raises

Exactly a week after the new Skydance corporation — the product of the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger — was officially formed, Hollywood’s newest media giant is already raising streaming prices.

Discovery+, one of Skydance’s new streaming assets, will now cost $6.99 a month for its ad-supported tier, up $1. Its ad-free tier is also up $2, costing viewers $11.99 a month. The prices take effect immediately for new subscribers. Existing subscribers will get 30 days’ notice and see the higher rates on bills dated on or after Nov. 12.

Skydance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The platform first launched in 2021, at $4.99 a month for its ad-supported tier and $6.99 for ad-free. Nearly six years later, the price of the cheapest tier has risen roughly 40%, and the ad-free tier has jumped about 72%. This is the service’s second price hike since January 2025.

The standalone streaming service features tens of thousands of TV episodes from cable networks like HGTV, Food Network and TLC.

Before the merger, each company maintained its own streaming services, with HBO Max and Discovery+ under Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount+ under Paramount Skydance. The services are currently operating as separate entities. But David Ellison, Skydance’s chairman and chief executive, has said he plans to merge the two platforms into one streaming service. It’s unclear when that might happen, what it would cost, or where Discovery+ fits in. The company has not publicly laid out plans for the service.

Prices for HBO Max currently range between $10.99 and $22.99 monthly. Paramount+ costs between $8.99 and $13.99 a month.

Streaming is one of the biggest open questions for Skydance as it enters a new era. The company is carrying roughly $80 billion in debt and is targeting more than $6 billion in cost savings over three years. Skydance has said those savings will come primarily from technology, procurement, marketing and real estate, and Ellison has said the bulk won’t come from layoffs. Industry observers expect that debt load to add pressure for more price increases across Skydance’s streaming lineup.

This price increase also comes at a time when many streaming platforms are similarly hiking their prices — in part to cover the rising cost of programming and talent. Discovery+ joins platforms like Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu and Disney+ which have all raised their subscription fees in the last year. Prime Video raised the cost of its ad-free add-on in April.

Kosovo faces the risk of turmoil as protests against the convictions of former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders coincide with a midnight deadline to elect a president.

Demonstrators have called for changes to the law governing the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers, including measures affecting prison terms and where convicted people serve their sentences. The protests follow the September 16 convictions of former KLA leaders, including former President Hashim Thaci.

The protesters’ demands have become entangled with negotiations over the presidency, raising the prospect of new elections if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement. November 15 has emerged as a likely date for a new vote.

“New elections do not, in themselves, promise anything particularly positive,” political analyst Artan Muhaxhiri told Al Jazeera. “The chances of a radical political change are slim.”

He said that if a president is not elected by midnight, a new vote will take place in a tense political climate.

Anger over the verdicts will become a central campaign issue, he said, “overshadowing fundamental questions of socioeconomic development, and deepening the country’s downward spiral of systemic instability”.

How did Kosovo get here?

In 2015, the Specialist Chambers were established under Kosovo law following international investigations into alleged war crimes committed by KLA members during and after the 1998-99 conflict. Although formally part of Kosovo’s judicial system, the court sits in The Hague. It remains contentious in Kosovo because the KLA is widely revered for having fought against Serbian rule.

In September, protests erupted after the court sentenced Thaci to 25 years in prison.

Later, the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) – formerly led by Thaci – proposed amendments aimed at curbing the tribunal. The plan included capping prison sentences at 15 years, allowing convicts to serve their sentences in Kosovo, enabling appeals before Kosovo’s Supreme Court, granting presidential pardons and narrowing the court’s temporal jurisdiction.

On October 2, 2026, Prime Minister Albi Kurti’s government concluded that there were no legal obstacles to the PDK initiative and forwarded its assessment to the parliament, the Assembly of Kosovo. Days later, Kosovo’s parliament approved the initiative at first reading with 91 votes in favour, although it has not been finally adopted.

Meanwhile, Kosovo has been mired in a political impasse after the expiration of President Vjosa Osmani’s term in April, as the National Assembly has been unable to select a new president.

Now, internal power struggles within the PDK following the September sentencing have left the party fragmented, rendering the largest opposition party incapable of negotiating a cross-party presidential compromise, according to Nexhmedin Spahiu, a Pristina-based professor of political science.

On Monday, as lawmakers failed to secure a quorum to elect a president, police deployed tear gas and water cannon outside the Assembly, following confrontations involving fireworks and bottles. The use of force prompted criticism from observers.

Tensions rise

Pristina-based journalist Gezim Baxhaku believes special police units overstepped their legal authority.

“There was an overuse of force,” Baxhaku told Al Jazeera. He said that while protesters threw firecrackers, police “exceeded their legal powers and acted entirely contrary to the situation on the ground”.

Among the hundreds of protesters were KLA veterans.

Pristina had witnessed nearly three weeks of largely peaceful gatherings before Monday’s escalation.

“Citizens were routinely bringing food, water, and coffee to the officers on duty,” Baxhaku said. “There was absolutely no reason for this to happen. For the first time since the late 2000s, police acted in such an uncalled-for manner – reacting upon orders to escalate a situation.”

Spahiu, the political science professor, said the protests should not be understood as a sign that people in Kosovo broadly reject the verdicts.

“A large majority of citizens in Kosovo are satisfied with the decision of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague,” said Spahiu.

He told Al Jazeera that the court’s rejection of Serbian claims of systematic crimes against humanity by the KLA “validated the liberation struggle”.

“Furthermore, people are relieved that individuals are finally being held accountable for crimes committed against political rivals within the Albanian community itself,” he said.

The political deadlock and Kurti’s ‘transactional’ approach

The Assembly remains deadlocked over the election of a head of state, as the PDK and other opposition parties boycott the voting session, denying the legislature its constitutionally required 80-MP quorum.

Muhaxhiri blamed Kurti for the crisis, criticising his decision to link the presidential vote to the Hague court amendments.

“Tensions escalated further when Kurti presented a plan based on a transactional approach to two fundamentally distinct issues: linking the draft law amending the Law on the Specialist Chambers to the election of the new president,” said Muhaxhiri.

“In effect, this amounted to a quid pro quo. By doing so, he appeared to be placing the historical, national, and identity-related significance of the liberation war on the same political bargaining table as the immediate objective of electing a president who would serve his political interests.”

Reserve Bank of Australia lifts benchmark rate to 4.6 percent amid stubborn inflation.

Australia’s central bank has raised interest rates to a 15-year high, spelling higher mortgage payments for millions of Australian households.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on Tuesday lifted the benchmark rate by 0.25 percent to 4.6 percent, its highest since 2011.

The RBA said inflation remained elevated and that previously flagged “upside risks” had materialised, including higher energy prices due to the United States-Israel war on Iran and rising tech costs.

“There continue to be heightened uncertainties about the outlook for domestic economic activity and inflation,” the bank’s monetary board said in a statement.

“The Middle East conflict remains unresolved, and there are scenarios where inflation is higher and activity lower than forecast,” it said.

“Global oil supply disruptions are maintaining upward pressure on global and domestic energy prices and inflation. A period of prolonged uncertainty may also cause growth to be lower overseas and in Australia.”

Australia’s annual rate of inflation stood at 3.5 percent in July, well above the central bank’s 2–3 percent target.

Central banks typically raise their benchmark interest rate when policymakers believe prices are rising too fast.

Higher interest rates raise the cost of borrowing, including mortgages, cooling consumer demand and bringing down inflation.

The latest hike is set to heap further strain on Australian households already grappling with three previous increases this year.

In a research report earlier this month, Roy Morgan said nearly one-third of Australian mortgage holders, or nearly 1.8 million people, were at risk of “mortgage stress” – where households spend 25-45 percent of after-tax income on payments – as of July.

Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who is not responsible for setting interest rates, acknowledged that the hike would mean greater hardship for many Australians.

“We know a lot of Australians are under pressure and this will make things harder,” Chalmers said in a post on X.

“Inflation and interest rates are going up around the world but we know that doesn’t take the sting out of today’s decision.”

Chalmers said the government would take responsibility for “our part of the fight against inflation”.

“That means continuing to manage the budget responsibly, rolling out tax cuts and cost of living help, and addressing the longer term challenges in our economy in an uncertain global environment,” he said.

Repeated blasts at military sites expose the risks facing Syria as it rebuilds its army and consolidates weapons after years of war.

A series of explosions at weapons and ammunition sites across Syria this month have exposed the difficulties facing the country’s military in storing and moving munitions, as the armed forces rebuild after more than a decade of war.

The latest blasts injured at least four people in the early hours of Monday morning at an arms depot in al-Eis, south of Aleppo.

On Friday, a blast in Ayyash, west of Deir Az Zor, killed 11 soldiers. Another on September 9 killed 14 defence ministry personnel in Sarmada, Idlib. Also in Idlib, five people were killed when a vehicle carrying ammunition exploded in the town of Binnish on September 1 .

According to a tally by the Reuters news agency, at least 16 similar explosions have hit arms storage facilities since the fall of long-time President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 after an opposition offensive.

Some have been attributed to poor storage conditions. The Syrian Defence Ministry said it is investigating the causes behind the recurrent explosions to prevent future incidents.

Long-time neglect

Security analysts are divided on the root causes, with some pointing to a lack of professional infrastructure and others highlighting the potential for foreign interference – although there is as yet no hard evidence for that.

Omer Ozkizilcik, a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programmes, explained to Al Jazeera that the Syrian military is undergoing a period of huge change. It is reorganising from what it was under al-Assad, consolidating weapons from different sources and integrating various forces. All of that could be putting pressure on Syria’s storage infrastructure, which was already creaking after the long war and international isolation.

“The explosions could have happened due to neglect, Ozkizilcik said. “The Syrian army is receiving much more military aid than ever before. It gained control over the stockpiles of the former regime and the formerly US-backed [Syrian Democratic Forces]. The increase in quantity coupled with the need to protect weapons from potential Israeli airstrikes may have pushed the Syrian army to store weapons in inadequate places.”

Ozkizilcik emphasised that Syria’s military is still in a transitional phase. The former army was dissolved after the fall of the al-Assad regime and fighters from armed opposition groups were integrated into a new military structure. Damascus has also been working to integrate territory and forces previously controlled by the Kurdish-led SDF.

“The Syrian army has yet to become a professional army,” Ozkizilcik added. “These explosions are not the first that happen in Syria. Before the fall of al-Assad, similar things happened many times in Syria. [but] I don’t think these explosions will affect Syria’s military capabilities in any visible way. It’s merely a loss of some stockpiles that can be replenished.”

Weapons and ammunition, by their nature, need to be handled extremely carefully and stored properly. Storing large quantities of ageing ammunition for years in poor conditions, such as high temperatures or humidity, can accelerate their deterioration and lead to them becoming unstable.

“The current warehouse infrastructure suffers from severe ageing; most of it dates back decades and does not meet international safe storage standards,” said security expert Ismat al-Absi. “Storing ageing munitions in open or semi-closed environments without controlled cooling and humidity systems creates what we call a thermal runaway chain reaction.”

Possibility of sabotage

The repeated explosions have led to some fears of sabotage, particularly in light of repeated Israeli attacks against Syria since the fall of al-Assad, many of which have targeted the military, including the August strikes on the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib.

Ozkizilcik noted that there was “no public information about possible sabotage” being behind the weapons depot explosions, and no evidence of any direct Israeli links. But the repeated explosions, coupled with Israel’s attacks in Syria and past intelligence operations against groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, mean it cannot be totally ruled out.

“Considering that the Israeli media recently wrote about the growing military capabilities of Syria, suspicions grow,” he said.

Al-Absi told Al Jazeera that the wide geographic scope of the explosions nevertheless meant that deliberate interference should be investigated.

“The main loopholes that [could have allowed sabotage operations] are the absence of smart surveillance, relying on traditional human guarding instead of remote sensors and thermal movement detection; weak securing of transport lines and administrative fragmentation,” al-Absi said. “The weakness of security discipline during the restructuring phase of the military institution has made some sites vulnerable to penetration or internal manipulation.”