France’s presidential hopefuls are turning burning streets, smashed storefronts, and accusations of police brutality into campaign ammunition, RT’s Oumaima Ichchar has reported.

While right-wing firebrand and potential front runner Marine Le Pen blames collapsing state authority, her left-wing rival, Jean-Luc Melenchon, accuses the government of failing to hear the voice of the people.

Nationwide protests began in September over underfunded schools and rising living costs, and escalated into widespread violence last week. Rioters have torched cars, looted or damaged thousands of businesses, and set fire to Limoges’ 143-year-old city hall. The clashes have also left hundreds of protesters and law enforcement officers injured and led to thousands of arrests.

In some of the most brazen incidents, a 15-year-old boy lost a hand to a police grenade, while a 17-year-old girl permanently lost sight in one eye after being struck by a projectile in Mulhouse. Macron, meanwhile, blamed radical-left militants and criminals for much of the destruction, and on Thursday ordered the local authorities to ban protests and restrict officially organized marches.

Le Pen has urged a tougher crackdown on rioters to restore order. “Our country is caught in a vice, if not held hostage, between violence and powerlessness,” Le Pen said, pledging support for police and demanding tougher penalties for rioters. National Rally president Jordan Bardella blamed far-left militants and criminals from the suburbs for the unrest, proposing to suspend family benefits for repeat offenders and make vandals pay for damage.

On the left, Melenchon backed the protests while pointing to a growing disconnect between the public and the institutions. “French democracy is in a very bad way,” the ‘France Unbowed’ leader said, calling for greater public participation and constitutional change.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe, two former prime ministers under Macron, sought to distance themselves from their ex-boss, whose approval rating has sunk to a record low of 15%, according to an October Ipsos survey. While Attal insisted that the priority should be the defense of people and property, Philippe called for the “reestablishment of the authority of the state, the punishment of looters and vandals, as well as a detailed method for restoring discussion with high school students and trade union organizations.”

The Eagle’s Nest mountainous retreat built for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in the Bavarian Alps has been devastated by a blaze, the German police have said.

The former tea house for the leader of the Third Reich, which was constructed on the peak of the Obersalzberg in southern Germany in 1938, sits at an altitude of 1,834 meters (6,000 feet).

A fire alarm at the Eagle’s Nest went off on Friday evening, and it was completely engulfed in flames by the time emergency services arrived, the police said.

The high elevation complicated the work of some 200 fire fighters, who were only able to extinguish the blaze on Saturday morning, they added.

“It is damaged to a large extent. The house is unlikely to be saved,” a police spokesperson told Bild tabloid.

According to Bild, the detained person was a motorcyclist whom the officers encountered on their way to the burning retreat, but his involvement in the case currently remains unclear. Investigators believe arson caused the fire, the paper’s sources claimed.

Following reports of the blaze, the Bavarian authorities announced plans to rebuild the structure, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said.

“We will not allow ruins to remain there,” DPA quoted him as saying.

The Eagle’s Nest was one of the few historic building from Hitler’s era to avoid damage by bombing during the World War II. The retreat hosted a museum and a restaurant since the 1950s, becoming a popular tourist destination. It was preserved as “a cautionary reminder of the abysses of the inhumane Nazi dictatorship,” according to its website.

A number of American lawmakers are gearing up to jeopardize the Trump administration’s deal to ease sanctions on Russian diesel through April. They are seeking action against US companies involved in the trade and planning to block the Treasury from issuing such a waiver in the future. 

US President Donald Trump announced the deal earlier this month, weeks ahead of the impending November midterm elections. Under the waiver, Moscow agreed to immediately put 300,000 tons of diesel into the market, followed by larger quantities later on. The deal was reached as US diesel prices hit a record high, surging above $6.50 per gallon in September, with prices in parts of California exceeding $8.

The disruption of global energy markets, caused by the Iran war and the Ukraine conflict, has resulted in rising gas prices in the US, further denting the positions of Republicans ahead of the vote. Diesel is the key fuel type extensively used in agriculture and freight; its price affects the cost of virtually all goods, resulting in further cost-of-living issues. Rural communities, smalltime farmers, and truckers are particularly vulnerable to diesel prices spikes.

“[The companies] should have liability concerns as well as investigative concerns,” the aide told WaPo.

Further action against the diesel deal has been taken by Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1), an outspoken hawk, Ukraine backer, and proponent of sanctions against Russia. The proposed legislation, titled the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act of 2026, would effectively block Russian oil imports for good.

The bill would nullify the standing Russian oil waiver, “immediately rendering General License 135 ineffective and prohibiting future waivers or general licenses authorizing the importation of Russian energy products,” as well as strip the Treasury from the ability to expend funds “on agreements that violate the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act of 2022,” the legislation that sanctioned Russian energy products, including diesel, in the first place.

Apart from the energy part, the bill also would “reinforce critical intelligence support for Ukraine,” obliging spy agencies to cooperate with Kiev and to “notify congressional intelligence committees within 24 hours of any interruption.”

Kiev has moved to block a planned tribute to Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevich, who was involved in the killing of an estimated 100,000 Poles during World War II ethnic purges, officials in Warsaw have claimed.

The reported retreat comes amid a series of disputes between the two countries in recent months over Kiev’s veneration of Nazi-linked figures that have eroded Polish support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

The controversy erupted on Tuesday when the Lviv Regional Council in western Ukraine voted to declare 2027 the Year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and to celebrate the 120th anniversary of its commander Roman Shukhevich while deciding to organize “cultural, memorial, scientific, and mass media events,” as well as exhibitions and national patriotic rallies on the occasion.

Following the backlash, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said on Wednesday that officials of Vladimir Zelensky’s office had assured Warsaw that the controversial resolutions would not come into force. On Friday, Tusk echoed the claim, saying that Zelensky had personally signaled he would not endorse the resolution, adding that the Ukrainian leader was “unhappy” with the situation.

This also came after the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called the Shukhevich tribute in Lviv “counterproductive to our current efforts aimed at further developing Ukrainian-Polish relations.” The ministry stressed that the local authorities had sought no advice from government bodies to assess the consequences of their actions.

An unnamed source in Zelensky’s office cited by Ukrainskaya Pravda went so far as to describe the decision as a “catastrophe.” “Ukraine looks erratic. We have just resolved the previous crisis – and now this,” the source said, accusing regional officials of pursuing “cheap one-day hype” despite knowing all too well what the resolution would lead to.

While senior Ukrainian officials apparently distanced themselves from the controversy, the Lviv council’s original announcement remains accessible as of Saturday. Sheremet also previously defended the resolution, saying “This is our history, our heroes, and we must duly honor their memory.”

The dispute is the latest in a series of heated clashes between Kiev and Warsaw over Ukraine’s continued veneration of nationalist figures that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

In May, Zelensky awarded an elite Ukrainian special operations unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA,” prompting another diplomatic uproar, with Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripping the Ukrainian leader of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state decoration.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to launch another military operation against Iran, as Washington quietly withdraws diplomatic personnel and relocates troops from bases across the Middle East in moves resembling preparations ahead of the initial US-Israeli strikes in February.

“We may do another little Epic Fury, or they’ll agree,” Trump declared during a campaign rally in Florida on Friday, referring to the military offensive launched against Iran on February 28.

“If they’re smart, they’ll just say, let’s get down to business,” he added, before expressing doubt that Tehran would agree to Washington’s demands.

The Pentagon officially declared Operation Epic Fury over on May 5, despite the continuation of the conflict. The administration has sought to avoid formally characterizing the hostilities as a war, maintaining that the fighting had diminished. Trump reiterated on Friday that previous US strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and defeated the country “militarily, financially and otherwise.”

The diplomatic missions in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will remain open but operate with fewer personnel. Unlike in Saudi Arabia, where nonessential staff and their families were ordered to leave earlier this week, personnel at the other embassies are not required to depart.

A separate intelligence memo sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday claimed that Tehran had intensified efforts to target Americans abroad.

The memo did not publicly identify specific targets or provide evidence substantiating the alleged plots. US officials have denied that the diplomatic withdrawals are connected to preparations for renewed strikes against Iran.

However, the drawdowns coincide with reports that the Pentagon has quietly begun relocating troops from bases in Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait. NBC News reported the movements on Wednesday, with CBS subsequently confirming the reductions.

The Pentagon reportedly presented Trump with options for renewed strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, underground military installations and strategic islands, including Kharg Island, a major oil export hub.

Trump has pledged not to launch new attacks before the November 3 midterm elections, while keeping military action on the table if Tehran refuses Washington’s demands.

A Syrian migrant arrested in Germany on suspicion of raping a teenage girl was released after just 40 days in pre-trial detention and later accused of raping another woman, local media reported on Thursday.

In the wake of the latter episode, the man went into hiding but was eventually captured by the authorities several months later. He was subsequently convicted of raping the teenager and is still standing trial over the second allegation.

The 26-year-old, identified by Bild as Ahmad A., was initially apprehended in late February 2025 over the rape of a 16-year-old girl at a Munich asylum center. However, the teenager could not undergo judicial questioning in time due to her psychological condition.

The delay prompted the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office to request the suspect’s release in early April. Bild quoted prosecutor Juliane Grotz as saying that continued detention would have violated the “principle of expedited proceedings in detention cases” and would have been “no longer proportionate.”

Without the victim’s testimony, authorities could not determine how much longer the investigation would take, they told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In July 2025, Ahmad A., who was required to report to police twice a week and barred from approaching the teenage victim, allegedly lured a 29-year-old woman to a secluded location, where he and two Yemeni nationals took turns raping her.

Police arrested the suspects in September 2025, with Ahmad A. subsequently convicted of raping the 16-year-old girl. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in November 2025.

The trial over the alleged rape of the 29-year-old woman is still underway, with the next hearing scheduled for October 27.

Also in Munich, local police reported in June that they had arrested two young Syrian migrants on suspicion of raping an 18-year-old German woman they had met at a nightclub.

There have been multiple similar cases involving migrants across Germany in recent years.

Under former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-border policies, more than a million people arrived in Germany from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq at the height of the 2015 immigrant influx. In recent years, the country has also granted temporary protection to an estimated 1.2 million Ukrainians. Germany ranks as the European Union’s top destination for migrants and the world’s third-largest refugee-hosting country, according to UN data.

Amid rising crime rates and a series of terrorist attacks perpetrated by migrants, public discontent with the German government’s handling of illegal immigration has been steadily growing.

The opposition right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which advocates stricter immigration controls, has consistently polled as the country’s most popular party in recent months. According to a recent INSA survey, the AfD enjoys the support of 30% of respondents – 12 percentage points ahead of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling CDU/CSU bloc.

US President Donald Trump made “totally false” statements when he blamed rising diesel prices in America on Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, Vladimir Zelensky has claimed, accusing him of “deflecting the focus away from Iran.”

Zelensky’s remarks came amid a growing spat with Trump, who has repeatedly accused Kiev of exacerbating the global energy crisis with continued attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.

Russia has historically been the world’s second-largest exporter of diesel fuel, behind only the United States, accounting for roughly 10% of global exports.

Disruptions to Russian supplies have tightened the global market, driving up prices even in countries that do not directly import fuel from Russia, including the US.

“The volume of diesel exports is so negligible from Russia that it has zero impact on prices in the US. That is totally false information,” the Ukrainian leader claimed during an appearance on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast on Thursday.

Zelensky accused Trump of unfairly “deflecting the focus away from Iran” and lamented that “everything gets shifted onto us and I’m made the target as the leader of our country.”

According to Zelensky, “the root of the problem” lies in the Strait of Hormuz, where crude exports and other maritime traffic have dwindled to a trickle following the start of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran in February.

Earlier this month, Zelensky similarly hit out at what he described as a “weak decision” by the Trump administration after Washington temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel exports to ease the global fuel crisis.

Washington struck the deal with Moscow after Zelensky had repeatedly ignored Trump’s requests to stop strikes on Russian refineries. “We said, you can do whatever you want to Russia, don’t hit the refineries, because that’s a world problem that’s caused,” the US president recounted earlier this month.

“And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel,” Trump lamented, accusing Zelensky of wanting to “make problems for the world.”

Trump also said he found it more difficult to deal with Zelensky than with Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggesting that Ukraine should get a new leader who would not obstruct Washington’s mediation efforts.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Zelensky was directly challenging Trump by refusing to accept a deal aimed at easing the global diesel shortage.

In recent months, Ukraine has ramped up long-range strikes on targets inside Russia, including civilian and energy infrastructure, amid continued setbacks at the front. Moscow has denounced the attacks as acts of terrorism and responded with strikes on military-related Ukrainian facilities.

‘Cambridge Analytica’ is by now a byword for the social media Wild West of 2016, when regulations were non-existent and unscrupulous brokers sold personal user data to advertisers and political operatives. RT explores the scandal that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg still can’t dodge.

The judge concluded that Meta’s misconduct warranted a penalty exceeding $219 billion under state law, but reduced the amount to $25 billion, making it one of the largest fines ever imposed on an American corporation.

Meta, operating at the time as Facebook, knowingly and systematically deceived users about how it managed their personal data and allowed its harvesting by third-party companies like Cambridge Analytica. The jury also found Meta’s senior executive team knew of, and lied about, deceiving users about how it planned to investigate data-harvesting companies after the Cambridge Analytica scandal became public.

To understand how Meta ended up owing an eighth of its annual revenue in just one judgment, it’s necessary to go back to 2013, when Cambridge Analytica emerged from Britain’s shadowy private intelligence sector.

What was Cambridge Analytica?

Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013 as a subsidiary of SCL Group, a London-based private intelligence firm that has provided data analytics and “behavioural analysis” services to the British Defense Ministry and Foreign Office. 

Cambridge Analytica CEO and SCL Group Director Alexander Nix has admitted under oath that his companies worked with American and British intelligence agencies, provided psychological warfare training to several Western militaries, employed multiple staff with security clearances in the UK and US, and hired former Israeli spies.

SCL Group’s work for NATO, Israel, Ukraine, and other governments and militaries was extensive, and Cambridge Analytica drew on its parent company’s experience in military psyops to become one of the world’s most effective election influence operations, according to whistleblower Christopher Wylie. On the other hand, SCL insists that its military and political wings were separate entities. Whichever account is true, Cambridge Analytica had been hired by political candidates in 200 elections by 2018, according to company documents. These included parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, India, and Italy, the Brexit referendum in the UK, and most infamously, the 2016 presidential election in the US.

What did Cambridge Analytica do in 2016?

How did this become a scandal?  

Cambridge Analytica did not break any laws to obtain this data. It was scraped from tens of millions of Facebook users who had, unbeknownst to themselves, given a third-party Facebook quiz application access to their messages, their profile data, and that of their friends.

Cambridge Analytica hired a Cambridge University professor, Aleksandr Kogan, to develop a personality quiz app, named ‘This is Your Digital Life’. Between 250,000 and 270,000 American Facebook users took the quiz in 2015, and by accessing their data, but crucially, under Facebook terms, accessing the data of all of their friends on the platform, Cambridge Analytica was able to compile detailed psychological profiles on roughly 87 million users.

Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie revealed the workings of the scheme to The Observer in 2018, telling the British newspaper that “we exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles, and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”

Was Cambridge Analytica the only data-scraper doing this?

“Facebook never cared,” Kogan told NBC News in 2018, explaining that “tens of thousands” of developers created apps like his quiz, and sold user data to companies like Cambridge Analytica. Among the developers were CubeYou, which used a “one-click personality test” app to gather information for commercial use, and LocalBlox, which scraped data from 48 million users, which it then sold to marketers.

AggregateIQ, Global Science Research, and Eunoia Technologies all used data gleaned by Kogan for political ends. However, long before these companies existed, Blue State Digital, an American political consultancy, surreptitiously harvested Facebook data, including friends’ data, for use by Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, however, had its work for the Trump campaign exposed at the height of the ‘Russiagate’ hoax, at a time when Democrats and liberal media outlets were convinced that Russia intervened in the election on behalf of Trump. Cambridge Analytica’s data-scraping dovetailed neatly into a narrative of “Facebook bots” and “Russian military hackers” working with the Trump campaign, and the company became a whipping boy for an industry that transcended partisan lines.

I wrote this in Nov 2017. Days after FBI revealed multiple strands of Trump-Russia investigation ran through London & I pulled them apart further. It was also when the attacks against me began in earnest. From Cambridge Analytica, LeaveEU & Russian govt 1/ https://t.co/YQB5slJhe8

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) February 25, 2022

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee eventually investigated claims that Cambridge Analytica helped the Russian government target political ads at American voters, but both determined that these claims were untrue, and neither investigation found any proof of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Has Facebook been punished?

At the time that the information was collected, Facebook had stopped allowing third-party apps to access friends’ data. However, a loophole allowed apps active on the platform before this change to continue harvesting information through 2015. Within days of Wylie’s revelations hitting the headlines, SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica were suspended from Facebook. Two months later, both companies ceased operations, leaving Facebook to handle the fallout.

Facebook initially went into damage control mode, insisting that “People knowingly provided their information” to Kogan’s app, and that “everyone involved gave their consent.” 

However, the US Federal Trade Commission determined that Facebook made its privacy settings deliberately opaque, spreading them out over 20 separate screens and opting users into sharing data with third-parties by default. Facebook settled with the FTC for $5 billion in 2019, setting the stage for a series of similar payouts in the following years.

In 2018, Zuckerberg told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that Facebook was aware that user data had been transferred from Kogan to Cambridge Analytica (this transfer was in breach of its policies) since 2015, but opted not to inform users. He said that Facebook asked Cambridge Analytica to delete the data, but never followed up and made sure the company did. “We considered it a closed case,” he told Congress.

In 2022, Meta settled a $725 million class-action lawsuit brought by a group of Facebook users, who alleged that the company violated privacy and consumer protection laws by misrepresenting its data-sharing laws and failing to protect their personal information.

Meta attempted to shut down further legal action over the Cambridge Analytica scandal this August, when it reached an $18 billion settlement with 51 attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia. Although the cases concerned the addictive design of Meta’s platforms and their effect on children’s mental health, the settlement included a clause resolving a multistate investigation into Facebook’s sharing of user data with third parties “whether known or unknown,” including Cambridge Analytica.

Even if participating states were to discover new facts about the data sharing, they have now waived their right to sue Meta. New Mexico was one of two states that was not party to this agreement, hence the $25 billion penalty.

Ten years after the fact, it remains unclear how prominent a role Cambridge Analytica played in Trump’s victory over Clinton. The Trump campaign’s use of Facebook and X (then called Twitter) is widely cited as instrumental in his win, but the campaign’s digital director, Brad Parscale, has since said that he stopped using the company’s data several months before election day, considering it inaccurate.

What about Brexit?

Cambridge Analytica worked with Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU organization in late 2015 and early 2016, and carried out some preliminary data analysis for the campaign. However, the data was never used, and the UK Information Commissioner’s (ICO) office concluded in 2020 that the company had no impact on the referendum. As in the US, the ICO found no links between Cambridge Analytica and Russia, and no evidence that Russia interfered in the vote.

Is Zuckerberg in the clear?

The $25 billion judgement handed down on October 22 may be the largest fine ever imposed on Meta, but it does not mark the end of Zuckerberg’s legal woes. In addition to a Washington DC lawsuit holding him personally responsible for the Cambridge Analytica debacle, Zuckerberg’s company is being sued by investors in California over Facebook’s alleged efforts to conceal the misuse of user data by the company.

woah, it gets worse. In the Meta securities lawsuit for Cambridge Analytica cover-up, plaintiffs just posted deposition list. If they have the courage to 'go to the mat' (as Zuckerberg says) like New Mexico AG has done for over $25B, this could be very, very bad for Team Zuck. 1/3

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) October 22, 2026

Meta will likely settle the latter case, just as it did with the similar SEC case in 2019. However, should Zuckerberg fight the lawsuit, he could find himself in the dock, as the plaintiffs have sought recorded depositions from him, former COO Sheryl Sandberg, and former CFO David Wehner – all of whom could be forced to shed more light on just how much Facebook knew about the scandal, and when.

French President Emmanuel Macron has described a deadly shooting near Paris as the country’s first “racist terrorist attack,” appearing to overlook decades of Islamist terrorism, including the deliberate targeting and murder of Christians and Jews.

A gunman opened fire from a car in Trappes and neighboring La Verriere on Friday morning, killing 26-year-old aspiring MMA fighter Pengo Bossio Wangi and injuring five others, including a 12-year-old girl who was shot eight times. Other victims reportedly included a woman wearing a headscarf, a man of North African origin and two school cleaners of African origin.

The suspect, identified as 39-year-old Kevin T., was arrested after a shooting spree lasting approximately 15 minutes. Police recovered a submachine gun from his vehicle and discovered three gas cylinders wired to a timer in his apartment. He reportedly had 13 previous criminal-record entries but was not on a terrorism watchlist.

Visiting Trappes on Friday evening, Macron declared the shooting a historic “turning point” for France.

“This is the first time there has been a terrorist act aimed at killing our compatriots and our children for the color of their skin or what their religion is thought to be,” he claimed. Macron also alleged that the suspect deliberately spared certain people because of their skin color, citing statements allegedly made after his arrest.

In March 2012, Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah murdered a rabbi and three Jewish children at a school in Toulouse. In January 2015, ISIS-linked terrorist Amedy Coulibaly stormed a kosher supermarket in Paris, killing four Jewish hostages.

Christians have also been targeted. In 2016, two ISIS terrorists slit the throat of 85-year-old Catholic priest Jacques Hamel during Mass at a church in Normandy. In 2020, a Tunisian Islamist attacker murdered three people inside the Notre Dame basilica in Nice, beheading one woman.

Jihadists have also attacked broader symbols of French secular society. In November 2015, ISIS terrorists killed 130 people in coordinated attacks across Paris, including 90 concertgoers at the Bataclan music venue. In 2020, an Islamist extremist beheaded schoolteacher Samuel Paty for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on freedom of expression.

Following the backlash, the Elysee sought to clarify Macron’s remarks, telling TF1 that he had specifically meant the first racist terrorist attack motivated by skin color, despite his explicit reference to religion.

The Trappes shooting has also intensified political tensions ahead of next year’s presidential election. Communist presidential candidate Fabien Roussel accused the far right of spreading “racist hatred,” while National Rally leader Marine Le Pen condemned the shooting and its “abject motive of racism.”

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutors have opened an investigation into suspected terrorist murder with a racist motive. The suspect’s precise ideological affiliations remain under investigation.

At least seven people have been killed and some 34 others wounded in a terrorist attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Jordan. The authorities have described the suspects as “extremists” who fled the scene and are still on the loose.

The slaughter unfolded on Friday afternoon in the village of Hmoud in western Karak Governorate, which is home to a sizable Christian community in the majority-Muslim country.

A group of at least three assailants arrived at the local St. George’s Church, where a funeral ceremony was underway. The gunmen attacked the mourners, with the shooting reportedly lasting for about 15 minutes before the suspects drove away from the scene unhindered. No group has claimed responsibility.

CCTV footage from the scene shows the attackers, two of whom were armed with handguns and the third with an assault rifle, firing at people desperately trying to flee the scene, tripping over pews and each other in the process. Highly graphic footage shows the suspects repeatedly shooting wounded victims in the head as they lay on the ground, apparently to finish them off.

Jordanian King Abdullah II has vowed to “confront the terrorist act that targeted Karak with the harshest penalties.” The country’s interior minister, Mazen al-Faraya, confirmed during a news conference that the suspects still remain at large, describing the attackers as a “group of extremists” without providing any further detail. 

The massacre has prompted a major response from the authorities, with Hmoud flooded by assorted security forces. Tightened security measures have also been implemented in the city of Karak, where the bulk of the wounded were transferred for treatment.

The king visited the victims at a hospital later on Friday to show support, promising to punish the perpetrators. Abdullah could be seen arriving at the facility in a military field uniform, accompanied by a large security detail.

Serbia is heading into a snap parliamentary election on October 25 following nearly two years of anti-government protests sparked by a deadly railway station canopy collapse.

Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is running for prime minister against a fragmented opposition seeking to capitalize on the protest movement. The result could reshape Serbia’s political landscape and its delicate balancing act between Russia and the EU.

What is Serbia voting for, and why does it matter?

Voters will elect 250 members of the National Assembly, with 126 seats needed for a majority. A total of 18 electoral lists, comprising 2,418 candidates, are contesting the election, including the ruling coalition, student-backed candidates, established opposition parties and representatives of national minorities.

The vote will test whether the protest movement can challenge the ruling coalition at the ballot box.

What led to the snap election?

The crisis began after a concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station collapsed on November 1, 2024, killing 16 people. Protesters blamed the disaster on alleged corruption and failures of government oversight.

Demonstrations intensified after students and lecturers involved in a vigil commemorating the disaster at Belgrade’s Faculty of Dramatic Arts on November 22, 2024 blocked traffic, prompting drivers to clash with the crowd; some of the motorists were later identified from photos posted online as Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) officials.

Students began blockading university faculties, demanding the release of documents relating to the station’s renovation, accountability for attacks on protesters, an end to the prosecution of detained demonstrators and increased funding for public universities.

Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic resigned in January 2025 following another attack on students, but the protests continued. A major rally in Belgrade on March 15 attracted an estimated 275,000 to 325,000 people, according to the organization Arhiv javnih skupova.

Parliament elected a government headed by Djuro Macut in April, but the student movement demanded snap elections on May 5.

Vucic has accused foreign organizations and intelligence services of financing the protests, alleging on Thursday that outside actors were seeking to remove him from power.

Serbia was the victim of perhaps Europe’s first ‘color revolution’ in 2000, when the opposition, having received extensive funding and training from the National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI), and USAID, as well as support from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (operating in 2000 as the Fund for an Open Society – Yugoslavia), brought down the government.

Has Vucic lost power, or is he trying to hold on to it?

Vucic resigned as president on September 27, saying he intended to campaign in the parliamentary election without holding the presidency.

He now heads the ruling coalition’s electoral list and is running for prime minister.

Who is running, and who could form a government?

The ruling camp is led by the ‘Aleksandar Vucic – United Serbia’ coalition, built around the SNS. Its longstanding partner, Ivica Dacic’s Socialist Party of Serbia, is running separately under the ‘Factor of Stability’ banner.

The main challenger is the ‘Student List – Students Are Winning,’ which emerged from the protests and includes lecturers, professionals and public figures.

Marinika Tepic and Zdravko Ponos’s ‘European Serbia’ and Milos Jovanovic’s ‘Authentic Right’ are also running independently. Some opposition groups have backed the students rather than fielding their own candidates.

The latest opinion polls offer conflicting assessments of support for the two main contenders.

An Ipsos survey published on October 22 put Vucic’s coalition at 47.4%, compared with 40% for the Student List and 3.2% for Dacic’s Socialists. The poll surveyed 3,624 respondents between October 20 and 22.

Latest Serbia Ipsos Poll modelled out 🔵SNS: 125 seats 🔴STU: 105 seats ❤️SPS: 8 seats 🟦NADA: 0 seats 🟢SVM: 6 seats 💚SDAS: 2 seats 💠SPP: 2 seats 🔹KSLP: 1 seat 🟤RUS: 1 seat 🔵SNS largest party, 1 short of a majority https://t.co/9pjH9MA8Ts

— Poliwave Europe (@PoliwaveEU) October 22, 2026

A survey published on October 20 by Nova srpska politicka misao (NSPM) instead gave the Student List 44.5% and Vucic’s coalition 42.7% among decided respondents. The telephone survey of 1,050 people was conducted between September 25 and October 5.

Serbia, NSPM poll: Student list-*: 45% (+5) SNS+-EPP: 43% (+5) SPS/JS~S&D: 3% (-2) ES-S&D: 3% (-1) NADA~ECR: 3% (+1) +/- vs. July 2026 Fieldwork: 25 September - 05 October 2026 Sample size: 1,050 ➤ https://t.co/ekzxpjD9df https://t.co/9EKrcxnWOe

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) October 20, 2026

An online survey published by Nacija TV on October 21 showed a much narrower gap, with Vucic’s coalition at 42.9% and the Student List at 42%. The poll surveyed 1,204 respondents between October 16 and 18.

An earlier Faktor Plus survey, published on September 21, put Vucic’s coalition at 48.6% and the Student List at 37.1%, based on 986 respondents interviewed between September 16 and 20.

National minority and smaller parties could become important in coalition negotiations if no major group wins a majority.

What unites the opposition, and what divides it?

The groups challenging Vucic differ on key foreign policy issues, particularly relations with the EU, NATO, and Russia.

The Student List has said it would maintain Serbia’s refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow. Its representative Jovo Bakic has proposed a referendum on EU membership and opposed joining NATO.

European Serbia supports alignment with EU foreign policy, including sanctions against Russia, a position advocated by Tepic.

Jovanovic opposes EU membership and sanctions against Moscow, while Socialist representative Snezana Paunovic supports EU accession but has criticized the bloc’s current policies.

Territorial tensions: Where do the parties stand on Kosovo and Republika Srpska?

Kosovo remains one of Serbia’s most sensitive political issues. The province declared independence in 2008, a move recognized by the US and many of its allies. Belgrade still considers Kosovo part of Serbia, as do Russia and China, and some 90 other countries.

The declaration followed NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, conducted without authorization from the UN Security Council. Belgrade’s relations with the ethnic Albanian-led authorities in Pristina remain tense.

The Student List has also rejected recognizing the so-called Kosovo precedent. In a memorandum published in May, it described Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia and called for a negotiated settlement in accordance with the Serbian Constitution and international law.

Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority constituent entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose autonomy is guaranteed under the 1995 Dayton peace agreement, is another touchstone.

Vucic has maintained close ties with its leadership while supporting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s territorial integrity. Former Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik has openly backed Vucic’s coalition, urging Serbian citizens living there to vote for it.

The Student List has sought support among Serbian voters in Republika Srpska but has not outlined a comparably detailed policy toward the entity. Some Bosnian Serb opposition politicians have backed the students, while others have refused to take sides.

Belgrade and Brussels: The beatings will continue

Serbia applied to join the EU in 2009 and received candidate status in 2012. Accession negotiations began in 2014, but no new negotiating chapters or clusters have been opened since 2021.

Brussels has made further progress toward EU membership conditional on the normalization of relations with Kosovo and alignment with the bloc’s foreign policy, including sanctions against Russia, as well as other judicial, media, and governmental reforms.

Serbia’s accession process has remained stalled while other candidates have moved forward. In July, eight EU member states opposed advancing talks with Belgrade, while Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine, and Moldova have made progress toward membership.

Vucic has expressed frustration with the slow pace of EU enlargement, warning in July that candidate countries should not expect major breakthroughs in the coming years.

Kos has also warned against allowing prospective EU members to develop dependencies on outside powers that could conflict with the bloc’s interests.

“We should not risk our future members building dependencies on others that run counter to our long-term interest,” she said.

The commissioner identified Russia as an adversary in the enlargement process and criticized the influence of US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement on European politics.

Vucic has maintained that Serbia intends to pursue EU membership while preserving its independent foreign policy.

What makes the ties between Serbia and Russia so strong?

Serbia and Russia share longstanding historical and cultural ties, reinforced by their Orthodox Christian traditions and Slavic heritage.

Relations were further shaped by NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, which Moscow strongly opposed. Russia has since backed Belgrade’s position on Kosovo at the UN Security Council and refused to recognize the province’s independence.

Under Vucic, Serbia has maintained diplomatic and economic cooperation with Moscow while refusing to join Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict.

In an interview with Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak published on Tuesday, Vucic said European leaders regularly pressed him on the issue.

”We are not sitting on two chairs; our only chair is Serbia,” he said.

Do Russia and Serbia have an energy deal?

Energy remains central to the relationship. On September 30, Russia’s Gazprom extended its gas supply agreement with Serbia for another three months, until December 31, on unchanged terms, according to Srbijagas CEO Dusan Bajatovic.

Following talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September, Vucic said Serbia was paying around €318 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, compared with a market price of approximately €868 at the time.

The latest extension secures supplies through the beginning of winter but leaves arrangements for 2027 unresolved.

The future of NIS, which operates Serbia’s only oil refinery, also remains uncertain following US sanctions over its Russian majority ownership. Hungarian oil and gas company MOL has been negotiating the purchase of the Russian stake.

Where would each party take Serbia if they win?

Vucic has emphasized his determination to preserve Serbia’s sovereignty and keep the country out of a war with Russia, which he said he believes the EU is preparing for.

”I do not want Serbia to be part of that war, and I would not allow Serbia to be part of that war,” he said in an interview with TV Prva on Wednesday.

He accused Western governments of seeking to install politicians who would follow their instructions.

How could the election affect relations with Moscow?

The next Serbian government will face decisions on future Russian gas supplies, the ownership of NIS, and the country’s military exports.

Russian observers will monitor the election at Serbia’s invitation, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The delegation will include representatives of both chambers of the Russian parliament and the Central Election Commission, with Russian officials also participating in international monitoring missions.

Moscow has said it hopes to maintain close ties with Belgrade after the election. Zakharova described the relationship as rooted in “strong fraternal traditions, a shared worldview, and respect for genuine values.”

She added that “continuity in these ties will serve the national interests of both countries and help strengthen peace and stability in the Balkans.”

Witkoff returns to Russia

US envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to present a new set of peace proposals to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As was the case in every round of talks so far, Moscow found little to agree with in the terms put forward by Kiev and its European backers, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters afterwards. 

That the US would even consider meeting with Putin rubbed the Europeans the wrong way. Speaking after Witkoff met Zelensky in Oslo on Tuesday, EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas accused US President Donald Trump and his envoys of “trying to push Ukraine into surrender.”

Kallas is in an unenviable position. Trump has proven able and willing to negotiate with Putin above the Europeans’ heads, as he did when he waived sanctions on Russian diesel. Faced with the prospect of being cut out of an eventual peace deal, the EU is reportedly searching for an envoy to represent Brussels’ interests at the negotiating table. As anti-Russia hardliners, Kallas and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have essentially ruled themselves out; French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are drowning in domestic turmoil and watching their legitimacy collapse in real time; and the supposed ‘compromise candidate’ trumpeted by EU media, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, is a potentially toxic choice.

EU leaders, Putin remarked on Thursday, suffer from “a kind of political schizophrenia.” The Europeans “now go so far as to constantly speak of a ‘Russian threat’ and even discuss preparations for a war with Russia” against the will of their citizens, he explained. “They will hopefully realize that it is better to live in harmony with Russia – a path that truly serves the interests of their own peoples.”

The only European official present at the St. Petersburg meeting was von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Bjorn Seibert.

Zelensky scorned again

Zelensky signaled his disapproval with the Witkoff-Putin meeting in as clear a manner as possible; firing drones at St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad Region. His own meeting with Witkoff in Oslo didn’t go so well either. The New York Times reported that the US envoy “reproached Zelensky for his sharp responses” to Trump’s recent assertion that Zelensky “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and “should have this war settled a long time ago.” Zelensky spent the rest of the week trying to dress up a ceasefire as a new idea that hadn’t been discounted dozens of times already by Moscow.

The deepening rift between Kiev and Washington is one of multiple diplomatic crises facing Zelensky. 

South Korea pulled diplomats from the Ukrainian capital over Ukraine’s refusal to apologize for exposing the secret transfer of North Korean POWs to Seoul, a move that the South Koreans warned could endanger the POWs’ relatives in North Korea and undermine stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) confirmed on Wednesday that it is investigating National Bank of Ukraine chief Andrey Pyshny in a graft probe reportedly aimed at Zelensky’s inner circle. One day earlier, NABU accused Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency of stealing $5 million by purchasing drones at inflated prices.

RT has covered the rampant graft in Kiev extensively in our ‘State of Corruption’ series, which you can read here. 

France fails

Just as corruption has come to define Zelensky’s Ukraine, the fiery collapse of the social contract now defines the closing stages of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency in France. After mass protests over rising prices and deteriorating social conditions degenerated into riots last week, almost 3,000 people were arrested this week as violent unrest continued to plague the streets of French cities.

Macron has refused to accept that his migration policies may be to blame for the riots, which Trump claimed are being led by “migrants, jihadists, and communists.” His government has also refused to change course on an austerity budget that will do little to alleviate the protesters’ economic concerns.

Instead, the French president has ordered military personnel into the streets, banned “illegitimate” protests, and imposed localized curfews. Whether he can count on the police to enforce these measures for much longer is unclear: France’s largest police union said on Thursday that it intends to sue the French state for creating the conditions that led to the riots, and leaving officers “betrayed and abandoned” to handle the violence without adequate training or protection. 

The EU’s Cold War in the Arctic

The Starlink wars return

The EU and its member states may be Ukraine’s leading backers, but the US provides Zelensky with something that the Europeans don’t have: access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. Ukraine depends on Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade version, to guide its drones, connect to NATO headquarters, and receive real-time updates from Palantir’s battlefield management software.

As long as this dependence exists, the US holds a powerful instrument of leverage over Zelensky. While nobody in SpaceX or the US government has taken responsibility for throttling Ukraine’s access to the network earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal claimed this week that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – who has condemned Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian oil refineries – personally ordered that the Ukrainian military’s access to the network be restricted.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the government played any role in the slowdown, saying that “it sort of happened” accidentally. However, a turn of phrase by Rubio suggested that the connection problems may have been deliberate, and intended as a warning to Zelensky: “Ukraine,” he said on Wednesday, “would not exist as a sovereign state” without US support.

Moscow is well aware that Kiev uses Starlink to strike civilian targets as well as military ones. Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed this week that two of the seven drones that struck a female dormitory at a college in Starobelsk in May – killing 21 people – were guided by SpaceX’s network. As long as Kiev continues to use this system, it remains a potential source of escalation between Russia and the US.

What we’re watching

We’re keeping a close eye on three consequential elections over the coming days, starting on Sunday with a presidential election in Brazil and parliamentary elections in Serbia. The showdown between Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro is an intensely personal battle between two bitter rivals, with the potential to pull another Latin American nation into the orbit of the US and reshape the future of the BRICS group. 

In Serbia, former President Aleksandar Vucic is now running for prime minister, in a snap election pitting his ruling coalition against a new political faction put together by the organizers of anti-government protests raging in Serbia since 2024. Vucic’s coalition has a narrow lead, but accusations of foreign interference are flying, and we’ll know by Monday whether Vucic’s gambit paid off.

Few world leaders have been as consequential as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Perennially on the verge of prosecution over multiple corruption scandals and facing mass protests, Netanyahu’s political fortunes changed with Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in 2023. Three years later, Netanyahu has managed to achieve almost all of his war aims – leveling Gaza, diminishing Hezbollah in Lebanon, neutering Syria, and leading the US into war with Iran. 

However, with the Iran war stalled and Netanyahu offering no plan for a post-conflict Gaza, dissent has returned, and polls suggest that his right-wing coalition will fall up to 10 seats short of the 61 needed to govern. The closing of polls on Tuesday night may signal the start of a lengthy process of political horse-trading, with Netanyahu’s future no clearer than it is now.

For more on these stories as they develop, stick with RT.

Former BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood has appeared in a London court on two additional sex offense charges, British media reported on Friday.

The 69-year-old faces a total of 17 charges involving nine women, including allegations of rape and sexual assault. The alleged offenses span more than three decades, from 1983 to 2016.

The two additional charges were announced by London’s Metropolitan Police in September. They concern the alleged indecent assault of a girl aged 16 or 17 in west London in 1991 and the alleged sexual assault of an 18-year-old woman in south London in 2004.

Former Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood in court charged with two further offences https://t.co/1OAT99G8aq

— ITV News (@itvnews) October 23, 2026

During Friday’s hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Westwood indicated that he would plead not guilty to both charges, according to court officials cited by British media. He has already pleaded not guilty to the original 15 charges, including four counts of rape.

Among the earlier allegations is the rape of a woman in a hotel in 1996. Westwood is also accused of several indecent assaults on BBC premises during the 1990s, as well as sexual offenses at other locations in London and elsewhere in England.

Westwood was one of Britain’s best-known hip-hop DJs, working for BBC Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra between 1994 and 2013.

In February 2025, the BBC apologized after an independent investigation found evidence of bullying and misogynistic behavior by Westwood. The broadcaster admitted it had been “too deferential to high-profile individuals” and missed opportunities to address complaints about his conduct.

Cut through the corporate damage-control flimflam – ‘technical’ issues and ‘mistakes’ but no politics, they say – and the Oversight Board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has just had to deny but really admit that its platforms have been caught trying to influence Brazil’s upcoming presidential elections.

In essence, they have favored the challenger and US favorite Flavio Bolsonaro, commonly referred to as ‘Flavio’ in Brazil, and harmed the incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, usually called ‘Lula’.

Meta, to be clear, hasn’t (sort of) fessed up because Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth has suddenly discovered a conscience. Instead, it was pressure from Brazilian investigative reporting that forced the company’s hand.

Whatever effect the American meddling will have on the election result, one thing is already certain: It has made the contest and the fierce political struggle behind it even more polarized than before. A few days before the decisive and very close final round, Lula and Flavio are trying to have each other excluded from the election; when dealing with a badly divided country, just leave it to Washington to make everything even more vicious.

The crude attack on Brazil’s electoral integrity is anything but a surprise. Historically speaking, it’s the bad old normal rejigged for the social-media age. In Brazil, as throughout Latin America, the US has a long history of brutally intervening in domestic politics, featuring highlights such as a full-blown coup in 1964 and massive subversion by a lawfare-spying-propaganda campaign in the 2010’s.

Brazil’s post-coup dictatorship was no short intermission either. It ended only in 1985. Washington to Brasilia: Regime change plus two decades of military rule – that’s what you get for not knowing your place in our backyard.

And the lawfare-spying-propaganda campaign of the 2010s – in part disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden – targeted and removed two Brazilian presidents. One of them, Lula, even ended up in prison, before his convictions were annulled in 2021.

Yet, while there is a long, sad history of American attacks on Brazilian democracy and sovereignty, the stakes are especially high now, perhaps as high as they have not been since the 1964 coup. For one thing, the choice Brazil’s voters are facing is stark: Flavio Bolsonaro, the favorite not only of the US but Donald Trump personally, stands for the Bolsonaro family empire itching to strike back. His father Jair Bolsonaro is currently doing time for trying to instigate a coup. If his son comes to power, Brazil will face a great, dirty settling of scores and severe danger of sliding into authoritarianism again.

Politically, Lula and Bolsonaro Jr. could not be more different: Lula is on the left; Flavio – like his father – very solidly on the right. More importantly, the rivals represent diametrically opposed ideas of Brazil’s place in the world. Brazil is not only an important G20 member, but Lula belongs to the founding generation of BRICS and is a proponent of the rising multipolar world order in general. He demands reform at the UN, especially its Security Council, and openly challenges the predominance of the US dollar, arguing for alternatives for payments, investments, and reserves.

Lula has also castigated Israel’s genocide in Gaza and compared it with the Nazi Holocaust, for which Israel has declared him persona non grata, while Brazil has joined South Africa at the International Court in accusing Israel of genocide.

The only other country cherished with equal fervor by the whole Bolsonaro family is – surprise, surprise – Israel. Go to a Bolsonaro rally and you are likely to see three flags: Brazil’s, that of the US, and of Israel.

And then there is China. Due to its demographic and territorial heft, its location, and its rich agricultural and industrial resources, Brazil is the prime prize in Washington’s dialing up to 11 of its traditional backyard colonialism. Lula has not only been bold enough to openly call it out but to declare that his country will never be a US colony when defying a typically Trumpian tariff attack.

What is worse from Washington’s perspective, he has worked hard to increase Brazil’s resilience by seeking connections beyond Latin America and especially with China. Beijing has been Brasilia’s main economic partner since 2009, with their trade volume reaching a record $171 billion last year. Brazilian exports to China exceed its combined exports to the US and the EU; and Brazil is now at the top of Chinese investment abroad.

The recent American de facto conquest of Venezuela was also a lesson in what Washington likes to do to those in its backyard daring to engage with America’s favorite hate object across the Pacific. But Brazil is no Venezuela; subduing it in one rapid cloak-and-dagger operation is impossible.

Yet the dark arts of interference have worked before. Recall that, in 1964, one of Joao Goulart’s unforgivable sins was to talk to China. By comparison, Lula’s determined policy of deep engagement with Beijing is off the American scale of intolerable rebelliousness. And for a reason: Without breaking Brazil once again, the continental cage the Donroe Doctrine is designed to rebuild sturdier than ever remains, at best, half-finished. And an unsubdued Brazil will always be an example of resistance.

The stakes could not be higher: sovereignty and, most likely, democracy itself for Brazil; strategic imperial triumph or failure for the US.

This article was first published on Substack

Anduril Industries CEO Palmer Luckey is working to clone and genetically engineer dogs for the American military, in a venture backed by the CIA and a biotech billionaire who plans on resurrecting prehistoric creatures.

Texas-based startup Warhound unveiled the project on Thursday, announcing $200 million in funding and a $1.2 billion valuation. The venture brings together Luckey, a major player in the burgeoning defense-tech sector, and Ben Lamm, whose biotechnology company has promised to revive the long-extinct wooly mammoth.

Warhound will be headed by David Spirk, the Pentagon’s first chief data officer and a former senior adviser at Palantir, a major US defense-tech company supplying AI and data analytics software to military and intelligence agencies. Its backers include In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s in-house venture capital firm and one of Palantir’s first investors.

“This is the sci-fi future we were promised,” Lamm said, describing the prospect of producing genetically enhanced working dogs.

Despite its billion-dollar valuation, Warhound has yet to secure a customer or determine how much its genetically engineered dogs will cost. Luckey and Lamm are no strangers to hawking vaporware, however. As RT explored in our ‘Wired for War’ series, Anduril Industries – which is valued at $90 billion – has produced only two combat-tested weapons systems, which failed during US military trials and were rejected for use by the Ukrainian armed forces.

Lamm’s company, Colossal Biosciences, is valued at $10-12 billion. Although the company succeeded in birthing three extinct dire wolf puppies last year, it is unclear how long the pups will survive, and Lamm admitted in August that he would likely be unable to resurrect the wooly mammoth for at least another decade.

Luckey and Lamm plan to outfit their designer dogs with advanced body armor and sensors linked to Anduril’s battlefield awareness system, which unlike Palantir’s flagship ‘Gotham’ system, is still in its prototype stages. The company is reportedly considering a subscription-style model under which the Pentagon would pay for a continuous supply of trained animals rather than purchase them individually.

In 2019, Chinese scientists unveiled Kunxun, a cloned police dog produced from the genetic material of an animal renowned for its crime-solving abilities. The project aimed to reproduce elite working dogs while reducing training costs.

The push to engineer military animals raises ethical and welfare concerns. Animal cloning has been linked to pregnancy complications, developmental abnormalities, and health problems in newborns. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has documented such risks in livestock cloning, although healthy clones that survive their first weeks generally develop normally.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a blockade of the occupied West Bank in the aftermath of a deadly shootout between IDF troops and two suspected Palestinian gunmen at a security checkpoint.

The incident unfolded on Friday in the southern West Bank at the temporary checkpoint at the Judea Junction on Route 35. An AFP photographer who witnessed the shootout reported the two Palestinian suspects armed with a handgun and an automatic rifle exchanged fire with Israeli soldiers. Five Israelis were wounded in the attack, with two servicemen succumbing to their wounds in hospital, while the gunmen were killed on the site of the shootout, which lasted more than 20 minutes, according to a preliminary Israeli military investigation.

The Israeli military described the incident as a thwarted “terror attack” without specifying the intended target of the suspects. Netanyahu vowed a “very extensive” retaliatory operation in the aftermath of the incident, announcing the demolition of the entire neighborhood the attackers come from and displacing its residents, as well as requesting the cancellation of all political meetings on October 23.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded even more severe retaliation, calling for the dissolution of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). No evidence, however, has emerged thus far linking the PA to the incident.

“The Palestinian Authority must be dissolved and demilitarized, and all terrorist infrastructure must be completely wiped out,” Ben-Gvir, known for extremely hostile anti-Palestinian rhetoric and assorted controversial stunts, said.

The deadly shooting comes ahead of the high-stakes legislative election in Israel scheduled for October 27. The upcoming polls are the first voting to take place since the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war. The prolonged conflict has prompted repeated allegations against Netanyahu of deliberately dragging out the hostilities to keep his grip on power. The latest opinion polls put the incumbent PM in a tight race with Gadi Eisenkot, a former head of the IDF, and the prospects of Netanyahu losing his post remain high.

Millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control are unable to vote in the upcoming parliamentary election that will shape their lives, RT correspondent Charlotte Dubenskij reports.

Ahead of the October 27 vote, Dubenskij visited East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank to examine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of Israel as the Middle East’s “only true democracy.”

In East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move rejected by the UN, many Palestinians hold permanent residency rather than Israeli citizenship. They pay taxes, social security, and VAT, but cannot vote for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

“We are really helpless, voiceless,” one resident told RT. Another described the frustration of facing the consequences of an election without being able to influence it.

Although Palestinian residents who obtain Israeli citizenship can vote, those who spoke to RT opposed taking that step, arguing it would amount to recognizing Israeli sovereignty.

Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti argued that the occupation and different legal systems applied to Palestinians and Israeli settlers contradict Israel’s democratic claims.

“Two different laws for two people in the same area is nothing but the description of apartheid,” he told RT.

Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strook, meanwhile, has advocated allowing Palestinians to remain while denying them a parliamentary vote. “They can stay here as human beings, of course,” she said, but stressed that they “shouldn’t be able to vote for the Knesset.”

Barghouti further accused Israel of obstructing internal Palestinian elections. The Palestinian Authority cited Israel’s refusal to guarantee voting in East Jerusalem when it canceled elections in 2021.

For Palestinians interviewed in Ramallah, the priority is to be allowed to hold their own elections rather than voting under occupation.

Watch the full report below.

US troops have been warned against using inside information to bet on prediction markets, the Associated Press has reported, citing a directive issued by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who said such wagers could expose military plans and influence operational decisions.

The memo, dated Tuesday and reviewed by AP, covers platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, where users wager on real-world events, including elections and military action.

The directive bars the use of both classified material and other official information unavailable to the public, with violators facing disciplinary action or criminal charges under military or federal law.

“Our enemies watch movements in these markets,” Hegseth wrote. “When an American service member, intelligence professional, or other Department civilian engages in a financial transaction on a military outcome, they create a signal.”

The directive follows the prosecution of a US Special Forces soldier accused of profiting from advance knowledge of the January operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Prosecutors allege that Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke used information obtained through his involvement in planning and executing the raid to place more than $32,500 in Polymarket bets, earning over $400,000.

Most of the wagers were allegedly placed on January 2, hours before the attack on Caracas. Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty.

The controversy has extended beyond the military. Newly created Polymarket accounts placed suspiciously timed bets shortly before Trump announced an April US-Iran ceasefire, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. The White House later warned staff against trading on confidential information.

The scandals have intensified scrutiny of prediction markets, which several US states have accused of sidestepping gambling laws and consumer protections. The Trump administration, however, has argued that the platforms should remain regulated by federal financial authorities rather than under individual states’ gambling laws.

The president’s family also has business ties to the industry. Donald Trump Jr. serves as a strategic adviser to Kalshi and holds an investment in Polymarket through his venture firm, 1789 Capital.

Moscow and Kiev have agreed to a temporary ceasefire in the frontline town of Alyoshki in Russia’s Kherson Region to allow humanitarian aid deliveries and civilian evacuations following mediation co-ordinate by US First Lady Melania Trump, the Kremlin has confirmed.

Located near the front line in Kherson Region, which voted to join Russia in a 2022 referendum, Alyoshki has been largely cut off from essential supplies and basic services for months under a Ukrainian siege. Drone attacks and remotely laid mines have hampered aid deliveries and evacuation efforts, leaving an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 civilians in the town trapped, many of them elderly.

The White House announced the agreement earlier on Friday, saying both sides had agreed to suspend all military operations in Alyoshki from October 29 to allow humanitarian aid deliveries and prepare for civilian evacuations through a designated safe passage.

Melania Trump, who had previously expressed willingness to support humanitarian efforts in Alyoshki, described the situation as “dire,” calling the town a “frontline war city on the brink of disaster.”

“The remaining population is comprised primarily of elderly residents who urgently need medical attention, medicine, food, and clean water,” she said.

Civilian representatives from Russia and Ukraine will assess residents’ needs and help organize evacuations to either country, depending on the residents’ wishes, the first lady said.

Peskov also acknowledged the work of Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova and her Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Lubinets in arranging the operation.

Moscow has accused Kiev of deliberately creating the humanitarian crisis by targeting civilian supply routes and obstructing aid deliveries. Russian Foreign Ministry envoy Rodion Miroshnik previously described the situation as a “medieval blockade using modern methods,” accusing Ukrainian forces of preventing residents from leaving.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, discussed the crisis during a phone call earlier this month. According to the Kremlin, the two leaders agreed that Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova would maintain contact with Melania Trump’s office over humanitarian efforts.

European governments should stop worrying about their growing dependence on American AI, US tech giant Palantir’s top executive for the UK and Europe has said. Instead, they should focus on the advantages the products offer, particularly against Russia, Palantir UK CEO Louis Mosley believes.

The European Commission is frantically trying to reduce reliance on American tech and the US in general.

“Europe is going to have to accept some dependency,” Mosely told Bloomberg News this week.

The Commission estimates that the bloc relies on foreign providers for over 80% of its digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property. However, many are skeptical that replacement is possible. In a Wire’s 2025 survey cited by the European Parliament, only 16% of regional IT leaders said the bloc could achieve digital sovereignty within five years, with almost 60% citing US dominance as a key obstacle.

“We cannot depend on the goodwill of certain partners who, as we’ve seen in recent days, are capable of cutting off access to models,” Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said when announcing the decision in June.

Berlin has reportedly chosen the same French competitor over Palantir for Germany’s domestic intelligence agency BfV.

Similar moves to ostracize the American firm have been reported in Spain and Denmark, as well as the non-EU nations of Switzerland, Norway, and the UK.

One of Palantir’s flagship products is Maven, an AI-powered system that processes vast amounts of intelligence data to help identify targets and generate strike recommendations for troops. It accelerates the so-called “kill chain,” allowing the military to consider substantially more potential targets than human personnel previously could.

Originally developed as a Pentagon project, Maven involved Google until 2018, when employee protests prompted the company to withdraw from the initiative. NATO purchased its own version of the system for use at its European headquarters in March 2025.

“I can provide categorical reassurance that where customers have bought our software, they are in full operational ‌control of ⁠that software,” Mosley assured in a separate interview with Reuters concerning NATO’s purchase.

There are no kill switches. There’s no ability for Palantir or the US government to reach in and switch it off.

The US government has a track record of restricting foreign access to flagship AI models. The French prime minister’s remark about a lack of goodwill was a reference to Washington’s blockage of Anthropic’s Mythos 5 tool, which lasted for almost three weeks.

US President Donald Trump has invoked a Cold War-era national security law to boost domestic oil production and refining, as rising fuel prices threaten the Republicans’ chances in November’s midterm elections.

Speaking on Thursday at a Republican campaign rally in Iowa – an agricultural state where farmers have been hit hard by the oil crisis – Trump announced that his administration would use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to provide up to $150 million to expand American refining capacity and produce diesel and gasoline “at record levels.”

He also predicted that the Iran and Ukraine conflicts would end soon, sending gasoline and oil prices “tumbling down.” 

Enacted in 1950, the DPA allows Washington to financially support industries deemed essential to national defense. In a presidential memorandum, Trump designated domestic petroleum production, refineries, pipelines, and storage facilities as critical to national security, arguing that private companies could not expand capacity quickly enough without federal intervention.

Vice President J.D. Vance had earlier announced plans to invoke the law to expand a Delek-operated refinery in Tyler, Texas, although such projects typically take months, if not years, to complete.

Fuel prices in America sharply rose after the US and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February, disrupting global energy supplies. According to the US Energy Information Administration, average gasoline prices have climbed from $2.94 per gallon immediately before the conflict to $4.28 in the week ending October 19, while diesel has jumped from $3.81 to $6.28 over the same period.

The Trump administration has sought to tackle the fuel crisis through several emergency measures, including releasing 172 million barrels from strategic oil reserves, relaxing gasoline-blending requirements, temporarily easing diesel regulations, and announcing additional subsidies for struggling farmers.

In early October, Trump also announced a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to release more than 300,000 tons of Russian diesel onto global markets, with additional supplies expected later. He has also repeatedly pressed Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, which he blamed for rising fuel prices.

The president’s pressure sparked pushback from Zelensky, who called Trump’s diesel deal with Moscow “a weak decision” and “not fair and not honest” while refusing to comply with the refineries ultimatum. In response, Trump suggested that Ukraine should “get a new president” instead of Zelensky, whose term expired more than two years ago, while calling continued Ukrainian strikes a “disgrace.”

An employee of a German immigration office and her husband have been arrested for allegedly assisting a human smuggling ring which brought Indian men into the country through sham marriages in exchange for hefty payments, Bild has reported.

The Cologne branch of the immigration office told the tabloid on Thursday that it has revoked the residence permits illegally issued by the criminal group, which involved two other people.

According to Bild, the smuggling ring exploited the EU’s family reunification program to bring in the Indians.

The foreign nationals arrived in Cyprus, where they entered fictitious marriages with Bulgarian women whom they had never met before, it said.

A member of the Cologne immigration office, identified as Subha L., then processed and approved the applications for residence permits by the Indian males despite the irregularities in their paperwork, the report read.

A lawyer for one of the suspected smugglers told the WDR broadcaster that the scheme had allowed more than 20 Indian men to enter the EU.

Subha L. was arrested along with her husband in December 2025 and remains in per-trial detention. She has been dismissed from her job, the Cologne immigration office said. The trial for the four suspected members of the criminal group is scheduled to begin in February.

The immigration office said it tightened workflow controls following the scandal to ensure any suspicious cases are identified more promptly.

An MP for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party accused the Cologne immigration office of failing to execute its duties and called for it to be audited by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

“We are witnessing a growing loss of control within an agency that views itself as a ‘welcoming authority’ rather than an immigration authority,” Seif told the Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper.

Illegal immigration has again become a contentious topic in the EU this year after more than 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta in late July. Up to 8,000 foreigners still remain scattered throughout the territory, straining local resources and prompting protests by residents.

Despite the number of arrivals subsiding since the EU migrant crisis of 2015, the foreign-born population in the bloc reached a record 64.2 million last year, expanding by 20.2 million since 2010, according to a report published by the Center for Research and Analysis on Migration at RFBerlin in April.

Germany continues to have the largest number of immigrants in the EU, with 18 million foreign-born citizens, making up 21.2% of the country’s population, the paper said.

The US has accused Canadian officials of attempting to interfere in American elections, citing politically targeted trade measures, anti-Trump advertising campaigns and meetings with Democratic politicians ahead of next month’s midterms.

In a fact sheet published on Wednesday, the US Embassy in Ottawa accused Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government of openly seeking to influence American politics.

“The Canadian government brushes off concerns about potential interference in US elections, even as its ministers and premiers openly describe plans to influence American politics in official documents and public appearances,” the embassy stated.

The document singled out Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly, citing her remarks about deliberately targeting Republican-leaning states with retaliatory tariffs in response to US President Donald Trump’s trade policies.

Washington also questioned Joly’s meetings with Democratic officials in Boston and Chicago in September, as well as an anti-tariff advertising campaign launched by Ontario Premier Doug Ford featuring former US President Ronald Reagan criticizing protectionist trade policies.

The embassy also highlighted a recent appearance by Canadian Consul General Bernadette Jordan alongside two Democratic congressmen at a Vermont roundtable on trade tensions, just three weeks before the midterms. It also cited a Canadian government billboard campaign targeting 12 mostly Republican-voting states and Washington, DC.

The embassy also cited Liberal lawmaker Anthony Housefather’s campaigning for Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida, and listed 11 Canadians who had been charged or sentenced in 2026 for illegally voting in previous American elections.

The accusations followed a warning from US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, who said Washington was closely watching Canadian political activities ahead of the November 3 congressional elections.

“We’re monitoring it, we’re evaluating it and if some of it becomes election interference then America will respond to it,” Hoekstra said.

Ottawa has rejected the allegations. Carney insisted that Canada’s measures were intended to protect its workers and businesses from American tariffs, while Ford denied any interest in meddling in US elections. Joly defended her meetings with American politicians as normal diplomacy, pointing out that she had engaged with both Republicans and Democrats.

In September, Carney revealed that his government had examined the possibility of US military action against Canada, describing the scenario as an “extreme tail risk” that nevertheless warranted contingency planning. Ottawa, meanwhile, has been seeking closer military and economic ties with Europe to reduce its dependence on Washington.

Hundreds of houses have collapsed after a powerful earthquake struck Tibet, killing at least 16 people and injuring dozens more, according to local authorities.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the Nagqu region of northern Tibet at 10:33 PM local time on Thursday. 

The death toll stood at 16 on Friday morning, with 46 people injured, including 11 seriously, according to the latest figures released by local disaster relief authorities. At least 339 houses and 20 livestock sheds collapsed, the Associated Press reported, citing government officials.

Videos circulating on Chinese social media showed residents rushing into the streets as buildings shook.

🇨🇳⚡️ — Emergency authorities report that a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Tibet's Nagqu City has caused the collapse of 339 homes, triggered severe infrastructure and transit disruptions, and prompted the activation of a Level-II emergency response. #China #Tibet #Earthquake #BreakingNews

— X-K (@ConflictRadarME) October 22, 2026

The shallow tremor struck at a depth of approximately 10 kilometers, according to Chinese seismologists. The US Geological Survey estimated its depth at 18 kilometers, placing the epicenter in a sparsely populated mountainous area.

Sixteen people were killed and 32 others injured after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Baqen County of Nagqu City in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, according to the city's emergency management bureau. https://t.co/BERNm8mcXy

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) October 23, 2026

More than 1,600 local personnel have been mobilized for search-and-rescue operations. Emergency supplies, including 1,000 prefabricated housing units, some 3,000 tents, beds and winter clothing, have been dispatched to assist displaced residents.

Xi orders all-out rescue efforts after Xizang earthquake https://t.co/GrKXDa8oGE

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) October 23, 2026

The earthquake also triggered rockfalls that forced the closure of a major highway, while railway services were temporarily suspended for safety inspections. Communications were disrupted in parts of the affected region, complicating rescue operations.

The latest disaster comes less than two months after a massive ice-and-rock avalanche near the Tibet-Nepal border unleashed catastrophic flooding, killing more than 1,450 people in Nepal and dozens in China.

Thursday’s tremor was the strongest to hit the Nagqu region in five years, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Authorities have warned that the casualty figures could rise as rescue teams continue searching damaged buildings and assessing the destruction.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a crackdown on public demonstrations, ordering authorities to ban protests and restrict even officially organized marches as nationwide unrest over soaring living costs and deteriorating public services continues.

The restrictions, announced Thursday following an emergency meeting with intelligence chiefs and senior ministers, come ahead of another wave of demonstrations planned for Saturday, after some of France’s worst street violence in years.

Macron said local authorities would prohibit deemed “illegitimate” gatherings organized by individuals or groups deemed to lack authority, while demonstrations arranged by recognized organizations, such as trade unions, would be considered for approval but could be required to use alternative routes.

“The general recommendation is that there should be no demonstrations in the coming days,” Macron declared, insisting the measures were necessary to restore calm and protect businesses and public buildings.

The announcement significantly tightens restrictions on mass gatherings in a country where the right to protest is constitutionally protected. Under French law, authorities can prohibit demonstrations if they are believed to pose a threat to public order, although such decisions must be proportionate and can be challenged in court.

A Paris administrative court overturned a police ban on a student demonstration on Thursday, allowing thousands of protesters to gather despite official objections. The rally proceeded peacefully under heavy police presence, according to AP.

France has been gripped by escalating unrest since protests over teacher shortages and deteriorating school conditions spread into a broader movement against rising prices, inequality and cuts to public services.

Around 550,000 people joined demonstrations last Saturday, which descended into clashes with police, arson and widespread looting. Nearly 2,500 people have since been arrested, while approximately 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured, according to figures reported by French media.

Even police unions have turned against the administration. Alliance Police Nationale has announced plans to sue the state, accusing officials of abandoning officers during the riots and failing to provide adequate equipment and clear instructions.

Macron has also clashed with US President Donald Trump, who blamed France’s turmoil on uncontrolled immigration and radical groups. The French leader dismissed comments by foreign politicians about the unrest as “stupid” and “unacceptable.”

A British museum has removed ancient Egyptian mummies from public display, citing a lack of “consent” from the deceased and drawing accusations of excessive political correctness.

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the country’s most popular cultural attractions, drawing more than 1.3 million visitors annually. Its collections include Egyptian antiquities and mummified remains that have been exhibited for years.

Among the items taken off display were a painted coffin containing the remains of an Egyptian priest named Nekht, a mummified male head, a right foot, and a right hand recovered from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt, the Glasgow Times reported on Thursday.

My daughter has a book on the ancient Egyptians and has been quite animated by it so we took her to Kelvingrove Museum to see their mummy. Except, it’s no longer there. All ‘human remains’ gone with the following sign up in place of exhibits that have been there for years. https://t.co/DKGOx4VjpR

— Jonny McFarlane (@jonnyrmcfarlane) October 17, 2026

The changes came to public attention after a visitor said he had taken his daughter to see an Egyptian mummy, only to discover that it was no longer there. He shared a photograph on X of a museum notice stating that the remains had been removed “as a mark of respect.”

Mummies have been removed from display at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow because of a 'lack of consent from the deceased individual'. A Glasgow Life spokesman said: ‘The removal of human remains from display at Glasgow Life museums reflects contemporary museum practice. ‘The International Council of Museums’ revised Code of Ethics, published in June 2026, states that museums “should uphold the inherent dignity of human remains and promote respect for their significance”. ‘The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations 2025 report, “Laying Ancestors to Rest”, also raises ethical concerns about the display of ancient Egyptian human remains due to the consistent disregard of the potential wishes of the ancestors and the intention of the communities that originally laid them to rest.

— UNN (@UnityNewsNet) October 22, 2026

Glasgow Life, which operates the museum, said the move reflected contemporary museum practices, citing revised ethical guidelines published by the International Council of Museums in June. The guidelines call for human remains to be treated with dignity and respect.

“In the absence of such consent, we believe removing ancient Egyptian human remains from display is more respectful to the deceased individuals,” a Glasgow Life spokesperson said.

The decision drew criticism from Scottish Conservative politician Murdo Fraser, who described it as “woke madness.”

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education and a former adviser to the British prime minister’s policy unit, also condemned the move as “virtue-signaling, woke nonsense.”

“It is not possible to seek permission from those who died thousands of years ago,” he said, adding that museums in Egypt continue to exhibit mummified remains.

Glasgow Life said it is also working to remove further archaeological human remains from Kelvingrove and plans to remove a coffin and mummified remains from the nearby St Mungo Museum afterward.

The controversy follows a similar decision by Manchester Museum, which removed the 2,700-year-old mummified remains of an Egyptian woman named Asru in September after more than two centuries on public display.

Major US banks have detected outside artificial intelligence agents operating inside customer accounts, with some appearing to attempt actions beyond users’ instructions, Axios reported on Thursday.

AI agents are designed to complete tasks on users’ behalf, potentially making purchases, paying bills or moving money. Customers often give them permission and login credentials, but this can violate banks’ rules requiring account holders to log in themselves.

Lenders including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo are racing to contain the risks, according to Axios, citing people familiar with the matter. Some have tracked agents contacting call centers or apparently acting independently of customer instructions.

Bank executives described the situation as “horrifying,” according to the outlet. One said lenders struggle to distinguish between authorized assistants and agents that have gone rogue.

JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi have now started restricting outside agents’ access, while Morgan Stanley has reportedly begun blocking them from its platforms. Chase has also urged customers not to share usernames and passwords with AI agents.

The banks have also expressed fear of losing profitable deposits. The Financial Times reported last week that AI assistants could move customers’ cash to banks offering better rates, forcing lenders to pay more interest to keep those customers.

The concerns come amid a string of reports of AI agents acting beyond their instructions and accessing outside systems without permission. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that OpenAI shelved its planned GPT-6.1 Astra model after testing revealed more deceptive behavior than its predecessors. The system sometimes failed to disclose its actions to human operators and attempted to use potentially unsafe external tools.

Financial regulators have warned that autonomous systems could also destabilize markets. Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden warned in June that agents reacting alike to the same signals could buy or sell simultaneously, making market swings more severe.

She urged regulators to consider emergency “kill switches” that could halt trading if faulty AI systems triggered a market meltdown.

European countries will inevitably resume economic cooperation with Russia, following Washington’s lead, Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev has predicted. Politicians who continue to blame Moscow for their domestic problems rather than address them risk losing power, he warned.

Dmitriev, who also heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, made the remarks on Thursday at the 19th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum in Istanbul.

The Russian official hailed Trump’s readiness to restore dialogue with Russia and reverse a “very dangerous situation where top nuclear powers don’t communicate.”

Commenting on Europe’s problems, including high energy costs and mass migration, Dmitriev accused European politicians of “using Russia as a boogeyman” to distract from more fundamental issues, warning that they have come to believe their own narratives and are unwilling to correct their mistakes.

However, Dmitriev argued that attitudes within the EU were beginning to shift, with more voices calling for renewed dialogue with Moscow. “Cooperation with Russia economically will be inevitable,” he said, adding that “as soon as we do more deals with the US, European companies” will want a piece of the action, too.

“Once people start paying double, triple their bills of energy in Europe, the resumption of energy supplies from Russia is absolutely inevitable and politicians who refuse that will lose in any way possible,” Dmitriev argued.

“Once people are rational, once people stop reading fake stories in the media, once they stop sort of living in this matrix of fake narratives…, they’ll understand that only through dialogue, through cooperation, through working together, we can go forward successfully.”

Dmitriev also argued that many of today’s “great leaders,” including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, prioritize national sovereignty over what he described as the “failed policy of globalism.”

On October 18, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Manama, where he attended the ninth ministerial meeting of the Russia-Gulf Cooperation Council strategic dialogue and held separate talks with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The following day, he traveled to Tehran to meet with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Masoud Pezeshkian.

In Manama, discussions centered on de-escalation in the Persian Gulf, maritime security, and Russian proposals for a collective security framework, while bilateral meetings provided an opportunity to clarify individual countries’ positions. Lavrov and his Kuwaiti counterpart stressed the need to reduce tensions quickly and agreed that a political and diplomatic settlement is the only viable way forward. In Tehran, regional affairs featured alongside Russian-Iranian cooperation, with Moscow reaffirming its commitment to economic and investment agreements despite the deteriorating security environment.

Diplomacy between the Gulf’s two shores

The trip aimed to prevent a new divide between Iran and the Arab monarchies from becoming entrenched, as the consequences of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran are affecting the security of the entire region. Yet rebuilding trust also requires acknowledging that the Gulf states have their own grievances against Tehran over strikes on their territory and threats to maritime routes.

During the Manama talks, Arab representatives explicitly said they hope Moscow would use its relationship with Iran to convey their concerns. Discussions also covered Yemen, maintaining the ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian access, and the resilience of energy and food supply chains – the various and interconnected sources of instability plaguing the Middle East.

Russia could mediate efforts to de-escalate tensions and mitigate the deterioration in relations between Tehran and the Gulf monarchies, since it maintains close ties with Iran while developing political, economic, and energy cooperation with the Arab states. These relationships allow Moscow to relay messages, identify the scope for compromise, and facilitate direct dialogue, which can easily give way to competing ultimatums during a crisis.

However, this two-way access does not mean Moscow can dictate what its partners actually decide, and its closeness to Tehran may raise questions among Arab participants. The effectiveness of Russian mediation will ultimately depend on whether the parties themselves are willing to negotiate, acknowledge one another’s concerns, and take practical steps to address them.

Inclusive security as an alternative to permanent crisis

In Manama, Lavrov once again presented Russia’s updated concept of collective security in the Persian Gulf as a potential contribution to a lasting settlement. The proposal continues a longstanding initiative rather than a document developed solely for this visit. As early as June, he reported that updated proposals had been circulated to regional capitals and that Moscow was receiving initial responses.

The approach rests on the premise that the Arab monarchies and Iran must take part in a shared framework, because attempts to secure one group of states by isolating another reproduce the causes of confrontation. Confidence-building measures and regular contact are intended to reduce uncertainty gradually, while the Gulf countries and their immediate neighbors should have the decisive voice in shaping the regional order.

An earlier Russian concept circulated at the United Nations in 2019 already envisaged a gradual normalization of conditions, respect for sovereignty, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the development of collective security mechanisms. The current proposals can be assumed to carry over the same spirit, even if specific provisions have changed or been updated.

The practical value of this model will depend on whether broad principles can be translated into agreed procedures for preventing incidents, protecting civilian infrastructure, and keeping maritime routes open. These arrangements could provide the first steps towards a more stable order, whereas an attempt to resolve every political disagreement at once could obstruct even limited measures to ease tensions.

Why expensive oil does not make war good for Russia

Western media and expert debates, including those focused on Middle Eastern politics, frequently portray Russia as a beneficiary of the war, arguing that disruptions to Gulf supplies drive up energy prices and create opportunities for Russian exporters.

A short-term price benefit is certainly possible, but to assume that war gives Russia a strategic advantage is analytically unsound, because the country’s national interests are not limited to a single source of export revenue. Additional income from commodity sales says little about the cost of damaged partnerships, postponed investment, and worsening conditions for long-term projects.

The Middle East matters to Russia as a political and economic partner, and stable relations depend on predictable institutions, transport routes, and financial transactions. A prolonged war raises shipping and insurance costs, complicates infrastructure agreements, and forces partners to divert resources from development toward immediate security needs.

This is evident in Russia’s cooperation with Iran, where its projects require a stable operating environment. In Tehran, Lavrov spoke of Russian specialists gradually returning to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, as well as prospects for cooperation in hydrocarbon production and transportation. A protracted war creates additional risks for these activities, and higher oil prices cannot remove them.

Moreover, a sustained energy shock can weaken the global economy, while the resulting decline in demand limits exporters’ initial gains. Even if some consequences of a Middle East war can benefit Russian suppliers in the short term, claims that Moscow wants endless war in the region are superficial at best. Russia’s strategic interest lies in the region’s long-term stability, which would allow it to preserve partnerships, markets, and opportunities for economic engagement.

The transformation of the world order and the erosion of Western hegemony give Middle Eastern states greater scope to pursue independent policies, but a redistribution of international influence does not in itself resolve regional disputes. If dependence on external guarantees is merely supplemented by new competing patrons, while mechanisms for direct dialogue remain weak, the Middle East will continue to serve as an arena where local conflicts intersect with rivalry among major powers.

Regional autonomy requires that neighboring states agree on rules for coexistence, even when their foreign policy priorities and perceptions of threats differ substantially. A durable system will require mutual respect for sovereignty, a rejection of imposed military solutions, and recognition that lasting security cannot be built on another state’s permanent vulnerability.

Russia can support this process by providing diplomatic channels and helping identify a workable sequence of agreements, but only the countries of the region can build a peaceful future. External mediation delivers results when it supports an existing willingness to compromise, while even substantive initiatives can remain on paper if that willingness is absent.

Lavrov’s visits to Manama and Tehran highlighted an opportunity to connect urgent de-escalation with discussions about a more durable regional order. Seizing this opportunity will take time and difficult political decisions, because the parties will need to constrain their own use of force, rebuild damaged trust, and accept reciprocal obligations. Moscow can mediate this process, but its outcome will depend on the desire and readiness of the Gulf states and Iran to reach an agreement.

Billionaire tech investor and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has expressed regret over the US war against Iran, warning that it could ultimately lead to International Criminal Court warrants for the Trump administration and have broader implications for the US, Politico reported on Thursday.

The outlet cited a transcript of a lecture given by Thiel earlier this month, part of the series of private events held in Nashville.

Thiel, a staunch backer of US President Donald Trump, has expressed doubts over the Iran war, which was launched by the US and Israel earlier this year, suggesting that it has exposed America’s weaknesses.

“I’m skeptical of [the war], I think we should not have done it. There were a lot of mistakes that were made,” Thiel said, as quoted by Politico.

Maybe we don’t have the hard power. Maybe we’re going to lose the soft power war.

While reiterating his support for Trump, he warned that the war could backfire for the administration and lead to legal troubles with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The Trump administration has had a hostile relationship with the ICC, particularly over the decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

“I have come to suspect that the threat of an ICC arrest warrant is the sword of Damocles hanging over the Trump administration as it tries to persecute this war in Iran,” Thiel said.

He also claimed that George W. Bush-era neocon figures such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have been colluding with the ICC against Trump. “I read the Cheney family’s Trump derangement syndrome as an attempt to buy favor with the [ICC] and avoid prosecution. Probably too late,” he said.

Palantir has been heavily involved in the hostilities, as its products have been used by the US military. The use of AI products was reportedly linked to one of the worst mass-casualty events of the war – the strike on a school in Minab on the first day of the conflict, which killed at least 156 civilians, predominantly schoolchildren. According to media reports, the facility was targeted based on outdated data used by Palantir’s analysis and surveillance software.

The world’s first documented human infection with the Shamonda virus has been reported in France, where a hospitalized patient later died, according to the health authorities.

The insect-borne disease, which has circulated among livestock for decades, was previously believed to be incapable of infecting humans.

In a joint statement on Thursday, the French Health and Agriculture Ministries confirmed that the patient, who had a severely weakened immune system, died in early October after being hospitalized in Lyon.

“Until now, the Shamonda virus was considered non-transmissible to humans,” the ministries said, according to AFP. They described the infection as the first confirmed detection of the pathogen in a person.

The patient developed severe neurological complications that the authorities believe were linked to the infection. However, investigators have still not established conclusively whether the virus was responsible for the death.

Despite the unprecedented case, the French authorities said there is currently no indication of a wider threat to public health. They stressed that the patient was severely immunocompromised and that no other human infections have been identified.

The Shamonda virus belongs to the orthobunyavirus group and was first identified in Nigeria in the 1960s. It is transmitted by tiny biting insects known as Culicoides midges and has been detected in livestock in Africa and Asia.

Other viruses that have crossed from animals to humans include HIV, Ebola, and bird flu. The Covid-19 pandemic was caused by a virus widely believed to have originated in bats.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control has confirmed the unprecedented human case and is working with the French authorities to assess its implications.

Health officials are continuing epidemiological and laboratory investigations to determine how the patient became infected and whether other cases may have gone undetected.

France’s leading police union has announced that it is set to sue the state, accusing it of leaving officers “betrayed and abandoned” during a wave of violent nationwide protests.

The union’s planned legal action comes in the wake of unrest last week, when around 550,000 people took to the streets over rising prices and deteriorating school conditions. Demonstrations descended into rioting across Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Bordeaux, with businesses looted and buildings set on fire. According to Le Monde, 997 police officers and gendarmes were injured, including seven seriously.

Speaking on Thursday, union representative Stanislas Gaudon criticized successive governments over what he described as a “20-year lack of political courage” in security policy.

“Police officers will not be shields for political spin, nor scapegoats for an administration that refuses to take responsibility for its decisions,” the union stated last week.

Alliance also directly challenged Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez over conflicting instructions from the police hierarchy.

“Mr. Minister, is your administration lying to you? Or are the police deliberately being sacrificed on the altar of political communication?” it asked, demanding an investigation into the chain of command.

The protests first erupted in September over staff shortages and deteriorating conditions at a high school near Paris before spreading nationwide. Thousands of students have demanded better education funding and an end to public spending cuts, accusing the government of prioritizing weapons over schools. The unrest has triggered massive arrests and accusations of excessive police force.

Police tactics have meanwhile come under scrutiny after a 17-year-old protester lost a hand in a grenade explosion in Saint-Étienne. His lawyer has filed a complaint against Nuñez over the use of controversial riot-control weapons. The government has defended the police response.

The unrest comes as President Emmanuel Macron’s government cuts public spending while increasing military expenditure and weapons supplies to Kiev. France has raised its 2026 defense budget by €6.7 billion despite mounting public debt.

Further protests are expected this weekend, while the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and other unions have called for a nationwide strike beginning November 5.

Major US news outlets amplified fabricated election polls showing gains by Democrats, giving a bogus months-old polling operation national credibility before investigators exposed its invented data.

Wedgewood Polls, which appeared in June, secured coverage from publications including Newsweek, the Daily Beast, and The Hill. Its surveys also entered polling databases maintained by the New York Times, election analyst Nate Silver, and other prominent aggregators.

On Tuesday, however, after researchers at election analysis website FiftyPlusOne confronted it, Wedgewood admitted that almost all its surveys were fake. It described the deception as an experiment testing how easily a fictitious firm could gain recognition.

“We wanted to test a simple hypothesis: how easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary? The short answer: Far too easy,” the group said in a press statement.

Wedgewood noted that despite having no history, formal credentials or real data, it was added to multiple major polling aggregators, was treated as a legitimate data source, and was being cited on air by mainstream outlets like MS NOW.

The group added that “out of curiosity and for our own internal baseline,” it actually carried one genuine crowdfunded poll in Nebraska during its run.

The admission prompted a mass cleanup across mainstream media. The Times removed 15 Wedgewood surveys, election tracker Decision Desk HQ removed 17, and Newsweek retracted three articles and corrected others.

The figures also reached campaign publicity. A Democratic Senate campaign in Mississippi cited a fabricated result as evidence of “massive momentum.”

Other invented results damaged candidates. Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow said a bogus survey showing her support collapsing helped dry up donations and demoralize volunteers before she withdrew from the Democratic Senate primary in July.

Questions about Wedgewood had circulated for months, but its surveys continued entering news coverage and polling databases. FiftyPlusOne eventually exposed the fabrication by examining underlying survey records and checking inconsistencies with the platform the firm claimed to use.

The revelations come less than two weeks before the November 3 midterms, which will determine control of Congress. Republicans are defending narrow majorities in both chambers as President Donald Trump campaigns amid dissatisfaction over living costs and the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is once again fighting for his political future, in a runoff election against Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro. After a dirty campaign, voters will decide on Sunday whether Brazil maintains its leftward trajectory or lurches to the right.

Bolsonaro defeated Lula in the first round of this year’s presidential election, beating the incumbent left-winger by 47.03% to 45.16% on October 5. With neither candidate winning an outright majority, ten runners-up were eliminated and a runoff called for October 25.

Who are the candidates?

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, more commonly referred to as ‘Lula’, has been a mainstay in Brazilian politics since the 1980s. After serving two terms as president from 2003 to 2011, he was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2017 for alleged involvement in a corruption and money laundering scheme within the state-run oil company Petrobras.

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court struck down his conviction in 2021, and Lula returned to politics the following year, defeating Jair Bolsonaro by a margin of just 0.11%. In power, Lula has increased government spending to tackle poverty, handed subsidies to industry, and hiked taxes on the wealthy. Meanwhile, his government has deepened trade and diplomatic ties with Russia, China, and the rest of the BRICS group, while criticizing US intervention in Latin America.

“Brazil,” he said in a speech at the UN General Assembly last month, “does not fit into anyone’s back yard.”

A senator since 2019, Flavio Bolsonaro is the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, who was placed under house arrest last year after the Supreme Federal Court found him guilty of attempting to overturn his 2022 loss to Lula. A social conservative, Flavio Bolsonaro has promised to slash government spending, deregulate industry, crack down on crime, and rein in the power of the judiciary. If elected, he has promised to pursue amnesty for his father.

Bolsonaro favors closer relations with the US, and has said he would join US President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Latin American drug cartels. He has signaled he would “consider leaving” BRICS, accusing the organization of “provoking the United States by proposing that the dollar should no longer be the currency for international transactions.”

Should Bolsonaro win, he would fall into a growing camp of right-wing leaders in Latin America, including Presidents Javier Milei of Argentina, Abelardo de la Espriella of Colombia, Jose Antonio Kast of Chile, and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

What are the key issues?

CNN Brazil identified “corruption” as the second issue atop voters’ list of concerns. Bolsonaro also leads Lula on fighting corruption, according to Bloomberg, albeit by a smaller margin of 4%.

Bolsonaro is currently a subject in two money laundering probes, but he has fired off corruption accusations at Lula, citing the involvement of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in one of these investigations. Moraes, a close political ally of Lula and the man responsible for jailing Bolsonaro’s father, was accused of taking bribes from the banker at the center of the probe.

Economic concerns are the third most pressing issue for voters, according to the CNN poll. Lula has made his economic record a central pillar of his campaign, pointing to Brazil’s rising wages, falling unemployment, and modest economic growth during his tenure. The president enjoys a narrow lead over Bolsonaro when it comes to tackling poverty and inequality, but Bolsonaro is seen as a stronger candidate when it comes to taming inflation and reducing Brazil’s national debt, according to Bloomberg’s poll.

Who’s interfering in the election?

Meta claims that technical problems were to blame, and insists that any allegations of favoritism are “simply false and unsupported by the facts.” Whatever the explanation, Meta’s platforms are vital to both Lula and Bolsonaro, as other social media platforms – among them Google, TikTok, and X – have banned political advertising in the runup to the election.

Brazilian Attorney-General Jorge Messias has accused the US of election meddling, pointing to the White House’s awarding of a $1 million grant to right-wing groups “countering lawfare and censorship in Brazil” – essentially groups opposing Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court.

“Disagreements between governments are inherent to international relations,” Messias wrote on X earlier this month. “What cannot be tolerated is for foreign political interests to seek to interfere in the functioning of Brazilian institutions or to influence, directly or indirectly, choices that belong exclusively to the Brazilian people.”

Bolsonaro’s supporters view the court as a political instrument in the hands of Lula. Justice Moraes ordered the mass suspension of social media accounts over the spread of so-called “misinformation” in the runup to the 2022 election, with the overwhelming majority of accounts suspended being pro-Bolsonaro ones. 

One day after the first round of voting this year, Moraes issued an arrest warrant for Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo, who lives in the US. Eduardo Bolsonaro had lobbied the Trump administration to campaign for his father’s release from house arrest.

Bolsonaro has accused Lula of using the machinery of state to boost his campaign. Bolsonaro’s lawyers have called for Lula’s disqualification over his use of the government’s Gov.br system to promote his social programs, his use of government databases to obtain citizens’ contact information in order to send campaign messages, and his use of public funds to produce campaign videos.

What do the polls say?

Lula and Bolsonaro are neck-and-neck in the polls, with every major survey taken up to this month within a margin of error. According to a Quaest poll released after a televised debate between the candidates on Sunday, Bolsonaro leads the leftist incumbent by 45% to 44%. Another poll by PoderData places both candidates in a 50-50 dead heat.

Although the race is too close to call, one historic constant is likely troubling the Lula campaign: since Brazil introduced presidential runoffs in 1989, no candidate has ever won a runoff after losing the first round. However, the first-round gap between Lula and Bolsonaro this month was the smallest in Brazilian presidential election history, at just 1.87%.

With his family persecuted – as he sees it – by Lula’s judiciary, the election is deeply personal for Bolsonaro. For Lula, who is 80 years old, this runoff may be the last of his political career, and the last chance to preserve the leftist state and multipolar foreign policy he’s spent decades building. Whoever wins, this election will be watched in Washington, Moscow, and beyond.

When will we know the result?

Polls close in Brazil at 5 PM Brasilia Time (10 PM Central European Time) on Sunday, and results will begin to emerge around an hour later as ballots are counted. A winner will likely become obvious within hours – in 2022, Lula’s victory was confirmed less than three hours after polls closed.

For more on the election and analysis of the results, stick with RT.

Andrey Sushentsov, dean of the Faculty of International Relations at MGIMO and a member of the Scientific-Expert Council under the Security Council of the Russian Federation, discusses why Western Europe is so afraid of a direct confrontation with Russia, how the US is shifting the burden of the Ukraine crisis onto the EU, why the “pyramid of trust” surrounding Kiev is crumbling, and when the Ukraine conflict might come to an end.

His interview, first published in Russian by TASS, was translated and edited by the RT team.

America sails away, Europe gets the bill

Evgeny Kuznetsov: You have noted that the US is seeking to extricate itself from the Ukraine crisis by shifting the burden onto Western Europe. If Washington does indeed distance itself, are these Europeans prepared, politically and economically, to assume the role of Ukraine’s principal “security guarantor”?

Ukraine was well suited to this role, as a large state with substantial armed forces, motivated to confront Russia. But the limitation of such a strategy is that you can’t fully control the behavior of the “sword.” Nor is it entirely resource-efficient, there’s a limit to the resources that can be allocated to it, and if no turning point is reached in the confrontation, further support yields no additional gains in effectiveness.

The Americans realized early on that many of their interests in this crisis had been achieved and prepared to withdraw. They did what a maritime power usually does when it decides to turn its attention elsewhere as they sailed back to their own region. The main difference between a maritime power and a continental power lies in the freedom to choose where to deploy military forces. A maritime power can choose where to deploy them and launch strikes across various parts of the world’s oceans. This is usually carried out in the form of raids, as large-scale expeditionary campaigns rarely prove successful. The US decided it was time to leave.

But they didn’t want the withdrawal to be accompanied by the collapse of the Ukrainian regime. The US incorporated its withdrawal and the reorientation of its priorities towards East Asia into its policy towards its NATO allies. It handed over responsibility for supporting Ukraine to them and assumed the role of “moderator” as a negotiator who, rather than being the instigator of the crisis, is steering it towards a resolution. US strategic documents state an interest in bringing the Ukraine crisis to an end.

Yet the US behaved treacherously toward both Ukraine and its European allies, saddling them with this burden without warning. The Western Europeans lack military resources, technological capabilities, strategic thinking, and awareness of their own interests comparable to those of the Americans, qualities that enable them to weigh up causes and consequences, to discern what is achievable and what is not by military means, and to identify where their bloc’s interests lie in this crisis.

These Europeans currently have a financial instrument of considerable weight at their disposal, in essence, the only one they can draw upon. They are using it wastefully, given the domestic debt of most major European states is approaching or exceeding 100% of GDP. They can’t obtain external compensation for their military expenditure, and there’s no hope of a Ukrainian victory.

If there were any hope, they would be counting on recouping their losses through Russian resources, through new deals with Russia on new terms. None of these hopes is being realized.

Geography is a constant, an immutable part of the foreign policy system. Governments and historical circumstances may change, but geography remains unchanged.

The course towards a long-term confrontation with their largest neighbor, a source of many benefits for the Western European economy, which they have now lost, demonstrates the narrowness of their vision. Domestic political processes in the EU suggest that, following the Americans’ example, it is time for these Europeans to reflect on what their interests are, which of these are achievable in the course of the Ukraine crisis, which are not, and what the possible trajectory might be. So far, the Western Europeans haven’t made any good moves.

When there are no good moves, it is better to pass a turn and stop making mistakes. So far, as our President [Vladimir Putin] put it, it looks like a series of mistakes, one after another.

Big spending, little strategic power

Evgeny Kuznetsov: Won’t they get tired of playing this game?

Andrey Sushentsov: Western Europeans states don’t possess the full strategic autonomy enjoyed by Russia and the US, and are not entirely capable of acting collectively from a unified position. Every major decision requires the consensus of nearly 30 countries.

The European Commission doesn’t have a very substantial budget of its own but relies on the budgets of the nation states. Despite the single currency, debt is measured separately for each country.

There is no unified army. It’s a far cry from even the most loosely organized confederation. They would carry strategic weight if they were capable of acting in unison, but there’s no sign of this. Western Europeans are terrified of being directly drawn into a military crisis with Russia. Speculation about sending troops into Ukraine always ends with the caveat that this will only happen once a lasting peace and a ceasefire have been achieved.

In part, their enthusiasm is fueled by what they perceive to be the relatively low cost of supporting Ukraine and this proxy conflict. They have no qualms about Ukraine. They are indifferent to what will become of it, its borders or its population. They express rhetorical outrage, flock to summits, pose for “family photographs,” and make categorical statements. But in essence, this is a gathering of onlookers who are not directly involved in the military crisis.

Russia as the glue holding Europe together

Evgeny Kuznetsov: The EU is not abandoning its plans to impose ever more restrictions on Russia. Incidentally, Brussels has also added you to its sanctions list. At the same time, some European leaders are calling for dialogue with Russia. Is that possible at present?

Andrey Sushentsov: Western Europeans are using the Ukraine crisis as a platform for unity, to become a more cohesive entity. Their strategic lack of autonomy, the prominent role of the Americans, and their internal fragmentation mean that the only platform for solidarity is an anti-Russian one.

The relevance varies from country to country. For Southern Europe, it’s not so obvious. For Spain, despite its anti-Russian government, Palestine and the Middle East are more important. The Baltic states and Northern Europe have an alarmist and militaristic outlook. Some share a border with us. The people in charge are a peculiar lot; one can expect all sorts of things. But no one wants to involve their armed forces in the Ukraine crisis, as North Korea has done on our side.

They are using Ukraine to strengthen their own agency and take steps towards coordinated action. These steps are not particularly effective. However, joint plans are being drawn up and substantial funding is being allocated.

One unresolved issue is the restructuring of the Western European defense industry; it’s fragmented and produces around 15 different types of main battle tank with guns of varying calibers. Standardization is a major and difficult challenge. A catalyst is needed. In other words, they are, to some extent, tackling an internal challenge.

Peace alongside Russia – or a strategic dead end

Evgeny Kuznetsov: Do the NATO Europeans want to sit at the negotiating table with Russia, representing a “united Europe,” in order to compensate for their strategic lack of autonomy?

The US doesn’t resolve such issues, nor does Russia. We can afford to take strategic, autonomous, purposeful and consistent action. These Europeans take a step back, a step forward, two steps back; they look over their shoulders and seek consensus.

It’s in Russia’s interests to invite them to the negotiating table only if it is clear that these Europeans prioritize a stable world on the continent, based on the principle of “peace alongside Russia,” rather than against Russia. The “peace against Russia” approach is inherently unstable and a dead end for Western Europe. It dooms them to fall behind, to strategic defeat, and to never becoming a true player on the world stage. The more internal contradictions there are within the bloc regarding priorities, the more fragile it becomes, and the Russian question is gradually becoming precisely such an issue.

Ukraine’s ‘pyramid of trust’ is crumbling

Evgeny Kuznetsov: You said that the “pyramid of trust” surrounding Ukraine will soon crumble. When will this finally happen?

Andrey Sushentsov: From the Russian perspective, the logic behind this crisis is that we are waging a war to wear down our opponents and deplete their resources. We are targeting their rear lines and breaking their “continental sword.”

We are demonstrating that their strategy is irrelevant; its objectives are unattainable. And the resources they are expending will, over time, be needed in ever-greater quantities. The existing ones are becoming obsolete, as are the systems for utilizing them on Ukrainian territory. They need to be replenished and rebuilt.

Building infrastructure is extremely costly; in wartime conditions, it is simply impossible. In time, Western countries themselves will realize the unviability of this strategy. The opposition within those countries is already openly voicing its outrage and stating that this is a dead end.

There are increasingly insistent calls for the Ukrainian leadership to take a realistic view of the situation and understand what is achievable and what is not. The “pyramid of trust” is crumbling. One after another, the parties involved are adopting an increasingly detached stance on this issue.

Their primary and secondary hopes have not been realized. Now they are almost left high and dry. We must admit, it was a mistake.

No one wants to take responsibility for it. It has not only a political but also a financial dimension. Who should be held to account for the hundreds of billions of euros spent on a strategically futile venture that has antagonized Russia and undermined security on the continent?

That is why we are talking about a short-term historical perspective. It may come to an end in the coming months, or perhaps in the coming years. But we are not talking about a decade-long war. The point is that this will still remain a crisis with its own distinct phases, and we are currently in the final phase of its resolution.

Politicians advocating for annexation and further military operations could decide Israel’s next government despite holding only a handful of parliamentary seats, RT correspondent Charlotte Dubenskij reports.

With 37 parties competing for the Knesset’s 120 seats on October 27, Israel’s proportional representation system gives smaller factions leverage in coalition negotiations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud faces rivals including Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar, and Yair Golan’s left-leaning Democrats. In her report, Dubenskij examines the Religious Zionist Party (RZP), which currently holds seven seats and is led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Smotrich has called for territory as far as the Yellow Line in Gaza and the Litani River in Lebanon to be annexed. His ambitions also extend to the occupied West Bank, which he calls Judea and Samaria.

The minister has also advocated for taking all of Gaza for “Zionist and security reasons” and described withholding food and water from its population until hostages were returned as potentially “just and moral.”

Fellow party candidates Zvi Sukkot and Orit Strook have taken similar positions, advocating for more hostility, expanding Israeli settlements, and taking over territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

The election comes amid continuing Israeli attacks in Gaza and southern Lebanon, along with escalating settler violence in the West Bank. Recent olive-harvest attacks have targeted Palestinian farmers, European diplomats, and American photojournalist Heidi Levine.

Dubenskij examines how a party with just seven seats could help shape the next coalition and its policies.

Watch the full report below.

French President Emmanuel Macron has slammed as “stupid” and “unacceptable” remarks by foreign leaders about the unrest gripping France, in an apparent swipe at US President Donald Trump, who blamed the violence on Paris’ lax border policies.

France has been rocked by some of its worst riots in years, sparked last month by teacher shortages and crumbling schools before escalating into nationwide protests over inequality, soaring living costs and public service cuts.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets over the weekend as demonstrations descended into clashes with police, arson and looting. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested, around 1,000 officers injured, hundreds of businesses looted and buildings torched, with damage estimated at “hundreds of millions of euros.”

Trump pours fuel on the fire

Trump claimed that “migrants, jihadists, and communists” had “conquered, looted, and burned” France, accusing Macron of failing to secure its borders. He urged European leaders to “close their borders,” before seizing on the unrest to rally Republicans ahead of the November 3 midterms, warning that scenes of “burning steeples and raging fires” were “what the Radical Dumocrats want to do to AMERICA” with their own migration agenda.

Macron isn’t amused

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Macron accused outside actors of manipulating information about the events to their gain.

“There was foreign manipulation of information, which gave rise to unacceptable and stupid comments from many people, including foreign leaders,” he said. “We have had people claiming that we were invaded by hordes of migrants and Islamists, which is completely false… These people annoy me.”

Asked whether he was referring to Trump, Macron replied: “Among others.”

President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that foreign leaders — including those “on the other side of the Atlantic” — were seeking to exploit France’s tense social climate for political gain following a weekend of street violence and looting.

Protests over soaring living costs… pic.twitter.com/XlitrzVoK6

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 21, 2026

While there is no clear evidence that migrants have played a disproportionate role in the unrest, multiple videos posted online have shown protesters waving Palestinian flags alongside French ones.

They said the riots and destruction in France were about the cost of living and schools.

Then explain the Palestinian flags and keffiyehs.

Allowing mass third-world migration is why France is done. pic.twitter.com/jDr733vcOx

— TaraBull (@TaraBull) October 19, 2026

French authorities have largely blamed the violence on radical far-left groups and opportunistic criminals, without linking its organization to immigrants. Meanwhile, politicians across France’s political spectrum blamed Macron and his government for the unrest, accusing the administration of undermining public services and failing to maintain order.

Macron leaves the building

His absence drew criticism of an “absent president” and left rivals Marine Le Pen, who leads first-round polling for April 2027 with 32-36% support, and Jean-Luc Melenchon, to dominate the debate at home.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has ordered curfews ahead of fresh protests, with gatherings banned near Paris landmarks including the Louvre and Champs-Elysees for three days. France also plans to deploy 1,000 counterterrorism troops to reinforce police on Saturday, October 24. Lecornu is due to meet mayors of riot-hit cities on Thursday to coordinate efforts to prevent further violence.

Russia, the usual suspect

In his remarks, Macron also dismissed suggestions of foreign interference in the unrest itself, citing a lack of evidence. His remarks followed a flurry of Western media speculation seeking to blame the riots, which spread from France to Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Albania, on outside meddling – with Russia once again cast as the usual suspect.

Outlets such as The Financial Times and the Telegraph, citing “anonymous” sources, reported that several EU governments had asked intelligence agencies to investigate possible Russian involvement. The FT expanded the suspect list to Iran and Algeria, claiming some officials had even demanded a formal EU probe.

Yet the allegations have apparently failed to convince even Brussels. According to Euronews, the European Commission has declined to launch an investigation, citing insufficient evidence.

The speculation follows a familiar pattern of EU officials invoking “hybrid warfare” and the alleged “Russian threat” amid domestic turmoil. Just this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accused Moscow and Minsk of “weaponizing migration,” linking them to the summer crisis in Spain’s Ceuta, where an estimated 70,000 migrants crossed from Morocco, sparking a border emergency and political fallout over EU migration policies. However, yet again, she presented no evidence connecting either country to the crisis.

Moscow says look closer to home

Moscow routinely dismisses allegations of interference and claims of a Russian threat as “absurd” fabrications, accusing EU leaders of using the narrative to deflect blame for their own policy failures and distract from mounting domestic crises.

Responding to Rama’s accusations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told him to look closer to home.

“These are citizens of your own country who took to the streets to protest. Don’t shift your responsibility onto others. Deal with your own domestic problems,” she said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, described the unrest sweeping the EU as evidence of “a major crisis… bordering on chaos.”

The European Commission will not revive a proposal to seize Russian sovereign assets immobilized at the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear to finance Ukraine, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has said.

Approximately €210 billion ($236 billion) in Russian central bank assets have been frozen in the EU, most of them held at Euroclear. Brussels has been using profits generated by the funds to support Ukraine through a so-called “windfall tax,” but has stopped short of confiscating the principal over concerns about the legal consequences. De Wever has repeatedly raised those risks at meetings of EU leaders.

“One colleague came to tell me in the hallway that it was as if I had run a flamethrower over that debate,” the prime minister told Belgian lawmakers on Wednesday, according to local media, referring to discussions last year. De Wever was briefing the Belgian parliament on the meeting.

“Not everyone experienced the discussion,” he said. “New leaders have emerged who are developing a discourse that I was able to nip in the bud last year.”

The proposal that De Wever considers a nonstarter nevertheless received support in various forms from Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, among others, during last week’s European Council summit.

EU leaders previously considered using approximately €185 billion ($208 billion) in Russian sovereign assets held in Belgium to finance Kiev. After De Wever demanded collective guarantees against potential financial and legal consequences, they instead agreed last December to raise €90 billion ($101 billion) through EU borrowing.

Kiev has deemed the foreign financing available for 2026-2027 insufficient, with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky requesting an additional €70 billion ($79 billion) last week. The EU has made no new funding commitment and reportedly plans to seek further contributions from other potential donors, particularly the UK and Canada.

The US military has quietly begun withdrawing troops from bases across the Middle East, while Washington is ordering diplomatic personnel to leave several missions in the region, NBC News reports.

The moves come as President Donald Trump considers launching a new wave of attacks on Iran, and the withdrawals resemble preparations made by the Pentagon and State Department ahead of the initial US-Israeli strikes in February, NBC reported on Wednesday, citing two US officials and two people familiar with the matter.

US troops stationed in Jordan, Qatar, and Kuwait are among those being relocated, according to the report. Washington reportedly intends to maintain a limited presence at its regional bases, including personnel responsible for air defenses and security.

Ahead of the February 28 attack, the Pentagon withdrew large numbers of troops from potentially vulnerable bases to shield them from expected Iranian retaliation. Tehran accused Washington of using Gulf residents as “human shields” after thousands of US service members took shelter in civilian hotels and office buildings.

The State Department has also ordered non-essential personnel and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, citing escalating attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement against civilian airports and other critical infrastructure.

Reuters reported that Washington is preparing additional diplomatic withdrawals across the Gulf, citing US officials, but State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott described reports of further withdrawals as “inaccurate.”

Some of Trump’s advisers, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, have reportedly advocated resuming military operations to increase pressure on Tehran. Others have warned against launching another major campaign without a clearly defined objective.

Hegseth made an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday, holding closed-door talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days before Israel’s October 27 parliamentary elections. Netanyahu is seeking another term amid mounting criticism of his handling of the wars in Gaza and Iran. Trump has endorsed his reelection bid.

The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched on February 28, has entered its eighth month, disrupting global energy markets and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has offered to restore normal navigation through the vital waterway within seven days if Washington lifts its naval blockade, eases oil sanctions, and agrees to a broader cessation of hostilities.

Trump has rejected the Iranian proposal as “unacceptable,” while his administration continues to consider whether additional military pressure could force Tehran to accept their terms.

Two OpenAI agents disabled security monitoring systems during testing, with one later denying it had done so, the company has revealed.

The disclosure follows a string of similar incidents in recent months involving autonomous AI agents, which can independently plan and carry out tasks using external tools.

In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI said that the incidents occurred on October 3 and 6, involving its GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra agents, respectively.

In the first case, the coding agent tasked with creating evaluation tasks using employee feedback collected via Slack disabled automatic alerts to the company’s security team. According to OpenAI, the agent reasoned that the user’s prior instruction not to send messages on the team communication platform during the process applied to all notifications, including security alerts.

OpenAI said that it was investigating why the agents disabled the safeguards and working to prevent similar incidents. While the behavior may have resulted from “benign overpersistence” by the agents to complete the task, the company said that it was also “developing evaluations to test whether models might have a propensity to evade misalignment monitoring in particular.”

Last month, the Wall Street Journal, citing Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, reported that the company had scrapped the release of its GPT-6.1 Astra model. The decision reportedly came after internal testing had found the model to be more deceptive than its predecessors and apt to employ potentially unsafe external tools without first seeking the user’s permission.

Also in September, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that an OpenAI agent had hacked his country’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, with the company failing to report the breach for nearly three months.

Earlier, in July, OpenAI disclosed that its models had escaped their sandbox during cybersecurity testing, accessed the internet, and hacked into the servers of the Hugging Face online repository for AI models and datasets.

Earlier this month, Anthropic released a report detailing instances of “unintended” actions by its AI models, including Claude Haiku 4.5 providing a bogus tip to Philadelphia police regarding an ongoing homicide investigation.

Calls to halt AI development or impose tighter regulations on the industry have grown louder.

Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton has warned that increasingly powerful AI could eventually escape human control, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has also urged governments to adopt a more active role in imposing safety standards on the industry.

However, US President Donald Trump has brushed off such concerns, saying that restrictions on AI development could allow China to overtake the US in the technological race.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, too, has argued that the world must absorb some “bad things” resulting from AI development, including hacks and scams, as the benefits afforded by the technology far outweigh the drawbacks.

A US judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties for deceiving Facebook users about the privacy of their personal data, in a landmark ruling stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed the harvesting of personal information from millions of Americans for political campaigns.

New Mexico District Judge Francis Mathew issued the ruling on Wednesday, following a jury verdict in September finding Facebook’s parent company responsible for nearly 44 million violations of the state’s consumer protection laws.

The judge concluded that Meta’s misconduct warranted a penalty exceeding $219 billion under state law, but reduced the amount to $25 billion, making it one of the largest financial penalties ever imposed on an American corporation.

The case arose from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when it emerged that the British political consulting firm obtained personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users without their consent.

woah, it gets worse. In the Meta securities lawsuit for Cambridge Analytica cover-up, plaintiffs just posted deposition list. If they have the courage to 'go to the mat' (as Zuckerberg says) like New Mexico AG has done for over $25B, this could be very, very bad for Team Zuck. 1/3

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) October 22, 2026

The information was collected through a third-party personality quiz application that exploited Facebook’s system for accessing users’ friends’ data. Cambridge Analytica used the information to develop psychological profiles of voters and deliver targeted political advertising, including during the 2016 US presidential election.

The company was established in 2013 as the American political-data arm of the British SCL Group, a private contractor specializing in behavioral influence, psychological profiling, and strategic communications. SCL also marketed influence and research services to defense clients, including the UK Defense Ministry.

The scandal also exposed connections to Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley data-analysis company with extensive contracts involving US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. A 2018 New York Times investigation revealed that at least one Palantir employee advised Cambridge Analytica’s researchers during the company’s 2014 efforts to harvest Facebook information.

Palantir denied having a formal business relationship with Cambridge Analytica, maintaining that the employee acted in a personal capacity.

Attorney General Raul Torrez hailed Wednesday’s judgment as a warning to Silicon Valley that even the largest technology companies could be held accountable for violating consumer protection laws.

Meta has denied misleading users and plans to appeal the ruling, arguing that the unprecedented penalty is unconstitutional. Responding to the jury’s verdict last month, the company also invoked freedom of speech, insisting that Facebook is a forum for free expression.

Numerous websites worldwide, including government-run pages, temporarily went dark after the AI-assisted discovery of critical vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language, which powers around 70% of the web globally.

On Wednesday, the developers of the popular open-source programming language, which helps websites run and display content, issued an urgent security alert over “critical remote code execution vulnerabilities.”

The flaws could allow hackers to take control of affected websites, prompting the release of urgent fixes, with all PHP users “strongly encouraged to update immediately.”

Cybersecurity agencies worldwide, including the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center, the Australian Signals Directorate, and the Canadian Center for Cyber Security, issued their own alerts, advising users to apply the patches immediately and prioritize internet-facing systems.

The announcement prompted France’s Interior Ministry to temporarily shut down prefecture websites, with local government pages also unavailable. In neighboring Belgium, the Foreign Ministry similarly took its websites offline on Wednesday. In the Netherlands, the National Cyber Security Center, the websites of all major political parties, and at least one port took similar precautionary measures.

In Denmark, the national school communication platform was temporarily shut down; in Finland, the government’s public web services went dark.

The flaws in PHP were identified by two cybersecurity companies, Calif and Wiz, in August. PHP developers have since worked on fixes, while keeping the discovery under wraps to prevent malicious actors from exploiting the vulnerabilities.

The cybersecurity companies said they made extensive use of AI models in the process, including Google’s Gemini 4 Argon and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol.

Wiz stated that the “underlying flaws had been present for decades, but demonstrating their exploitability required an exceptionally complex chain of steps, at the edge of what human researchers could practically achieve.”

Poland has accused Kiev of making unacceptable “suicidal” moves after the Ukrainian city of Lviv dedicated 2027 to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its leader, Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevich.

To celebrate the 120th anniversary of Shukhevich’s birth and mark 85 years since the creation of the militant group that perpetrated mass killings of ethnic Poles, Jews, and Russians, the Lviv Regional Council decided on Tuesday to organize “cultural, memorial, scientific, and mass media events,” as well as exhibitions and national-patriotic rallies.

The announcement was met with widespread condemnation in Poland, which regards the UPA as perpetrators of genocide against Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia and its leader, Shukhevich, as a key ‘architect’ of the massacres. From 1943 to 1945, Ukrainian nationalist militants murdered an estimated 100,000 ethnic Poles in the regions, which are now largely part of modern Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the move a “suicidal tactic,” and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called it “unacceptable.” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski condemned the announcement, calling for the resolution’s key sponsor, Lviv regional lawmaker Svyatoslav Sheremet, to be placed on Poland’s travel ban list.

The resolution ultimately vanished from the Lviv council’s website without any explanation. Speaking to Polish media on Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said Warsaw received assurances from Kiev that the resolution would not be implemented.

“We take on faith the words of the administration of Vladimir Zelensky that this catastrophic decision will not be implemented,” Bosacki stated, calling the disappearance of the resolution from the council’s website a “good sign,” but cautioning against interpreting it as an official cancellation of the celebrations.

Poland regards the UPA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, as perpetrators of genocide, while modern Ukraine cherishes them as freedom fighters and national heroes.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named a military unit after the ‘Heroes of the UPA’ and established a ‘pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians’ at Kiev’s main military cemetery, where OUN leader and Nazi collaborator Andrey Melnik was reinterred with state honors in May.

First and foremost, it’s important to note a significant decrease in the level of violent crime. Of course, after President Donald Trump’s controversial firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erica McEntarfer, for publishing weak labor market figures, trust in American statistics has been considerably shaken. Thus, reports of achieving the lowest murder rate in history – 4.3 cases per 100,000 population – may be politically motivated and deliberately boastful. Nevertheless, a noticeable decline in the rate of murders and other violent crimes has indeed occurred in recent years. This can be attributed to increased federal funding and strengthening of the police force, as well as intensified efforts against illegal immigration during the Trump administration.

A particularly striking aspect of this is the comparison with Canada, which has been and remains a bastion of liberalism in immigration and domestic policy. Unlike the US, where the level of violent crime is traditionally high, Canada has always been perceived as a safe society. But now, everything is changing before our eyes.

Since 2015, the rate of violent crime per capita in the U.S. has decreased by 15.1%, while in Canada, on the contrary, it has increased by 36.9%. As a result, for the first time in history, the land of the maple leaf has surpassed the U.S. in terms of violent crime per capita.

Another significant trend: Gallup polls show that the perception of homosexual relationships as morally acceptable has stopped increasing and even declined in the US The share of those supporting same-sex marriage fell from 71% in 2023 to 64% in 2026. Support for gender transition practices among Americans decreased from 46% to 38%.

As we can see, the MAGA effect is concentrated within the Republican electorate and primarily manifests in the consolidation of Republicans based on traditional values. At the same time, there is an intensifying value conflict between conservative Republicans and the Democratic Party electorate.

Perhaps the most vivid manifestation of the MAGA effect is that in the summer of 2024, the trend of decreasing births among white Americans was replaced by steady growth, and by spring 2026, the proportion of newborns from white families reached 51.5%, the first increase in five years.

Let’s see if this trend can be maintained, but the mere fact of the growth in births among white Americans is quite remarkable – it demonstrates a surge of optimism in the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) community and proves that they still have fight left in them. In an era of victorious globalization, WASPs in the US were already being metaphorically buried with a derogatory epitaph, yet they suddenly breathed life and showed they are ready to fight for their country, which their ancestors built.

It is noteworthy that conservative and religious Americans have twice as many children as their liberal and non-religious counterparts. Thus, the conservative American community reproduces itself (total fertility rate 2.22), while the liberal American environment naturally shrinks by half in each subsequent generation (total fertility rate 1.02), mainly replenishing itself through immigration.

The descendants of pilgrims and pioneers remember that the primary traditional value is the will to live. Everything one needs to know about MAGA can be boiled down to two points. First, it is the rise of the American spirit. Second, it serves as a visual reiteration of a biblical lesson: the salvation of those who are drowning is in the hands of the drowners themselves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump could hold a “historic” three-way meeting at the APEC summit in China, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is scheduled to take place in Shenzhen, China, on November 18-19.

Speaking to the Russian outlet Vesti on Wednesday, Ushakov said Beijing had already begun preparations for the potential talks.

“Everyone is ready for this, but much, if not everything, depends on the Chinese hosts of the summit,” he said.

The possibility of three-way talks was also discussed during Putin’s meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, according to the Kremlin.

Ushakov described the proposed gathering as potentially “historic,” noting that it would be the first meeting of the three leaders in this format.

Putin and Trump last met in person at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August 2025, and have remained in contact by phone, most recently on October 9.

Trump and Xi have met twice so far this year, first in Beijing in May and then at the White House last month.

Trump has previously expressed openness to three-way talks, suggesting that nuclear disarmament could be among the issues discussed.

Asked whether the talks could also contribute to peace efforts in the Ukraine conflict, Ushakov said a single meeting would not be enough. “Even if the meeting lasts one, two or five hours, it still won’t be possible to resolve all the problems,” he said.

Commenting on whether the summit could amount to a “new Yalta,” Ushakov said: “I think that if the meeting takes place, there will be a storm of comments and assessments.” 

The 1945 Yalta Conference brought together Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to discuss the final stages of World War II and the postwar international order.

Slovakia will discuss economic cooperation with Russia, including energy supplies, in Moscow next week, the Slovak Foreign Ministry has said.

The landlocked EU nation has remained a buyer of Russian oil and gas despite the deterioration of the ties between Moscow and the EU in the wake of the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The country is supposed to phase out Russian energy by late 2027 under the bloc’s plan to replace Russian oil and gas supplies from elsewhere.

The Russian-Slovak intergovernmental commission for economic, scientific, and technical cooperation has been inactive since November 2021 but is now set to meet next Monday, the Slovak Foreign Ministry announced late on Tuesday. The commission will discuss a broad range of topics, including farming, environment, sports, and culture, and focus on energy supply, including nuclear energy, according to the ministry.

“The fundamental topic will be energy and the possibility to cooperate in securing supplies of strategic resources. The Slovak side is also interested in discussing gas supplies and the continuation of oil supplies,” it said in a statement.

Bratislava continues “to base its approach on its European Union and North Atlantic Alliance membership and keeping commitments of this membership” but wants to create room for dialogue, the ministry said.

Last month, Fico warned that Europe was moving dangerously close to a direct clash between NATO and Russia, accusing the West of seeking a “pretext” for a major conflict. He accused EU nations of engaging in increasingly bellicose rhetoric and described the Ukraine conflict as “out of control.”

“The situation has never been as serious and tense regarding the possibility of a pan-European war conflict as it is now,” he said.

The EU has updated its Arctic strategy, and militarism has replaced climate activism as Brussels’ new preoccupation in the frozen north. Despite what the new strategy claims, however, the Arctic is not “the EU’s Northern Neighborhood.”

Unveiled on Tuesday by the European Commission, the ‘Strategy for the Arctic’ describes the region as a “critical” zone for trade, investment, and conservation, and a flashpoint for military confrontation with Russia. 

Today, we adopt our new 🇪🇺 Arctic Strategy. The Arctic is where the tectonic plates of geopolitics collide head-on. It requires us to change our strategic posture. And work with like-minded partners that share our values ↓ https://t.co/B6GvgUOCQk

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) October 20, 2026

“With Russia and China increasing their footprint and ambition, the Arctic has become a front line of global power competition,” top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas said in a statement. “Our revamped Strategy reflects this new reality and puts security firmly at its core.”

To understand just how dramatic this new focus on security is, it’s necessary to turn back the clock to 2021, when the commission released its previous Arctic strategy.

The EU’s green past

Published on October 13, 2021, the strategy opened by describing climate change as “the most comprehensive threat the Arctic is facing.” Russia’s refurbishment of Soviet-era military bases along its Arctic coastline was presented primarily as something that could “further aggravate the consequences of climate change,” and the EU pledged to work with Moscow “to improve environmental and health security,” and to leave military relations with Russia up to NATO and individual member states.

Four months later, Brussels severed relations with Moscow and entered the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Kiev’s side. The title of the 2021 strategy – ‘A stronger EU engagement for a peaceful, sustainable and prosperous Arctic’ – needed an update that reflected the EU’s new militarism.

Brussels claims the Arctic

“Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine has reshaped the security of the Arctic and the EU as a whole,” the new document opens, going on to assert that “the Arctic is not someone else’s frontier. It is Europe’s Northern Neighbourhood and the European Union is part of the Arctic.”

Geography is not exactly on Brussels’ side here. The 27-member union has no coastline on the Arctic Ocean, and only two of its members – Finland and Sweden – have territory inside the Arctic Circle (although a Danish dependency, Greenland left the EU in 1985). Russia accounts for 53% of the Arctic Ocean’s coastline, and 45% of all land inside the Arctic Circle.

To compensate for this, the new strategy proposes that all waters north of 60 degrees latitude be considered ‘Arctic’. The commission argues that this would allow its environmental regulations to “cover the actual footprint of Arctic shipping.” It would also dramatically expand the EU’s ‘Arctic’ territory and population by bringing almost all of Finland and Sweden into the new region, including Finland’s entire 1,340 kilometer border with Russia. It is on this frontier that the EU is preparing for conflict.

War preparations

The strategy sets out a lengthy list of military objectives, with the commission promising to:

• “Deepen engagement with NATO” and hold military exercises focused on moving troops and equipment into the Arctic

• Develop military logistics corridors from central Europe to the Arctic

• Upgrade ports and airports for military use

• Expand icebreaker capacity 

• Expand satellite surveillance of the region and tracking of Russian oil tankers

• Develop polar-capable undersea drones

• Establish a “Maritime Security Hub” and increase data-sharing with NATO

• Deepen military ties with Canada, Iceland, Norway, the UK, and US

The strategy is short on some specifics, and almost all of these goals are presented without an accompanying price tag. The only actual figures listed are €260 million for ten existing European Defence Fund projects, €107 million toward the construction of an undersea internet cable to Greenland, and the €200 million Greenland ‘Partnership Package’, which was announced last month. Although the commission says that this investment package will “support resilience, security and peace in the Arctic,” none of the €200 million in funding is earmarked for explicitly military projects.

‘Shadow fleet’ is an EU euphemism for tankers carrying Russian oil in international waters. Russian oil exporters do not abide by EU sanctions, nor do importers outside the EU. Nevertheless, EU member states have abrogated the authority to seize them, in what the Kremlin considers “flagrant violation of international law” and “outright piracy and robbery.”

Should the seizures continue, Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to respond in kind.

The ‘hybrid war’ deception

The EU’s militarization of the Arctic is justified, the document states, as Russia is “pursuing hybrid strategies against its neighbours… from drone incursions and Global Navigation Satellite System jamming to the sabotage of undersea cables.” In the absence of real, verifiable military action by Russia against Europe, EU and NATO leaders have taken to accusing Moscow of waging “hybrid war,” describing drone sightings, fires, and accidents at weapons factories, protests, and even natural disasters as Kremlin-orchestrated plots to destabilize the West. 

Nevertheless, claims of ‘hybrid war’ have persisted in European politics and media, to the point where some analysts view the claims themselves as a form of “hybrid warfare” against the European public, used to justify military spending hikes and welfare cutbacks.

“When you are sure it is the Russians, or almost sure it is the Russians, attribute it to the Russians,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte advised the bloc’s political leaders and intelligence chiefs earlier this month. 

Russia has been holding military exercises in the Arctic for decades, and the refurbishment of its Soviet-era bases in the region has been underway since before the EU published its 2021 Arctic strategy. However, the newly militarized EU is no longer content to handle this matter through old mechanisms – namely the Arctic Council – and insists that countering Russia in the north is its responsibility as well as NATO’s.

The Europeans dictate their terms

The EU’s new strategy calls on Russia to “ensure that freedom of navigation is preserved” along the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a formerly impassable navigation corridor that can now be traversed year-round, thanks to receding polar ice caps and the assistance of Russia’s vast icebreaker fleet. The NSR cuts transit time from China to northern Europe in half, and in August, the first Chinese container ship arrived at the port of Murmansk via this route.

The NSR skims along more than 24,000 km of Russian coastline, and through internationally recognized Russian territorial waters. Russia is the only state capable of rendering assistance to any ships passing through the route, and vessels wishing to pass in winter must pay to be escorted by Russian icebreakers. Moscow retains the right to deny any ships access to the NSR.

Nevertheless, the EU insists that it has a say over Russian maritime policy, even as it vows to “continue to sanction the shadow fleet entering from the Northern Sea Route” and place Russian shipping under satellite surveillance. The latest Arctic strategy states that the EU will “actively engage” with other nations to ensure freedom of navigation in the Arctic, but omits any possibility of engagement with Russia. Only “like-minded partners,” a term mentioned nearly two dozen times in the document, will be consulted.

Diplomatic and economic disputes in the Arctic were previously handled at the Arctic Council. However, seven of the council’s eight members – every one except Russia – stopped participating in high-level Council meetings in March 2022. That same month, the EU joined Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in suspending any activities involving Russia within the separate Barents Euro-Arctic Council.

The EU’s Arctic delusion

In a message released by its embassy in the Netherlands on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the document as “another pipe dream of EU hawks.”

“A quick reality check: Russia operates a fleet of 40+ icebreakers. How many does the EU have in total?” the ministry asked. “The Arctic should be a place of cooperation, not confrontation. Maybe it’s time to stop the provocations?”

Residents of New South Wales, Australia could soon have the option to make a final contribution to their garden upon death, after the state’s parliament approved turning human remains into compost as an alternative to burial and cremation.

The bill, introduced by Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, cleared the upper house on Wednesday after passing the lower house unanimously last week. It now awaits assent, with a minimum two-year wait before going into force.

Known as ‘terramation’ or natural organic reduction, a body is placed in a vessel with wood chips, straw, and other plant material. Microbes break down the remains, producing material that can eventually nourish trees and gardens.

US operator Recompose says its process takes 8-12 weeks, including a curing period. Remaining bones are mechanically ground down and mixed back in, and artificial implants are removed.

Under the NSW bill, families can take the resulting compost home to nourish a memorial tree or garden, or arrange for it to be placed elsewhere. However, choosing to become garden material remains a personal decision; operators are barred from turning a deceased person’s remains into compost against their written wishes.

“We are running out of burial space [and] that space can cost as much as $50,000 [Australian dollars],” Greenwich told ABC in June. He predicted that composting will become cheaper than cremation, although local prices have yet to be established.

Not everyone is pleased with the proposal. NSW Premier Chris Minns said in June that he felt “a bit weird about it.” Catholic Weekly columnist Michael Cook described it as a “bizarre solution to saving the planet,” arguing that composting conflicts with religious respect for the human body.

Similar human composting practices have already been approved in several US states and part of Germany. England and Wales are considering rules that could eventually allow it.

Israel’s leading political parties hold broadly similar positions on Palestinian statehood and Gaza despite their fierce electoral rivalry, RT correspondent Charlotte Dubenskij reports. 

With parliamentary elections scheduled for October 27, the report examines whether a change of government would bring any significant shift in the country’s policies toward the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing Likud party, has categorically rejected the creation of a Palestinian state.

“There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu declared.

His position is echoed by several political rivals. The leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman, has said that the idea of a two-state solution “has died,” while Gadi Eisenkot, head of the centrist Yashar party, has ruled out Palestinian statehood under a government he leads.

Even Yair Golan, leader of the left-leaning Democrats, has described a two-state solution as “too ambitious” for now, instead advocating civilian separation while retaining Israeli security control.

The similarities in position extend to Gaza, where the main parties all support disarming Hamas and maintaining Israeli military involvement, although they differ over who should govern the territory.

Military conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews remains a major point of contention, with disagreements over long-standing draft exemptions triggering widespread protests.

With smaller factions potentially playing a decisive role in forming the next coalition, Dubenskij raises the question of how much Israel’s policies could change after the vote.

Watch the full report below.

The Wall Street Journal has challenged Elon Musk’s denials over alleged restrictions on satellite services used for Ukrainian drone strikes deep inside Russia. The outlet has cited anonymous White House sources who have claimed that the SpaceX founder and Starlink owner had personally ordered restricting the service.

Ukrainian officials last week claimed that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications service and its military-grade version, Starshield, which Kiev uses for frontline drone operations, stopped working on drones traveling faster than 160 kph (100 mph). Neither Starlink nor SpaceX has publicly acknowledged a technical “signal or service failure,” leaving the questions of whether an actual service restriction took place, and if so what could have caused it, unconfirmed. On Saturday Ukrainian Defense Minister Evgeny Khmara said Starlink terminal speeds have returned to 400 kph (248 mph). 

What has Ukraine claimed about Starshield?

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky initially claimed, without evidence, that Kiev had been told “technical malfunctions” had caused a service slowdown. He later shifted the blame to Washington. On NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday Zelensky claimed, again without citing evidence nor being asked to provide it, that an order had come from the US government. According to Zelensky, Kiev had even secretly despatched cars to the EU, where they could drive "legally" at 180kph (110mph) where tests allegedly surfaced discrepancies in Starlink performance between the EU and Ukraine.

Musk has categorically denied that he instructed SpaceX to restrict either service, nor has he confirmed that any restriction or slowdown took place.

The WSJ cited anonymous sources who contradicted him, alleging on Tuesday that he personally ordered speed limits on Ukrainian hardware connected to the satellite network.

Even the WSJ's sources accounts differed. Some claimed that Musk acted unilaterally; others said he consulted senior administration officials, including President Donald Trump, before making the decision. The outlet also claimed that SpaceX representatives contacted the White House to coordinate their accounts of whether the restrictions had been agreed on with the administration. 

What has the US government said about Starshield?

Musk earlier insisted that Starshield is owned and controlled by the US government, meaning any speed or usage restrictions are determined by the US military and ultimately Trump – who denied that he ordered the restrictions, though he said on Monday he “would like to find out” who did. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent both said the administration was not behind the restrictions, with Bessent rebuking Zelensky for making “reckless” allegations.

Relations between Zelensky and Washington have effectively collapsed in recent weeks over sanctions on Russia and Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. Both Musk and Trump have sharply criticized Ukraine’s attacks on Russian diesel refineries, blaming them for global fuel shortages and soaring prices at the pump.

Speaking at the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump warned Zelensky that he is “going to have to want to make a deal.” He also criticized the cost of supporting Kiev, saying the US has received “absolutely nothing back” except “grief, death and tremendous monetary loss.”

What did Kiev say about Starshield?

Despite Zelensky’s evidence-free assertions and there being no record in the public sphere to support it, the Western press and Ukrainian diplomats are echoing the claims regardless. Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington, Denis Senik, said on Tuesday that Kiev is still “waiting for the official response from contacts with the Pentagon and SpaceX” to understand what happened. 

What did the Kremlin say about Starshield?

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week that Moscow is unaware of the reported Starlink restrictions, but stressed that “overall, of course, it would be better if such amazing technology… was not used for military purposes at all.” Moscow has condemned Western military assistance for Kiev, arguing that it only prolongs the conflict and obstructs peace efforts.

Is there any proof Starshield was slowed down?

There is no proof on the public record or in the public domain that the Starshield was affected. The only suggestions supporting the idea such an incident took place are Vladimir Zelensky's uncontested claim that Ukrainians sent cars to the EU with Starlink terminals to compare data and the claims of an anonymous Ukrainian officer who told German media giant Axel Springer's Global Reporter's Network, seemingly during the alleged service restriction, that all operations were on hold. 

Washington has been involved in nearly two dozen regime change operations across the Middle East, each ending in disaster, US Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack has said.

Barrack criticized American efforts to manipulate the region and impose change through military force during an interview at the Global Security Forum in Qatar on Tuesday. He warned that his remarks would be “real” rather than “diplomatic.”

“If you take the greater Middle East, including the Levant, the Gulf, the Caucases, Central Asia, North Africa, we’ve had 23 regime changes. None of them have worked,” he said, stressing that the US had been involved in all of them in one way or another and bore responsibility for the outcomes.

The diplomat added that “kinetic reactions have never worked” either, referring to US military interventions and their “unintended consequences.” The latest US-Israeli war on Iran, which began in late February, has also plunged the region into chaos.

Barrack acknowledged that fomenting “conflict and controversy” had previously benefited Washington because “the more off base the region was, the more [Washington] could manipulate fossil fuels for its own benefit.” That is no longer the case, he said.

The envoy contrasted the proposed approach with the arrangement Washington reached with Saudi Arabia in 1974 following the oil shock triggered by the Yom Kippur War between Israel and several Arab nations.

Under the old arrangement, Saudi Arabia continued pricing its oil exclusively in US dollars and invested much of its revenues in American assets, while also purchasing US weapons and expecting American troops stationed in the region to rescue it in case of a major conflict.

The US confrontation with Iran, culminating in two open wars since 2025, has crumbled the foundations of that relationship.

Barrack urged friendly Middle Eastern nations to temper their expectations of American assistance, saying the US is not offering “a commitment to open seas and open trade at any cost.” Washington should “do a better job of defining: here’s what we’re willing to do, here’s what we’re not willing to do,” he added.

“We leave Israel out of this because it’s so delicate to talk about,” Barrack said.

He also acknowledged that the Israeli government was reluctant to make any concessions on national security and described a “failure” of the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements Israel signed with several Arab nations in 2020.

Poland does not have enough Patriot air defense missiles to hand over to Ukraine, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has said, urging other NATO members to supply Kiev with the scarce interceptors.

In an interview with the Polish Press Agency published on Monday, Sikorski warned of growing pressure on Western air defenses, citing the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran.  

“Following the attacks on Iran, the shortage of interceptor missiles has indeed increased, and Russia is producing more missiles than we have interceptors to neutralize them. This is a real problem,” he said.  

“There are NATO countries that still have such resources to contribute, but Poland is not one of them,” Sikorski said, adding that Warsaw “can only join the calls for countries possessing Patriot missiles to share them with Ukraine.”  

Poland has emerged as one of the EU’s most rapidly militarizing nations, with defense spending reaching 4.7% of GDP. Warsaw has also been one of Kiev’s staunchest backers, pouring billions into military and other aid while serving as a crucial hub for Western arms shipments.  

Yet Poland now faces delays in replenishing its own arsenal, with deliveries of US-made PAC-3 MSE Patriot interceptors pushed back as the war with Iran drains American weapons stocks, Polish General Ireneusz Nowak warned earlier this month.  

Tensions flared again this year after Zelensky awarded a Ukrainian military unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” Polish President Karol Nawrocki subsequently stripped him of the country’s highest honor, politicians on both sides renounced state decorations, and Warsaw threatened to obstruct Ukraine’s EU accession.  

The ammunition crunch is spreading across NATO. In July, the Netherlands said it had exhausted its capacity to supply Ukraine with Patriot missiles from its own stocks, having already provided interceptors and helped assemble a complete Patriot system for Kiev.  

Vladimir Zelensky has requested 300 Patriot interceptors from European backers and complained that Washington has approved only some of the missiles purchased through a NATO-backed initiative. The White House has also delayed approving additional transfers as US President Donald Trump presses Ukraine to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia.  

Moscow has repeatedly maintained that Western weapons deliveries prolong the conflict, obstruct peace efforts, and risk drawing NATO countries into a direct confrontation with Russia.

France will deploy military personnel from its counterterrorism force to support police during a new wave of nationwide protests, as the government prepares a “massive” security operation following some of the worst riots in years.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced the move on Tuesday, confirming that soldiers from Operation Sentinelle, established to protect France against terrorist attacks, would be mobilized ahead of demonstrations scheduled for Saturday.

The troops will primarily take over guarding sensitive locations, freeing police and gendarmes to confront rioters and prevent a repeat of last weekend’s widespread violence and looting. According to French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, 1,000 military personnel will be available in Paris on October 24, including 500 on patrol, compared with the usual 300.

“The deployment for next Saturday will be massive,” Lecornu told lawmakers, accusing radical left-wing groups of orchestrating an “insurrectionary plan” during demonstrations against soaring living costs.

Nunez also announced plans to mobilize elite police units, including RAID, GIGN, and BRI, along with helicopters, armored Centaure vehicles, and water cannons. The authorities are considering banning demonstrations deemed likely to threaten public order.

According to Le Monde, 997 police officers and gendarmes were injured, including seven seriously, as overwhelmed security forces struggled to contain the violence.

More than 2,400 people have been arrested, while over 800 have been brought before the courts. The authorities have also imposed localized curfews in Paris and several other cities.

Germany’s most popular party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has suffered a massive cyberattack, with unknown hackers reportedly stealing and publishing hundreds of thousands of internal emails, while the country’s political establishment seeks grounds to outlaw the opposition party.

The breach, which was first reported by Bild on Tuesday, reportedly exposed 421,179 emails totaling 281 gigabytes, including correspondence involving AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, and other senior party figures.

The leaked material reportedly includes photographs of identity documents, bank statements, invoices, membership applications, and internal party lists. Bild said it examined a small sample of the files, including an identity card belonging to Markus Frohnmaier, the deputy leader of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

The identities and motives of the hackers are unknown, and the authenticity of the published material has not been independently established.

“Only a few email inboxes were unlawfully copied, most of which had not been used for years,” a party spokesman told Bild, adding that current federal party email accounts were unaffected.

The AfD condemned the breach as an “attack on the German party system and therefore on democracy” and said it reported the cyberattack to the security authorities.

No statement from investigators or condemnation of the breach by senior government officials has emerged as of early Wednesday.

The attack comes amid an escalating campaign by Germany’s established political parties to isolate and potentially ban the AfD. The Euroskeptic party, which advocates stricter immigration controls and opposes Berlin’s military support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, has surged to 30% support in the latest INSA poll for Bild, opening a 12-point lead over Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc, which has slumped to 18%.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has also sought to classify the party as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization, but a Cologne court blocked the designation in February pending further legal proceedings.

The AfD has rejected the accusations, portraying the proposed ban as an attempt to overturn the will of millions of voters and eliminate political competition.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has accused Washington of trying to force Ukraine to surrender to Russia, attacking President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

Speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Kallas credited Europe’s military and financial backing of Kiev with prolonging the conflict and preventing Ukraine from accepting Moscow’s terms.

“American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for already almost two years, one and a half years now,” she said, as quoted by Euronews.

Kallas’ remarks came a day after US President Donald Trump said negotiations were making “great progress,” defending his decision to ease economic pressure on Russia to keep diplomacy moving.

Trump has stepped up his criticism of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, describing him as “more difficult to deal with” than Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has accused Zelensky of prolonging the conflict and taking Washington’s extensive support for granted, and has criticized Kiev’s continued attacks on Russian refineries for disrupting global diesel markets. Zelensky has said he feels betrayed by Trump.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Oslo on Tuesday with Zelensky, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner joining remotely. Witkoff is expected to travel to St. Petersburg on Wednesday for another round of discussions with Russian officials, according to Store.

Russia has insisted on a long-term peace deal that addresses the root causes of the conflict, rejecting the idea of a temporary truce. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Zelensky of repeatedly undermining negotiations, suggesting that any agreement acceptable to Moscow and Washington would threaten the Ukrainian leader’s hold on power.

Further financial support for Kiev has also become a source of disagreement within the EU. At Friday’s EU summit in Brussels, Zelensky demanded another €70 billion ($78.5 billion) for next year, in addition to €90 billion already pledged by the bloc to bankroll Kiev’s war effort.

The images of French and Italian cities gripped by unrest are shocking, while Albania is in turmoil, police are dispersing demonstrators in Argentina, and India’s protests show no sign of abating. Add the upheavals across the Global South, and the parallels with 1968 become difficult to ignore.

That year, political and social unrest swept across much of the world almost simultaneously. It was a less interconnected age, divided by the Cold War, yet similar movements erupted in countries with vastly different political systems as a remarkable synchronization of discontent took place. 

Direct comparisons are inevitably imperfect, but many of the underlying grievances are familiar, such as inequality, problems in education, wars without clear objectives, and growing frustration with political elites unwilling or unable to adapt.

In 1968, the rebellion was largely directed against the conservative establishment, but while the protesters didn’t achieve everything immediately, their ideas ultimately prevailed and in both the West and the socialist bloc, the upheavals helped transform political and social life over subsequent decades.

Today, however, we may be witnessing the opposite process in the end of the political era that 1968 helped create.

Governments are devoting themselves to preserving the existing order, employing everything from political manipulation to outright repression. As in 1968, many protesters have lost faith in democratic institutions, yet there’s little evidence of a coherent revolutionary alternative, and what we see instead is an explosion of destructive energy.

The events of 1968 tested the resilience and adaptability of political systems, with very different results.

In Western Europe, governments initially suppressed the unrest but subsequently absorbed much of the protest movement into mainstream politics and, in doing so, they renewed their own legitimacy and broadened their social base.

The socialist system took a different path. Unable to accommodate dissent, it relied on repression, so the tensions accumulated until, eventually, the system broke.

Today’s political challenge is similar, although the ideological balance has reversed.

Western Europe’s establishment has adopted a peculiar strategy, where  rather than accommodating these movements, it increasingly tolerates destructive forces on the opposite side of the political spectrum, apparently regarding them as less threatening than its conservative challengers.

Behind the growing instability lies a fundamental disconnect between governing elites and the societies they claim to represent, given those in power are increasingly preoccupied with questions that ordinary citizens don’t regard as priorities. Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in Europe, where the political establishment’s fixation on confrontation with Russia clashes with public concerns about prosperity and living standards and the gap between these competing priorities continues to widen.

The upheavals of 1968 eventually reshaped the political order and  today’s unrest may prove equally consequential, but in precisely the opposite direction, and the longer Western Europe’s leaders refuse to recognize the change, the greater the danger that the political system they’re determined to preserve will become its next casualty.

This article was first published by Kommersant, and was translated and edited by the RT team

Saudi Arabia has postponed its flagship investment forum until next year, organizers have announced, as Houthi strikes have continued to hit the kingdom.

Launched in 2017, the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference, often dubbed ‘Davos in the Desert’, brings together world leaders, top executives and global investors.

“This decision comes from a deep commitment to our partners, members, speakers, and delegates,” FII Institute CEO Dr. Maha Bint Mishari Al Saud said in a press release on Monday, adding that the new 2027 dates would be announced soon.

The event was set to mark the conference’s tenth anniversary, with financial and tech heavyweights including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon expected to attend.

The conflict with the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, has caused broader disruptions in Saudi Arabia. Government agencies and businesses in Riyadh, including those at the Kingdom Center and King Abdullah Financial District, have instructed some employees to work remotely, according to Al Jazeera.

The Houthis retaliated with missile strikes and declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia. The move came in response to restrictions imposed by the Saudi-led coalition on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled ports and airports since March 2015, when Riyadh intervened in the country’s civil war.

The escalating conflict has caused civilian casualties in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Multiple Houthi attacks on Riyadh airport earlier this month killed at least 14 people and injured more than 300, according to the Saudi authorities. Saudi strikes have killed 141 people and wounded 395 since September 3, most of them women and children, the Houthi-run Health Ministry said on Monday.

Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian farmers, European diplomats and an American journalist during the annual olive harvest in the occupied West Bank, as violence against local communities intensifies, RT correspondent Charlotte Dubenskij has reported.

The annual olive harvest is a vital source of food and income for Palestinian families, providing both oil for household use and surplus crops to sell.

In Taybeh, a predominantly Christian Palestinian town, European diplomats who had arrived to help local farmers were reportedly attacked by masked Israeli settlers armed with clubs. A 78-year-old French mayor was reportedly kicked and beaten, while stones were hurled at diplomatic vehicles, smashing their windows.

Calls for help were made to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but troops took hours to respond, despite having a military outpost less than two kilometers from the scene, according to Dubenskij. The area had been designated a closed military zone, and the diplomats reportedly visited without coordinating with the IDF.

“If Palestinians had been the ones throwing those stones, the IDF would have been greenlit to shoot them,” Dubenskij said.

In a separate incident in Abu Fallah, near Ramallah, American photojournalist Heidi Levine was seriously injured while documenting Palestinian villagers gathering olives. Footage shows the veteran journalist, who was clearly identifiable as a member of the press, being kicked while lying on the ground.

“A group of about 15 or so of these terrorists grabbed my mother and began hitting her,” Miller said.

The National Press Club demanded an investigation into the assault, saying: “A brazen attack like this cannot go unanswered.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, rejected allegations of settler violence, describing them as a “blood libel” against Jewish communities in the West Bank, which he characterized as law-abiding and courageous.

Following pressure from Washington, Israeli police have arrested at least ten suspected settler attackers under Operation Olive Leaf, while security forces have demolished two unauthorized outposts.

The arrests came against a backdrop of widespread violence against Palestinians during the harvest season, with Israeli forces also accused of firing rubber bullets and tear gas at those attempting to gather their crops, Dubenskij said.

Watch the full report below.

Paris is burning again. Violent riots are tearing through French cities as protests over rising living costs descend into chaos. Looting. Arson. More than 2,400 arrests. Dozens of officers injured. Historic town halls torched. Streets devastated in Paris, Limoges, and beyond. While leftist protesters chant about the “cost of living,” flames rise from neighborhoods that once stood as beacons of French liberty and culture.

Paris riots: The verdict on progressive rule

This disorder is the brutal, undeniable verdict on decades of liberal and progressive rule: the project has failed completely. Mass migration is not simply a generous humanitarian act. It is a deliberate security threat. It is the engine of the left’s cherished dream of erasing European civilization from within – something many conservatives call the ‘Great Replacement’, and many liberals, a conspiracy theory.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand capitalizing on these riots, has long appeared to despise the “white and stale” France of tradition, faith, and national pride. He fights for a “New France” – young, urban, multicultural, queer, and woke. He embodies the argument that the Western European far left is no friend of Europe. It is its enemy.

In Spain, socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has moved to legalize over one million illegal immigrants in his country, granting them rights to roam the EU at will. The move has provoked fury, including within European political circles. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has recently warned that, if the tide continues, Central European nations may have to “defend our borders” and deploy an army on the German frontier.

The Ceuta crisis – in which some 80,000 migrants surged into the Spanish enclave only a couple of months ago – is another stark reminder of the pressures facing Europe’s borders.

Sánchez does not stand alone. He represents the broader Brussels euro-bureaucracy: billions in EU funds flow to media organizations and NGOs promoting mass migration, while the same bureaucracy tightens Digital Services Act rules and advances the European Democracy Shield, suppressing conservative voices and the integrity of democratic competition.

Marco Rubio, America’s Secretary of State, saw the challenge during his early October European tour, which included Iceland, Greece, and Portugal. Defense and energy security talks were vital, but his real message came in Athens, beneath the shadow of the Acropolis. Rubio called for a revival of the West. He demanded greatness, self-confidence, civilizational vitality, pride in Christianity, and nationalism, and an “unapologetic pursuit of national power.”

He criticized transnational bureaucracies, mass migration, the massive welfare state that he argued had bred decline, the “climate cult,” and open borders. In February, he had made the argument even more starkly at the Munich Security Conference: the “end of history” and the triumph of liberal democracy? No. A foolish idea. The West, he argued, must build a new Western century.

And the Trump administration is not just talking. It is acting. Funding is being redirected from globalist and woke agendas towards conservative voices, think tanks, and interests across Europe and beyond. If America is prepared to push back against the EU’s accelerating drift towards demographic replacement, political authoritarianism, and economic insanity, this is not simply interference; it is the strongest possible counterpressure – precisely what Europe’s patriots need right now.

Donald Trump was right. Europe needs regime change. Europe needs a conservative revolution.

The riots, the terror, the spread of antisemitism across Western Europe, the destruction of great monuments, and centuries of culture – Ceuta and Paris stand as stark reminders. The liberal establishment is impotent. It cannot even manage its own cities. It has turned European streets into war zones and its capitals into symbols of surrender.

Let us be clear about the stakes. For centuries, Europe stood at the heart of Western civilization. Now, its pillars are rotting under the weight of progressive dogma. Open borders erode national cohesion. The welfare state invites dependency instead of self-reliance. The climate cult distracts from real dangers. Bureaucracies in Brussels regulate everything except the influx that is changing Europe’s demographics permanently.

Today’s Europe bears witness to the growth of parallel societies in cities from Paris to Stockholm. Crime statistics indicate that migrant cohorts are disproportionately involved in sexual assaults, terrorism, and gang violence. Integration failures breed resentment. Cultural clashes erupt into the very riots we see today. Antisemitism has surged: synagogues attacked, Jewish communities targeted. These are symptoms of a demographic transformation that left-wing elites frame as “humanism.”

Yet, amid this despair, hope flickers. Patriots are rising. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has gained ground with policies rooted in sovereignty, borders, and family values. In Germany, the AfD is growing stronger. Across the continent, millions of ordinary Europeans share the same unease: our ancestors built cathedrals, universities, and statehood. Will we allow globalists and progressives to consign that legacy to history?

Marco Rubio’s Athens address captured this challenge. He reminded the world that the West is at an inflection point. It can atrophy, serve hostile interests, or decline into irrelevance.

A return to Christian roots strengthens families and communities. Healthy nationalism fosters loyalty and shared sacrifice. Sovereignty restores democratic control over people’s destiny. These are not inherently divisive principles; they are the very pillars that once made the West great.

Europe’s achievements were not accidental. They flowed from the interplay of faith, reason, and ordered liberty. Replace those foundations with open borders and wokeness, and you risk producing the Paris we see today: burning buildings, paralyzed cities, and eroding trust. The liberal establishment has demonstrated that it cannot cope with the challenges confronting it.

Rubio’s message is clear: build a new Western century. That means stronger combat capabilities and fighting spirit, and policies that put nation-states and citizens first. Trump’s America is already acting. Europe’s best interests demand the same: counterpressure against globalist networks and liberal elites.

The riots have spoken. Ceuta showed the southern front. Paris showed the domestic front. Western Europe needs to wake up and realize that the liberal experiment is over. And so is the time for complacency. The battle for sovereignty, identity, and civilizational future has begun. The question is no longer whether Europe must change, but whether its leaders will find the courage to lead that change.

Acting Serbian President Ana Brnabic has accused the European Parliament of breaking its own ethics rules and sending a team of political operators to Serbia “with already formed conclusions” about how they want this weekend’s election to end.

Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is running in parliamentary elections this Sunday, after vacating the presidency last month. Vucic’s coalition, led by his SNS party, is competing against the Student List – an electoral faction put together by the organizers of anti-government protests raging in Serbia since 2024.

European Parliament elections observers are due to arrive in Belgrade on Thursday. However, in a letter to Parliament President Roberta Metsola on Tuesday, Brnabic accused the team of political bias, pointing out that some of its members have openly expressed “extremely negative judgments about the authorities in Serbia [and] expectations for their removal.”

The appointment of Schieder, an Austrian Social Democrat, violates the UN’s Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, she continued. This document, to which all EU delegations are beholden, states that observers must be “free from any political, economic or other conflicts of interest.”

In June, Schieder publicly backed the student protest movement and accused Vucic of leading Serbia into an “authoritarian downward spiral.”

Speaking to Austria’s APA news agency on Tuesday, Schieder described Brnabic’s letter as “unprecedented attack on the European Parliament’s election-observation mission.”

The observation team also includes liberal MEP Helmut Branstetter, who has described Vucic as “not the person to lead Serbia to the European Union,” and promised to “do everything” to cut Serbia off from EU funds and accession talks over his refusal to ban the funeral of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic in September. 

Two Croatian MEPs are members of the mission. Gordan Bosanac has met with protesters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, while Suncana Glavak has signed a letter to EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos calling for talks with Serbia to be suspended. 

Recurring protests have dogged Vucic since 2024, when the deaths of 16 people in a railway station disaster in Novi Sad sparked nationwide discontent. More than two decades earlier, the US successfully fomented mass protests that forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic out of power, and Vucic has accused the EU and Western NGOs of attempting to run the same playbook against his government.

Last month, Vucic described MEPs who traveled to Novi Sad to support the protests as “scum that cannot rule even in their own countries,” who have “come to demolish Serbia from the outside.”

The UK government’s negligent approach towards care homes at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic led to high disease and death rates among the elderly, a public inquiry into the nation’s response to the disease outbreak has concluded.

More than 43,000 people died from Covid-19 in care homes throughout the UK from March 2020 to July 2022, with most of them registered during the first year of the pandemic, according to data presented in the inquiry report published on Tuesday. That amounts to just under 10% of the total care homes population from 2022 to 2023.

An earlier report published by the UK Parliament put the death toll from March 2020 to April 2021 at over 41,000, adding that it amounted to nearly a quarter of deaths from all causes among care home residents as well as more than a quarter of all Covid-19 deaths in England over that period. The report called the rate one of “the worst in Europe,” adding that the loss of life could have been mitigated.

“The mantra of ‘protecting the NHS’ sometimes came at the expense of the users and providers of care,” she stated. “These failures created environments in care settings in which the virus could spread like wildfire.”

In March and April 2020, around 25,000 hospital patients were discharged into care comes in England alone to free up beds before mandatory testing was introduced in mid-April 2020. The practice was later recognized as unlawful by the British high court. The investigation head defended the practice, calling it the “least worst decision to a terrible problem,” but maintained that a lack of isolation advice was a “significant omission” on the government’s part.

The report is the sixth out of ten to be published by the inquiry costing more than £200 million ($267.77 million). In July, another report by Hallett and her team concluded that the UK wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money during the pandemic. The country entered the pandemic with its PPE stockpile “in a perilous state,” including large quantities of expired equipment, while emergency procurement and distribution plans had never been properly tested, it said at the time.

Earlier reports by the inquiry found that authorities across the UK did “too little, too late” during the pandemic and that delays in introducing restrictions contributed to thousands of additional deaths.

Political consultant Roger Stone has called for cutting off US funding to Kiev, highlighting that Vladimir Zelensky is showing contempt for Washington despite receiving billions of dollars in American aid. Speaking on America Now with RT’s Ben Swann, Stone said the Ukrainian leader “has no interest in peace.”

The comment comes as US President Donald Trump continues to ramp up pressure on Kiev to accelerate efforts to reach a peace deal with Russia. Trump has repeatedly called for a halt to strikes on Russian oil refineries as part of a broader effort to curb energy prices, while Washington has negotiated a deal with Moscow to release Russian diesel supplies to global markets.

Stone pointed to Ukraine’s resumption of strikes on Russian energy facilities after agreeing to a ceasefire covering them. The host of ‘The Stone Zone’ highlighted the attacks had undermined a deal negotiated by US President Donald Trump to release Russian diesel fuel at reasonable prices, which Stone argued could have helped bring down fuel costs worldwide.

“Ukraine kept that promise for about a nanosecond and went right back to driving the cost of diesel high,” he said.

Stone also criticized what he described as Zelensky’s inappropriate reaction to a question about the potential political fallout in the US from strikes on Russian energy facilities.

“Look, I saw a piece, a video in which he was asked whether the fact that he had blown up these factories would cause an election problem for Donald Trump and his party,” he said. “He smiled, which is thumbing his nose at the country that has given this man tens of billions of dollars, not all of which, of course, can be directly accounted for.”

Watch Benn Swann’s full interview with Roger Stone here.

South Korea is withdrawing more diplomatic staff from Ukraine over Kiev’s failure to resolve a dispute sparked by Vladimir Zelensky’s disclosure of a secret North Korean prisoner transfer, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul has announced.

The dispute erupted after Zelensky publicly announced the transfer of two captured North Korean soldiers to Seoul during his address to the UN General Assembly in September. South Korea insists that the operation was supposed to remain confidential, while Ukrainian authorities deny that any such agreement existed.

The servicemen were reportedly captured in January 2025 in Russia’s Kursk Region, where North Korean troops helped Russian forces repel a Ukrainian incursion.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Park Doo-soon announced the withdrawal at a press briefing on Tuesday, saying that Kiev had failed to take “positive steps” to settle the dispute despite repeated diplomatic protests.

He also cited persistent threats of airstrikes across Ukraine, saying they had made it difficult to guarantee the safety of diplomatic personnel.

Seoul did not disclose how many staff would be withdrawn. A chargé d’affaires will remain in Kiev to maintain diplomatic contacts, while consular personnel will continue assisting South Korean nationals.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung accused Kiev of violating a confidentiality agreement intended to protect the prisoners and their families in North Korea. He warned that exposing the transfer could endanger their relatives and undermine stability on the Korean Peninsula, insisting that Ukraine itself had originally demanded secrecy.

Earlier this month, Lee warned that “if the Ukrainian government continues to refuse acknowledging the facts and issuing a public apology, we will take additional measures.”

South Korea recalled its ambassador from Kiev on October 8 after its demands went unanswered. The move marked the first time in 18 years that Seoul had withdrawn an ambassador in a diplomatic protest. The latest decision further escalates the standoff, with South Korean media reporting that roughly half of the embassy staff are now expected to leave Kiev.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga previously sought to downplay the row with Seoul, describing it as a “diplomatic misunderstanding” and saying that he was working to resolve it. He denied that Kiev had breached its commitments, attributing the dispute to differing interpretations of confidentiality arrangements.

South Korea has become a major arms exporter since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, securing multibillion-dollar weapons deals with Poland. However, Seoul has refused to supply lethal weapons directly to Kiev, citing its longstanding policy against arming countries at war.

It has instead provided non-lethal military equipment, including helmets, bulletproof vests, and mine detectors, alongside humanitarian and financial aid.

Polish authorities have charged nine people, most of them Ukrainian nationals, over their alleged involvement in a money-laundering operation.

The group was described as part of a broader international network helping criminal enterprises launder illicit proceeds in statements released on Monday by the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Lodz and the Internal Security Agency (ABW). Ukraine has become a major hub for online and telephone fraud operations, many of which are said to enjoy protection from corrupt government officials.

Polish investigators said the group laundered more than $86 million between February 2025 and July 2026. Authorities seized approximately $250,000 in cash and gold during the arrests.

Nine suspects aged 26 to 53 were detained over their alleged roles in the operation: two money couriers, four cashiers, and three currency exchange clerks. Eight suspects are Ukrainian nationals, while the ninth is a Belarusian woman. A 34-year-old Ukrainian man was accused of leading the ring.

All nine were charged, with seven remanded in custody. The two cashiers were released on bail and barred from leaving Poland.

The group allegedly served primarily online and call-center fraud operations, channeling their proceeds through currency exchange offices, fictitious gold purchases and cryptocurrency transactions.

The cash was then delivered to cryptocurrency exchange offices, where cashiers received confirmation codes by text message before accepting the money without carrying out mandatory anti-money laundering checks.

Some of the laundered funds were reportedly concealed in specially modified vehicles and transported abroad rather than deposited into bank accounts or converted into cryptocurrency.

Ukraine’s domestic telefraud industry, estimated to generate around $1 billion annually, attracted international attention last month after Western-backed investigators accused the head of the cybercrime division at the Prosecutor General’s office of operating a protection racket for fraudulent call centers on behalf of his superior. Prosecutor-General Ruslan Kravchenko was not personally charged but nevertheless left the country before parliament dismissed him.

Critics have questioned the effectiveness of the crackdown, arguing that many fraudulent operations simply relocated from rented offices to private apartments to continue targeting victims.

Petroleum product prices have soared in Germany, with gasoline and diesel nearly 49% more expensive and heating oil nearly doubling over the past year, according to official figures.

The surge comes as Europe’s largest economy continues to grapple with the fallout from its break with Russian energy in 2022, now compounded by the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Prices for refined oil products jumped 51.3% year-on-year in September and 8.2% from August, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported on Tuesday. Heating oil surged 91.8%, motor fuels rose 48.6%, and naphtha, used in chemical manufacturing, climbed 53.8%.

The figures reflect producer prices rather than those paid by consumers at the pump.

The shock spread across the energy sector. Producer energy prices rose 14.9% year-on-year, with natural gas distribution costs up 15% and electricity 8.2%.

The pressure has spread across German industry. Overall producer prices rose 6.7% year-on-year in September, the sharpest increase since March 2023. Manufacturing materials and components became 6.4% more expensive, while machinery and equipment rose 2.4%. Excluding energy, producer prices were up 3.2%.

The Iran war has severely disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, driving up energy prices worldwide. Brent crude topped $111 a barrel on Tuesday, a five-month high, while US benchmark WTI exceeded $104.

Germany’s energy troubles, however, predate the Middle East crisis. The country has faced high costs since abandoning cheap Russian energy following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, forcing energy-intensive manufacturers to seek more expensive alternatives.

Before the break, Russia supplied 55% of Germany’s natural gas imports. Direct imports from Russia have since fallen to zero, with Germany reportedly paying five times as much for gas. Norway (44%), the Netherlands (24%), and Belgium (21%) have become its main suppliers, with US liquefied natural gas (LNG) accounting for much of the remainder.

Meanwhile, Berlin committed €96 billion in Ukraine-related support, launched a €100 billion rearmament drive, and pledged to raise core defense spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2029.

Amid criticism that increased military spending is at the expense of domestic needs, Merz’s approval rating sank to a record-low 10% in a poll in October. His Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has suffered major electoral setbacks against the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has overtaken the CDU-led bloc in national polling. The AfD has called for Russian gas imports to be restored.

Moscow has long argued that Western energy sanctions are counterproductive, redirecting Russian exports while forcing Europeans to pay more for alternative supplies. Russia has offered to cover shortages and resume deliveries, but says its proposals have gone unanswered.

As Israel prepares for the October 27 elections, accusations of foreign interference are intensifying. While Israeli leaders have pointed to Iran, Russia, and China, journalist Nick Kolyohin argues that greater scrutiny should be directed at Western funding of Israeli media outlets and civil society organizations, which he believes may be influencing the country’s political discourse.

With election day approaching, political parties are stepping up efforts to attract voters and consolidate their support.

The right-wing camp, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is seeking to rally hawkish voters behind him, potentially at the expense of other conservative parties. The opposition bloc is trying to persuade voters to abandon Netanyahu and shift their support to its side.

Yet the battle for the Israeli electorate is not being fought exclusively within the country’s borders. Foreign actors are also seeking to shape the political landscape and influence the outcome of the election.

Several days ago, speaking to Channel 14, Netanyahu raised this concern.

“Iran is trying to damage the elections with the help of its terror arms Hamas and Hezbollah. It is totally true – they say it openly that they need to topple me because their real desire is to destroy the State of Israel.”

Iran, however, is not the only country accused of interference. In July, speaking at the Knesset, opposition leader Yair Lapid also accused China and Russia of attempting to meddle.

“The elections are drawing closer. Iran is involved, Russia is involved, and influence operations are running rampant on social media. They want to divide us, strengthen the extremists, weaken the moderates, and sow chaos and hatred.”

Nick Kolyohin, a veteran Israeli journalist and Russia expert, disputes the accusations against Moscow, saying he has seen no evidence of Russian interference in the current or previous election cycles:

“I am not witnessing, neither in the current round, nor in the previous, any influence from the Russian side.”

“I am not even sure which side Russia prefers in this internal dispute between the different political parties. Israeli politicians are not speaking about Russia so it doesn’t even make any sense for Moscow to interfere because it is not clear which government is going to be good or bad for the Kremlin,” he said.

Kolyokhin maintains that the broader relationship between the two countries lends weight to his assessment. Despite periodic setbacks and fluctuations, economic ties and trade have continued. Diplomatic relations and cooperation have also endured through some of the most turbulent periods in recent history, including the Syrian civil war, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.

“I know for a fact, including from my sources within the PM office, that the current premier has very good and close relations with President Vladimir Putin. Israel understands that from time to time Moscow needs to slap it [publicly] because it is a part of a broader geopolitical game but in the end of the day this will not sour the relationship between the nations.”

The West dictates

Kolyohin argues that while Russia has come under scrutiny over alleged interference in the upcoming elections, another potential source of foreign influence is receiving far less attention: liberal political circles in Europe and the US.

“For many years, the European Union and the Democratic Party have been pouring money into the Israeli NGOs, news outlets, journalists, think tanks and experts – all of whom are located on the left side of the Israeli political map. So they ended up promoting European interests, which I find outrageous, especially now, when the EU is openly unfriendly towards Israel.”

In recent years, several European countries have recognized Palestine despite Israeli appeals. European governments have also pursued sanctions on Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank and Golan Heights, imposed embargoes on military equipment, and suspended bilateral agreements.

Kolyohin says he has evidence to support his allegations of Western interference. In recent weeks, he says, he obtained three documents that point to substantial financial transfers from Western liberal circles to Israeli left-wing organizations.

The first transfer involved around $48,000 (€43,000). According to Kolyohin, the money came from Canal France International (CFI), a French public media-development agency, and went to the Seventh Eye, an Israeli liberal outlet known for its critical coverage of Netanyahu.

CFI has also reportedly provided hundreds of thousands of euros to another liberal Israeli organization, the Israeli Association of Internet. While the stated objective was to support Israel and combat disinformation, Kolyohin suspects that the underlying motivations extend beyond those publicly declared goals.

“This is one of the ways for the west to censor and control the information in Israel and in this way they can also interfere in the elections, and promote their agenda among the public.”

According to the journalist, the Western agenda extends beyond the promotion of liberal ideas. He argues that another key objective is to foster anti-Russian sentiment in Israel, a goal he believes is advanced through media outlets and think tanks that receive Western funding.

“These journalists and experts learned fast that if they want to be honored, invited to conferences, and get prizes, they need to criticize Russia even if that is contrary to the interests of Israel itself,” Kolyohin said.

“You have to understand: Russia is an important partner of Israel but very often the Israeli government is trying not to flash these tight relations petrified by what the media and the experts are going to say.”

Kolyohin says he has personally experienced what he regards as the consequences of anti-Russian sentiment in Israel. Several Israeli news outlets have investigated his alleged connections to the Kremlin. His name is frequently associated with what local outlets describe as Russian propaganda, and he believes these efforts have damaged his professional standing.

In 2025, he was barred from press conferences held by Israel’s Foreign Ministry after asking Foreign Minister Gideon Saar to comment on Ukraine’s glorification of the Nazis.

A year later, he was removed from a plane carrying Netanyahu to Washington, where the prime minister was scheduled to meet with Trump. According to Kolyohin, the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, wanted to examine his background and ties.

“They are after journalists like me because I am not slamming Russia like the rest of them. They are after me because I dare to speak to the Russian media, I dare to give interviews and do reports. That’s why they want to discredit me, and they are even trying to tilt the PM office and the Shin Bet against me.”

Kolyohin has filed a lawsuit against several Israeli organizations that receive foreign funding and says he is prepared to continue his legal fight to find out the truth: Who funds Israeli NGOs, for what purpose, and how is this money used to shape public opinion?

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made an unannounced visit to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days before the country’s parliamentary elections, according to Axios.

The reported meeting comes as Washington and Israel discuss potentially resuming major military operations against Iran, while indirect negotiations continue over the war they launched in February. Israel, a major recipient of American military funding and weapons, has justified its offensives on security grounds, even as the conflict has spread across the region, disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and driven up global energy prices.

Hegseth met Netanyahu on Monday at Ovda Air Base in southern Israel, where US fighter jets and refueling aircraft are stationed, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the visit. The Pentagon chief also met American troops deployed at the facility.

The surprise visit followed US President Donald Trump’s public endorsement of Netanyahu ahead of the October 27 parliamentary elections – Israel’s first since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks and the subsequent devastating Israeli military campaign in Gaza. On Sunday, the US president hailed Netanyahu as a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” and offered him his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

“BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump declared on Truth Social, praising the Israeli leader’s role in the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Hegseth’s trip also reportedly comes as Washington and West Jerusalem discuss the possibility of unleashing another major military campaign against Iran. Trump has raised the prospect of renewed strikes after the US midterm elections in November.

“If we need to act alone, we will act alone,” he declared on Sunday, outlining a security doctrine centered on preemptive military action.

Netanyahu has also called for the overthrow of Iran’s government, claiming Tehran would continue to rebuild its military and nuclear capabilities as long as its current leadership remains in power. Iran has repeatedly denied seeking nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear program is peaceful.

Japan’s space agency has launched a mission aimed at becoming the first to land on one of Mars’ moons and return samples from its surface to Earth.

An H3 rocket carrying the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center on Monday, according to a live broadcast by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

If the mission proceeds as planned, at least 10 grams of material from Phobos will be returned to Earth in 2031, with the first landing operation scheduled for around two years from now.

No spacecraft has ever successfully landed on Phobos or Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos. The USSR launched two probes in 1988, but neither completed its mission.

Phobos 1 was lost before reaching Mars after an erroneous command from Earth disabled its attitude-control system. Phobos 2 spent nearly two months observing Mars and Phobos before a communications failure ended the mission, preventing it from deploying two small landers.

Russia’s subsequent Fobos-Grunt sample-return mission failed in 2011 when the spacecraft’s propulsion system failed to send it out of Earth’s orbit toward Mars.

JAXA plans for MMX to reach Mars in August or September 2027 and begin observations before deploying a rover in late 2028 or early 2029. The spacecraft carries a 25-kilogram French-German rover named IDEFIX, which will be dropped onto Phobos to study its surface for around 100 days. The main spacecraft will then attempt two landings to collect samples. MMX is also expected to fly past Deimos in 2030 before its return module heads back to Earth.

Landing on Phobos presents a major technical challenge. The moon measures just 27 kilometers across its longest dimension, and its gravitational pull is too weak for conventional close-orbit operations. Instead, MMX will synchronize its orbit around Mars with that of Phobos, effectively becoming a “quasi-satellite” of the moon.

Scientists hope the samples will help establish whether Phobos formed from debris thrown into orbit by a massive impact on Mars or is an asteroid captured by the planet’s gravity.

China’s Tianwen-3 mission could return samples collected directly from Mars to Earth as early as 2031.

The oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta has voted to remain part of the country, with most voters rejecting a proposal to move toward an independence referendum, national broadcaster CBC reported on Tuesday.

The vote comes amid purported contacts between pro-independence activists and US officials, as well as mounting tensions between Alberta and the federal government in Ottawa. The dispute centers on what advocates of independence see as insufficient attention to the province’s interests.

The preliminary results showed that 76.2% of voters backed remaining a Canadian province, while 23.8% supported initiating the legal process for a future binding referendum on independence.

Located in western Canada, Alberta borders the US state of Montana and is home to about 5 million people. Its economy is driven by oil and gas, with the province accounting for 83.6% of Canada’s oil production in 2024, according to the government. Much of its oil comes from northern oil sands, which reportedly hold an estimated 158.9 billion barrels in reserves.

Advocates of Alberta’s independence argue that the province faces excessive federal restrictions, particularly over climate policy. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government proposed caps on emissions for the oil and gas sector and power plants, as well as limits on pipeline construction. Although Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has abandoned some of the measures and advanced plans for a new pipeline to the Pacific coast, tensions persist.

Alberta’s independence movement gained momentum in 2025-2026, with supporters launching a petition for a separation referendum in January. A court overturned approval of the initiative in May after indigenous groups challenged it over a lack of consultation and potential threats to their treaty rights. Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith later announced that the separation question would be included in the October 19 provincial referendum.

Alberta independence advocates held at least three meetings with US State Department officials ahead of the vote and prepared a document outlining potential areas of cooperation should the province leave Canada, AP reported. The State Department did not deny the meetings, but stressed that the vote was a matter for Albertans alone. In January, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the province as a “natural partner” for Washington if it left Canada.

More than 1.35 million people voted ahead of election day between October 13 and 17, representing 43.1% of eligible voters, according to Elections Alberta. The ballots are being counted by hand, with votes on the separation question tallied first. Official results are due on October 29.

US President Donald Trump has claimed that America could face similar chaos to the violent unrest sweeping France if the Democrats win next month’s midterm elections, accusing left-wing politicians of fueling mass migration and instability across the West.

France has struggled to contain escalating riots that erupted last month over teacher shortages and crumbling facilities. The protests have since grown into a broader movement against inequality and soaring living costs.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets over the weekend as demonstrations descended into clashes with police, arson, and looting. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested, hundreds of businesses looted, and buildings torched across the country, while around 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured.

Footage drew comparisons to “scenes from a civil war,” with videos also showing some protesters waving Palestinian flags alongside the French tricolor.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Monday, Trump warned that “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon,” blaming France’s immigration policies for the unrest.

Trump: Paris is going to be a Muslim city pretty soon. pic.twitter.com/9S5fx0ppPo

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2026

He sharpened his criticism in a Truth Social post, describing France as a “once-great nation” being “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground.” Trump blamed “migrants, jihadists and communists” for the violence, accused European leaders of surrendering their countries to people unwilling to assimilate and urged them to “close their borders” before it is too late.

“If you want to see what is at stake in this Election, just look at what is happening in France… Globalist Leftwing Politicians have treasonously imported millions of Third World Migrants who are totally incompatible with Western Values, and despise everything that makes France great... they have surrendered their country to vandals,” he wrote.

Trump’s renewed focus on immigration – a cornerstone of his successful 2024 campaign – comes as his approval ratings slide and Republicans face mounting pressure ahead of the midterms. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday put his approval at 31% – down one point from two weeks earlier and the lowest of either presidential term. Democrats led Republicans 47% to 35% among registered voters on a hypothetical congressional ballot.

Trump repeated his Truth Social message at a Kansas rally for Republican Senator Roger Marshall, whose once-safe seat, according to polls, is now facing a competitive challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor campaigning against the president’s “erratic leadership.” Trump won Kansas by 16 points in 2024, and the state has not elected a Democratic senator in 94 years.

❗️ [ 🇺🇸 ÉTATS-UNIS | 🇫🇷 FRANCE ]

🔸 Donald Trump s’en prend violemment à la France, qu’il décrit comme une « grande nation d’autrefois » en train d’être « conquise, pillée et incendiée » par des « migrants, des djihadistes et des communistes » qui, selon lui, « haïssent le…

— Little Think Tank (@L_ThinkTank) October 20, 2026

The rally kicked off a six-day campaign blitz through Republican strongholds, with stops planned in the Carolinas, Florida, Iowa and Georgia, as Trump seeks to boost turnout and defend the party’s narrow congressional majorities. Democrats need to flip four seats in each chamber to overturn Republicans’ 218-214 House majority and 53-47 Senate advantage.

Trump’s bet on Russian diesel

Trump has also sought to shore up Republican support ahead of the midterms by tackling soaring fuel prices, as the Iran war and tariffs squeeze household budgets. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 68% of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy, including 37% of Republicans.

The deal with Moscow would release over 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, another 500,000 tons in November and one million tons thereafter. Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev told RT the agreement had an immediate “positive effect,” with New York diesel futures falling 5% on the announcement.

The move, however, drew accusations of “betraying Ukraine” from Democrats and some Republicans, who urged Trump to end the Iran war instead. He defended the deal as “the right choice for the American People” and later went further by invoking a national-interest exemption to suspend recently enacted Russia sanctions, including 500% tariffs on Russian imports and 100% tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

Vice President J.D. Vance refused to call Ukraine a US ally, noting that the two countries are at odds on a number of issues.

Asked by journalist Mark Halperin in an interview released on Monday whether Ukraine is a US ally, Vance suggested that Kiev is “certainly a partner” but noted that the countries “have some divergent interests from time to time.” 

“Do I think they should be bombing Russian diesel facilities that raise the cost of energy for Americans? No… I think they should stop bombing Russian energy.”

Pressed on the distinction between partner and ally, Vance said the US has no formal alliance with Ukraine. “They’re not in NATO. I don’t think that they should be in NATO,” he said. He added that the two countries will continue to work on some issues despite their differences.

Zelensky called the deal a “weak decision,” which came after Kiev ignored a number of US requests to stop attacking Russian refineries.

Zelensky refused to comply with Trump’s demand to end the strikes. The US president accused him of driving up fuel prices for Americans and said: “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Zelensky’s presidential term expired in May 2024, but he refused to hold a new election, citing martial law. Russia has since declared Zelensky illegitimate, saying his status is an obstacle to signing a binding peace deal.

On Sunday, Trump accused Zelensky of not wanting the conflict with Russia to end, saying he “probably never did,” adding that Ukraine should “get somebody else to negotiate.”

Ukrainian officials also reported that they missed advance US warnings of Russian missile strikes and claimed there are new restrictions on the Starshield satellite service developed by SpaceX and used by Ukrainian drones. Media reports also suggested that the US threatened to stop intelligence sharing with Kiev, which US officials have denied.

Iran has completed a key railway line connecting the southern port of Chabahar with Zahedan near its border with Afghanistan, amid a US blockade of its ports and mounting economic pressure from the West.

The 730-km rail link will give Tehran more flexibility to move cargo to neighboring countries from the port, which is being developed by India, RT correspondent Saman Kojouri reports.

The railway is a key link in the strategic International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which is backed by India, Iran, and Russia. Iran’s broader ambition is to connect its southern ports to transport networks connecting the Caspian Sea and beyond, operationalizing a vast land corridor for market access across Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Russia.

The Chabahar route would be 40% shorter and 30% cheaper than the existing Suez Canal route for moving cargo. The line, which has 39 tunnels, 201 bridges, and 33 stations, is expected to become operational in the next 2-3 months. It can also move about 7 million tons of cargo and 1 million passengers annually.

The route will allow India to bypass the territory of arch-rival Pakistan, although sanctions and blockades remain a challenge. However, New Delhi and Tehran are actively engaged in smoothing out customs, logistics, and operational issues to maximize the line’s commercial potential.

Transit volumes through Chabahar are already up tenfold in the last few months compared to the same period a year ago, the CEO of the Chabahar Free Trade-Industrial Zone, Mohammad Saeed Arbabi, told RT. The new railway line will further increase transit volumes, creating new opportunities in investment, manufacturing, exports, and re-exports, and thus reinforcing the port’s role as a key transit hub, he said.

He noted that although military tensions with the US have reduced shipping activity, India has not withdrawn from the port project. “India remains actively involved,” Arbabi said, adding “we welcome investment from all countries except hostile nations [in the port project].”

According to Arbabi, cooperation with Pakistan and Afghanistan remains strong, with activity expanding beyond previous levels.

Vladimir Zelensky has appealed to a bipartisan group of US senators to pressure President Donald Trump into lifting alleged restrictions on US military assistance and intelligence sharing, Axios reported on Monday.

During a virtual meeting with lawmakers led by Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democrat Richard Blumenthal on Monday, Zelensky complained about alleged disruptions to weapons deliveries, satellite communications, and early warnings of Russian missile attacks, according to a transcript obtained by Axios from Ukrainian officials.

The Ukrainian leader suggested that the Trump administration deliberately “slowed down support” to force Kiev into accepting a negotiated settlement with Moscow.

The dispute escalated earlier this month after Trump struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports and increase supplies to the global market. Kiev condemned the agreement, accusing Washington of making concessions to Moscow behind Ukraine’s back.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner reportedly reminded Ukrainian negotiators during talks in Miami that Washington is supplying Kiev with weapons and intelligence and that Ukraine should not pursue attacks that hurt American consumers. Ukrainian officials interpreted the remarks as a threat to suspend the assistance unless the refinery strikes stop.

Yet Zelensky continued to challenge the administration, telling senators that SpaceX’s Starlink and the US military’s Starshield satellite systems remain partially restricted and that Ukraine missed US early warnings about Russian ballistic missile attacks on three occasions over the past week.

He also accused Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of holding up Patriot interceptor missiles and AIM-9X missiles that NATO countries already purchased for Kiev.

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has yet to authorize certain transfers of Patriot missiles from third countries.

Trump lashed out at Zelensky on Monday, accusing him of obstructing efforts to end the conflict and suggesting that someone else should negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf.

“Zelensky doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Trump told reporters. “Maybe it’s time for Zelensky to get someone else to negotiate… We’ve given a lot to Ukraine, they’ve given nothing to us.”

The Italian government is sending 500 soldiers to Milan to protect the city from looting and violence after two days of riots left shops ransacked, police officers injured, and hundreds of people detained.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini announced the deployment on Monday as luxury boutiques in Italy’s financial capital shut their doors and removed merchandise from display windows, fearing another wave of unrest.

“From words to action: 500 more troops to defend Milan,” Salvini, who leads the right-wing League party, wrote on social media.

Dalle parole ai fatti! ✅ https://t.co/eAZVJjzzEx

— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) October 19, 2026

The announcement followed an emergency security meeting chaired by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose government is preparing tougher measures against violent protesters and youth gangs.

Riot police deployed tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators who hurled bottles and other projectiles. Among the businesses targeted were Decathlon, Arc’teryx, and Vodafone, while other retailers boarded up their shattered storefronts.

Police detained 271 people on Sunday alone, with 32 formally arrested, including 23 minors and 13 foreign nationals. Another 28 were referred to the judicial authorities. Fourteen police officers were injured, according to ANSA news agency.

Luxury retailers including Chanel, Hermes, and Pomellato closed their doors on Monday. Other high-end stores cleared their display windows amid fears of renewed attacks.

Salvini accused the rioters of deliberately seeking confrontation with police, arguing that the violence cannot be excused by economic hardship.

“This is not social distress,” he said, calling for tougher legislation to allow preventive detention of minors and arrests based on video evidence of looting.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also promised a firm response. Reports suggest that the government could fast-track measures against violent youth gangs.

Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala condemned the destruction as “unacceptable and unjustifiable,” warning that the tensions are far from over.

The French authorities reported nearly 2,400 arrests over the weekend, with hundreds of businesses looted and public buildings set on fire. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced localized curfews on Monday as President Emmanuel Macron faces mounting criticism over the government’s failure to contain the violence.

Ukraine needs a new representative to negotiate peace with Russia as Vladimir Zelensky “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” US President Donald Trump has said. He added that he is ready to discuss a resolution to the conflict with Russia and China.

The statement comes amid a deepening rift between Trump and Zelensky over Ukraine’s continued targeting of Russian refineries after the US president struck a deal with Moscow aimed at reining in skyrocketing global energy prices through Russian diesel exports.

“Zelensky’s a man that should have this war settled a long time ago,” Trump told reporters on Monday when asked about the Ukrainian leader’s criticism of his deal with President Vladimir Putin.

The agreement between Trump and Putin reached earlier this month involves the US easing restrictions on Russian diesel exports and waiving the ‘bone-crushing’ sanctions, including 500% tariffs on imports from Russia and 100% tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil and gas, in exchange for Russia supplying diesel to the global market and potentially to the US as well.

Ukraine has continued to target Russian oil infrastructure despite repeated demands by Trump to stop the attacks, which he blames for surging global energy prices. On Monday, he reiterated that Ukraine is behaving ungratefully.

Asked if he is ready to negotiate a settlement of the Ukraine conflict with Russia and China without Zelensky present, Trump said he just wants the conflict to end and will do “anything I can do to end the war, whether somebody is there or not.”

Earlier on Monday, the Kremlin said Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next month.

Trump’s remarks follow a series of similar statements in recent days. Over the weekend, he said Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”

Russia has long accused Ukraine’s Western backers, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, of sabotaging the 2022 peace talks in Istanbul. Russia has also identified the stance of Ukraine’s European backers as one of the key obstacles to resolving the conflict.

Elon Musk has pledged to give every child in the United States a share of SpaceX next year, in a massive giveaway potentially worth more than $10 billion that has earned praise from US President Donald Trump.

The world’s richest man, whose fortune is estimated at around $1 trillion, announced the initiative on Monday, saying it’s the beginning of a broader effort to distribute his wealth. The announcement comes as Musk deepens his political and financial support for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of the midterm elections in November.

“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” Musk wrote on X. “This will be the first of many.”

Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026

With around 73 million children under 18 in the US and SpaceX shares closing at $147.97 on Monday, up 1.33%, the giveaway could be worth $10.8 billion.

Trump enthusiastically welcomed the announcement, saying the shares will be distributed through government-backed investment accounts established under his administration.

Trump said the initiative demonstrates how the private sector can help invest in America’s future and “give every American Child a piece of the American Dream.”

‘Trump Accounts’ are tax-advantaged investment vehicles designed to help children build savings from an early age. Under the program, the federal government provides $1,000 in seed funding for eligible children born between 2025 and 2028, while parents, employers, and private donors can make additional contributions.

The pledge follows an announcement by rival AI company Anthropic that it will commit 5% of its equity to a new public benefit fund. Musk responded by recommending that companies distribute shares directly to ordinary people.

Musk and Trump publicly feuded last year over the president’s spending legislation but have since reconciled, with the billionaire emerging as a major financial backer of the Republican midterm campaign. According to the New York Times, Musk has donated more than $276 million to Republican groups since July, bringing his political contributions during the 2025-2026 election cycle to around $366 million.

Elon Musk has quietly forked out more than $400 million to Republican organizations since July, making him the largest known donor of the 2026 midterm elections. But can money alone buy the midterms?

The windfall represents a change in tune from May 2025, when Musk, in the middle of a political feud with President Donald Trump, grumbled, “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.”

The donations come at a critical time for the Republicans who are struggling in the popularity polls amid a sluggish economy, political infighting, and an on-again, off-again war with Iran, a potential quagmire that has the MAGA crowd furious. Nevertheless, the slush fund is helping Republicans, who currently control both the House of Representatives and the Senate as part of the 119th United States Congress, to purchase pricey late-campaign advertising. Meanwhile, the Democrats have no billionaires in their corner who can match Musk’s financial power.

The biggest Musk payout was awarded to the Senate Leadership Fund, the primary super PAC that supports Republican Senate candidates. Musk lavished the organization with nearly $200 million over the summer, which was a quarterly record for one donor at the group and more than its Democratic counterpart raised from all sources in the same quarter.

America PAC spends most of its midterm budget on door-to-door canvassing and intensive field operations. PAC officials said nearly 3,000 paid canvassers worked across the country last month, and knocked on 6.5 million doors in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races. The mission focuses on registering and turning out conservative voters, especially those who vote irregularly, a more difficult objective in a midterm year without Trump leading the ballot.

The PAC’s messaging focuses on socialism and transgender policy, hot button topics for their Democratic rivals. Its canvassers are focusing on connections between Democratic candidates to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two highly controversial figures who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Never before have socialists held such high positions in the US and that has many Americans vexed. At the same time, its best-known advertisement in Texas features Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who remarked in 2021 that God is “nonbinary.”

“If Democrats take control of Washington and win key gubernatorial and attorney general races this November, then America risks becoming a socialist, woke and borderless country,” America PAC spokesman Andrew Romeo told reporters in a recent interview. “These robust investments have allowed the G.O.P. apparatus to get its message out so Republicans can have a fighting chance to defy history.”

In other spending sprees, from July through September, Musk gave $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, $10 million to the Republican Governors Association, and $2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association.

The Republicans, especially Trump, owe a lot to the world’s first trillionaire. Musk endorsed Trump for the 2024 presidential election and became one of his largest political donors, reportedly spending hundreds of millions backing him and other Republican candidates. Trump returned the favor by putting Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash federal spending.

The seemingly unbreakable relationship between Trump and Musk collapsed after the US president pushed through his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Musk has called a “disgusting abomination,” “debt slavery,” and “political suicide.” The fracture between the two men was so serious that Musk went on to create the America Party to challenge the two-party system.

Today, Musk, apart from funneling massive amounts of money into Republican campaign coffers, has remained on the sidelines of the political process to devote more time to his various business ventures. His dream of a third party has also been put on hold as he did not file formal registration paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to legally establish the America Party.

In the meantime, the native of South Africa will have to wait and see if his vast funds can make a difference in one of the most momentous midterm elections in history.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great 19th century Russian author of ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, was a counterintuitive thinker who could have appeared on RT. That’s the opinion of Times literary supplement editor Martin Ivens, who, in a piece for Bloomberg arguing against censorship of Irish author Sally Rooney in the UK, mentioned the Russian great.

The suggestion is not without merit. Dostoevsky knew persecution, famously spending ten years in Siberia, four of which were in captivity and another five in military exile having completed his initial present sentence in February 1854.

Rooney is a best-selling author who has publicly taken a stand to back Palestine Action, a group whom it is illegal to support, and about whom it is illegal to make public gestures of support in the UK. British police have made hundreds of bizarre arrests of elderly protesters holding signs supporting the group. Her books have been banned in Britain.

Ivens has used his platform in the Times Literary Supplement to highlight how Russian writers often assume the status of prophets. In his Bloomberg piece he reaffirmed that censoring literature is counter-productive and only serves to feed resentment against the mainstream already in the body politic.

However, his suggestion that Dostoevsky could appear on RT inspired us to inquire as to what topics the great man might hold forth on in 2026.

On Europe

Like many since, Dostoevsky viewed Western Europe with a complex mix of cultural admiration and affinity, moral revulsion, and spiritual anxiety. His experience in captivity – where he was subject to a mock execution – is said to have destroyed his faith in secular humanism. He argued that discarding God led to a moral chaos where “everything is permitted.” 

“Conscience without God is a terrible thing; it can stray into the depths of immorality.”

He also predicted that attempts to build a so-called paradise on earth through rationalism and secularism alone would inevitably lead to political tyranny.

On the EU’s crisis

Dostoevsky would likely and emphatically make the case that Western European leaders have by now displayed a total political bankruptcy and that Western Europeans should renounce materialism and seek meaningful social relations. The riots engulfing major European capitals, and the unfettered profiteering and immigration that have given rise to such tensions, are a symptom of the malaise of the Western European mind. Forcing humanity into rationalist conformity will only lead to extreme bloodshed, he claimed.

“Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.”

On liberalism 

Dostoevsky would have undoubtedly lamented the emergence of the European Union as a bureaucratic bearer of so-called liberal values. He would have highlighted how his book ‘Demons’ predicted the so-called democratic deficit that characterizes the EU – a tiny, largely unelected bureaucratic elite unreachable to the regular population who are stripped of freedoms.

He would have called the Covid-19 pandemic a brutal event in the restriction of human experience.

Abandoning God and zealously attempting to replace spiritual authority with a moral relativism where everything is permitted will only lead to social and spiritual collapse, Dostoevsky believed. He would have stoutly defended the emphasis and respect for traditional values in popular Russian culture.

“The Westernizers have placed themselves above the people as a paternalistic intelligentsia, rejecting the people.”

He also enjoyed the mess, and this is where he probably would’ve got into trouble with Brussels. The EU notoriously wishes to regulate everything, where Dostoevsky emphasized the irrational and fundamentally spiritual nature of human beings.

On techno-fetishism

He foresaw the loss of grace in the world and its replacement by either authoritarian Catholicism, rational individualistic Protestantism, or indeed technological fetishism. Artificial intelligence in this respect may have represented the apotheosis of his foreboding.

Similarly, Dostoevsky rejected the idea that humans could be rendered calculable and rational beings in their entirety and in that sense would undoubtedly have been horrified at the creeping legislation and legalization of everyday life.

“Human nature acts as a whole, with everything it possesses, consciously and unconsciously.”

The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which allows the behemoth to interfere in the local elections of member countries, would represent such a bureaucratic and legalistic invasion. He would’ve taken a strong stand against the nullification of anti-systemic narratives but would also have emphasized that such political and authority and overreach was inevitable given the collapse of religion and morality.

Dostoevsky would have been as much energized as he would have been horrified by developments in 2026. Were he to be with us today it’s highly likely his voice would contribute to the choir of outspoken and brave commentators who make the channel what it is.

A Florida judge has issued an arrest warrant for former Cuban President Raul Castro, 95, the state’s attorney general announced on Monday. The move marks another escalation in Washington’s months-long pressure campaign against Havana.

The warrant pertains to the 1996 shooting down of two American planes operated by anti-communist Cuban exiles off Cuba’s coast. US authorities accuse Castro of ordering the attack.

“Today, we are announcing state charges against Raul Castro with an arrest warrant for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said at a press conference in Miami. Prosecutors had gathered evidence and witness testimony linking a Cuban spy network to the operation that allegedly led Castro to order the planes shot down, he said.

In February of 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two US planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based Cuban exile group, killing four men. Havana has maintained that it acted in self-defense against aircraft that violated its airspace.

The CIA has a long history of working with Cuban exile groups against Havana, most notably during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Washington imposed a broad trade embargo on Cuba the following year.

After US forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, Trump imposed a near-total energy blockade of Cuba and announced that the island will be “next” in line for regime change. The restrictions have led to a widespread energy crisis and frequent blackouts in Cuba.

Russia, China, Mexico and several other nations have provided humanitarian aid to Cuba. Moscow delivered around 700,000 barrels of oil to the island in March.

Israel is threatening to turn its occupation of southern Lebanon into a permanent military presence while pursuing the so-called “Gaza model.” RT correspondent Steve Sweeney reports from Beirut on the destruction of entire villages, mass displacement and efforts to secure an Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared over the weekend that troops would not withdraw from areas they currently control and warned that the military could advance further towards Nabatieh and the Litani River if Hezbollah launches additional attacks on Israel.

Katz claimed that more than 60 villages and 23,000 homes had been destroyed across an Israeli-controlled area of approximately 700 square km in southern Lebanon and that around 200,000 residents had been displaced. 

“All the villages have been wiped out,” he said. “This is the Gaza model, and this is the model we are implementing.” 

The reference is to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, launched in response to the Hamas-led attack in October 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. The offensive has left much of the Palestinian enclave in ruins, displaced most of its population and killed more than 74,000 people, according to local health authorities.

Fighting in Lebanon has subsided since a US-brokered ceasefire took effect in June, although Israeli strikes and demolitions have continued in the south. The UN estimated that approximately 330,000 people remained displaced as of late September.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also insisted that the IDF would remain in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.

The latest escalation began in early March, after Hezbollah attacked Israel following the start of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Israel responded with a major air and ground campaign.

The June agreement envisages a gradual Israeli withdrawal alongside Lebanese army deployments and the removal of Hezbollah’s weapons and infrastructure from designated areas. However, its implementation has stalled.

At least 4,389 people have been killed and 12,424 injured in Lebanon since March 2, according to recent Health Ministry figures.

“The question is whether these talks can deliver an end to occupation or whether Israel intends to make its presence in southern Lebanon a permanent reality,” Sweeney said.

Watch the full report below.

Lithuania has been stripped of the right to host stages of the 2027 Modern Pentathlon World Cup over its refusal to admit Russian and Belarusian athletes, local media reported on Monday.

The decision was reportedly made at the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) executive board meeting earlier this month. Lithuanian Modern Pentathlon Federation President Justinas Kinderis called the move “sad” but unsurprising, as the international body has repeatedly questioned Lithuania’s refusal to admit Russian and Belarusian competitors.

In a letter cited by Delfi, UIPM President Rob Stull said host countries must comply with International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommendations and ensure equal opportunities for athletes seeking to qualify for the 2028 Olympics.

In July, the IOC decided to provisionally lift restrictions on the Russian and Belarusian Olympic committees, potentially opening the way for their athletes to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics under national symbols. It also recommended that international sports federations let athletes from both nations enter championships.

Kinderis also criticized the UIPM for failing to understand Lithuania’s position. “We would like our many years of work organizing championships and winning medals to be respected and appreciated more. We expected simple human decency,” he told Delfi on Monday.

According to the Lithuanian federation head, the nation could also lose its right to host the 2028 World Cup stage and the junior and youth championships.

Russia and Belarus have yet to comment on the development.

National federations have until October 25 to submit bids to host the stage that was originally scheduled to take place in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas. If no candidate comes forward, the UIPM could hold just three stages next year instead of four, according to Delfi.

Estonia has similarly lost the right to host two international sports tournaments over its hardline position on Russian and Belarusian athletes. In January, the International Fencing Federation (FIE) stripped it of the right to hold the 2026 European Fencing Championship. The next year’s European Air Weapons Championship was also moved from Estonia to Spain.

The EU is reportedly considering measures to curb the return of Russian and Belarusian athletes to international sports under their national flags. According to Euractiv, proposals discussed include targeted sanctions, visa restrictions, and cuts to funding for sports organizations that allow athletes from the two countries to compete under their national flags.

Anti-government rioters have torched Albania’s education ministry and supreme court, as protests spread across the Balkan nation. Prime Minister Edi Rama is refusing to step down and blames the unrest on Russia. What’s really going on?

Running battles between demonstrators and police have broken out around the ministry on several occasions since. On October 19, hundreds of demonstrators pelted rocks at riot police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. The previous night, offices of the Albanian Supreme Court were set on fire, and arson attacks on several police stations in the city were reported.

Some 500 demonstrators had been detained and 167 of them formally arrested as of October 17, according to Reuters. 295 people had been injured, including 196 police officers, as of October 19, according to Interior Minister Ervin Demo.

What do the protesters want?

The protests follow more than a year of unrest in Albania, which began when Rama banned TikTok in the runup to last March’s parliamentary elections, following similar measures inposed by the EU during every major election across the bloc since 2024. The ban was lifted in February of this year, but demonstrations broke out again in May after Rama’s government authorized the sale of protected wetlands to a development company operated by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The protesters’ core demand – that Rama resign – remains unchanged. However, the movement is now calling for a root-and-branch reform of the entire Albanian establishment, with demonstrators accusing both Rama and opposition leader Sali Berisha of corruption. Unemployment, underfunding of schools, and declining living standards have also been cited by protesters as grievances.

What did Rama say about the protests?

Despite the repeated chants of “Rama resign” heard at the protests, Rama has claimed that the demonstrators do not oppose his government, but Albania’s “mission” of joining the EU. 

“I am not being challenged,” he said in a video address on October 18. “The government is not being challenged, a government majority or a winning party in the elections is not being challenged but a path is being challenged, a mission is being challenged”

“Albanians need to think ​very clearly,” he continued. “Do they want this, do they want that, or do they want the EU?”

Rama has refused to resign, and blamed the protests on “foreign hands that do not wish for Albania to be at peace.” Back in June, Rama accused “the enemies of Albania and of Israel” of waging a “hybrid war” to stop the wetlands development. In two separate speeches on October 18 and 19, the embattled PM blamed the unrest on Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin and a “wave of Russian influence in the entire social media system,” and on “the Khomeiniist republic of Iran, the pinnacle of disinformation.”

Was Russia involved?

In short, no. Rama has not backed up any of his accusations, and they are being treated with skepticism and ridicule by demonstrators and opposition media. Albania’s Publik Media news outlet criticised Rama for “return[ing] to the Berisha, Russia and Iran alibi,” while Pamfleti, an investigative outlet, dismissed his claims as an “ignorant reaction to those protesting his misgovernance” 

Even the US-run Radio Free Europe noted that Rama “did not present public evidence” to back up his allegations. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has rejected Rama’s accusations. “No, Edi Rama,” she said on October 18, “it is the citizens of your country who have taken to the streets in protest.”

“This has all the hallmarks of the ‘highly likely’ British approach,” Serbian journalist Nebojsa Malic told RT on October 19, referring to British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s failed attempts to blame the 2016 Brexit vote on Russia and a recent ‘terror plot’ at a US airbase on Iran. “We’ll just make an accusation and provide no evidence but say ‘oh it’s highly likely that Russia’s behind this’, and everybody is going to take it for granted.”

Rama is “doing this because he’s hoping it will stick,” Malic said. “He has nothing to lose. He’s seen plenty of leaders in western Europe essentially getting away scot free with covering for their malice and incompetence by blaming Russia.”

“Rama is just as opportunistic as [French President Emmanuel] Macron or any British prime minister in the last ten years,” Malic concluded. “They will say or do whatever, because they think that Russia is not able to defend itself.”

Why did Rama mention Israel?

However, all available information suggests that the funding for Kushner’s Albanian projects comes from Albanian, American, and Qatari individuals and entities. Affinity Partners is leading the €1.4 billion Sazan Island project, while Kushner himself is a minority partner in the wetlands development. 

Rama visited Israel and addressed the Knesset in January. Less than 24 hours later, Israel’s Channel 12 claimed that the Albanian PM had struck a deal with Netanyahu to accept up to 100,000 Palestinian refugees from Gaza. As speculation spread that the Palestinians would be resettled on land developed by Kushner, Rama clarified that no such deal had been, or would be, made.

Regardless, Rama’s close relations with Netanyahu are at odds with public opinion in Albania, where a 2024 poll found that 73% of the population believe that Israel should be sanctioned over its war on Gaza. Kushner is widely seen in Albania as representing Israeli interests, and Rama’s decision to amend environmental laws and grant “strategic investor” status to Affinity Partners has fueled accusations that the PM is placing Washington and West Jerusalem’s interests above Tirana’s.

Will there be an Albanian Maidan?

Some images emerging from Tirana – burning barricades, police officers set on fire with Molotov cocktails, and smouldering government buildings – are reminiscent of the scenes that played out during the 2014 ‘Maidan’ coup in Ukraine. However, Rama is in far less perilous of a position than Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovich, was during the 2014 uprising.

Unlike the present unrest in Albania, the Maidan coup was planned and directed by foreign actors, namely the US State Department and the British embassy in Kiev. Rama, on the other hand, is a close partner of the EU and US, and neither Washington nor Brussels have backed the protesters. Instead, Rama has apparently been given carte blanche to squash the demonstrations, with columns of military vehicles seen entering Tirana between October 15 and 19.

The EU has condemned the use of violence by protesters, with the European Commission criticizing them for “arson, attacks on State institutions and the destruction of public and private property.” In a statement on October 18, the commission praised Rama’s progress toward EU membership and welcomed his “commitment that the right to protest will be protected.”

One week earlier, an EU delegation in Tirana said that Brussels was “aware of allegations of excessive use of force by the police against protesters and journalists,” adding that the government’s response to protests and riots “must remain within the law.”

The EU took a far more interventionist position in 2014, sending officials to meet with demonstrators in Kiev and endorsing protests even as they devolved into violent riots. Brussels prepared sanctions on Yanukovich, and once he had been toppled, it gifted an €11 billion aid package to Ukraine, which would elect the pro-EU Petro Poroshenko president months later.

The West is still firmly on Rama’s side, and he is unlikely to face any calls for resignation from abroad. However, he is still facing the most sustained public pressure campaign of his 13-year stint in power, and if the protests continue and more buildings burn, he may be left with no choice but to admit defeat and step down.

France will introduce localized curfews as the unrest over rising living costs and deteriorating public services has escalated into widespread violence and destruction, leaving the authorities struggling to restore order.

The unrest escalated over the weekend, with nearly 2,400 people arrested, hundreds of businesses looted, and buildings set on fire across the country. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said police lost control in several major cities.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced on Monday that he instructed the regional authorities to introduce curfews following an emergency government meeting.

“They will be partial and may be highly localized,” Lecornu said, adding that declaring a state of emergency cannot be ruled out.

Later on Monday, Paris police imposed an overnight curfew from 11pm to 6am in designated areas around Republic Square and the Les Halles district, restricting access for both adults and minors.

Nearly 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured over the weekend, according to the Interior Ministry. In Limoges, rioters set fire to the city’s historic 19th-century town hall, causing the roof to collapse. Clashes, arson, and looting were also reported in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and other cities.

Nunez offered his resignation on Sunday, acknowledging failures in anticipating and containing the violence. President Emmanuel Macron refused to accept it, instead ordering a review of security planning and intelligence failures and demanding changes to policing tactics.

More than 2,500 businesses were targeted on Saturday alone, according to Alain Di Crescenzo, the president of the French Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

The protests began in September at a high school in Creteil, near Paris, over teacher shortages and deteriorating facilities. The movement has since spread to public sector workers and trade unions demanding higher wages, better services, and relief from rising living costs, while opposing spending cuts in the government’s proposed 2027 budget.

France is grappling with growing public debt (around 119% of GDP) and a substantial budget deficit. The government is seeking to reduce the shortfall through spending cuts and tax measures, while growing political uncertainty has pushed borrowing costs to the highest levels in more than 20 years.

The crisis has intensified pressure on Macron in the final months of his presidency, drawing criticism from across the political spectrum ahead of the 2027 election.

Right-wing politician Marine Le Pen, who leads in first-round presidential polling, called Macron a president “without credibility or authority” who has “lost all touch with reality.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party, blamed “ten disastrous years”of Macron’s policies for the crisis and accused Nunez and police commanders of “complete incompetence.”

Israeli security forces arrested ten suspected extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank on Monday following attacks on a US journalist and European diplomats that sparked international outrage.

The suspects were detained during a joint operation dubbed “Olive Leaf,” involving police, the Shin Bet security agency, and the IDF, Israeli police said in a statement on Monday.

The arrests were part of an investigation assigned to the police’s Judea and Samaria District investigative unit, the authorities said, using Israel’s name for the West Bank. Ten suspects were arrested in the pre-dawn operation, evidence linking them to the incidents was seized, and several vehicles were confiscated, the police said.

“The law in Judea and Samaria applies to everyone, regardless of identity or affiliation,” Israeli Police Commissioner Danny Levy stated.

The following day, masked settlers attacked a convoy of European diplomats in the Palestinian territory. Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, accused the attackers of kicking him and beating him with metal bars.

The attack drew condemnation and demands for action from France, Belgium, and Poland, whose diplomats were part of the delegation. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that Washington had urged Israel to “crack down” on the violence.

More than 2,060 settler attacks resulting in casualties or property damage took place this year to date, with 244 incidents since late September, the UN said last week. More than 160 attacks targeting the Palestinian olive harvest were recorded in the two weeks covered by the report, it added.

Israel helped facilitate nearly $2 billion in Qatari payments to Gaza over more than a decade and urged Doha to maintain the funding, even as Israeli officials publicly accused the country of financing Hamas, Time Magazine reported on Sunday, citing official correspondence and testimony from senior Israeli, US, and Arab officials.

Qatari payments to Gaza, long a source of controversy, came under renewed scrutiny after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Qatar has denied that the funds were intended for Hamas and has argued that Israel was responsible for any money that reached the group, as West Jerusalem oversaw the aid mechanism.

According to Time, Israel’s role went beyond simply allowing Qatar to send aid to Gaza. Israeli officials reportedly determined who received the money, facilitated cash deliveries into the enclave, and pressed Doha to keep the payments flowing.

The publication also details how Israel facilitated the payments, including cash deliveries to Gaza in suitcases and a UN-backed payment mechanism. The magazine cited a 2020 letter in which then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen thanked Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the assistance. Two weeks before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, then-Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly traveled to Doha and asked Qatar to renew the funding for another two months.

By 2018, Qatar had sent roughly $1.1 billion to Gaza, according to an analysis provided to Israeli ministers. The funds covered humanitarian assistance, fuel, and government salaries. Under the arrangement, Qatar paid for fuel and electricity purchased from Israel, financed projects through the UN, and provided monthly $100 payments to some of Gaza’s poorest families, distributed by the World Food Programme after Israeli authorities vetted recipients.

Qatar told Time that all its assistance was intended for Palestinian civilians and delivered through mechanisms coordinated with Israel and international partners. At the same time, Doha argued that Israel bore responsibility if any funds reached Hamas because it had overseen delivery and created the mechanism.

Israel is prepared to attack Iran without US participation if necessary, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, pledging to overthrow Tehran’s government and make striking first a central principle of his security doctrine.

The declaration comes amid ongoing indirect negotiations over the war launched by the US and Israel in February. Israel, a major recipient of American military funding and weapons, has justified its offensives on security grounds, even as the conflict has spread across the region, disrupted Hormuz shipping, and driven up global energy prices.

Presenting his security doctrine in a speech on Sunday, Netanyahu argued that Iran would rebuild its nuclear and military capabilities as long as its government survived and made clear that Israel was prepared to launch further attacks without waiting for American participation.

“If we need to act alone, we will act alone,” he said.

Netanyahu presented Israel’s earlier campaign against Iran as a model, recalling that he told US President Donald Trump he would attack Tehran “either way” and invited American participation in a strike on the Fordow nuclear facility.

He framed further action against Iran as unfinished business, explicitly identifying the overthrow of the country’s government as the ultimate objective. “We are working on it and we will do it,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu framed the renewed strikes as part of a broader doctrine prioritizing attack over defense. He compared striking first to gaining the advantage in childhood street fights and said Israel could establish bases far beyond its borders.

“We will have to live by our sword in order to live for many years,” he said.

He also described plans to seize and destroy what he called threat centers in the occupied West Bank, listed preventing Palestinian statehood as a fundamental principle, and included disrupting military and “civilian systems” in his deterrence strategy.

US-Iran negotiations are already deadlocked. Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal last month as “unacceptable,” insisting the US blockade had left Iran “losing so badly” and seeking a deal on Washington’s terms.

Trump has nevertheless threatened renewed bombing, with Axios recently reporting that US officials expected major combat operations could resume after November’s midterm elections.

Tehran has warned that another attack would trigger broader retaliation, potentially targeting American technology infrastructure across the Gulf.

Nearly 350 people were arrested in Paris on Sunday and overnight amid violent unrest sweeping France despite President Emmanuel Macron’s appeals for calm, the authorities said on Monday.

Hundreds of thousands protested rising living costs and education funding cuts over the weekend, with demonstrations escalating into clashes with police, arson and looting.

The violence erupted Saturday as Yellow Vest demonstrations merged with student protests that began last month at a high school in Creteil, near Paris, over teacher shortages and deteriorating facilities. The movement has since broadened into protests against inequality and rising living costs, with labor unions joining in opposition to the government’s proposed 2027 budget and spending cuts.

Despite Macron’s Friday appeal for “calm and respect,” Paris endured two days of rioting. On Sunday, protesters clashed with police near Place de la Republique as vehicles and trach cans burned, shops were looted and officers deployed tear gas and water cannons.

Footage showed charred wreckage, shattered storefronts, smashed advertising signs and graffiti-covered businesses.

🇫🇷 Paris? Its looks like a third world country 😢

Writer: Samuel pic.twitter.com/rbd0fwCwm6

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 19, 2026

A crowd also attacked RT Arabic correspondent Wafa Fakkani while she was filming the protests. Her cameraman captured the incident before the crew escaped and resumed reporting.

A day prior, violence hit some of the capital’s wealthiest shopping districts, where luxury retailers were targeted by vandals and looters. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said “entire streets” had been “systematically devastated.”

Galeries Lafayette in Paris is being looted tonight.

It’s the French equivalent of Harrods in London or Bergdorf Goodman in NYC pic.twitter.com/F5jZU4bswZ

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 17, 2026

Clashes also erupted in Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, Angers, and Limoges, damaging businesses and public buildings. Alain Di Crescenzo, head of the CCI France chamber of commerce network, estimated that more than 2,000 businesses were affected, with damage reaching “hundreds of millions of euros.”

Although the worst rioting had subsided by Monday morning, students and union activists blocked access to the iconic Louvre Museum, denouncing “police repression.” Footage showed demonstrators gathering outside the museum’s glass pyramid after passing security, prompting its temporary closure.

🚨🇫🇷 ALERTE INFO !

"ACAB, ACAB, ACAB !"

Devant la pyramide du Louvre à Paris, des étudiants d’écoles d’art et de culture manifestent et bloquent l’entrée du musée.

(@JBSemerdjian / Le Figaro) pic.twitter.com/zpH7KcHPX4

— Impact (@ImpactMediaFR) October 19, 2026

Action and reaction

Politicians across France’s political spectrum blamed Macron and his government for the unrest, accusing the administration of undermining public services and failing to maintain order.

Marine Le Pen, who leads first-round polling for the 2027 presidential election, called Macron a president “without credibility or authority,” describing his administration as “a government on its last legs.” Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the left-wing France Unbowed party, blamed “ten disastrous years” of Macron weakening public services. The mayors of Paris, Marseille and Limoges accused Interior Minister Laurent Nunez and police commanders of incompetence in maintaining public order.

Nunez initially blamed “opportunistic troublemakers” for the unrest, but admitted Monday that police had suffered “a loss of control” due to poor planning. He said he offered his resignation Sunday, but Macron refused, instead ordering a new policing strategy, faster deployment and transparency over intelligence failures. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu ordered partial curfews in several cities.

Despite the unrest, Macron departed on Monday for a three-day visit to the Middle East, leaving his government to deal with the fallout at home.

The crisis comes as Macron’s approval ratings hit record lows. An October Ipsos BVA-CESI poll for La Tribune Dimanche put his approval at 15%, with 82% disapproving, the lowest since he took office in 2017. An Ifop survey recorded 17% approval and 83% dissaproval. Le Pen leads first-round polling for the April 2027 election with 32-36% support.

Protests spread beyond France

France was not alone in facing unrest over the weekend, as tens of thousands protested living costs, housing shortages and government policies across Europe. Demonstrations in several countries escalated into clashes, vandalism and arson.

Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz described the unrest across Europe over the weekend as resembling “scenes from a civil war,” warning in a post on X that “we risk seeing the same scenes soon in Berlin, Vienna and Munich.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the European unrest as “bordering on chaos,” calling it a major crisis.

“It’s hard to say whether the crisis is systemic or not, but it is obvious that it is a big crisis,” he told reporters on Monday.

Some experts who spoke to RT linked the unrest to EU’s confrontation with Russia. Italian journalist Davide Carbonaro called the severing of economic ties with Moscow “economic and political suicide,” saying that young Europeans felt betrayed and deprived of a future. Serbian journalist Nebojsa Malic accused Western leaders of scapegoating Russia to hide their failures.

RT’s Chay Bowes examined how Europe’s continued support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia are fueling economic pressures and public discontent as unrest spreads across the continent.

A Catholic priest in Ecuador has been killed after a large wooden crucifix fell from a church wall and struck him on the head during Mass.

The tragedy occurred on Saturday at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in the southern city of Guayaquil. The service was livestreamed on social media, according to local media reports.

Footage shows the 53-year-old parish priest, Father Patricio Alfredo Sanchez Molinari, standing near the altar when the crucifix mounted on the wall behind him suddenly tilts forward and falls on him. The incident occurred roughly 30 minutes into the service leaving the congregation stunned and bereaved.

The Archdiocese of Guayaquil subsequently confirmed the priest’s death in an official statement, saying Cardinal Luis Cabrera joined “in prayer for the eternal rest of his soul and expresses its solidarity, affection and love to the Redemptorist family, to his families and friends.”

Parishioners at San Lorenzo in Vinces, where Father Patricio had previously served, also paid tribute to the priest, recalling his “dedication and pastoral love” to their community.

Ecuadorian authorities have not publicly commented on the incident, and the cause of the crucifix’s fall remains unknown.

Negotiations to end the Ukraine conflict are making “great progress,” US President Donald Trump has said, defending his decision to hold back economic pressure on Russia to keep diplomacy moving.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said his priority is securing a settlement rather than taking steps that could undermine ongoing negotiations.

“I am in the process of negotiating peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he wrote.

“Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations!” Trump added, without specifying who he meant. His administration has previously negotiated the release of several Americans jailed in Russia and has also helped mediate several prisoner-of-war exchanges between Moscow and Kiev, including a May agreement providing for the return of 1,000 prisoners on each side. 

The president’s remarks followed his waiver of sweeping penalties pushed by the late US lawmaker Lindsey Graham, dubbed the “sanctions from hell,” including tariffs targeting Russia and major purchasers of its energy. Washington also eased restrictions on Russian diesel exports earlier this month to alleviate rising global fuel prices.

He also accused Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky of resisting a settlement despite extensive Western funding, while criticizing Kiev’s continued attacks on Russian refineries for disrupting global diesel markets.

Moscow welcomed Washington’s continued diplomatic engagement on Monday. “The American side continues its mediation and peacemaking efforts, which we highly appreciate,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

However, a final settlement is impossible without participation by someone representing Kiev who is prepared to take responsibility, he added.

At Friday’s EU summit in Brussels, Zelensky sought another €70 billion ($78.5 billion) in foreign financing for next year, in addition to the €90 billion already being paid out by the bloc to bankroll Kiev’s war effort.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico rejected participation in further financing, while Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis ruled out guarantees from Prague. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, however, said the European Commission would nevertheless examine further funding options.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has rebuked Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky over his insistence that his country must defeat Russia, rejecting his all-or-nothing stance as a “false binary” and insisting that the conflict must end through a negotiated settlement.

Speaking to NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday, Zelensky said Ukraine must win the conflict with Russia, calling victory essential to preserving the country’s independence, geopolitical alignment, and national identity. He lamented that Ukraine “will not prevail” if the US sides with Russia.

“Zelensky presents a false binary this morning that Ukraine must win,” Bessent told the show shortly after Zelensky’s appearance, arguing that the priority should be ending the conflict rather than determining a winner. “The war must end, and that will be with some kind of a negotiated settlement.”

Bessent stressed that Trump made it clear “he wants to end this war,” noting that the president’s decisions are aimed at securing a negotiated settlement.

The move followed Trump’s decision days earlier to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports to ease rising fuel prices. According to US media reports, Trump eased the restrictions after Zelensky refused to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities, which the president blamed for global fuel shortages and soaring prices at the pump – a critical issue just weeks before the US midterm elections. The moves sparked outrage in Kiev, where they were seen as a betrayal of Ukraine’s efforts to maintain Western pressure on Russia.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump defended the moves, saying Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries are driving up prices, while stressing that he is focused on brokering a peace deal and does not want to “do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” Trump also argued that Zelensky does not want to end the conflict and probably never did, despite receiving billions in Western aid.

Zelensky, whose presidential term expired in 2024, has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law. Moscow maintains that Zelensky is illegitimate; Trump recently called for his resignation, saying Ukraine should get “a new president.”

Since returning to office, Trump has revived talks with Russia, which were largely suspended under his predecessor, Joe Biden. His efforts to broker peace have produced some results, including POW exchanges, but the diplomatic push has been overshadowed by the US war against Iran and has yet to yield a peace deal.

Kiev and Brussels fear the EU’s next package of sanctions against Russia could be its last, with officials rushing to secure its adoption before Marine Le Pen potentially becomes France’s next president, according to The Telegraph.

The right-wing National Rally politician, who opinion polls put in the lead of the race, has strongly criticized Brussels’ approach to Ukraine. She has compared Kiev’s proposed accession to the EU to economic suicide and repeatedly called for suspending all aid to the country.

Kiev and Brussels are “wargaming contingency measures” in case Le Pen wins the election next April, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. One source described February as possibly the “last opportunity” to adopt new sanctions against Russia.

The EU has imposed 21 rounds of sanctions since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and is preparing a 22nd. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday contrasted the bloc’s unwavering stance with that of US President Donald Trump, who has eased restrictions on Russian diesel to alleviate domestic fuel shortages.

As the Ukraine conflict has dragged on, Brussels has found it increasingly difficult to identify new Russian targets for sanctions. The latest negotiations reportedly stalled over France’s push to remove billionaire Alisher Usmanov from the EU’s blacklist.

The move was presented in the media as part of a backroom deal to secure the release of convicted French spies in Azerbaijan. Skeptics, however, pointed to Usmanov’s successful legal challenges exposing weaknesses in the EU’s justification for sanctioning him as another major factor.

Negotiations over the 21st sanctions package, adopted in July, also faced firm resistance from several member states. Greece secured an exemption allowing Greek shipping company Dynagas to continue transporting LNG from Russia’s Yamal project. Bulgaria prevented the blacklisting of Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill, while Germany and Portugal defended their imports of Russian seafood. Tourist destinations France and Italy, meanwhile, opposed tighter entry restrictions on Russian military personnel.

Egypt has pledged to support Saudi Arabia in its escalating conflict with Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, the country’s top security body has announced.

Riyadh has been pressing allies for assistance following Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and oil facilities in retaliation for its military operations in Yemen. The group has demanded that Saudi Arabia lift its blockade of Yemeni airports and ports, describing its approach as “an eye for an eye.”

Egypt’s National Defense Council, chaired by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, announced the decision on Sunday, a day after he sought parliamentary authorization to deploy troops and military equipment abroad. The council pledged “all possible forms of support” to help Saudi Arabia defend its security but did not specify what assistance Egypt would provide.

The renewed confrontation began in July when Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces struck Houthi-held Sanaa Airport, ending years of relative calm following a UN-brokered truce in 2022.

The Houthis retaliated with missile strikes, declared a maritime blockade, and seized territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including Mokhaa and islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Riyadh subsequently intensified its airstrikes and backed a counteroffensive by Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

An airstrike on a house in Yemen’s northern Saada province killed at least nine people, including five children and two women, and wounded 19 on Sunday, the Houthi-run Health Ministry said. It blamed Saudi Arabia, which did not immediately comment. Across the border, the Saudi authorities said a Houthi projectile wounded six people in a residential area of Najran province.

The Houthis’ chief negotiator, Mohamed Abdulsalam, blamed Riyadh for the escalation and accused it of obstructing mediation efforts. He said Oman proposed a five-day truce to facilitate talks and that the rebels agreed to halt attacks if Saudi Arabia meets unspecified humanitarian demands.

A Saudi diplomat offered a conflicting account last week, saying the kingdom proposed talks in Oman in July to resolve their differences but that the Houthis refused to take part.

Most Italians oppose aid to Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has said, as the country grapples with cost-of-living protests.

“We are fully aware that the majority of our public opinion, also influenced from abroad, is opposed to aiding Ukraine,” he told the BBC in an interview published on Saturday.

“It is difficult to explain that you have to help a nation resist and that helping it resist does not mean that you are opposed to peace.”

He nevertheless argued that Italy should continue to support Kiev, while acknowledging public anger over rising energy prices linked to the sanctions on Russia. He went on to claim that ‘Russian disinformation’ is fueling discontent.

“We cannot give in to public opinion when we believe that public opinion is wrong,” Crosetto said, adding that “it is difficult to explain that, at this moment, we cannot give Russia any gift.”

Around 290,000 Ukrainian citizens are officially resident in Italy, according to the latest figures from the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica. Most of them are reluctant to return to their home country, Italian media reports.

US President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports earlier this month after Kiev refused to halt strikes on Russian refineries, which Trump blamed for soaring prices. Crosetto argued that it was “a major mistake” for Trump to reduce support for Ukraine at such a critical time.

Crosetto’s remarks came as anti-government demonstrations swept northern Italy over the weekend, with clashes erupting in Milan, Turin, and Bologna. Protesters demanded more funding for public services and accused Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government of prioritizing military spending over education and welfare. Demonstrators in Milan chanted “more money for families, less for wars.”

Meloni’s policy has faced resistance within her governing coalition, including from Matteo Salvini’s League party. Last week, Roberto Vannacci, the leader of the right-wing National Future party, accused Vladimir Zelensky of treating Europe “like an ATM” after the Ukrainian leader requested another €70 billion ($79 billion) in aid. Vannacci argued that Italian taxpayers should not have to foot the bill.

An Austrian Airlines flight carrying 57 people from Tel Aviv, Israel to Vienna made an emergency landing in Bulgaria following a bomb threat.

According to a statement from Bulgaria’s Transport Ministry, the crew of Austrian Airlines flight OS82, an Airbus A320, reported that it received a bomb threat while flying near the Romanian border on Sunday.

Bulgarian MiG-29 fighter jets were scrambled to escort the aircraft to Vasil Levski Sofia Airport. All 51 passengers and six crew members disembarked safely.

Austrian Airlines spokeswoman Anita Kiefer said the passengers will be rebooked on alternative flights following a police search of the aircraft.

The incident follows two bomb threats involving Delta Air Lines flights between New York and Tel Aviv on October 13. One aircraft was evacuated and searched after landing at Ben Gurion Airport, while another was held at New York’s JFK Airport before departure. Both were cleared after security inspections found no explosives.

The latest scare also comes after an attempted terrorist attack aboard a Flydubai flight carrying mostly Israeli passengers from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30. A co-pilot attacked the captain with an emergency axe and attempted to seize control of the aircraft. Passengers and crew members overpowered the assailant, allowing the plane to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The pilot, Indian national Smit Machchhar, sustained serious injuries.

According to Emirati prosecutors, the suspect, an Omani national, planned to crash the aircraft into the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion Airport to cause mass casualties.

Following the attempted hijacking, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered tighter security checks on foreign airline crews and a comprehensive review of security procedures.

French opposition leaders have blamed President Emmanuel Macron and his government’s policies for the wave of violent unrest sweeping the country.

The latest round of demonstrations by students and public sector workers over the high cost of living and deteriorating public services descended into rioting, vandalism, and looting in Paris and other cities on Saturday. Thousands of people were arrested and hundreds of police officers were injured.

Marine Le Pen, who leads first-round polling for the 2027 presidential election, described Macron as a president “without credibility or authority” who has “lost all touch with reality,” calling his government “a government on its last legs.”

“We are experiencing a profound crisis of trust and authority that threatens democracy. This should serve as a warning: Our country is caught in a vice, even held hostage, between violence and powerlessness,” she said in a message on X.

“We are paying the price for decades of laxity, the erosion of authority, and the moral and material weakening of our domestic security forces,” RN President Jordan Bardella said. “I expect Emmanuel Macron to apologize and step down.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party, told French broadcaster LCI that the protests are “the result of ten disastrous years during which President Macron has undermined the functioning of the state and public services.”

He accused Interior Minister Laurent Nunez and police leaders of “complete incompetence” in handling the protests and criticized the use of riot-control weapons. LFI previously rejected government accusations that it incited violence.

“We will show no leniency. Listening and dialogue do not mean weakness or impunity,” he said.

Macron also pledged to address the concerns of protesting students, who have complained about staff shortages and poor learning conditions. “Their voices must be heard, without prejudice and without downplaying their difficulties.”

Macron’s approval rating has fallen to just 15-19%, according to opinion polls this month. Le Pen leads first-round polling for the election in April, with support ranging from 32% to 36%.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky does not want to end the conflict with Russia and probably never did, US President Donald Trump has said, citing the billions in aid Kiev has received from the West as among the reasons. 

In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump defended his decision to ease the sanctions on Moscow, while reiterating his claim that Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries have contributed to rising energy prices.

“Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now,” Trump wrote.

He added that Ukraine was “in shambles,” describing its male population as “low, wounded, and/or dead.”

Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports earlier this month to curb rising energy prices ahead of the US midterm elections. On Friday, he suspended the tariffs targeting major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

Ukraine defied Trump’s demand to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities, launching a drone attack on an oil terminal in St. Petersburg overnight on Sunday and setting it on fire.

Zelensky said he felt betrayed by Trump. According to US media reports, Ukrainian officials were blindsided by his diesel deal with Russia.

“I hope that he will change his decisions, because I think that it’s all mistakes, and it will not help us, and it will not help [the] United States,” he told NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday.

On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that Zelensky has “no desire” to reach a settlement because his government would collapse if Ukraine signed a deal acceptable to both the US and Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine “cannot alter the course of history” by intensifying strikes deep inside Russian territory.

Russia has long accused Ukraine’s Western backers, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, of sabotaging the 2022 peace talks in Istanbul. Johnson has denied the allegations.

Zelensky, whose five-year presidential term expired in 2024, has refused to call a new election, citing martial law, which was imposed shortly after the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022.

He has since argued that an election can only be held after a months-long ceasefire. Russia has warned that Ukraine could use a prolonged truce to replenish its military and has offered to suspend attacks only on election day.

Ukraine has been rocked by a series of high-profile corruption scandals since 2025, including an alleged $100 million kickback scheme in its embattled energy sector that implicated Zelensky’s former business partner, Timur Mindich. His government has also faced political controversies, including attempts to curb the powers of Western-backed anti-corruption agencies and the abrupt dismissal of popular Defense Minister Mikhail Fyodorov in July, which sparked protests in Kiev.

Two Saudi Air Force officers died when an ​AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter crashed in southwestern Najran province, Saudi-led coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki has said. Yemen’s Houthi militants claim they shot it down.

According to the Saudi authorities, the helicopter crashed because of a technical malfunction. Riyadh did not comment on the militant group’s claims.

Separately, the Saudi General Directorate of Civil Defense reported on Sunday that six civilians were injured in a Houthi missile strike on the city of Najran in the same area. Three homes and three vehicles were damaged in the attack, it added.

The militant group, known officially as the Ansar Allah movement, published a video on social media purporting to show the moment of the strike against the helicopter. The black-and-white video shows a glowing object being hit with a projectile, resulting in a major explosion. It is unclear whether the object was a helicopter or whether the video is related to Sunday’s incident.

Najran province borders Yemen and has been targeted in Houthi attacks over recent weeks as violence between the militants and the Saudi-led coalition escalates. A Houthi offensive last month triggered the latest flare up in the civil war, which began in 2014. In a rapid advance, the militants captured the strategic port of Mokha and Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a vital shipping route connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

The development prompted the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government to launch a counteroffensive to retake the lost territory. The Houthis, an Iranian-backed Shiite group, accused Riyadh of targeting civilians. According to the militants, Saudi forces launched nearly 120 airstrikes in just one day earlier this week. At least 385 people have been killed or wounded by Saudi strikes since September 3, including many women and children, the Houthi health authorities stated.

The group responded by targeting Saudi infrastructure, including civilian airports, using missiles. Last weekend, a strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh left 12 people dead, including four Saudi nationals, and more than 300 injured. Another attack the following day killed a Pakistani national and injured 11 others.

Washington has urged Israel to “crack down” on extremist settler violence following a brutal attack on an American journalist in the occupied West Bank, even as President Donald Trump has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his “Complete and Total Endorsement” ahead of Israel’s October 27 elections.

The conflicting messages come amid reported tensions between Trump and Netanyahu over Israeli military operations in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran. Nevertheless, the US president praised Netanyahu as a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” in a Truth Social post on Sunday, prompting the Israeli leader to thank him for his “tremendous support and the joint work.”

A day earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attack on American photojournalist Heidi Levine when questioned by reporters in Maryland.

“We’re very disturbed by those images and what we’re seeing. We’ve asked the Israelis, and continue to ask them, to crack down on that stuff,” he said.

Trump does not want to see “a crisis going on in the West Bank,” Rubio added. “The whole thing was just disturbing, not a good look.”

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also condemned the assault.

Levine was attacked near the West Bank village of Abu Falah on Friday while covering the local Palestinian olive harvest, which has faced recurring settler violence. According to the Washington Post, Israeli settlers knocked down the veteran photographer, who was wearing a protective vest marked ‘PRESS’, stole her equipment, and repeatedly kicked her, breaking four vertebrae and a rib. Israeli soldiers were reportedly present but did not intervene.

On Saturday, masked Israeli settlers also attacked a convoy carrying European diplomats near Taybeh, a predominantly Christian Palestinian village in the West Bank.

Israel has also expanded settlement construction, approving nearly 11,000 new housing units in the West Bank this year, according to Israeli watchdog Peace Now.

The expansion has been championed by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and backed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, both key members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Tens of thousands took to the streets of European cities over the weekend to protest rising living costs, housing shortages and government policies, with demonstrations escalating into violent clashes, looting and arson in several countries. The unrest left smashed storefronts, damaged public buildings and burned-out vehicles in its wake.

France, where the protests first erupted, saw the most extensive destruction, while clashes also broke out in Belgium and Italy as a separate wave of anti-government demonstrations continued in Albania. In Portugal, tens of thousands also demonstrated, although no comparable scale of violence or damage was reported.

Footage from across Europe showed smashed shop windows, looted stores, burning vehicles and fires near public buildings.

In Limoges, France, flames engulfed the historic town hall, while masked demonstrators in Milan hurled stones at riot police near the Gothic cathedral and set fire to street barricades. In Brussels, protesters overturned a car, while in Tirana, demonstrators threw rocks and petrol bombs at police near the Education Ministry. Riot police in several cities used tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds.

The massive rallies reflect a range of national grievances rather than a coordinated movement. In France, demonstrations took place in Marseille, Strasbourg, Nantes, Lyon and other cities. 

🇧🇪 Protests have spread from France to Belgium, with masked protesters, smashed bus stops, fires, water cannons and clashes with riot police.

More than 100 people have reportedly been arrested over property damage and arson.

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/HSYWcgUdll

— Europa.com (@europa) October 8, 2026

Initially sparked by poor school conditions and teacher shortages, the protests have broadened to include anger over living costs, inequality, public services and proposed spending cuts. Authorities put Saturday’s nationwide turnout at 550,000, while organizers estimated 800,000.

🚨 ALERTE

Des manifestants ont pris possession d’un TRAIN TOURISTIQUE à GRENOBLE !! pic.twitter.com/WfwvixHZpW

— Kultur (@Kulturlesite_) October 17, 2026

In Belgium, student groups opposed to rising education costs and reforms they say could limit access to higher education. In Italy, marches against living costs and wars began peacefully before groups broke away and clashed with police in Milan and Bologna.

In Portugal, protesters rallied over low wages, rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing. Thousands marched in Lisbon, pitching tents in Rossio square to highlight the crisis.

Incredible scenes out of France where a fire tornado forms right in the middle of the protests.

Vive la révolution! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/6PgNppMO3l

— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) October 17, 2026

In Albania, student-led protests entered a fifth consecutive day, with demonstrators demanding Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation over corruption allegations, a lack of jobs and poor prospects for young people.

Opposition has also focused on a luxury tourism project on the southern coast linked to an investment firm founded by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

🔴 🇫🇷 LOOTING IN LYON: Shops looted and vandalized as rioting grips the Presqu’île district. Scenes of destruction across the city.#France pic.twitter.com/y9yYNjiSAY

— Silent Observer (@YousufPash69914) October 17, 2026

Police in France arrested nearly 1,800 people and reported more than 500 injured officers, gendarmes and firefighters. One demonstrator died after suffering a cardiac arrest in Paris.

Carrefour reported damage to 50 stores, 20 of which were looted, with losses reaching tens of millions of euros. Limoges estimated repairs to its fire-damaged town hall at €1 million, while Bordeaux reported up to 100 looted stores

🚨The beginning of a store looting captured in Lyon.🤣🔥 pic.twitter.com/IbR2HIovIP

— Aleksey The Great 🇷🇺🎖 (@aleksthgrt) October 17, 2026

In Belgium, 45 people were arrested in Liege, including 12 minors, amid clashes and property damage. Italy reported about 50 detentions in Milan and four in Bologna, where 36 law-enforcement personnel were injured. In Albania, reports gave differing totals for arrests and injuries over five days of unrest. Seven officers were suspended pending an investigation into alleged excessive force.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar has said that he expects US President Donald Trump to prolong Budapest’s exemption from Washington’s sanctions targeting Russian energy after Trump announced a diesel deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Trump eased restrictions on Russia’s diesel exports following a phone call with Putin last week in an attempt to reduce rising fuel prices ahead of the midterm election in the US on November 3.

The deal faced harsh criticism in the EU, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni labeling it a “very risky” gamble that could undermine the whole Western sanctions policy towards Russia. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys argued that it “doesn’t help neither the price of oil products nor the unity of the transatlantic community.”

When asked to comment on Trump’s decision during his interview with the outlet 444 on Saturday, Magyar replied by saying that “the US president will make the deals that he wants. On the other hand, this agreement is significant for Hungary.”

“Hungary has an exemption from sanctions on Russian oil until November. This is extended annually by the Americans. If the US president has concluded an agreement on diesel exports, it would be illogical not to grant Hungary this exemption for at least another year,” Magyar said.

The exemption was agreed between Trump and Magyar’s predecessor, Viktor Orban, who was a harsh critic of Western economic restrictions on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict.
Due to being a landlocked country, Hungary remains heavily dependent on deliveries of Russian pipeline oil and gas. Some 90% of its crude oil in 2025 had been provided by Moscow, according to S&P Global data.

The Hungarian prime minister stressed that he understood that the Russia-US diesel deal was “not welcome from Ukraine’s point of view.”

Following his address at the EU summit in Brussels on Friday, Zelensky told journalists that “we cannot accept these agreements [between Washington and Moscow]. Because gas deals will follow. And I am absolutely certain of this. After gas, they will lift sanctions on other things as well.”

On Saturday, Trump also signed an executive order to waive “the bone-crushing” sanctions, championed by the late US Senator Lindsey Graham, which proposed 500% tariffs on imports from Russia and 100% tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Taylor Rogers defended the move, saying that it “provides the president with additional authorities to pursue a peaceful resolution” of the Ukraine conflict. “Enforcing the sanctions provisions now would impede ongoing US efforts to negotiate a durable and comprehensive peace agreement,” she explained.