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On trade, investment and innovation, leaders will work toward conclusion of a Canada-Turkiye Free Trade Agreement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have announced the launch of a Canada-Turkiye Strategic Partnership, backed by a three-year action plan.

“In an increasingly complex global security environment, rising geopolitical uncertainties, and evolving humanitarian challenges, a strong and resilient Canada-Turkiye partnership is essential, providing a foundation to mitigate shared threats and capitalise on new opportunities,” said a statement by the two leaders on Thursday.

This comes as Carney is on a two-day visit to Turkiye, seeking to forge a new partnership as Canada looks to reduce its dependence on the United States.

The partnership’s three-year action plan rests on four pillars: trade and investment; defence and security; energy; and ties between people, the statement said.

On trade, investment and innovation, the two leaders agreed to “work toward successful conclusion of a Canada-Turkiye Free Trade Agreement”, it said. They will also expand bilateral trade and investments in priority sectors including energy supply, defence production, aerospace, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

On defence and security, the leaders “underlined their intent to deepen bilateral and multilateral cooperation”. They also agreed to “strengthen cooperation in support of peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic region and beyond including Ukraine, South Caucasus, and the Middle East, in particular Gaza”.

Meanwhile, energy ministers from both countries will work on areas such as LNG, nuclear energy and critical minerals.

‘Launching a new era’

Speaking to reporters in Ankara alongside Carney on Thursday, Erdogan said the two countries “hope to increase our trade volume, which currently stands at around $3 billion, to $5 billion initially and then to $10 billion through the steps we will take”.

He said the two sides had agreed to begin free trade agreement negotiations before the end of the year to boost trade and investment, adding that elevating Turkiye-Canada relations to the level of a strategic partnership would not be merely a symbolic step on paper.

“We have today overcome the disconnect that had persisted between Turkiye and Canada for many years. Now we are launching a new era between Turkiye and Canada,” he said.

Canadian and Turkish leaders will convene next month in Ankara for the first round of trade talks, the joint statement said.

Carney is on the first bilateral visit by a Canadian prime minister to Turkiye, although he travelled to Ankara in July to attend the NATO summit.

He was scheduled to meet with Erdogan and other officials before travelling to Istanbul for talks with Turkish business groups as the two countries seek to deepen trade ties.

The Canadian prime minister has sought to diversify partnerships and reduce reliance on the US amid an escalating trade war with President Donald Trump, marked by US tariffs on Canadian goods, retaliatory measures by Canada and statements questioning Canadian sovereignty.

Briton Freddie Slater will have his first experience of a Formula 1 car on a grand prix weekend when he drives for Audi in first practice in Mexico City on 30 October.

The 18-year-old will have a second outing a week later at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Slater was the first driver to be brought into Audi’s driver development programme following the German company’s entry into F1 this season.

Allan McNish, Audi’s racing director and head of the driver development programme, said: “We have seen Freddie making great progress throughout recent years, both on and off the track.

“It is the right time for Freddie to step up.

“These appearances in Mexico and Brazil will give him valuable experience of a Formula 1 race weekend, and another chance to continue his development before he steps up to Formula 2 next season.”

Slater said: “Getting behind the wheel of an F1 car at a grand prix weekend is a big moment for me and something I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid.

“I’ve learned a lot this year, and these free practice outings will be another opportunity to keep gaining on-track experience.”

Slater finished second on his debut in the Formula 3 championship this season and is moving up to Formula 2 in 2027 with the front-running Invicta team.

Invicta driver Rafael Camara is leading this year’s F2 championship and is moving up to F1 next season with the US-based Haas team.

Second Test, Gqeberha (day five of five)

South Africa 425-9 dec: Bavuma 179, Jansen 85; Boland 5-81

Australia 99 & 295: Head 121; Rabada 4-77, Mulder 3-64

South Africa won by an innings and 31 runs

Scorecard

South Africa broke Australia’s resistance in the final session to complete a famous victory in the second Test and set up a series decider in Cape Town.

Travis Head made 121 for Australia and Scott Boland survived 166 deliveries for 40 runs in an attempt to escape Gqeberha with a draw – the tourists’ hopes also boosted by the first session being wiped out by rain.

But the Proteas stuck to their task to take the six wickets needed to win by an innings and 31 runs as the light faded late on the last day.

Premier paceman Kagiso Rabada finished with 4-77 while Marco Jansen, whose 5-33 on day four put South Africa in the ascendancy, took the final wicket as Australia were dismissed for 295.

But all-rounder Wiaan Mulder also played a crucial hand, bowling with accuracy and finding movement off the pitch to dismiss Head, Boland and Australia captain Pat Cummins.

Some of South Africa’s great Test wins have come against Australia – notably in the last World Test Championship final two years ago and a Test on this ground in 2018 in the infamous Sandpaper series. This must surely rank highly among them.

They were heavily beaten in the first Test in Durban and when 40-4 and 110-6 in their first innings of this Test, there appeared only one winner in this series.

Instead, the contest has been turned on its head by Bavuma’s epic 179 and South Africa twice dismissing Australia, setting up a tantalising finale in Cape Town.

The third Test begins on Tuesday.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says renewed attacks by the United States could prompt Tehran to invade neighbouring countries and hit bases used in US military operations as part of its new “offensive” strategy.

The warning on Wednesday came amid escalating attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a global energy chokepoint, and uncertainty over diplomatic efforts to end the nearly eight-month war.

“Our defence doctrine was previously defensive; we used to say that if a country attacks us, we will respond. Now we say that if a country attacks us, we will both respond and launch an offensive,” IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebi said.

Washington ordered some diplomatic personnel to leave Saudi Arabia amid attacks from Yemen’s Houthis while US President Donald Trump has signalled that a decision on the conflict could come soon.

According to media reports, the US and Israel are planning potential attacks on Iran in the coming weeks.

As negotiations seem stalled and both sides exchange threats, could the region be heading towards another military escalation?

What is Iran’s new doctrine?

The IRGC on Wednesday announced a shift towards an “offensive and asymmetrical” defence doctrine, threatening to invade countries that launch attacks against it.

Mohebi said Tehran would no longer limit its military operations to retaliatory strikes.

Mohebi stressed that Iran’s missile stockpile has increased 1.5 times since the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025. He did not provide specific figures.

“The quality of the missiles has improved significantly, and their range, destructive power and accuracy in hitting targets have increased,” the spokesman said.

Moreover, Mohebi said Iranian forces were in the “stage of preparing to unveil the ‘father of all bombs’. This is something new for the enemy.”

Meanwhile, attacks in the Strait of Hormuz continued unabated.

The IRGC’s navy said on Thursday that four vessels it accused of being involved in illegal oil transfers were struck and caught fire in the northern Gulf. Three other vessels hit mines west of the strait, it added.

Before the war, one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies passed through the Strait of Hormuz. While shipments through the strait are still below those levels, oil shipments from the region returned to pre-war levels last month as exporters found alternative ways to ship out their oil and gas, including using pipelines.

However, a flurry of recent attacks in the key waterway and the fighting between Yemen’s Houthis and its Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government, which has resulted in Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, have once again sent oil prices surging. Brent crude climbed above $110 a barrel on Thursday amid fears of further disruptions to regional energy supplies.

Why the shift?

Iran’s shift towards an offensive military doctrine reflects Tehran’s determination to make future US-Israeli attacks significantly more costly, according to analysts.

Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the Centre for International Policy, told Al Jazeera that Tehran was drawing lessons from the wars of 2025 and 2026 after its previous strategy of retaliation failed to prevent repeated attacks.

“Tehran now wants to establish a new equation: Any future attack on Iran will come at a much higher cost for the aggressors,” she told Al Jazeera.

Unable to match conventional US military capabilities, Iran is increasingly relying on asymmetric warfare, including missiles, drones and its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, Mortazavi explained.

She said Tehran was pursuing a broader strategy aimed at imposing military, economic and political costs on Washington, including potentially influencing the November 3 US midterm elections.

“Iran wants to teach Washington a lesson: Attacking Iran comes with a high price, one that can even cost elections,” Mortazavi said, referring to US surveys that are predicting electoral losses for Trump’s Republican Party.

She added that Iranian officials were closely monitoring the elections, believing the economic fallout from the war could damage the Republican Party’s prospects of retaining control of Congress.

“The long-term objective is to establish deterrence so that future American administrations think twice before daring to attack Iran again,” she said.

Political analyst Rami Khouri said the doctrine was also intended to ensure that the consequences of attacks extend to the US, Israel and regional countries supporting their military operations.

“That’s one part of the strategy, that the suffering and the damage have to be equal and reciprocal,” Khouri, nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center, told Al Jazeera.

Khouri argued that Tehran was also seeking to challenge what it views as longstanding Western domination of the region.

“The Iranians are actually working to try to end the colonial period,” he said.

He added that Iran’s strategy could extend the economic consequences of conflict far beyond the Middle East, affecting energy supplies, transportation, insurance costs and shipments of essential goods.

“The pain is going to go way beyond just the Middle East and Israel and the US and will hurt people in other parts of the world,” Khouri said.

What has the US said about resuming the war?

Trump has offered conflicting signals about Washington’s next steps.

On Wednesday, he said the US was no longer negotiating with Tehran and suggested developments were imminent. “We are going to have something one way or the other that’ll happen fairly soon,” he told reporters.

He also said Washington could end the war immediately but wanted a lasting outcome. “It’ll end very soon. We could leave now, but we want to make sure it lasts for a long time,” Trump said at a campaign rally in South Carolina.

Trump previously pledged not to attack Iran before the November 3 elections.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that reaching a peace agreement is extremely difficult and insisted that Iran must stop targeting commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

In recent weeks, Iran’s enrichment of uranium has re-emerged as a point of contention.

Rubio has maintained that Washington will reject any agreement allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons, which require highly enriched uranium. “The United States will not support any deal that creates a pathway for Iran to ever have a nuclear weapon,” he said on Wednesday.

Tehran insisted its right to enrichment is guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Iran has offered a seven-day plan to restore shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Washington ending its blockade of Iranian ports, easing sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets.

Meanwhile, the US Department of State on Wednesday ordered nonemergency personnel and their families to leave Saudi Arabia after recent Houthi attacks.

The US embassy in Riyadh has warned of further attacks while American officials told the Reuters news agency that family members could be withdrawn from other Gulf missions.

State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott said departure orders for mission personnel across the Gulf have not been ordered, saying the current orders were for “employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia only”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday his pledge to topple Iran’s government, saying it was key to preventing it from rebuilding its nuclear programme and the “axis of resistance”, further raising prospects of an escalation.

Netanyahu made the comments as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is locked in a tough battle to remain in power in Tuesday’s elections.

Is war imminent?

Analysts warned that renewed US-Israeli attacks on Iran are increasingly possible with both sides preparing for another confrontation despite the continued possibility of diplomacy.

“Another round of war seems to be approaching,” Mortazavi said.

“Both sides appear to be preparing for renewed confrontation while escalating tensions in the Strait of Hormuz increase the risk of a wider conflict,” she said.

Mortazavi added that the elections in the next two weeks in the US and Israel could influence the timing of military action but warned that the current trajectory appeared to favour escalation over negotiations.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on Wednesday said, “Everyone must know that any action against Iran comes at a cost.”

“If diplomacy can create this understanding, we prefer diplomacy, but if the war continues, Iran has the necessary means to sustain its response,” Rezaei said, according to the IRNA news agency.

Echoing Mortazavi, Khouri warned that another confrontation could be approaching although he said US threats might still be part of a negotiating strategy.

“I think imminent conflict is on the cards, but I don’t know if war is the right word to use,” Khouri told Al Jazeera.

He said renewed strikes could target Iran’s critical infrastructure, including electricity networks, transportation systems, bridges and essential services.

“We’re probably going to get some severe attacks on a few targets that will try to make life in Iran very difficult,” he said.

However, Khouri cautioned that Iran’s ability to withstand another major military offensive while inflicting comparable damage on its adversaries remained uncertain.

“It’s not clear if Iran has the ability to withstand major new assaults against it,” he said, while stressing that Tehran was unlikely to surrender to military pressure.

Government websites in Europe and elsewhere have gone offline after news of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators scrambling to protect their systems.

Developers of the PHP programming language on Wednesday released urgent new fixes, saying all users were “encouraged to update immediately”.

PHP runs on the servers that host websites, building pages behind the scenes before they reach a visitor’s browser. Most people never see it, but it powers everything from blogs to online shops and government portals.

The vulnerabilities, which had been lurking in the software for years, were uncovered with the help of artificial intelligence. Details about them leaked online on Tuesday before fixes were available, forcing PHP to rush them out.

Experts said they were bracing for a wave of intrusions as hackers jumped to get ahead of the updates.

What is the bug?

Andrew Cullen, a lecturer on AI and cybersecurity at the University of Melbourne, said many devices in the world are connected to one piece of foundational software, which is where the bug was found.

The vulnerability allows a hacker to run code on a website, meaning they could change the website or force it to release personal information collected in a database, Cullen told Al Jazeera.

Both flaws stem from how PHP handles fatal errors, such as running out of memory. Because the problem sits in PHP itself, even the simplest website running an affected version can be vulnerable, and attackers could read passwords and other credentials from a server’s memory, the cloud security company Wiz said. Both flaws scored 9.2 out of 10 on the industry’s standard severity scale, placing them in the “critical” category.

The two flaws, nicknamed PHP2Shell, were found independently by two cybersecurity companies using AI. Calif, working with OpenAI, reported the first on August 11. Wiz, which is owned by Google, reported the second on August 24.

The vulnerabilities remained hidden in the PHP codebase for more than a decade and would have been extraordinarily complicated for a human hacker to take advantage of, Wiz said in a statement.

Calif and Wiz said they had coordinated with each other, the PHP team and OpenAI before making the vulnerabilities public.

However, Amazon security chief CJ Moses said his security team detected an attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities on October 17, four days before the public disclosure.

Moses said it was unclear how the hacker learned of the flaws while Calif’s and Wiz’s reports were still under embargo. Security researchers usually keep details of flaws secret until a fix is ready, so attackers cannot use them in the meantime.

Who can potentially be affected?

PHP, a language that dates back to the early 1990s and initially stood for Personal Home Page, underpins huge parts of the public-facing web and is baked into WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento sites, meaning any critical vulnerability potentially has enormous knock-on consequences.

Calif, Wiz and the web infrastructure company Cloudflare said the flaws affect PHP 5.4 and later versions, more than a decade of releases.

Cullen said the vulnerability was “really unprecedented”, noting that PHP powers more than 70 percent of websites globally, although sites that have been updated are protected.

“There is a real risk to the kind of shared digital infrastructure that we all rely on,” Cullen told Al Jazeera. “There is concern in the cybersecurity community about what the blast radius for this will be, even though the developers of PHP have been very quick to try and develop patches for it.”

Cullen added that while AI was getting better at cybersecurity, it was also getting better at being a hacker. “This means that we are developing systems … that are making the internet safer by helping to fix bugs, but we’re also making it riskier by discovering bugs and creating bugs they’ll be able to hack,” he said.

What has the impact been so far?

In the Netherlands, the Dutch cybersecurity agency itself went offline, saying it had done so as a precaution because of the vulnerabilities. Several organisations followed the example and took public-facing websites offline, including the Port of Rotterdam, government portal Overheid.nl, the national football association KNVB, the websites for the country’s five largest political parties and several hospital ‌websites.

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said he was closely monitoring the situation.

Disruptions were even more widespread in Finland, where state IT services provider Valtori said government public network services had been taken offline “as a precautionary measure”.

France’s Ministry of the Interior said it had placed all of its websites into preventive maintenance.

Belgium’s Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation said it had temporarily taken its websites offline after reports of cyberattacks exploiting the PHP vulnerabilities although the country’s cybersecurity centre said it had not recorded any attacks on Belgian websites.

South Korea’s ⁠government raised ⁠its private-sector cybersecurity alert level and activated emergency response measures. It issued security guidance to about 28,000 companies with registered chief information security officers and 5,900 members ⁠of a government information-sharing ⁠network as well as operators of critical infrastructure, web-hosting firms and data centres.

The operator of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia also said it had taken down an unspecified number of systems until they could be safely patched while the Internet Archive, the sprawling online library, said it also briefly went offline to deal with the issue.

Until now, the virus was considered non-transferable to humans, making the patient the first documented human case.

French authorities have confirmed that a patient who died at a Lyon hospital earlier in October was infected with the Shamonda virus, the first such report of the virus in a human.

In a statement on Thursday, the French Ministry of Agriculture stressed that there were no identifiable health risks to the general population at this time.

Shamonda is an orthobunyavirus – a group of viruses primarily carried and spread by insects – transmitted to animals, mainly cattle, by biting midges of the genus Culicoides.

It was first detected in Nigeria in the 1960s, but has since been reported sporadically in East and Southern Africa, as well as Japan.

Until now, the virus was considered non-transmissible to humans, making the patient in France the first documented human case.

The French announcement said the leading hypothesis was that the patient was infected in eastern France, where the virus had circulated among animals this spring and summer.

“Clinical, biological and epidemiological investigations are continuing in conjunction with expertise in human, animal and environmental health,” the statement added.

Shamonda was first confirmed in Europe in late July after genomic tests on sick cattle in southern Germany, Switzerland and eastern France.

A report from France’s ‌weekly animal health surveillance bulletin said the virus had also been detected in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom’s Jersey.

Libya’s eastern-based parliament has backed a 2019 maritime deal with Turkiye already signed by the North African nation’s internationally recognised government based in Tripoli to delimit maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea.

The vote on Tuesday came as Turkiye has been cultivating close ties in recent years with the eastern parliament, backed by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar. Ankara had helped the Tripoli government, known as the Government of National Accord (GNA), push back an offensive in 2020 by Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) that aimed to capture Tripoli.

Egypt and the European Union have rejected the ratification of the maritime borders agreement, calling the deal “null and void”.

On Tuesday, the Tobruk-based House of Representatives voted unanimously to approve the agreement, reversing its 2020 rejection.

Israel also condemned the move while Greece, which said the agreement violates international law, briefed the United Nations Security Council.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan dismissed the criticism, calling the deal “entirely legitimate”.

So what is the deal, and why has it drawn such a backlash? Here’s what you need to know:

What is the deal?

It is a memorandum of understanding that draws a sea border between Turkiye and Libya across the eastern Mediterranean.

It was signed in Istanbul on November 27, 2019, by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fayez al-Sarraj, then-prime minister of the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

Within weeks, Turkiye sent drones and military advisers to help repel Haftar’s assault on Tripoli.

The deal allowed Ankara to claim large and potentially gas-rich areas of the eastern Mediterranean.

Why does Egypt oppose it?

Because Cairo says it cuts into Egyptian waters.

Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the agreement “constitutes a clear infringement upon Egypt’s sovereign rights within its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf”.

It said the ratification “carries no legal consequences for Egypt”.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has historically been one of Haftar’s strongest backers, but experts said their relations have cooled because Haftar allowed his territory to be used to funnel support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, which is fighting Sudan’s military, the AFP news agency reported.

Cairo is also now a close security ally of Ankara, and in July, Egypt refrained from objecting to a maritime line drawn between Benghazi and Turkiye.

According to exclusive information Al Jazeera received in July, the rapprochement between Ankara and Haftar’s general command included agreements on developing military facilities and advanced surveillance systems.

The agreements also included training programmes in Turkiye for eastern Libyan officers with specialised Turkish defence companies participating in the projects.

Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy analyst and former Austrian defence attache in Greece, told Al Jazeera that a possible Turkish military presence in eastern Libya was “probably more of a concern for Egypt”.

“This is not so much an issue for Greece, which has a Turkish military presence next door anyway,” he said, adding, “I doubt Cairo would accept this.”

Why does the EU oppose it?

Because two of its member states said it seeks to take their waters.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the memorandum infringes on the sovereign rights of third states and does not comply with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

They reaffirmed the bloc’s solidarity with Greece and Cyprus.

Athens said the deal ignores Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes and Karpathos, and therefore infringes on its maritime territory, according to a briefing document from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sotirios Zartaloudis, an associate professor in comparative European politics at the University of Birmingham, told Al Jazeera that Athens and Nicosia see the deal as a Turkish attempt to block the “crucial Great Sea Interconnector”.

The planned subsea power cable, which would link Greece’s grid to Cyprus and later Israel, has been delayed by a dispute between Athens and Ankara over waters off the Greek island of Crete, the Reuters news agency reported last year. The project is estimated to cost about $2.1bn.

Turkiye has not signed UNCLOS, which means Ankara is not bound by the treaty’s rules governing maritime boundaries.

On Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas urged all countries to respect member states’ sovereign rights under EU and international law, including UNCLOS.

Zartaloudis said both countries had pushed for the EU to condemn the deal, but “so far expectations were not met”, and that “they will try to gain further support against the deal”.

He added that “the main actor in the region is the US”, which he said had not repudiated the agreement.

What does Turkiye say?

Ankara said the deal is lawful and already in force.

Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the memorandum safeguards both countries’ rights on the basis of international law and “the principle of equity”.

“There are countries reacting to this. We know why they are reacting,” Fidan told state media.

“However, this is an entirely legitimate deal, both from a legal and a statutory perspective,” he said.

Why did eastern Libya change its mind?

Because Ankara has spent years courting it and its parliament has new leadership.

After Ankara struck a deal with Haftar’s LNA in July, the eastern parliament on October 6 elected Al-Salhin Abdelnabi al-Obeidi as speaker, replacing Aguila Saleh after more than 12 years.

Al-Obeidi previously chaired the Libyan-Turkish parliamentary friendship committee.

Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank, told Al Jazeera that the turnaround in eastern Libya was about the route to the presidency under a US mediation plan for Saddam Haftar, Khalifa Haftar’s son and deputy commander.

“Turkiye is now the most consequential outside power in Libya with leverage over Tripoli and a military presence in the west, and he needs it to get there and to stay there,” El Gomati said.

“But a ratified treaty is hard to reverse, so Ankara gets something that looks permanent in return for support that, depending on how the Haftars use it, may not be,” El Gomati said.

Does the vote unite Libya’s rivals?

Not on the issues that divide them most.

Tripoli’s GNU welcomed Tuesday’s vote, meaning both of Libya’s rival centres of power now back the deal.

But El Gomati said the “unification was never about the sea”.

“It’s about who controls the budget, the army and the electoral commission, and this vote touches none of them,” he said.

What happens next?

Athens said it would take all appropriate measures to safeguard its sovereign rights.

El Gomati said implementation now depended on institutions such as Libya’s National Oil Corporation and he expected pressure “to be diplomatic and slow”.

Pusztai said the risk of naval incidents if Turkiye or Libya act on the deal at sea was “very high”.

He said it might also lead to the involvement of the EU naval mission enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya since 2020.

In August 2020, months after the deal was signed with the GNU, Ankara sent the survey vessel Oruc Reis to explore for oil and gas in waters Greece claims, bringing the two NATO allies to the verge of military confrontation.

Across Europe, an autumn of anger is taking hold.

In France, student protests over overcrowded classrooms and teacher shortages have grown into a broader public outcry.

In recent weeks, separate protests have also erupted in Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Albania.

The grievances differ, from unaffordable housing and low wages to rising fuel costs, education and political accountability.

But the frustration is increasingly shared: paying more, getting less, and struggling to afford a decent life, even with a job.

Governments face demands for relief while wrestling with high debt, rising borrowing costs and, in several countries, looming elections.

Class action could be first in Australia to blame social media for harming its users.

Meta and its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram are facing a class action lawsuit in Australia over allegations that addictive design features are harming children and teenagers.

The lawsuit, filed by MinterEllison in the Australian Federal Court, seeks to recover compensation for current and former users of Facebook and Instagram who claim they were exposed to harmful content or developed an addiction to social media as a result of using those platforms, the law firm said in a statement released on Thursday.

“This proceeding raises important questions about the design and operation of social media platforms and their impact on children and teenagers in Australia. Those questions will now be considered through the Federal Court process,” MinterEllison Partner William Nolan said in the statement.

The class action suit was filed on behalf of eight plaintiffs who allege they were harmed by Meta while they were below the age of 18.

In a suppression order on Monday, the court prohibited the reporting of any information that could reveal their identities and the statement of claim.

“We are aware of this claim and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a Meta spokesperson said.

Litigation Lending Services said it was funding the class action for Australian families who “would have no practical means of pursuing these claims against a global technology giant”.

The lawsuit comes amid rising tensions between Australia and Big Tech after a world-first ban on social media for children below 16 in 2025, and newly proposed rules that could let users switch off algorithm-driven content on their feeds.

Meta agreed in August to pay $18bn to settle with nearly all US states to resolve claims that it designed social media to addict children.

Barclays is cutting around 5,000 staff this year as it introduces more artificial intelligence (AI) into its processes.

The banking group said 1,000 posts had already been closed and it expects a further reduction of 4,000 to be complete by the end of 2026.

The cuts amount to 5% of its global workforce. Most are operational and functional roles, with the bulk in its UK retail banking arm. However, its investment banking division will also be affected.

Barclays said the cuts were the result of investments in technology, with AI making some work processes more efficient.

Taiz, Yemen – As Houthi fighters tighten their siege on the government-held southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz, women who initially organised food deliveries for soldiers defending the city have begun raising money to buy weapons and ammunition.

The initiatives have emerged spontaneously since the resumption of fighting in early September in the western countryside of Taiz governorate, between Saudi-backed forces of the internationally recognised government and the Iran-backed armed group.

At first, women volunteers came together to bake cookies for fighters on the front lines.

The aim was “to strengthen the relationship between the supportive social base and the members of the national army and pro-government popular resistance forces stationed at the front lines in defence of their besieged city, which is subjected to daily shelling in preparation for an invasion,” said Amira al-Saghir, an activist involved in the campaign.

The cookie-making initiative attracted widespread participation among women volunteers, drawing encouragement and support on social media. It coincided with a broader community campaign to supply fighters with food and other basic necessities, as well as weapons, with people contributing from districts and villages across the governorate.

In Yemen, a conservative country and the poorest in the Middle East, the vast majority of women do not participate in active fighting in the civil war, which began in 2014. Instead, these initiatives allow women to take part in what they see as the defence of their city against an invading force, and support for the men who are fighting.

After nearly four years of relative calm following a United Nations-brokered truce in April 2022, Houthi forces launched a major ground offensive in western Taiz in early September. The armed group rapidly captured territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the strategic port city of Mocha on September 10 , expanding its presence around Bab al-Mandeb strait, a vital shipping route.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, Arabic for Supporters of God, subsequently advanced towards other parts of Taiz governorate, taking control of key routes into the provincial capital and effectively surrounding the city. Government forces have since launched counteroffensives, with control of some areas remaining contested.

The renewed siege has severely restricted the movement of people and essential supplies into the city, triggering shortages of food, fuel, and medicine.

From cookies to weapons

As the fighting intensified, the women’s initiatives expanded. What began with baking cookies and organising food convoys to supply arms kitchens gradually evolved into efforts to buy ammunition for fighters.

Women involved in the initiatives told Al Jazeera that they felt they had been “forced” to act because of the risk of their city falling to the Houthis.

The change began as more rural districts began falling to the Houthis, leading to some donors making their contributions conditional on part of the money being used to buy ammunition for fighters.

Al-Saghir believes the shift was encouraged by information and criticism circulating on social media suggesting that government fighters in Taiz lacked sufficient ammunition to continue defending the city and surrounding front lines.

The initiatives soon took off, encouraging more women to get involved. Among them was Huriya Wabel, a humanitarian activist.

“After we saw that those [Houthi] militias … are waging a war of extermination against our city, we felt that we had to take a serious stand to support the army, not just with food and clothing, but with weapons as well, especially since a siege has been imposed on Taiz and supplies can no longer reach it easily,” Wabel told Al Jazeera.

“We also found many civilians who wanted to participate in the fighting alongside the army in defence of the city, but they did not have weapons,” she added. “So it became incumbent upon us to help by focusing more of our activities on this aspect at this stage.”

Defending their city

For Khadija al-Majidi, the move from providing humanitarian supplies to delivering military equipment is a response to the growing threat facing Taiz.

“When the enemy reaches the gates of your city and imposes a complete siege on it in preparation for storming it by force, and everyone in it – including you, your children, and members of your family – is threatened with being killed, captured, or displaced … then what do you expect from us?” the activist told Al Jazeera. “Did you expect us to carry flowers for the criminal who came from the farthest reaches of the country to destroy our city and kill us?”

When Al Jazeera spoke to al-Majidi, she had just returned from the fighting around Jabal Sabir, the mountain overlooking Taiz from the south.

It was al-Majidi’s second trip to the front that day, delivering ammunition and other military supplies, which she valued at $3,000, to the commander on the front, along with winter clothing, shoes, food, and other necessities.

She said that after more than 10 years of living through Yemen’s devastating war, she no longer felt afraid to visit active battlefronts.

“Repeated visits to the front lines play a major role in removing fears, given what we see on the ground of the heroes’ courage and bravery in defending the city and their confidence in victory,” she added.

As fundraising expands, the women’s department of Taiz’s Supreme Council for Popular Resistance launched a campaign on October 8 , aiming to equip 10,000 pro-government fighters with rifles and ammunition.

The council has called for contributions from Yemenis across the country and abroad to support the initiative.

The campaign reflects the state of the fighting in Taiz, with government forces facing daily Houthi attacks, as they try to conduct their own counter-attacks.

But the longer the siege continues, the more difficult the military and humanitarian situation becomes in the city.

Al-Saghir and al-Majidi both explained that while many of the donations they receive come from Yemenis living abroad, people on the ground are also giving whatever they can, despite the humanitarian crisis in Taiz.

Al-Saghir said one woman whose husband was fighting in the army donated a wedding ring, while al-Majidi recounted stories of other women donating their gold jewellery.

Al-Majidi recalled a woman arriving at her home carrying envelopes containing Yemeni and Saudi currency.

The woman had written on the envelopes, “God willing, we will win. Buy ammunition for the heroes with this.”

China finished 0.233 points ahead of the Americans, denying them a chance to win an gold eighth consecutive team gold.

China have denied the United States an eighth consecutive women’s team title at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships as Qiu Qiyuan sealed a dramatic victory with the final routine.

Qiu needed to score more than 12.600 points in the closing floor routine to give her country gold and did just enough with 12.833 on Wednesday.

The USA last failed to win gold when they were beaten by Russia at the 2010 championships, but were left to count the cost of several errors on the balance beam in Rotterdam.

China, who also led the way in qualifying, finished with 165.764 points, edging out the Americans by 0.233 overall.

Japan were a further 1.468 points behind as they completed the podium ahead of fourth-placed France.

USA superstar Simone Biles, a 23-time world champion including five times in the team competition, is taking a break from the sport and has not competed since the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she won three gold medals.

The reigning champions took a healthy lead at the halfway stage, helped by strong vault and uneven bars routines by Skye Blakely, the only gymnast on the team who was part of the quintet that won their seventh consecutive title in 2023.

But 18-year-old Caylor Dulcy stumbled on the beam, scoring just 12.333, as the Americans were outscored by more than four points on the apparatus by their rivals.

Zhang Qingying, who topped beam qualifying, in particular made them pay with a sparkling performance that earned her 15.066 points.

The Chinese were put under pressure on the floor, but Qiu held her nerve to secure their first women’s team world crown since 2006.

The championships continue in the Netherlands on Thursday as Japan’s Daiki Hashimoto defends his men’s all-around title, with a big challenge expected from his compatriot and Olympic champion Shinnosuke Oka.

Japan took the men’s team title on Tuesday, pipping Russia and China.

The U.S. Air Force says any decision on whether or not to acquire new production F-16 Viper fighters is likely a year or more away. The service’s top officer in charge of force structure planning has also now raised the prospect of using a “spectrum of capability” to eventually supplant aging older-model F-16s. All of this comes as the Air Force has laid out a new vision to have 1,509 combat-coded fighters in inventory, hundreds more than it has now, by 2035, amid questions about whether industry and budgets can keep up.

Inside Defense and Air & Space Forces Magazine were among the first to report on the Air Force’s latest long-term fighter force structure plan late yesterday. This followed a roundtable with Lt. Gen. David Tabor, the service’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs. At the time of writing, an unclassified copy of the report, which was submitted to Congress last week, has not been released publicly. TWZ has reached out for more information.

Tabor said yesterday that the target fleet of 1,509 combat-coded fighters by 2035 would be approximately 40 percent F-35s, 40 percent F-15s (inclusive of F-15E Strike Eagles and F-15EX Eagle IIs) and F-16s, and 20 percent F-22 Raptors and F-47s, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. As an aside, the final expected F-47 fleet size remains unclear, though the Air Force continues to say it plans to acquire at least enough of those jets to replace its 185 F-22s on a one-for-one basis.

The current breakdown of the service’s fighter force structure is 45 percent F-16s, 30 percent F-35s, 15 percent F-15s, and 10 percent F-22s. Last year’s long-term fighter force structure report said the service was aiming for an eventual inventory of 1,558 combat-coded fighters and hoped to hit a milestone of 1,369 aircraft by Fiscal Year 2030. As of the start of Fiscal Year 2026, the Air Force had 1,168 combat-coded fighters, not including 103 A-10 Warthog ground attack jets, which have been part of this force structure planning in the past. The plan now is for the last of the A-10s to be retired by 2030. The new 2035 figure also does not include the hundreds of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones the service wants to have acquired by that time, something we will come back to later on.

Currently, the Air Force expects fighter fleet expansion to be driven by the acquisition of new F-35As, F-15EXs, and F-47s. This was also the case when last year’s fighter force structure report was released. The possibility of the Air Force also acquiring new-production F-16s has come up several times in recent years. Most recently, there were several reports last month that prime contractor Lockheed Martin had made a new pitch to the service for a version of the latest Block 70 version of the fighter, tentatively dubbed the F-16G. New Block 70 and Block 72 F-16s, which differ in what engine they use, are being actively produced at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Greenville, South Carolina. At that time, TWZ did a deep dive into the benefits that this could offer the Air Force.

“There is a spectrum of capability that we might want to replace the F-16s with,” Lt. Gen. Tabor said amid a discussion about the prospect of acquiring new Vipers at the roundtable yesterday, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s not urgent, frankly. What we don’t want to get to is a point where it is urgent, and we haven’t done the homework and decided ‘hey, this is really the right place to be.’ We do have time to churn through that and make sure that we have a good option going forward.”

“We’re not in a position where that decision has to be made immediately,” Tabor added, while acknowledging that “we are very conscious” that older-model F-16s are set to begin reaching the end of their lifespans in the 2030s. He also said any such planning was unlikely to be part of the process of developing the service’s Fiscal Year 2028 budget proposal, which will be released sometime early next year.

The Air Force is “in the initial phases of analyzing options for the next Future Years Defense Program,” a spokesperson for the service had told us last month without specifically mentioning any particular type of aircraft. “At this stage, we have neither defined the precise mission requirements nor the spectrum of options that could fill it.”

When it comes to the current F-16 fleet, the Air Force had 774 Vipers in inventory at the start of Fiscal Year 2026 and expected that number to drop to 768, according to past budget documents. This includes a mixture of subvariants, and not all of them are assigned combat-coded units. The Air Force has been substantially upgrading at least a portion of its existing F-16s, including with the addition of new active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and electronic warfare suites, to ensure their operational relevance for years to come.

The Air Force has also already been taking newer F-16s from squadrons transitioning to the F-35 and using them to replace older Vipers in other units. Last year’s fighter force structure report explicitly highlighted plans to supplant Block 30 F-16s in five Air National Guard formations – three combat-coded squadrons and two training units – with Block 40 and 50 types in this way.

As we’ve previously written:

“A new F-16 offers a fresh and highly mature airframe — one with a full service-life ahead of it, on the order of 12,000 flight hours without the need for structural upgrades — double that of the original F-16. This is compared to existing F-16s in the inventory with the decades of wear and fatigue already accumulated on them, with structural upgrades keeping them in the air. That difference in remaining structural life is arguably the single biggest advantage a new-build aircraft has compared with extending an existing one.”

“Dumping more money into existing F-16s is becoming questionable. Service life extensions and technical upgrades can only go so far and supporting these jets is becoming harder as parts dry up and suppliers who made them are long gone. A new airframe would give the Guard many decades of highly efficient service and the piece of mind for future force planning that goes with it.”

…

“The new [F-16G] proposal would let some Guard and Reserve units swap their F-16s for vastly improved F-16s — the same logic that drove the F-15EX buy — while also keeping the Greenville line hot, which is a significant benefit in its own right. And it accomplishes both in the most efficient way possible: not just in acquisition cost, but in sustainment cost, which is really the more problematic burden of the two. In the end, this points to another glaring reality check for the all-stealth-force concept, a vision the Air Force has effectively already abandoned.”

“The Air Force has spent years describing the F-35 as the replacement for its F-16 fleet, yet it now has to contend with aging F-16s, delayed or constrained fighter production, a larger stated requirement for total fighter capacity, and the lengthy transition toward the F-47 and uncrewed combat aircraft. In that environment, a new-build F-16 provides an option that sits between extending legacy aircraft and buying the most sophisticated — and expensive — fighters available.”

You can read our full prior deep analysis on this topic here.

Lt. Gen. Tabor acknowledged many of these exact same points at the roundtable yesterday. He notably described acquiring new F-16s as “maybe the lazy” option, but also one that would benefit from “practically a ready-made aircraft” that is in production now, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“The question is, can industry produce at those levels?” he also said, speaking more generally. “They’ve assured us that they can, and we believe them, but we also actually need to see it manifest.”

In the context of acquiring new F-16s, especially, it is important to note here that Lockheed Martin order books are very full already as a result of demand for these fighters from U.S. allies and partners. The company’s capacity, at least at present, to add a substantial new Air Force acquisition program on top of that is a real question. This, in some ways, mirrors questions that surround Boeing efforts to meet surging Air Force demand for F-15EXs.

On top of all this, the Air Force’s still-evolving CCA plans remain something of a wildcard in these discussions. The Air Force has ordered General Atomics FQ-42 Vengeance and Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury CCAs into production, and is now aiming to have a combined fleet of at least 500 of these drones in inventory by 2032. The service is also still expecting to acquire additional CCAs, which could be of entirely different types, through a second iterative development cycle, or Increment 2, under this program. This is influencing the service’s crewed fighter force structure plans, but the full scale and scope of those impacts remain to be seen.

“CCA is very much a reality,” Tabor said yesterday, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It is going to be a part of our future, and there is absolutely a world in which the incorporation of CCAs into the force will mitigate the requirement for the number of fighters. That’s not the CCA that we have right now, but it is advancing very, very rapidly. We’re confident that it will play a major role in future versions of the fighter force structure report.”

The Air Force’s F-22s are currently set to be its first ‘aerial quarterbacks’ for CCAs, with F-35s and F-47s expected to follow. At the same time, TWZ has highlighted previously how CCA could offer particular value when paired with fourth-generation fighters like the F-16. This, in turn, could actually bolster the case for new Viper acquisitions as a more affordable force multiplier.

The Air Force’s ability to secure necessary funding and other factors will play in all this, too. 2035 is a long way off from a budgetary perspective. It also stretches across multiple election cycles, including the one that will decide the next presidential administration, all of which could lead to major changes in defense spending priorities. Congress can and routinely does demand that the U.S. military alter major procurement plans. Just in the past two years or so, legislators have intervened to force the Air Force to move ahead with the acquisition of new E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control planes and to save the U.S. Navy F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program.

In the meantime, the Air Force clearly faces many continued questions about how to balance the need to modernize its fighter fleets while ensuring it retains enough tactical airpower to meet current and future operational demands. Even so, the service says it sees no need to rush to make a decision about whether to choose the “lazy” route of just buying new F-16s.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Right-wing presidential candidate says he will release personal records if his opponent, President Lula, meets his conditions.

Brazilian right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro has set out steep conditions for disclosing his personal records in response to a challenge from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his opponent in Sunday’s election run-off.

Bolsonaro’s campaign has said it will release the data Lula requested if the president expands his own pledge to disclose his personal records to include those of his advisers, security staff and records from companies held by Lula’s children.

Lula said on Tuesday that he would share his bank, tax and telephone records, along with those of his family, if Bolsonaro would agree to do the same.

His campaign submitted conditional authorisation to Brazil’s electoral court to release the president’s personal data.

Camilo Santana, a senator and representative of Lula’s campaign, told journalists that ⁠⁠Lula has agreed to Bolsonaro’s new demands, and the president’s would file an official response with the court on Thursday morning.

Corruption scandal

The call from Lula on Tuesday came as both campaigns try to navigate the fallout of an explosive corruption scandal involving disgraced banker Daniel Vorcaro, which has implicated influential individuals and institutions across Brazil.

Bolsonaro, who narrowly leads Lula in the polls, is under investigation over alleged corruption and money laundering related to an investment he allegedly ⁠⁠sought from Vorcaro. He is also under investigation in a separate probe over alleged money laundering.

The presidential hopeful denies any wrongdoing.

Brazil’s president is also linked to a corruption scandal, via his son Fabio Luis Lula da Silva, a businessman, who is accused being investigated over allegations that he unlawfully helped another businessman to gain access to the government.

Lula’s eldest son is also being investigated over his links to a businessman detained under a pension fraud probe.

Lula’s son denies the allegations, and the president has said his ‌‌son ‌‌would be treated like any other citizen.

North Korea has said it plans to resume broadcasting anti-South Korea propaganda along the armed border between the two countries, as Seoul urged Pyongyang to discuss easing tensions.

Kim Yo Jong, a senior North Korean official and the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Wednesday that North Korea will place loudspeakers along the entire border, following a visit with top military officials to fortifications along the contested frontier.

Kim warned Seoul of “the most horrible and distressing situation” if South Korea continued what Pyongyang calls interference in the North’s internal affairs.

She added in a follow-up statement on Thursday that North Korea would place “new counter means” on alert along the border, without elaborating, and have its loudspeakers on “standby” within days.

A landmine blast last month that wounded three South Korean soldiers in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two countries has ratcheted up tensions. Seoul accused North Korean troops of deliberately laying mines in the border zone as part of the North’s fortification work.

Kim had denied the allegation, calling the incident a South Korean fabrication. She said North Korean tactical units had taken up new positions, and accused South Korean troops of conducting warning broadcasts and firing warning shots at multiple locations near the border.

Seoul said the warning shots were fired as “legitimate and defensive measures”.

North Korea has been adding mines, barbed wire fences, anti-tank barriers and other fortifications to what is already one of the world’s most heavily armed borders.

South Korea’s Ministry of National Defence urged North Korea on Thursday to discuss measures to ease tension at the border and prevent any accidental military clash, its spokesperson said.

Pyongyang had cut off a military hotline with the South after declaring it would no longer seek dialogue or unification with what it called its “foe”.

Loudspeaker propaganda

Both North and South Korea have historically used loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda across the border, with South Korean broadcasts featuring K-pop music and news that have long irked Pyongyang and prompted tit-for-tat responses.

The two Koreas are separated by the DMZ, established after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice.

North Korea has been reinforcing its side of the DMZ with mines, barriers and fencing since 2024 as it seeks to establish what it calls a permanent border with South Korea.

Mekelle, Ethiopia- In Mekelle, shops are reopening, and banks are resuming services, but residents remain anxious about what comes next. Ethiopian federal forces and allied fighters retook the Tigray regional capital on October 4, as renewed fighting raised fears that the region’s fragile recovery could be derailed once again.

Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, is still recovering from the 2020–2022 war between federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s dominant political movement. For residents, the return of fighting has brought new uncertainty over jobs, education, security and the future.

Daily life resumes, but hardship remains.

Businesses and financial services are gradually reopening in Mekelle, but many households are struggling to afford necessities. Delayed salaries have left public employees struggling to cover food, rent and school costs, while years of conflict have depleted family savings.

“Things may be reopening, but that does not mean our problems are over. We still have expenses every day, and without our salaries, it is difficult to know how we will manage,” said Gebregziabher, a public servant in Mekelle.

The funding crisis has affected the wider public sector. In March, Tigray’s interim administration said it could no longer cover monthly salaries for about 137,000 civil servants because expected federal budget transfers had not arrived. In April, the regional finance bureau reported an 8.5-billion-birr (about $52,000) funding shortfall affecting salary payments and development projects.

For many residents, the reopening of businesses offers only a partial return to normality. Without reliable incomes and greater security, everyday expenses remain difficult to manage.

Students fear losing more time

For students in Tigray, renewed fighting has revived fears of another interruption to their education. Many already lost valuable study time during the previous war and worry about falling further behind.

In Adigrat, Shewit, a grade 10 student, said uncertainty about classes and security had left him worried about his future.

“I have already lost so much time because of the war. I am afraid that if our education is disrupted again, I will lose another year and fall further behind,” he said.

Some university students have left Tigray for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to seek transfers to other public universities. The Ministry of Education announced temporary placements at universities elsewhere in the country for students enrolled at institutions in Tigray. More than 5,000 returning students had applied by September 17–18, according to reporting on the ministry’s programme.

Abel, a third-year student at Axum University, travelled to Addis Ababa to request a transfer.

“I didn’t want to leave, but I also can’t keep putting my education on hold. I came to Addis to see if I can transfer to another university and continue my studies. I just want to finish what I started,” he said.

For students who have already lost years to conflict, the uncertainty means more than interrupted classes. It threatens to delay graduation and make an already difficult path to employment even harder.

Border communities fear a wider conflict

Near the Eritrean border, military movements and conflicting accounts of troop deployments have heightened fears that the fighting could spread beyond Tigray.

On October 8, The Associated Press reported claims by a commander allied with Ethiopia’s government that Eritrean troops had entered Adigrat earlier that week and Idaga Hamus the following day. The AP said it could not independently verify those accounts. The conflict-monitoring organisation ACLED separately reported Eritrean troops crossing the border at Zalambessa.

On October 13, Reuters reported that Ethiopian government forces had advanced into Zalambessa, citing people in contact with residents and other sources. The report said it remained unclear whether Eritrean troops or Tigrayan opposition fighters were still present in the town. The differing accounts underscored the difficulty of establishing control of individual towns as the fighting shifted.

The developments have unfolded amid worsening relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara. On October 8, Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Gedion Timothewos, accused Eritrea of sending troops as far as 60km (37 miles) into Ethiopian territory in several areas of Tigray and appealed to the United Nations Security Council to respond.

Eritrea has denied invading Ethiopian territory. Its government said Ethiopia’s accusations amounted to a declaration of war and called on the Security Council to take action against Ethiopia. The competing claims have raised fears that renewed fighting in Tigray could lead to a direct confrontation between the two neighbours.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought on the same side during the 2020–2022 Tigray war, when Eritrean forces supported the federal government against the TPLF. Their deteriorating relations have added a regional dimension to the renewed conflict.

In Zalambessa, residents are watching developments with concern. One resident, who declined to be named, said the uncertainty made it difficult to know what to expect in the coming weeks.

An uncertain road ahead

On October 16, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a six-month caretaker administration for Tigray, tasked with restoring public services, helping displaced people return and preparing the region for elections. The announcement followed the federal forces’ takeover of Mekelle and other major towns.

The federal government says the temporary administration will help restore stability and pave the way for elected regional leadership. The TPLF has opposed the federal advance, and it remains uncertain how effectively the new administration will operate across the region.

For residents, the immediate concerns are whether salaries will be paid, schools and health facilities will function, and displaced families will be able to return safely.

In Zalambessa, Gebrehiwot said residents knew from experience what another conflict could bring.

“People are worried because we know what war means for this area. We have already suffered enough, and nobody wants to see things reach that point again,” he said.

US federal judge blocked wall’s construction on Texas-Mexico border amid an ongoing legal battle.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to resume plans to build a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas, as part of its anti-immigration policy to strengthen security on the border with Mexico.

The Justice Department filed an emergency request on Wednesday asking the court to lift a federal judge’s injunction in a lower court that has halted construction while a lawsuit against the project, brought by an environmental group and other challengers, plays out.

The Department of Homeland Security plans include vehicle barriers, patrol roads, lighting and detection technology in and around Big Bend National Park.

Big Bend has about 805km (500 miles) of border, and, according to opponents of the project who have sued the administration, accounts for about 1 percent of migrant arrests.

Landscape, historic church

The lawsuit, filed by plaintiffs including the Center for Biological Diversity and a Big Bend-area river guide, seeks to preserve the landscape, protect a historic church, and challenge the federal government’s waivers of environmental and historical laws to fast-track the $1.7bn project.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and current Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who issued the waivers between February and July, found the region to be an “area of high illegal entry”, requiring additional barriers to control the border.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued an injunction in El Paso on October 2 halting work “until and unless Defendants comply with all applicable laws,” she wrote in her order.

In a later opinion, the judge found that the waivers exceeded the authority of Noem and Mullin.

The Justice Department in its request urged the Supreme Court to pause or overturn Cardone’s injunction.

The Supreme Court has not yet responded to this appeal.

“Even assuming that the secretary’s waiver authority implicates a question of ‘vast economic and political significance,’ Congress did clearly authorize the secretary both to build border barriers and to waive legal requirements in order to facilitate their expeditious construction,” the Justice Department wrote.

In August, the administration paused construction in Big Bend after the project drew bipartisan criticism over its potential impact on the park’s landscape and wildlife.

Neil Bush says that he will vote for Democrat James Talarico due to reservations about Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

Neil Bush, brother of former Republican President George W Bush, has said that he voted for the Democratic candidate James Talarico in a crucial race for the United States Senate.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Bush said he voted for Talarico due to concerns about the Republican candidate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Talarico and Paxton are in a tight race for Texas’s open Senate seat. Democrats are hoping to seize control of the 100-member Senate in the November 3 midterm elections, when 35 seats will be on the ballot.

Bush’s endorsement of Talarico is the latest sign of division among Texas Republicans.

Bush comes from a prominent Republican family: not only was his brother a president, but his father, the late George HW Bush, was too.

“My concerns about his judgment and conduct are hardly mine alone,” Bush wrote. “He was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House, although subsequently acquitted by the Texas Senate.”

To explain his decision, Bush pointed to Paxton’s divisive track record, including efforts to support President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election.

“I have been deeply troubled by Paxton’s conduct as Texas Attorney General, particularly his decision to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in other states in an effort to help Donald Trump remain in power,” Bush said.

“I believe that effort was an affront to our democratic institutions and the peaceful transfer of power.”

His brother, the former president, has largely receded from political life and has declined to endorse candidates in recent elections. Before serving in the White House from 2001 to 2009, George W Bush was governor of Texas.

But George W Bush’s daughter Barbara Bush has also shown her support for Talarico by donating to a political action committee backing his campaign.

Texas has long been considered a Republican stronghold, and Democrats have not won a Senate race in the state since 1988.

But polls show Talarico locked in a close race with Paxton, who defeated incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican Party’s primary run-off on May 26.

Paxton had secured an endorsement from Trump on May 19, days before the run-off.

In a statement, Trump criticised Cornyn as “not supportive of [him] when times were tough”, while praising Paxton as a “MAGA Warrior”.

Some Republicans have expressed frustration over Trump’s intervention on Paxton’s behalf, given the vulnerabilities posed by his state impeachment and other scandals.

A Marist poll released on October 14 found Talarico winning 47 percent of the vote compared to 45 percent for Paxton.

Far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella says he will wage a ‘counterrevolution’ against cultural institutions.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has announced he is spearheading a cultural “counterrevolution” that includes removing dozens of exhibits from the National Museum, drawing protests and comparisons to United States President Donald Trump.

De la Espriella, a conservative Trump ally, said last week that he wants to prevent cultural institutions from being taken over by what he calls “atheist social communism”.

Since then, exhibits have been taken down that once addressed the history of social movements, including feminist and LGBTQ+ activism, and Colombia’s political violence.

The changes have sparked protests by civil rights groups, artists and students who have accused the government of censorship and warn that important parts of the country’s history could be erased.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered on Wednesday outside the National Museum in downtown Bogota as riot police guarded its entrance.

“I find it outrageous that they want to erase part of our history,” said Azul Riascos, a history student.

He said the government was promoting a vision of Colombia as exclusively white, Catholic and Spanish-speaking. That image, he explained, excluded Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities.

Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy organisation, said the Colombian government’s approach reflects a broader trend among Trump allies who are copying US political narratives and strategies.

Trump has been fiercely critical of museums in Washington, particularly those tied to the Smithsonian Institution.

The White House released a report in July branding leaders of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as radical activists and has ordered signs to be installed outside the museum telling visitors that some of the exhibits are inaccurate.

Nearly three months after that order, such signs haven’t been installed. The museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, told Congress that the White House report “does not fairly or accurately characterise the full body of work at the museum”.

Sanchez-Garzoli said Trump’s cooperation with allied Latin American governments on security and counternarcotics efforts also has an ideological dimension.

“These are imported narratives about terrorism and about being ‘woke,’” anthropologist Arturo Sanabria said during Wednesday’s protest, describing the Colombian government’s approach as a form of neocolonial intervention.

Colombia’s Culture Minister Paola Holguin said the government was reviewing and redesigning exhibitions and curatorial practices at other museums overseen by her ministry.

The Foreign Ministry also renamed a courtyard previously honouring an Indigenous leader, describing the change as part of the president’s campaign against “woke” ideology.

“The government is making serious efforts in a cultural battle that probably doesn’t exist,” political scientist Estefania Cardozo said outside the museum. “It is inventing one to erase identities that cannot be erased because they already exist.”