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Burnham is set to be greeted with military honours at the German capital’s Chancellery ahead of his first face-to-face meeting with the chancellor.

On Thursday, the two leaders will formally ratify the 2025 Kensington Treaty, a partnership committing both countries to tackle hostile activity through deeper cooperation on science, technology, defence, security and growth.

Speaking ahead of the visit, Burnham said the UK and Germany were “joining forces to find, expose and disrupt” threats.

He continued: “Attacks on our infrastructure, our businesses and our democracies are not a distant threat.

“They reach into people’s homes and workplaces, and they are designed to make us weaker and more divided.”

European leaders have warned the threat of hybrid attacks against Europe by Russia has intensified in recent weeks.

Hybrid warfare or hybrid attacks are loose terms which tend to describe non-military methods designed to exert pressure and destabilise an adversary – for example cyber attacks, sabotage or misinformation.

Last month, a senior Russian diplomat was summoned by the British government over an “egregious and reckless attack” on Leipzig airport.

It is a major international freight hub used for providing support to Ukraine. Moscow has denied any involvement in the incident.

Meanwhile, questions have also been raised this week about Germany’s reliability as an intelligence partner, following the bombshell arrest of a former spy chief on suspicion of espionage.

August Hanning has been accused of espionage, treason and obtaining classified information for a foreign power, the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office says.

He ran the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005 and has since been working as a private consultant.

The talks also come during a period in which Merz’s own political future has come under intense scrutiny.

Burnham replaced Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in July after the former leader was forced out by his own MPs just two years after winning a landslide election victory.

Similarly, Merz has faced persistent rumours he could be replaced by his party due to his poor approval ratings and following setbacks in regional elections.

Although the chancellor appears to have overcome an immediate crisis in his leadership, questions remain over his future.

Additional reporting by Ottilie Mitchell.

Ukrainian reports of South Korean fuel exports to Russia come amid strained tensions between Seoul and Kyiv.

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said the government will take legal action over illegal fuel shipments to Russia if allegations from an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are confirmed.

The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it had not confirmed whether South Korean fuel, including diesel, had been exported to Russia.

It added that exports of some products, such as diesel and jet fuel for commercial purposes, were not included in a South Korean exports control list to Russia.

On Wednesday, the South Korean presidential office dismissed a statement by Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian president on sanctions policy, that 176,000 tonnes of fuel were shipped from South Korea to Russia via sanctioned tankers in July and August.

Ukraine’s top sanctions official said the alleged findings run counter to South Korea’s sanctions policy towards Russia.

“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our government has consistently implemented sanctions and export controls against Russia in close cooperation with the international community,” South Korean presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said on Wednesday, according to the Yonhap news agency.

“We ask that Ukraine also refrain from distorting the relevant policies of the Republic of Korea without sufficient verification of the facts and making public remarks that can damage international trust,” she added.

Relations between South Korea and Ukraine have been strained for the past couple of weeks after Seoul accused Zelenskyy of having “unilaterally disclosed” to the United Nations General Assembly that Kyiv had transferred two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea.

Seoul Korea demanded an official apology from Kyiv, claiming the Ukrainian president had breached a non-disclosure agreement. Kyiv said no such agreement was in place.

Pyongyang and Moscow, meanwhile, have deep ties, with the two countries having signed a mutual defence treaty in 2024. According to Ukrainian and South Korean estimates, about 14,000 to 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to support Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine.

North Korea and South Korea remain technically at war because the 1950–1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

As part of the largest U.K. Commando Force exercise in 15 years, British special operators conducted a submarine insertion off Scotland, making use of a German Navy Type 212A — a boat you can read about in detail here. The maneuvers are the first time since the war in Afghanistan that all of the Commando Force’s specialist elements have operated together. The submarine insertion, conducted at Cape Wrath on September 29, is part of Exercise Strike Warrior, a major NATO drill intended to rehearse allied crisis-response and warfighting operations across the North Atlantic and High North.

The U.K. Royal Navy-led Commando Force specializes in amphibious, littoral, and expeditionary operations. It brings together Royal Marines commandos with specialist elements including reconnaissance, intelligence, targeting, artillery, logistics, and medical capabilities. The force is increasingly focused on smaller, dispersed teams operating across contested littoral environments.

Commandos attempt to drive RIB onto German submarine casing in heavy swell

Including elements of the Commando Force, more than 2,000 personnel from the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, and Norway are currently participating in Strike Warrior, with eight warships and 19 aircraft involved in activity spanning Scotland, the Western Isles, the North-West Approaches, Galloway, the Borders and the North Sea.

The submarine insertion underscores the type of maritime special operations the British Commando Force is now increasingly training to conduct. Personnel from 148 (Meiktila) Commando Forward Observation Battery, Royal Artillery, boarded the unnamed German attack submarine off Scotland before being infiltrated toward the coast. The sub provided intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support as the force approached the target area, after which the commandos conducted a discreet small-boat insertion using inflatable raiding craft.

Once ashore, the commandos moved onto the cliffs and established an extemporized observation post. From there, they confirmed the simulated target and coordinated live naval surface fires against a simulated enemy position. Here, firepower was provided by the Portuguese Karel Doorman class frigate Dom Francisco de Almeida, presumably using its Oto Melara 76mm deck gun. Following the engagement, the team was extracted. The complete sequence incorporated submarine infiltration, small-boat insertion, covert reconnaissance and targeting, live naval gunfire, and withdrawal into a single mission profile.

The German submarine involved is particularly well suited to this kind of mission. Conventional diesel-electric attack submarines (SSK) lack the nuclear-powered endurance and sustained high speed of an SSN, but those characteristics are not necessarily what a short-range clandestine insertion mission requires. Modern SSKs such as Germany’s Type 212A are designed around extremely low acoustic signatures and can remain submerged for extended periods using air-independent propulsion, making them difficult to detect while operating in relatively shallow and constrained waters.

That combination is hugely valuable for special operations. An SSK can approach a coastline covertly, conduct ISR, release a small team and its boats, and withdraw without exposing a large surface vessel or maintaining the high-speed transit capability associated with a nuclear submarine. Its comparatively small size can also be advantageous when operating closer to shore, where depth, seabed conditions and the presence of coastal sensors can constrain larger submarines. Conventionally powered boats are also far cheaper to procure and operate and have smaller crews.

An SSN offers major advantages for longer-range deployments: far greater endurance, sustained speed, and the ability to carry and support larger payloads over intercontinental distances. These payloads can include dry deck shelters and swimmer delivery vehicles, allowing divers easy exit and entrance while the boat is submerged and at a standoff distance from the coast.

But for a mission whose essential requirement is to quietly loiter near a coast, put a small team ashore and leave, an SSK remains a highly relevant platform. Conventional submarines are particularly valuable to the kind of distributed littoral operations NATO is rehearsing in northern European waters.

The U.K. Royal Navy’s four Upholder class were its last diesel-electric submarines. They were withdrawn in 1994–95 and subsequently transferred to Canada. The Royal Navy today operates an all-nuclear submarine fleet.

The Upholders were also particularly suited to inshore operations, reconnaissance, and other missions demanding extreme quietness and maneuverability.

With this in mind, TWZ has, in the past, examined whether the U.S. Navy should complement its all-nuclear submarine fleet with advanced conventional boats. Sweden’s Gotland demonstrated the value of these kinds of boats when it was leased to the U.S. Navy for adversary training and proved exceptionally difficult for American ASW forces to detect.

Returning to the Cape Wrath drill, the 148 Battery operations officer involved explained that “This level of complexity and coordination of live assets has not been achieved by 148 for nearly 30 years.”

“We wanted to demonstrate to our partners across the United Kingdom Commando Force, wider U.K. Defense and NATO SOF community the type of missions we are prepared to execute against future threats,” the officer added.

Multinational integration is central to the exercise. Strike Warrior is testing the ability of the British Commando Force to plug into a much larger allied force in which submarines, surface combatants, aircraft, drones, and small specialist teams can contribute to different parts of the same operation.

Earlier in Strike Warrior, 148 Battery also directed fires from the Dutch Karel Doorman class frigate HNLMS Van Amstel and Royal Canadian Navy Halifax class frigate HMCS St. John’s after establishing observation posts. Those ships were operating as part of Standing NATO Maritime Group One.

The exercise also provides a snapshot of how Britain’s commandos have evolved since their intensive employment in Afghanistan. The Royal Marines’ Future Commando Force concept emphasizes smaller, more dispersed formations capable of operating in contested littoral environments, with greater reliance on maritime mobility, uncrewed systems, long-range fires, and allied capabilities.

Strike Warrior combines those elements, with the exercise including amphibious landings, boarding operations, intelligence and surveillance missions, maritime security, and anti-submarine warfare, alongside drone missions involving strikes and combat resupply. Other elements have practiced establishing protected medical facilities.

The geography of Strike Warrior is equally significant. The exercise extends across Scotland and its surrounding waters, including the Western Isles and out into the North Sea, placing the Commando Force in the maritime environment connecting the highly strategic North Atlantic, Norwegian Sea, and northern European approaches.

That region has become increasingly important to NATO planning because of the difficulty of monitoring and controlling such a large maritime battlespace. Submarines, maritime patrol aircraft, surface combatants, drones, and long-range weapons all have roles to play, while the geography provides numerous opportunities for small forces to operate from the coast and islands.

The United Kingdom has been repeatedly using the region and the wider High North as a training ground for this type of activity. Earlier this year, British commandos conducted a submarine insertion during Exercise Cold Response in Norway using the German Navy’s Type 212A submarine U-35. That also involved submarine infiltration, small-boat deployment, establishment of an observation post, and the direction of allied naval fires.

Strike Warrior expands that concept considerably and across a much larger battlespace, providing an opportunity to test not simply individual capabilities but the ability to combine them during a sustained NATO exercise.

The exercise began September 28 and concludes October 9.

For the British Commando Force, the significance extends beyond the dramatic imagery of troops emerging from a German submarine at Cape Wrath. After years in which British commandos were heavily committed to land-based counterinsurgency operations, the exercise is intended to put them firmly back in a maritime and high-end warfighting context.

This is the kind of operation that the U.K. Commando Force is now preparing to conduct alongside NATO partners in the increasingly contested waters of the North Atlantic and High North.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The State Department has accused the official of paying bribes to Fijian citizens to advance Chinese interests.

The US Department of State has publicly designated a Fiji-based man for his involvement in corruption on behalf of Chinese actors.

Zhao Fugang, the director of the Overseas Chinese Service Center, “abused his public position by paying bribes to Fijian citizens to advance China-based government, business, and criminal interests”, the State Department said in a press release on Wednesday.

“His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected U.S. interests in Fiji.”

The designation renders Zhao and his immediate family members “generally ineligible for entry into the United States”.

The US embassy in Suva, Fiji’s capital, said Zhao’s actions left the Pacific nation open to “malign foreign influence facilitated by Chinese government, business, and criminal actors”.

The embassy also said, “Public reporting shows an established trend of criminals operating across the Pacific with ties to China.”

Beijing says Overseas Chinese Service Centers help its nationals with administrative issues abroad, such as renewing driving licences. However, rights groups have alleged they are fronts for Beijing to push interests abroad, including the targeting of dissidents.

In February, the Trump administration sanctioned two leaders of Pacific island nations for alleged corruption tied to China. The US Department of State issued a notice alleging that Hokkons Baules, the president of Palau’s Senate, and Anderson Jibas, a former mayor in the Marshall Islands, had created openings for China to increase its influence in the region.

The testing plan for the U.S. Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47 fighter is continuing to take shape ahead of the type’s expected first flight in 2028. The Air Force Test Center (AFTC) aims to blend developmental and operational test elements, and leverage new tools in the virtual realm, to help accelerate that work. All of this is in support of an aggressive program schedule that aims to see the first production F-47s enter operational service in the early 2030s.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, head of the AFTC, was asked about how the groundwork is being laid for F-47 testing during a virtual talk the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies hosted yesterday. AFTC is located at Edwards Air Force Base in California, which is the Air Force’s main flight testing hub.

“So, I’ll leave timelines to the [F-47] program office and other folks to talk to, but what I will tell you are some of the things that we’re doing to accelerate our test capabilities to get critical capabilities out the door,” Massaro explained. “Integrated test is a key component.”

“So, how we mix together the DT [developmental test] and OT [operational test] elements, how we bring our operational test partners in earlier to define the requirements early on in the test planning process,” he continued. “We understand that the information that we can get early on in a program may have applicability to that final operational test requirement to establish whether it’s effective and suitable to the end user. So that’s a key component to accelerating test capabilities.”

There has always been overlap in development and operational test efforts for new U.S. military aircraft, but the Air Force has been taking steps to more deeply integrate these processes in recent years. The F-15EX Eagle II fighter, which reached initial operational capability in 2024, was the first ever Air Force aircraft to be fully tested and fielded through DT and OT efforts conducted in parallel, as you can read more about here. The service has more recently applied these concepts to the B-21 Raider program with test flights where developmental and operational test pilots have shared the cockpit.

“Another thing that we’ve learned over time too, if you think back to software testing and you think about agile software development, is having an iterative capability that you constantly iterate on,” Brig. Gen. Massaro also highlighted yesterday. “So, thinking about how we can structure our software, or our software testing, our capabilities testing.”

In this way, “we have those opportunities to inform decision makers on a regular cadence on what type of capability they may have at a certain timeline to be able to issue out to a warfighter on a time that might not be a normal milestone chart,” he continued. “We’re really working to incorporate into our test planning processes.”

“Another thing – and I kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier, too – is on the digital front, using our software tools, that super intelligence, graphic processing units, which have a significantly higher capability to process information, to really refine model iteration,” the AFTC head added. “Those models and flight test data [can be used] to update things like computational fluid dynamics when you’re doing tests like loads and high-alpha maneuvering to get information quicker from a flight test back into the program.”

Those “digital tools” can also be used “to accelerate how that information then goes back into a design choice or change if they need to make it,” he continued. “Coming up with those opportunities to use those tools in a test design and in a program” can then further help “to accelerate that final schedule delivery.”

Even very high-fidelity modeling in the digital realm is still not a substitute for real-world flight tests. However, Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro spoke more generally yesterday about how AFTC has been blending digital and live testing to maximize their respective benefits.

“We use models to develop our capabilities, and we need to anchor those models in truth, in physics, and an understanding of what happens in the real world,” the AFTC head stressed. “Outside of a cyber system, all of our capabilities touch the real world and touch physics, and we need to understand those dynamics. So, the models that we use to do design work, to do iterative type[s] of developmental work, and, in ways, operational work, too, need to be anchored in that real world truth.”

At the same time, “we can’t replicate what we need to go and test, and develop tactics and operationally test, in the real world on some of our ranges,” he also noted. “So, from a geographic perspective, just the width and the depth and the height of the ranges to the laydown of the systems that we have to see on the ranges to be able to execute against a threat, [and] the numbers that we might have to be testing.”

Blending real and virtualized elements can therefore be very valuable.

An “element that we’ve done in the developmental world for quite a while, that are [sic] part of this conversation, are plugging in, even though it’s a virtual environment, plugging in real world hardware into that virtual environment,” Massaro offered as one example. “So, you’re getting real-world software, the OFPs [operational flight program software], or you’re getting real-world sensing information coming into that virtual environment and feeding it there.”

Air Force Test Center’s Mission

Virtualized elements can also be added to real-world flight test events in various ways. The Air Force, among others, is also making use of these so-called live, virtual, constructive (LVC) concepts for training purposes for many of the same general reasons, including limited range capacity.

It is also worth noting here that the F-47 program is already benefiting from years of flight testing in secret using full-scale demonstrator aircraft. A substantial amount of simulation and modeling would also already have been done as a byproduct. A simulator likely already exists, as well, which could be used for risk reduction and fine-tuning of the F-47 design, as well as testing flight dynamics.

The Air Force has also leveraged its F-22 Raptor fleet to help in the development of relevant advanced capabilities. Back in 2023, the service announced that it was outright transforming its existing F-22 test force into one that would support the broader Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative. F-47 is part of the larger NGAD effort, as is the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone program, along with work on new weapons, jet engines, and more.

Though much about the F-47 program remains highly classified, the Air Force has consistently said that the program continues to be on track. Prime contractor Boeing is now building the first flying example, and construction is already well underway to establish a full production line. As mentioned, the target date for a first flight is currently in 2028, ahead of operational fielding in the early 2030s. As an aside, Boeing has also now won the contract to develop the Navy’s sixth-generation carrier-based fighter, currently referred to as F/A-XX.

AFTC is doing its part now to be ready to support the flight testing that will be needed to keep the F-47 program on track in the coming years.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The Democratic National Committee has filed a lawsuit against United States President Donald Trump over television advertisements that were publicly funded and allegedly used to promote his political policies.

Ken Martin, who heads the Democratic Party’s leadership body, suggested in a statement on Wednesday that the ads were designed to bolster Republican odds in the upcoming November 3 midterm elections.

“Donald Trump is misusing millions of taxpayer dollars to fund pure propaganda ads in a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November,” Martin said.

Later that day, Common Cause, a democracy watchdog group, filed a second lawsuit over the same set of ads.

It argued that the ads were “overtly political” and therefore ran afoul of laws that bar public funds from being used for political propaganda.

“These ads are not public-service announcements,” Common Cause said in its lawsuit, citing a justification Trump has offered for the television spots. “They are personal publicity and political propaganda through and through.”

Both lawsuits argue that, to create the ad campaign, Trump directed the White House to repurpose $20m in funds that Congress allocated for commemorative activities related to border security, including for those killed in the line of duty.

That manoeuvre, they argue, violates the separation of powers established in the US Constitution.

“The founders made clear more than 200 years ago that the executive can spend money only according to Congress’s direction,” Common Cause’s lawsuit said.

The two lawsuits also point to a provision Congress includes in its appropriations bills barring the use of taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes”.

Both complaints seek to have the ads declared illegal, and the expenditures stopped. They also call for steps to be taken to recover any money already spent on the ads.

The Democrats’ lawsuit was filed in Washington, DC, while the Common Cause complaint will be heard in the Southern District of New York.

Trump has faced mounting criticism over the ads, which began airing in September.

So far, the advertising campaign has cost more than $12m to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.

The $20m Trump tapped for the ads comes from a $175m package Congress assigned to the Department of Homeland Security as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

Critics have pointed out that one of the ads appears nearly identical to a television spot Trump used in his 2024 re-election campaign.

Three ads have aired so far. In one, a choir sings “love me” over a montage of Trump as he declares the US will “never be a communist country”. Another uses images of Mount Rushmore as Trump heralds a new “golden age of America”.

The third is darker: Trump walks towards the camera in black and white, warning of a “final battle” against the “deep state” and other perceived enemies.

On Wednesday, the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos released a poll showing the ads are highly unpopular. Some 86 percent of the Americans surveyed, including four out of five Republicans, said it was inappropriate for Trump to have used public money for them.

Trump has defended the ads as “promotion for the country”, and he has argued they were similar to public outreach campaigns put out by previous administrations.

But after a bipartisan backlash, Trump said on Monday that taxpayer funds would no longer be used for future ads.

He did not, however, commit to paying back the money already spent on the existing ads.

Members of Trump’s Republican Party have been among those speaking out against the ad campaign.

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said the advertisements resembled something former Hungarian leader Viktor Orban would put out.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, meanwhile, indicated he agreed with the message in one of the advertisements, but he emphasised that “it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars”.

Dolly Parton’s estate is alleging that Bryan Seaver, the country icon’s nephew and former head of security, used a “no trespassing” sign and barbed wire to avoid being served legal documents.

There is an active restraining order and lawsuit against Seaver by Parton’s company, She’s Alive LLC, which is run by Parton’s former manager, Danny Nozell, for allegedly threatening and extorting her estate.

Seaver served as Parton’s head of security for more than 20 years and, on Aug. 25, delivered the news of his aunt’s death via a video on her Instagram account.

Legal troubles for Seaver first came to light on Sept. 22 when a case was filed by She’s Alive in Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville on the heels of Seaver’s termination as head of security. Both Seaver and his company, Squadron Augmented Protection Services LLC, are the defendants in the lawsuit.

In documents reviewed by the New York Times, Seaver is accused of mounting “an obscene, deliberate and escalating campaign of threats” to acquire money from the Parton estate, including a profane threat made toward at least one Dollywood business partner.

Seaver filed a motion last week to delay a hearing scheduled for Friday, saying he needed time to meet with his preferred legal counsel.

The following day, lawyers for She’s Alive asked the court to deny this motion, arguing that Seaver “attempted to evade service of process” and that the “court should not reward that behavior.”

According to court filings obtained by ABC News, a process server tried to issue court documents to Seaver for the third time but encountered a “no-trespassing sign in the front yard and barbed wire draped across the handrails leading to the front door.”

The new hearing date is set for Oct. 20.

The legal complaint includes text messages in which Seaver wrote that he would become “the hand of retribution for my entire family.” According to the complaint, in other text exchanges between him and a longtime lawyer of Parton, he described himself as a “killer,” a term he would later argue was taken out of context.

There are also claims that Seaver began making financial demands before Parton’s death, including in a text to Nozell where he said he would launch a podcast “dedicated to ruining Dolly’s brand partnerships and telling the violations these people have done on us” if demands were not met, the New York Times reported.

Nozell was Parton’s longtime manager and is credited with reviving the “I Will Always Love You” singer’s international touring career.

The Times reached out to Seaver, Nozelle and She’s Alive LLC but did not hear back.

Yemeni government forces said in a social media post that they carried out 2,103 “precise targeting operations.”

Yemeni government forces said they have “neutralised” 1,860 Houthi fighters since launching a large-scale counter-offensive to retake territory under control of the rebel group.

The spokesperson for the internationally recognised government’s army said in a social media post early on Thursday local time that they carried out 2,103 “precise targeting operations” against Houthi military positions across several fronts as part of the ongoing “Dawn of Yemen” operation.

Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, announced on Sunday the “Dawn of Yemen” operation to retake all Houthi-held territory, including the capital, Sanaa, which the Iran-backed group has controlled since 2014.

Battles in Yemen have focused in recent days on areas around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a shipping route that has become more crucial for energy exports since the conflict between the US and Iran restricted trade through the Strait of Hormuz.

Forces aligned with the Yemeni government launched an operation on Tuesday to capture strategic territory near the strait and around the city of Mocha, which the Houthis had captured in September.

Coalition targeting

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said on Wednesday it destroyed 82 Houthi military targets in the Yemeni governorates of Saada, Hodeidah, al-Jawf and Marib.

The spokesperson for the coalition said in a statement the targets included ballistic missile sites including “11 mountain-based ballistic missile storages in Saada, command and control centres, communication systems, missile and weapons storages”.

The new operation followed Houthi attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday targeting King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport, according to the spokesperson.

Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said the attacks on the two airports killed three people.

One person was killed and eight wounded in an attack on King Khalid International Airport, and two were killed and 28 wounded in an attack on facilities at Abha airport, the General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a statement.

Saudi civil aviation authorities say Houthi attacks on Abha and King Khalid International airports have killed three civilians, including two women, and injured 36 others.

Talks will focus on the €1 billion daily deficit and rare earth export restrictions.

European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic has arrived in Beijing for talks on the European Union’s (EU) growing trade deficit with China.

Sefcovic will meet Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Thursday and Friday after months of discussions over the EU’s trade deficit of more than €1bn ($1.12bn) daily, as well as Chinese curbs on exports of rare earths and other critical minerals.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies are increasingly challenging Europe’s top car brands. China rejected the EU request for voluntary curbs on Chinese hybrid car exports as the two sides enter negotiations, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The European Commission now hopes to get Beijing to accept a unilateral EU measure to cap hybrid imports instead, the outlet said, citing two diplomats briefed on the plan.

The two days of discussions come just as a majority of EU lawmakers called for a more assertive trade policy towards Beijing in a non-binding resolution on Wednesday. China vowed a “resolute response” to safeguard its industries if the European Union goes ahead with restrictions against Chinese companies or products, according to its commerce ministry.

Germany and France propose rapid EU measure

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, leaders of the bloc’s two biggest powers, on Tuesday urged the EU to prepare a “credible instrument” that could be quickly activated to strike back against countries that harm the bloc economically.

The new measure would not target any specific country. German officials said the EU needed a tool as powerful as the Section 301 tariffs imposed by the United States or China’s restrictions on critical-mineral exports.

The proposed weapon – to be discussed at an EU leaders’ summit next week – would give the European Commission the power to respond to a trade aggression within days.

China responded to the letter by urging Paris and Berlin to steer clear of “protectionist” measures.

“We hope that France and Germany, as major economies in the world, will uphold openness, cooperation and free trade,” the commerce ministry said in a statement.

“They should avoid going down the wrong path in the wrong way, only to ultimately suffer the consequences themselves.”

G20 finance leaders, except China’s, agreed in September to act against “non-market” distortions that exacerbate imbalances. Beijing says that hyping up issues such as economic imbalances and overcapacity is a form of protectionism designed to exert pressure on and restrict China.

Ongoing trade talks

EU and Chinese officials have been discussing trade imbalances since June. Sefcovic said he wanted “tangible results by October” as well as some form of commitment that can be put to EU leaders meeting in Brussels.

Trade relations with China top the summit’s agenda next week, as ballooning debt has prompted auditors to warn about the next seven-year EU budget and has spurred protests in France.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament last month that the trade imbalance had reached a tipping point and that Europe would use every tool at its disposal to rebalance the relationship.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said there were no casualties after small arms fire targeted a border post.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) says one of its posts on the Lebanon-Israel border was targeted by small arms fire, with no casualties reported.

The UN force said the incident occurred on Wednesday morning with several rounds of small arms fire targeting a UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the UN-drawn border with Israel, known as the Blue Line.

“Such deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers,” UNIFIL said in a statement, adding that it was investigating the incident.

Under pressure from the United States and Israel, the UN Security Council decided earlier this year to set December 31 as the end of the mandate for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

UNIFIL was initially created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion, and its mandate has been renewed annually since then.

The mission was expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Proponents say it remains important to maintaining a demilitarised buffer between the two sides along the volatile Israeli and Lebanese border.

Israel has long accused UNIFIL of failing to prevent threats posed by Hezbollah and has increasingly pushed for the end of its mission since cross-border fighting escalated in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

UNIFIL currently has 7,500 peacekeepers from around 50 countries operating in Southern Lebanon.

Last month, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pressed the UN on the need to “avert the vacuum” that would be caused by withdrawing the mission from the country’s south without a viable replacement.

Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a June memorandum of understanding in the US-Iran war. Lebanon and Israel concluded a US-sponsored framework agreement later that month.

The Israel-Lebanon deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones”.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Rio de Janeiro in a student-led protest against presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro and the growing influence of Brazil’s far right.

The march happened on Wednesday, just days after far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, earned the most votes in the first round of the country’s presidential race.

Bolsonaro won 47 percent, ahead of his closest rival, incumbent left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who gained 45 percent support.

Since neither candidate surpassed the 50 percent threshold, they will face each other in a run-off on October 25.

The results have triggered fears that Brazil could become the latest Latin American country to see its presidency switch from left to right.

Protesters marched through downtown Rio carrying signs reading “Never again Bolsonaro” and “No to the father, no to the son”. Others held banners reading “Dictatorship never again” and “Get out Bolsonaro”.

“I’m here because I believe in democracy. Because I’m scared,” said Alice Carneiro, 25, an administrator in maritime shipping who participated in the protests. She explained that, under a far-right government, she feared a backlash against her wife, who is transgender.

Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, led the country from 2019 to 2023. But his single-term tenure was marked by a series of controversies related to his far-right policies.

He voiced support for Brazil’s past military dictatorship, which was responsible for the disappearance and murder of hundreds of perceived dissidents. He also spread unfounded claims about the accuracy of Brazil’s election system, leading to a court ruling that barred him from holding office for eight years.

Currently, the former president is serving a 27-year sentence after being convicted of plotting to overturn his 2022 election defeat. After Lula’s inauguration in 2023, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed government buildings in the capital, reportedly hoping to trigger a military uprising.

Critics have framed Jair Bolsonaro’s actions as a threat to Brazil’s democracy.

But Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has received his father’s endorsement, and he has backed amnesty for his father, a prospect that has raised concerns among protesters.

“I find this rise of the far right and the rise of Bolsonarism in Brazil very, very sad,” said Emmanuel Araujo, 19, who is preparing for university entrance exams.

“Lula might not be my preferred candidate,” Araujo added, “but amid this barbarism, we have to choose between someone we can keep criticising and someone who might take away our right to speak.”

Australia play their first Test in South Africa since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal when they start a ⁠three-match series in Durban on Friday, with the visitors unlikely to face more than a few heckles over the incident that rocked the sport eight years ago.

The tourists’ efforts to roughen ⁠up the ball using sandpaper to aid reverse swing in Cape Town in March 2018 were caught on camera and led to a major reckoning for the game in Australia, with captain Steve Smith among those banned for their role in the subterfuge.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a closer look at the first Test battle in South Africa since the infamous series.

What is the context for the first return of series since ‘Sandpapergate’

South Africa have played Tests in Australia since ‘Sandpapergate’, and ‌Australia have toured South Africa in the interim for limited-overs internationals.

The scandal has attracted little media focus in South Africa over recent weeks in comparison to the attention devoted to the incident in the Australian press.

After dethroning Australia last year in a thrilling World Test Championship (WTC) final at Lord’s to win a first major title, South Africa are focused on improving their chances of a return to the final at the end of the 2025–27 ⁠WTC cycle.

What shape are South Africa in for the visit of Australia?

The pitch at Kingsmead often proves a fickle track but should offer the spinners a chance to play a leading role in ⁠a change from South Africa’s usually seamer-friendly surfaces.

It is unusual for South Africa’s chances to be largely entrusted to their spin attack, but Simon ⁠Harmer and Keshav Maharaj wreaked havoc in India last November ⁠when they triumphed in their last two Test outings.

Spin was also a key factor for the home side as they beat Australia in the recent One-Day International series.

South Africa may therefore opt to rest frontline attack bowler Kagiso Rabada from ‌the Test as he continues his comeback from a hamstring injury.

South Africa also have a choice to make over their number three batsman, with coach Shukri Conrad having several options including a potential first cap for 30-year-old Marques Ackerman.

How are Australia poised for their South Africa return?

Australia are also in need of a boost after a surprise ⁠home Test defeat by Bangladesh in August in their drawn series, and with an Ashes tour to England starting next June.

Injury to Australia all-rounder Cameron Green opens up a chance at number five for Cooper Connolly, or a fairytale return for ‌34-year-old ‌Nic Maddinson after recovering from cancer.

Head hits back at former Australia players in defence of Test team

Australia opener Travis Head has taken to task former Test players turned critics whom he accused on Wednesday of “putting a bullet” through the current team.

Head did not single out any pundit directly, but his strong remarks at a news conference came the day after Matthew Hayden, one-time holder of the record ⁠for the most runs in a Test innings, accused selectors of “promoting the greatest pile of mediocrity that we’ve seen in a generation of cricket”.

The reference, made in a podcast, was about the recall of Maddinson, who has been out of Test cricket for nearly 10 years, but who joined the squad in South Africa after Josh Inglis ‌fractured his finger and Cameron Green suffered a stomach injury.

“I think it’s unfairly judged a fair bit from a group of past players, pretty much that put the bullet through a lot of players, which I think is unfair,” Head said.

“But that’s what they’re paid to do. Some of them need a job, so they go after us, and that’s totally fine.

“This group is strong enough to deal with those sorts of things. That’s how it is. It’s unfortunate sometimes to have some of that feedback from a ⁠generation of players that we have huge respect for, but that’s the caper.”

Why have Australia selectors been accused of disrespecting cricket?

Hayden accused the selectors of “disrespecting first-class cricket”, asserting that batsmen should have an average of 45 runs or more before being considered for Test selection.

Head, however, praised Maddinson’s abilities and the benefits of choosing experienced players for Test cricket despite the 34-year-old ⁠replacement having a first-class average of 37.11.

“We need mature guys that know what they need to be doing,” Head said. “That revolves back to why ⁠we’ve been so good over a period of time, and why Australian ⁠cricket was so good back then in that era, because you’d bring in the Mike Husseys of the world, who are 30, who are tried and tested and know what they need to do.”

Former Australia captain Allan Border suggested that the 32-year-old Head would face his ‌toughest test as an opener against the South African bowling attack and would perhaps be better batting at number five.

“I have laughed at a fair bit of it because if a traditional opening batter had pushed out ‌the ‌same sort of numbers in his first 20 innings, I think he’d be pretty safe and not talked about in the way that it has been talked about,” Head said. “It’s a lot of headline stuff.”

Smith still traumatised by Sandpapergate

In the build-up to the series, Smith has admitted he is still traumatised by “Sandpapergate” – the series he oversaw as captain.

The prolific batter was sent home in disgrace, banned for a year and sacked as captain for his role in the ball-tampering scandal during the third Test in Cape Town eight years ago.

David Warner, considered the ringleader, was suspended for 12 months and stripped of all leadership roles, while Cameron Bancroft was slapped with a nine-month ban.

Smith said he still suffers flashbacks to a traumatic period of his life, haunted by memories of leaving Johannesburg airport, with cameras clicking furiously around him, and a harrowing Sydney news conference on his return when he broke down in tears.

“I’m not a big fan of cameras … I get anxious around cameras to be honest,” he told News Corp.

“That was a traumatic experience in my life, and when I hear the flash of a camera it makes me revisit that in a way.

“The 24-48 hours of being told by James Sutherland [then Cricket Australia chief executive] that I was getting banned for a year. That and going through the airport in Johannesburg getting absolutely mobbed, and then flying back and doing that press conference.

“I still have little flashbacks here and there of it.”

Smith bore the brunt of the scandal that is considered one of Australian sport’s darkest moments, but bounced back emphatically.

He smashed a superb century against England on his return and has gone from strength to strength, with 10,920 Test runs so far at an average of 56.

“It was certainly a difficult period, particularly the initial period a few days after,” he said.

“The mental state I was in was not great. That’s somewhere I’d like not to get to again, but I certainly learned from that and have been able to move forward with my life.

“I’ve tried to kind of erase a lot of 2018 and what happened,” he added.

“I can’t remember a lot about the series. I’ve tried to block most of it out of my memory bank.”

Smith has been back to South Africa for a white-ball series since 2018, but not for a Test, and he is bracing for hostile crowds.

But the 37-year-old is unperturbed, having negotiated multiple Ashes tours to England since 2018, where the Barmy Army abused him relentlessly.

“It’s something I’m kind of used to. I’ve copped a lot at times away from home at different venues across my career and it’s something that I take in my own stride,” he said.

“I use it as motivation to try and go out and do well and try and take a positive from it.”

A Gallup survey highlights a deep – and historic – partisan divide over confidence in the country’s elections.

With less than a month to go before the United States’ pivotal midterms, a new survey found that most independent voters and supporters of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party do not believe the elections will be honest.

Polling from Gallup, released on Wednesday, found 37 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of independents have confidence in the country’s electoral system, significantly lower than US Democrats (63 percent).

Overall, 49 percent of Americans said they were confident in the honesty of elections, while 51 percent said they were not. Those figures are unchanged from the country’s last midterm election in 2022.

This “marks a change from 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, when confidence was nominally higher among approvers (51 percent) than disapprovers (45 percent)”, Gallup wrote in a statement highlighting the results of the survey.

The numbers highlight a deep, historic partisan divide over confidence in US elections.

“Since 2025 and Trump’s return to the White House, the relationship between leadership approval and confidence in elections has disappeared,” Gallup wrote.

Gallup said that the US is the only country out of more than 100 polled annually over the past 15 years to show this pattern – trust in US election integrity is markedly higher among those who disapprove of the country’s leadership under Trump (52 percent) than those who approve (41 percent).

In more than 100 countries where the polling organisation tracks views of national leadership and confidence in elections, people who approve of their governments have generally been more likely to trust their country’s elections.

In 2025, 70 percent of people globally who approved of their national leadership expressed confidence in the honesty of their elections, compared with 30 percent among those who disapproved.

“The current US pattern is highly unusual compared with the rest of the world,” Gallup wrote.

Under former US President Joe Biden, 81 percent of Americans who approved of the government expressed confidence in elections, compared with just 30 percent of those who disapproved, according to Gallup.

Gallup said the unusual divide could have implications for the November elections, raising questions about whether some voters will view the results as legitimate.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Rahul Gandhi has been arrested several times at protests demanding the resignation of poll body chief.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been detained for the third time in two days during a protest demanding the resignation of the election chief over a controversial revision of voter lists.

Gandhi and other opposition lawmakers were apprehended by police on Wednesday as they marched towards Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in India’s capital, New Delhi.

A live feed on the YouTube channel of Gandhi’s Congress Party showed police taking him into a vehicle and driving away. Authorities also detained several other opposition lawmakers and protesters.

Opposition parties, their student units and the “Cockroach” youth movement have been demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, accusing the poll body he heads of benefiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

India’s Election Commission has so far removed more than 130 million names from the voter lists, with millions appealing the removals. About 969 million people were eligible to vote in the 2024 election.

Protesters allege the changes disproportionately removed voters who support opposition parties while preserving or adding voters more likely to back Modi’s party.

The commission and government deny the allegations. They say the revision has no political motive but is aimed at removing duplicate and ineligible entries while ensuring eligible voters remain registered.

Opposition lawmakers led by Gandhi protested on Tuesday as well, before police broke up their gathering and ‌‌briefly detained them.

Speaking before his detention on Wednesday, Gandhi said protesters showed up unannounced after Delhi police “stopped” their gathering the day before.

“We will go to the designated protest site, sit there, and tell the country that, for us, Gyanesh Kumar is not the legitimate commissioner,” he told reporters, referring to Jantar Mantar.

“The people who have done this [vote theft] are traitors … Gyanesh Kumar will have to resign,” he ⁠⁠added.

There was no immediate comment from the police on the detentions.

The demonstrations present a new political challenge to Modi midway into his third term, just months after similar protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party ‌‌youth ‌‌movement forced the resignation of his education minister over exam paper leaks.

The “Cockroach” protests, one of the most visible signs of public dissent against Modi’s government in recent years, reflected growing anger over job scarcity, corruption and a lack of government accountability.

Eritrea dismisses allegation as Ethiopia’s pretext for more war.

Eritrean soldiers have been seen driving through a northern town inside Ethiopia, witnesses tell the Reuters news agency, days after the neighbouring countries severed ties.

At least two witnesses told Reuters they saw “dozens” of Eritrean soldiers drive through Adigrat in two trucks on Wednesday. The town is located 25km (15 miles) south of the border with Eritrea.

The witnesses said they could identify the soldiers as Eritrean by their off-white camouflage uniforms.

Another Adigrat resident who was not in town at the time said family members had told him they had also seen Eritrean troops, according to Reuters, which could not independently verify their accounts.

“The Eritrean army has entered Tigray in uniform, equipped with heavy weaponry,” said Gebreigziabher Beyene, commander of the Tigray Peace Force, a pro-government militia that has fought alongside the federal army.

“This force is being struck by drones,” he said, adding Eritrea was “deliberately deploying its forces so that the fighting takes place inside Tigray rather than spilling into Eritrea”.

Last week, the chief administrator in Ethiopia’s northeastern Afar region said Eritrean troops were fighting in the area, but Reuters was unable to confirm the claim.

In a statement on X, Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Meskel did not deny that troops had crossed the border, but said Ethiopia’s government was creating “a fallacious narrative of ‘self-defense’ to rationalise and camouflage its war of aggression”.

If confirmed, it would mark the first time Eritrean forces have been seen inside Ethiopia since the renewal of fighting between Ethiopian forces and a seven-group armed alliance, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), on September 23.

Ethiopia has accused Eritrea, as well as Egypt and Sudan of backing the armed alliance which is fighting to remove the government. All three countries have denied involvement.

Eritrea announced it was severing ties with Ethiopia on Thursday after Addis Ababa announced it would close its embassy in Asmara and expel 10 Eritrean diplomats.

In a statement, Eritrea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Ethiopia’s actions had left it with “no option but to reciprocate in kind and sever all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia”.

On Monday, Ethiopian forces captured Tigray’s regional capital Mekelle, days after the TPLF confirmed that it had withdrawn from the city and moved its regional administration “temporarily” to another location.

It happened as Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was sworn in for another five-year term, during which he insisted that his landlocked country must have access to the Red Sea.

On the same day, Eritrea joined Somalia, Sudan and Egypt in issuing a joint declaration calling for a political and peaceful solution to the war in Ethiopia.

The declaration appeared to push back against several policies pursued by Ethiopia in recent years, highlighting widening rifts between Addis Ababa and its neighbours.

Comments by one of Israel’s most senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis postulating that Jews may have been better off without a state have prompted controversy in the country.

In footage broadcast by Channel 12 on Monday, the 96-year-old Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, also said that soldiers adhering to “Religious Zionism” killed in Israel’s wars were dying because of what their rabbis had taught them. The remarks, made at a closed meeting at his home in Bnei Brak, have set off a political storm three weeks before Israel’s October 27 parliamentary election.

“They are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah,” Lando said, adding that many military operations are carried out “not for saving lives, but for the honour of the state”.

Lando’s comment came in response to a question about admiration among some ultra-Orthodox Jewish men – who have traditionally refused the military draft – for religious Zionists who combine Torah study with military service.

His comments aren’t new – they were first published in February 2025. However, their reemergence this week comes amid an election campaign in which ultra-Orthodox military service has become one of the sharpest fault lines in Israeli politics.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that there was no legal basis for ultra-Orthodox seminary students to have exemptions from military service, and the government has since not been able to pass legislation restoring the exemptions. The issue has led to large protests on both sides of the divide.

“The question is not what he said, but why this discourse has been placed at the heart of the Israeli debate three weeks before the election,” Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Better ‘without a state’

Lando’s party is one of the two factions of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) alliance, which won seven seats during the last election in 2022, and had been part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government before its ministers resigned last year.

The bloc did continue to intermittently support the coalition government, however, and Netanyahu has been wary of removing the military exemption – despite widespread opposition to it from many in Israel – out of fear that the UTJ and similar parties would remove their support completely.

Along with his role within Degel HaTorah, Lando is also one of the spiritual leaders of Israel’s Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, which makes up roughly a third of the country’s estimated 1.45 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim.

In May, he said he no longer trusted Netanyahu and called for parliament to be dissolved.

In the footage, he goes further. “It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state,” he says, adding that international or Palestinian rule would have been “the best situation”.

Zionism, he argues, “caused the Arabs to hate us” and brought physical as well as spiritual disaster on the Jewish people. He describes secular Israelis as having built “a state of apostasy and heresy”.

The comments reflect non-Zionist and anti-Zionist positions that used to be dominant within ultra-Orthodox Judaism, but take on an overt reference to the possibility of living within a non-Zionist state, something that is even more controversial in Israel.

Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict studies scholar at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Lando’s remarks drew a line between Zionism and Judaism “from inside the Jewish community itself”, at a time when the official Israeli establishment “tries to bind them together”.

They also put to the test the narrative that Jewish communities in Arab societies were in danger and threatened, and that the Zionist movement came to “save them” at the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, he told Al Jazeera. However, Khatib cautioned that the ultra-Orthodox polity in Israel “is right-wing, its leaders hold right-wing positions, and some of them have made clearly offensive statements about Arabs and Palestinians”.

Political ammunition

Israeli opposition leaders moved quickly after the footage of Lando emerged this week, taking it as an opportunity to attack a figure from a party within Netanyahu’s electoral bloc.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – one of Netanyahu’s main challengers in the upcoming elections – called the remarks “anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-[Israeli military]”, but aimed his fire at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who he said “back [Lando] and funnel tens of billions of shekels to him and his friends”.

Gadi Eisenkot, another opposition leader whose Yashar party has campaigned on enforcing the military draft, urged every Zionist party to pledge not to sit with Lando’s party.

Netanyahu, who publicly rejected Lando’s remarks in July when the rabbi accused the Religious Zionism movement of “incitement to murder” for its support of the drafting of religious seminary students to the military, has not yet commented.

Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, put it bluntly: “Netanyahu is silent because without Rabbi Lando and his emissaries, he has no government.”

Jabareen sees Netanyahu’s silence as “calculated”.

“If Netanyahu attacks Lando forcefully, he pays a price with the Haredim he needs to form a government,” he said. “If he stays silent, he hands his rivals material to tell right-wing voters that the man who speaks of Zionism and security depends on a religious leadership that doubts Zionism itself.”

Who fights and who dies

The military draft of the ultra-Orthodox, Jabareen added, has turned “from an old dispute over religion and state into a question about the Israeli [social] contract itself: Who fights? Who dies? And who gets the exemptions, the budgets and the political influence in return?”

Mohammad Abu Rumman, an academic adviser at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, said the significance of Lando’s remarks lay in the question that prompted them. The example of a young religious man who combines Torah study with military service, he said, “raises a question inside the ultra-Orthodox world itself: Why don’t we do the same?”

“When Lando describes their teaching as a distorted Torah, he is trying to close the door on emulating them,” Abu Rumman told Al Jazeera. “His words are aimed at his own audience as much as at his opponents.”

But Jabareen argued that the row exposes a rift more dangerous for Netanyahu than the familiar clash between secular and religious Israelis, because it runs through the right itself. Religious Zionists have paid a heavy human price in the war, while the ultra-Orthodox leadership still rejects conscription. Caught between those who pay the price of war and those who refuse to, Netanyahu needs both, and cannot satisfy them at once.

Whether the outrage over Lando’s comments translates into votes is less clear. Abu Rumman expects the remarks to “reinforce existing positions more than change voters’ choices”. The space where they could matter, he said, lies among right-wing voters who serve in the army and resent Netanyahu’s protection of ultra-Orthodox demands.

“If Netanyahu needs these parties to build a majority, that need will not disappear because of a rabbi’s remarks, however shocking,” Abu Rumman said. Netanyahu is also not the UTJ’s only suitor: Channel 12 reported that, frustrated by his failure to secure a law exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service, the party would not rule out or oppose a government led by Eisenkot.

“The Israeli right has managed to bring under one political roof two currents with almost contradictory visions of the Jewish state,” Jabareen said. “One sanctifies the state and the expansion of its sovereignty. In the other, one of its most important rabbis can say it might have been better had the state never been founded.”

Far-right and far-left parties gain ground in local elections as Merz’s approval rating sinks.

Chancellor ⁠Friedrich Merz has hit out at what he called political “extremism” in Germany after recent stinging defeats in local elections to far-right and far-left parties.

“This is a task for ⁠our society as ⁠a whole, and it is ⁠one I intend ⁠to play ⁠my part in,” he said on Wednesday at an ‌event in Berlin.

Merz said “extremism” was forcefully making its way into the country’s parliaments, a day after a member of the far-right Alternative for ‌Germany (AfD) was elected president of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt and the Left Party won out in Berlin’s state election last month.

“Anyone who casts their vote for ⁠the AfD is ⁠playing the extremists’ game and undermining credibility,” ⁠Merz said. “In ⁠any case, this is incompatible with the values of ‌my party, the CDU [Christian Democratic Union of Germany].”

Despite winning the vote in the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD fell three seats short of the absolute majority it had had sought. AfD lawmaker Tobias Rausch won the presidency of the parliament in the eastern German state Tuesday, backed by the left-populists in a secret ballot.

Founded in 2013 as a Eurosceptic movement, the AfD won over voters with an increasingly hardline opposition to immigration after about a million people fled to Germany in 2015, many of them from war-torn Syria.

The party has since become a dominant political force in much of eastern Germany, especially among voters disillusioned with mainstream parties, though most traditional parties have pledged not to enter coalitions with the AfD.

Berlin election

Merz’s comments followed the far-left Left Party’s victory in the Berlin state election on September 20, in another defeat for the chancellor’s ruling Christian Democrats.

Lead ‌candidate Elif Eralp campaigned on the soaring cost of housing in the German capital and immediately promised to follow through with a pledge to nationalise private housing associations that account for a large share of the city’s housing stock.

The result, which roughly doubled the party’s previous score, could see her become the first mayor of Berlin from the Left Party, which grew out of the former East German communist party following the reunification of the country 36 years ago.

Eralp, the 45-year-old daughter of left-wing Turkish parents who fled a coup in 1980, said the increasingly difficult rental situation was the biggest social problem in the capital.

She promised to proceed with nationalising the housing associations she said drove property speculation, in accordance with a referendum from 2021 in which 58 percent of voters backed a proposal to promulgate the move.

While the AfD has attracted most attention, the ⁠Left Party has also benefitted from a general turn against the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties.

Meanwhile, Merz has received a record low approval rating. Earlier this month, a survey by Germany’s public broadcaster ARD found that only one in 10 respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with his performance, the lowest figure for any chancellor since the survey began in 1997.

Another major election test will come in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, where voters are set to elect a new parliament in April.

Rising borrowing costs have pushed mortgage applications to lowest level since February 2025.

Mortgage rates in the United States have hit their highest level in nearly three years, as cost-of-living concerns weigh on Americans less than a month before the midterm elections.

The average cost for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped 19 basis points to 7.49 percent for the week ending October 2 , according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly report released on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, applications for mortgages tumbled 4.2 percent from the previous week, according to the report. Applications are at their lowest level since February 2025 and have fallen by almost half since the beginning of the year.

“Very few homeowners have an incentive to refinance at these rates, and the jump in borrowing costs has caused many potential borrowers to step back from the purchase market,” Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a press release.

Mortgage rates are closely tied to US 10-year Treasury notes. Earlier this week, those hit a 24-year high of 5.3 percent amid surging oil prices tied to ongoing tensions with Iran.

Meanwhile, the yield on 30-year Treasury bonds rose to its highest level since 2002, at 5.7 percent on Wednesday.

Mortgage rates have jumped since late February, when the US and Israel first struck Iran. Since the strikes, mortgage rates have climbed 1.4 percent. Inflation, which has risen by 3.4 percent from a year ago, is also putting pressure on mortgage rates.

It comes as the cost of living is top of mind for voters as they approach the congressional midterm elections that could decide the balance of power in Washington, DC. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in late August, 47 percent of voters said that the cost of living was the single most important issue ahead of the midterms.

In a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll in September, 17 percent of voters said they approved of US President Donald Trump’s handling of cost of living-related issues.

Protesting students demand accessible education in French-speaking areas of the country.

Police in Belgium have detained more than 100 people after demonstrations in the city of Liege against the rising cost of education turned violent in some places, as similar protests grip neighbouring France.

Students rallied in the city on Tuesday and Wednesday against overcrowded classrooms and difficulty accessing resources in Belgium’s French-language education system.

Eighty people were detained during the protests, and 27 were formally arrested, the Belga news agency reported, citing the Liege police.

Some protesters damaged property and set fires, the police added.

Attendees insisted that shortcomings in the education system gave them no choice but to take to the streets.

“When we saw nothing was changing without protests, we decided we would start,” said Amelia Di Salve, a 19-year-old studying to become a teacher, who added that protests in “France did influence us a little”.

“We support each other because we’re facing pretty much the same issues,” Alfred, another 19-year-old ⁠student, told the Reuters news agency.

‘Peaceful way’

Authorities were attempting to defuse tensions and head off further unrest.

“Dialogue can be established,” Willy Demeyer, the mayor of the city of Liege, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF, adding that he hoped “young people can express their grievances in a peaceful way and if possible have those concerns heard”.

In Belgium, education is managed independently by the country’s linguistic communities, and there is no single national curriculum.

Instead, the Flemish population regulates education in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region while French-speaking Wallonia oversees its own curriculum.

Parents can decide where to enrol children in the bilingual capital Brussels.

The protests in Liege follow sporadic violent demonstrations over the summer in Brussels against an increase in tuition fees for students in French-speaking areas from 835 euros ($930) to 1,194 euros ($1,340).

Belgium’s education budget has been under pressure as a result of a cost-of-living crisis and the spiralling cost of energy, issues that are helping fuel student protests in France as well.

Mérida, October 6, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan acting government is resorting to a Qatar-led financing agreement in order to regain access to multilateral loans from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

According to specialized outlet Bitácora Económica, Qatar is preparing to establish a specialized rescue fund to settle Venezuela’s estimated US $2.5 billion debt with the IDB.

Under the proposed mechanism, the Qatari fund would immediately clear Venezuela’s overdue principal and interest payments, while issuing a new, long-term loan with favorable interest rates for the South American nation.

Venezuelan economist José Guerra claimed that Qatar will be joined by the United Arab Emirates and that the Gulf countries will back the financing initiative with their sovereign wealth funds.

The Qatari-backed initiative would reportedly allow Venezuela to address short-term liquidity constraints and access a new IDB credit line worth as much as $8 billion. The financing would be used for public infrastructure projects, including the national road network, water distribution systems, and stabilizing the national electric grid, as well as providing additional funding for state budgets.

The proposed Gulf-backed debt arrangement comes amid a broader, deliberate push by Caracas to re-establish formal relations with major US-led multilateral financial institutions.

Over recent months, high-level Venezuelan delegations have held technical and institutional meetings with representatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF).

In September, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez met in New York with IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva, as well as senior World Bank and IDB officials.

Caracas’ rapprochement with Western multilateral institutions has coincided with a geopolitical shift in its foreign policy since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan government, headed by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, reestablished ties with Washington while also strengthening relations with US allies such as Qatar and the UAE.

Doha initially provided intermediation for US control over Venezuelan oil export revenues, with funds deposited in Qatari bank accounts. The scheme was later transferred directly to the US Treasury Department. Energy firms from Qatar and the UAE were recently announced as stakeholders in a Venezuelan offshore natural gas project as well.

Venezuela’s reengagement with Washington-based financial institutions saw the IDB officially reopen its country office in Caracas on October 2, seven years after halting operations in the Caribbean nation.

The IDB had suspended all active credit lines and disbursements to Venezuela in May 2018 following payment arrears. The relaunched local office follows the formal reinstatement of Venezuela’s voting rights in June, when the IDB Board accepted Calixto Ortega as the country’s governor at the IDB.

During an expanded session of the National Economic Council in Caracas on October 2 with IDB officials, Acting President Rodríguez emphasized the importance of access to international multilateral credit for both the public and private sectors.

“This agenda that we have been developing with the multilateral financial system is for development, for investment and financing in infrastructure and services,” she stated during the televised session. “In Venezuela, there is a very important installed industrial capacity to develop, and a boost in financing will bring us to full capacity.”

Rodríguez added that the renewed engagement aims to ensure that private companies, communal production units, and small businesses can access international loan programs to expand local production.

While direct sovereign lending to the Venezuelan government remains contingent on fully clearing arrears, the multilateral’s private-sector arm, IDB Invest, has already initiated direct financial assistance to key Venezuelan corporations and commercial banks.

Under recently approved financing structures, IDB Invest is reportedly delivering commercial-rate loans and capital support to food processing conglomerate Empresas Polar, as well as private commercial banks Banco Mercantil and Banesco.

The allocations for Banco Mercantil and Banesco are designed to strengthen liquidity and capitalization within the national banking system, while also boosting local credit lines for businesses.

Meanwhile, the funds directed to Empresas Polar are earmarked for agricultural development projects and supply-chain expansion, particularly targeting grain production in Portuguesa state, according to reports.

Unlike traditional development loans, the IDB Invest credits are extended at market interest rates, focusing directly on private-sector growth and sustainability.

The Venezuelan government’s current strategy marks a departure from the former President Hugo Chávez’s stance toward multilateral lending institutions.

In November 2008, at a Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) summit, Chávez criticized the IDB, labeling it an “instrument of political pressure” used by Washington to impose orthodox economic policies on sovereign nations.

At the time, Chávez called on Latin American governments to withdraw from both the IDB and the IMF, which he labeled as a “weapon of US imperialism,” advocating instead for regional alternatives such as the Bank of the South to replace traditional multilateral lenders.

London, United Kingdom – Claire, 52, lives in the Scottish countryside, not far from Edinburgh.

She describes her work as “low-level administration” and does not use social media. She lives a quiet life with her dog, reading and baking in her spare time. Until three years ago, she did not consider herself political.

Now, she faces 14 years in prison for her suspected show of support for Palestine Action.

Claire, who requested Al Jazeera withhold her surname, is one of the many people in the United Kingdom who, until three years ago, did not consider themselves activists.

But as the genocide in Gaza was livestreamed, many have rallied around the cause of Palestinian solidarity.

Organisations like Defend Our Juries, Artists for Free Palestine, Workers for Free Palestine, and virtually every other insert-profession-here for Palestine have cropped up across the UK.

In the summer of 2023, Claire read I Shall Not Hate by Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician in Gaza who lost his three daughters to Israeli tank fire. Not long after finishing the book, Claire watched the aftermath of October 7 unfold online.

“For me, there wasn’t a delay between ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ and then lies,” she told Al Jazeera.

She went to a pro-Palestine rally on Armistice Day, calling for a ceasefire, and “was horrified” by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who called the protests “hate marches”.

“I was determined not to ignore [Palestine],” she says.

She continued to march, writing letters to lawmakers and fundraising for various Palestinian aid programmes.

In August 2025, she began publicly protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action with Defend Our Juries, the group behind a campaign of civil disobedience aimed at lifting the ban. To date, more than 3,000 people have been arrested for showing support for the pressure group that was banned in 2025.

Earlier this year, police arrived at her door to arrest Claire under Sections 11 and 12 of the Terrorism Act: “Being a member of a proscribed organisation and encouraging others to join a proscribed organisation.”

“I’ve never been in trouble before,” she says. “I’m not backing down.”

Marji, 70, lives in Colchester and had a similar feeling after hearing Braverman’s words.

“I had never been to a protest in my life,” she says, until she carried a “Ceasefire Now” sign at an Armistice Day march in 2023.

“I knew it wasn’t a ‘hate march’.”

Marji’s father served in the British Army, and her father-in-law was in the Royal Air Force and taken as a prisoner-of-war in Japan during World War II.

“Our parents’ generation fought fascism,” she says. “Now Britain is breaking British law.”

Marji, who also requested to be identified only by her first name, had a successful career in financial services, while her husband held an executive-level role.

They are now retired grandparents.

In July, they were arrested in Westminster under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act and are now waiting to see if charges will be laid.

“We’ve had to decide … is it safe to have grandchildren here? When the police could come to the door?”

Her children remain supportive.

“I think they’re proud of us, even if there’s been fear on their part.”

Across sectors, from the arts to railways, financial services and administration, Britons have risked professional and legal repercussions for the sake of Palestinian solidarity.

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and what they see as the UK’s role in the conflict. They have urged the UK government to cease all arms sales to Israel and cut diplomatic and trade ties as the genocide goes on in Gaza and violence escalates in the occupied West Bank.

This week, tensions have flared again as the Metropolitan Police warned pro-Palestine protesters against rallying on the three-year anniversary of October 7. The force said on Wednesday that five people were arrested outside the Board of Deputies of British Jews in north London for “inciting racial hatred, involving allegedly shouting or chanting slogans calling for Intifada”.

Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip – it has waged several since 1948 – began after Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, attacked southern Israel. About 1,200 people were killed that day, while more than 240 were taken captive, including Israeli soldiers, citizens and some foreign nationals.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s relentless bombardment has killed more than 74,000 people and  devastated Gaza, making life for survivors nearly impossible. The small territory is now home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history.

“The narrative that we had grown up with was wrong – that the people who were there and living peacefully have been cast as ‘terrorists’, when they have suffered terrorism,” Marji says.

Both Marji and Claire spoke about their belief that the UK government is “complicit” in the genocide.

“The government participation, complicity, and their lies. Their gaslighting makes people more determined,” says Claire.

As the legal dangers and rhetorical backlash mount against pro-Palestine protesters, Marji, whose maternal grandmother was Jewish, is only more resolved: “We knew that saying ‘stop the genocide’ doesn’t mean you’re an anti-Semite. We’re not stupid, we can differentiate between Jewish people and people who support illegal occupation.”

Workers for Free Palestine, which includes a range of trade unions, formed in late 2023 and soon began holding protests.

“Many people oppose how their labour is used to prop up an apartheid state, but have been told there is nothing they can do as individuals,” a spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

Many workers are nervous to speak out against their workplace’s role in producing weapons, their investments in Israel, or other ways of enabling Israel’s war.

“Many are unfamiliar with their rights as workers and are afraid of the repercussions of speaking up – and these repercussions can be very real,” the spokesperson said.

Still, for some, there is not just resolve but optimism.

“Doing nothing makes us feel sick, angry and powerless,” says Marji. “I hope people will wake up and see how our own civil liberties … are being eroded to protect the interests of Israel.”