French President Emmanuel Macron says protesters who attacked government buildings need to pay for their crimes. His address comes after hundreds were arrested across France during violent protests against the rising cost of living and poor school conditions.
Published On 18 Oct 202618 Oct 2026
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Gulf ministers urge action against Houthis as fighting displaces more than 233,000 people across Yemen.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has condemned repeated attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi fighters on Saudi Arabia and pledged support for the kingdom.
The political and economic bloc that includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates issued a statement on Sunday, shortly after their foreign ministers’ meeting in Manama, Bahrain.
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The statement said an attack on any member affected all six, invoking a joint defence agreement and backing Saudi Arabia’s right to protect itself.
The condemnation came as the Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthis reported shooting down two drones near Riyadh and in Saudi Arabia‘s Eastern Province early on Sunday.
The coalition said another drone had been intercepted near the capital hours earlier, but did not identify who launched it.
Gulf ministers accused the Houthis of carrying out deadly strikes on civilian airports and vital facilities.
They also pressed for tighter enforcement of a United Nations arms embargo against the group and urged countries to formally designate it “a terrorist organisation”.
The ministers welcomed an October 15 statement from the UN Security Council (UNSC), the body responsible for maintaining international peace, which condemned Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia and threats to Red Sea shipping.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government separately appealed to the UNSC to act against Houthi attacks on homes and state facilities.
In letters addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UNSC’s president for October, Aglaia Balta, the Yemeni government cited an attack on the presidential palace in Aden, where the government is temporarily based.
Separately on Sunday, UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud in Abu Dhabi to discuss regional security, the UAE’s state news agency WAM reported.
Meanwhile, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces press offensives on several fronts.
The Yemeni military said the Houthis fired missiles towards the central city of Marib on Sunday, while government troops reported gains in Taiz, further south.
Government-aligned commanders said eight soldiers died in fighting in Lahij province on Saturday.
Government forces also claimed to have killed 12 Houthi fighters in southern Taiz, figures that could not be independently confirmed.
This latest phase of the war followed Houthi gains along Yemen’s Red Sea coast last month.
Government forces launched a counteroffensive intended to recapture territory from the Houthis, who seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
The fighting has uprooted more than 233,000 people, according to the International Organization for Migration, the UN’s migration agency.
About 121,000 are in Taiz province, where supply routes have been disrupted by the fighting.
Al Jazeera’s Hadeel al-Yamani, reporting from Taiz, said cooking gas was unavailable and food stocks were dwindling as Houthi forces blocked supplies through the city’s western entrance.
A local office tracking the siege said food prices had risen fivefold.
The World Health Organization, the UN health agency, warned that Taiz’s 12 hospitals had fuel for just four more days and had run out of surgical supplies.
Oxygen and medicines were also critically scarce as the city struggled with a cholera outbreak.
Coco Gauff says she suffered racial abuse on social media following an incident in her win over 16-year-old Sun Xinran at the China Open.
The American had been serving at 4-5 in the first set her Chinese opponent thought she had hit a winner.
However, Gauff raised her hand to halt play because of a flickering light in the side panels surrounding the court.
Gauff won the next three points to hold for 5-5 before she closed out the set, and then dropped just one game in the remainder of the contest as she claimed a 7-5 6-1 victory to reach the last 16 in Beijing.
The world number four gave a lengthy explanation of why she stopped the point in a post on X and said it was “an unfortunate situation” but “out of my control”, adding that Sun had understood and accepted her apology.
Gauff then responded to a reply to her original post which included racist language.
“You can dislike me or disagree about what happened without being racist,” Gauff wrote.
“The amount of racist comments/direct messages I’ve received in the last few hours is insane. Lastly, I’m not a cheater or a thief.”
Gauff is far from the first player in the women’s game to suffer social media abuse.
A report in July said female players were subjected to more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages on social media in 2025.
The WTA and World Tennis said “collective action” was required to make “significant progress” in tackling abuse.
Saudi Arabia has used its address to the UN General Assembly to accuse Iran of flagrant attacks on civilian and economic targets across the region, while calling on the international community to condemn Houthi actions threatening Red Sea shipping.
Published On 26 Sep 202626 Sep 2026
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