited Wadephul to explain what had prompted to him to ask for the meeting. It was the first direct bilateral meeting between the Russian and German foreign ministers since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, in which Berlin firmly sided with Kiev.

“He took out his notes and read out a text that completely reproduced what Germany’s leaders publicly and officially say every day,” Lavrov said, saying he had expected something beyond Berlin’s familiar refrain that Russia is the aggressor. The underlying message, as Lavrov described it, was that Wadephul had “deigned” to engage Moscow and Russia should return the favor with concessions on Ukraine and guarantees for Black Sea shipping.

🇩🇪🇷🇺 Russian foreign minister mocks the German foreign minister:

Lavrov says Wadephul came and read from a note the standard talking points Germany has publicly declared for years. “I learned nothing new from this”

Funnily, Lavrov says Wadephul acted in an arrogant way: “Now I… https://t.co/H2cgyLoNuI pic.twitter.com/MmzoBa84ph

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) September 27, 2026

Wadephul, he said, also confronted him over an August drone incident in Leipzig that Berlin blamed on Russia without producing evidence.

Lavrov ultimately portrayed the meeting as a missed opportunity for substantive diplomacy.

“I honestly told him that I had thought he had something interesting, something unusual... I got nothing new out of it,” Lavrov said. Instead, he quipped, Berlin “could have simply called.”

An unwelcome report

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova later pointed to another telling detail: some apparently unwelcome reading material waiting for Wadephul at the table.

Placed before the delegations was a report titled “Heirs of Goebbels: Falsification of the Events in Bucha and Bloody Staged Performances of the Kiev Regime.” It lays out Moscow’s case that the 2022 Bucha killings were staged by Kiev and its Western backers. Ukraine and Western governments blame Russian forces for the alleged massacre. Videos circulated online appeared to show Wadephul promptly covering the report with his notebook upon taking his seat and ignoring it.

“Wadephul bashfully covered the report with his notebook and pretended he hadn’t noticed anything,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram, referring to its comparison with Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. “Everything is perfectly obvious to everyone – the truth hurts.”

Meanwhile, Wadephul emerged from the meeting sticking firmly to Berlin’s established script, saying Germany was ready for dialogue if Moscow “is ready to give up its war against Ukraine.” He added that Europeans were not keen to leave talking to Russia entirely to Washington.

Lavrov’s UNGA marathon

Disappointing as Lavrov evidently found his encounter with Wadephul, the German minister was just one stop in his diplomatic marathon spanning the geopolitical spectrum.

Lavrov’s New York interlocutors ranged from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and IAEA chief Rafael Grossi to officials from Serbia, Senegal, India, Uganda, Singapore, Sudan, Kuwait, Uruguay, Morocco, Iraq and Yemen.

Zakharova contrasted the packed schedule with Moscow’s increasingly frosty relations with Western Europe.

“We held dozens of talks at the UN. Heads of government and ministers from countries that the West disdainfully calls the ‘wild jungle,’ supposedly because of their low level of democracy, came to Sergey Lavrov,” she said, referencing former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s controversial 2022 metaphor comparing Europe to a “beautiful garden” and much of the rest of the world to a “jungle.”

Many encounters proved considerably warmer than Wadephul’s – and offered opportunities for Lavrov’s trademark dry humor. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein traded jokes with Lavrov about being in “good shape” and the Russian diplomat’s “beautiful eyes.”

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis prompted another quip while posing for a photo with Lavrov.

“I hope they don’t fire you for this photo,” Lavrov joked. “I hope so too,” Cassis replied with a smile.

The banter came against a more serious backdrop. Switzerland is due to vote on Sunday about enshrining neutrality in its constitution, while Moscow has accused Bern of abandoning its traditional neutrality by aligning with Western policy on Ukraine.

Poland should tighten its border controls following a deadly knife attack by a Ukrainian national, former Polish Deputy Prime Minister and current Law and Justice (PiS) MP Henryk Kowalczyk has said, warning that the killing could fuel another wave of anti-Ukrainian sentiment. 

A 31-year-old Ukrainian citizen attacked five people at a Catholic abbey in the southeastern city of Jaroslaw on Thursday, killing a priest and injuring four others, according to Polish officials. The suspect, who according to investigators had entered Poland from Germany overnight and was apparently heading toward the Ukrainian border, was detained at the scene. Prosecutors are investigating the circumstances and motive behind the attack.

“This will certainly trigger another wave of hostility toward Ukrainians,” Henryk Kowalczyk, an MP with the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, told Polish Radio’s Jedynka on Friday.

The lawmaker stressed that politicians should not inflame anti-Ukrainian sentiment, but added: “We are talking about the facts. People draw their own conclusions: a Ukrainian killed a Polish priest and injured many people. There is no need to fuel anything here.”

“We do not control the German-Polish border at all,” he said, contrasting Warsaw’s approach with Berlin’s selective checks. Poland “cannot accept all migrants who ended up in Germany and then enter our country,” he argued.

The MP also said that punishing the attacker was not enough, urging the Polish authorities to draw broader conclusions from the deadly incident.

“This is a signal that we should check people in advance, rather than just say that we will punish them severely,” he said.

The attack comes as Polish attitudes toward Ukrainian migrants have deteriorated sharply. A July survey by polling agency CBOS found that, for the first time since it began tracking the issue, a majority of Poles opposed accepting them, with 52% against and 42% in favor. Support had stood at 94% shortly after the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Kiev’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vasily Bondar, said earlier this week that attacks and acts of aggression against Ukrainians had risen by around 30% in the first half of 2026, as public attitudes toward refugees continued to sour. He said Polish police had recorded 180 such incidents during the period, compared with 275 throughout 2025.

Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have also been strained by historical grievances. Tensions escalated after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which Poland holds responsible for massacres of Polish civilians during World War II.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki subsequently stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor, citing the decision to honor the UPA.

Britain is fully capable of defending the Falkland Islands if Argentina attempts to invade and take control of the territory, UK Defense Secretary Wes Streeting has warned.

The UK has administered the South Atlantic archipelago, known in Argentina as the Malvinas, since 1833. Buenos Aires maintains that the islands are part of its own territory.
The two countries fought a war over the islands in 1982 after Argentine forces seized them and Britain sent a naval task force to retake them. Residents overwhelmingly voted to remain British territory in a 2013 referendum, which Argentina disputes.

The decades-old dispute has recently flared up again, with Argentine President Javier Milei stepping up the country’s sovereignty claim and condemning British-approved oil development around the islands as unlawful.
The renewed tensions come as US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether America would come to Britain’s aid in another conflict over the territory. Milei raised the issue at the UN General Assembly in New York this week, pointing to the Sea Lion offshore oil project and warning that Argentina could “take matters into our own hands” if the UN fails to act.

In an interview with The Sun on Sunday published on Saturday, Streeting dismissed Milei’s position as the “same old bogus propaganda,” arguing that “the Argentinians lack the ability” to seize the archipelago.

Milei has stepped up pressure over the dispute, launching sanctions proceedings against companies and individuals linked to Sea Lion and pledging additional funding for a naval base in Tierra del Fuego to strengthen Argentina’s presence in the South Atlantic.

Milei has seized on the possibility of a shift in Washington’s position, saying in a televised address earlier this month that “winds of change” around the world favor Argentina’s sovereignty claim.

The US recognizes Britain’s de facto administration of the islands but has remained neutral on the competing sovereignty claims.

In April, however, an internal Pentagon email reportedly outlined options for punishing NATO members that the US says failed to support the war against Iran. According to Reuters, one option is reassessing US diplomatic support for Britain’s position on the Falklands.

“Your country was not there to help me,” the president said when asked whether the US would come to Britain’s aid, noting that then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer told him Britain had no ships available. Trump called the response “pretty sad.”

Russian-born businessman Timur Turlov has been elected president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). The vote by representatives of 196 nations took place on Saturday after the previous FIDE chief, Russian national Arkady Dvorkovich, resigned under EU pressure.

Turlov led in the first round with 96 votes as he competed against two Germans, Wadim Rosenstein and Jan Henric Buettner, who trailed with 76 and 20 votes respectively. He won the second round with 110 votes.

Dvorkovich congratulated his successor, saying the new chief “has already done a great deal for chess, and… will do even more now as FIDE president.” He added that Turlov’s victory shows that he had “significant backing” within the international chess community.

Turlov called it “a great responsibility and a vote for a better future of our sport.”

Today is a victory for chess - for every player, every federation and everyone who believes in the potential of our game!

We are all one family and we will continue working as one. This is a great responsibility and a vote for a better future of our sport.

Now is the time to… pic.twitter.com/ieF9HmGQf5

— Timur Turlov (@TurlovforChess) September 26, 2026

Born in Moscow in 1987, Turlov lived in Russia until the early 2010s, when he moved to Kazakhstan. He is the founder of the Freedom Finance investment company, which was established in 2008 to provide retail investors with access to US stock exchanges and has since expanded to 22 countries worldwide.

The vote comes amid tensions within FIDE over Western pressure on Russian sports. In July, the EU put Dvorkovich, a Russian economist and former deputy prime minister who had led FIDE since 2018, on its sanctions list over alleged “public support” for Russia’s military operation against Kiev. Dvorkovich blasted Brussels’ move as “unlawful and unfair” and vowed to challenge the sanctions.

FIDE is registered in Switzerland, where sanctioned individuals cannot legally act as the “owner, holder or controller” of an organization’s assets, meaning its bank accounts, sponsorships, and contracts could have become compliance issues had Dvorkovich remained in office.

In August, FIDE also barred Russian teams from returning to the Chess Olympiad, prompting prominent names in Russian chess to accuse its leadership of Russophobia.

“There are… people who prioritize personal interests, and they currently predominate on the Council. This time, they prevailed,” Russian Chess Federation Executive Director Aleksandr Tkachev said at the time.

Moscow has condemned the sanctions imposed on Russian athletes by international sporting bodies as politically motivated. President Vladimir Putin has argued that comparable measures have not been applied to athletes from other countries involved in conflicts.

President Donald Trump has rejected Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart nuclear negotiations, calling the terms unacceptable and arguing that Tehran is seeking a deal because it is under growing economic pressure.

Iran presented the US with what Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described as a “concrete seven-day plan” during the UN General Assembly in New York this week.

Under the proposal, Tehran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume negotiations over its nuclear program if the US lifts its naval blockade, eases restrictions on Iranian oil exports, releases frozen Iranian assets, and observes a ceasefire that includes an end to Israel’s combat operations in Lebanon.

Reporter: Will you strike Iran after the midterms?

Trump: I'm rejecting their deal. They want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately because they're losing so badly.

They want to make a deal, and I think that's fine. I like making a deal, too, but that deal would… pic.twitter.com/87rKbDySLN

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 26, 2026

“I reject their proposal,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday. “They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they’re losing so badly.”

Araghchi said Tehran took note of Trump’s public rejection, but is still waiting for a formal response.

“If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened and normal maritime passage restored within seven days,” he previously said, adding that “the choice now rests with the United States.”

At the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said he faces a “big decision” over whether to “annihilate” Iran if negotiations fail.

Trump’s rejection confirms earlier reporting by the Wall Street Journal that he had turned down the proposal and told aides that he expects renewed US bombing of Iran after the November midterm election. US officials nevertheless said negotiations through regional mediators are continuing.