US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host his G20 counterparts, including Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, for talks on Friday that are expected to be fractious, with wars in Ukraine and Iran and surging energy prices fanning discord.

The foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, taking place just days before crucial US midterm elections, will set the stage for a December G20 leaders’ summit in Miami at President Donald Trump’s Doral resort.

Few breakthroughs are expected this week from the Group of 20 economies — which include China, India, Russia, Japan, Germany and France — as officials face divisions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine and fallout from conflict with Iran.

Russia has been shunned by most of the West after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Lavrov himself remains under international sanctions.

Rubio’s encounter with Lavrov — whose presence adds an additional layer of tension — will be closely watched as Washington pursues diplomacy on Ukraine while seeking Moscow’s cooperation on reining in fuel prices, a key campaign issue in the midterms.

“The G20 is no longer really a forum where foreign ministers can reach agreement on a statement,” a diplomatic source said.

The source added that the US G20 presidency intends for Miami’s summit to serve “more as a demonstration of American power — and of US commitments to growth, deregulation, trade and business — rather than as a summit with grand ambitions on substantive issues.”

Instead of a final declaration, the source expects a chair summary drafted by the United States to be published from this week’s meeting.

The Trump administration, which is set to hand the rotating G20 leadership to Britain, sees the platform as having strayed from its core mission.

Washington has pledged to return the grouping to its goal of driving economic growth, arguing that security and economic prosperity are “inextricably linked.”

“Conversations in Atlanta will provide an opportunity to discuss energy and supply chain challenges as well as identify ways to collectively address the impact of geopolitical tensions on economic security,” a US State Department official said.

They stressed the importance of energy access — necessary for tech like artificial intelligence — and flagged a “shared resolve to confront urgent crises and keep critical sea lanes open to commerce without threats or tolls.”

‘Test case’

Global energy prices have rocketed since US-Israel strikes on Iran from late February triggered Tehran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

“This is the last test case the G20 has, at least under the US G20 presidency, until Miami,” Alisha Chhangani of the Atlantic Council told AFP. Its outcomes will affect how the December summit shapes up.

She expects Washington will seek to argue that security shocks are also economic shocks.

It will likely push for agreement on what “freedom of navigation” means within and beyond Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil and gas transit, she said.

But this could face objections from China, which dissented against wording on free navigation in Hormuz and worldwide at an earlier gathering of finance ministers.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi will not be in Atlanta, and is instead sending his deputy, the US State Department said.

Meanwhile, the possibility of further escalation in the Middle East is mounting, with Israel threatening to strike Iran and Trump signalling he could attack after Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Lavrov attendance

In Atlanta, Rubio is also due to cross paths with Lavrov, who has already reached Atlanta according to Russian state media.

It comes ahead of fresh negotiations between Moscow, Kyiv and Washington in November.

The appearance of Lavrov, who plans to argue against international sanctions at the gathering, will likely frustrate European ministers, Chhangani said.

It is not surprising, however, as Washington has welcomed Russian officials to this year’s G20 events — while excluding member South Africa — and Trump has invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to Miami in December.

Trump has eased some sanctions on Moscow recently while touting a deal for Russia to sell diesel as prices soared, squeezing Americans.

The diplomatic source stressed that Russia’s G20 presence “in no way legitimizes its actions.”

All eyes will also be on US engagement with Brazil, whose foreign minister will be in attendance, after Washington granted entry to Flavio Bolsonaro following his defeat in Sunday’s presidential election.

US President Donald Trump is scrapping two of his last midterm election rallies, his Republican Party said Thursday, as the 80-year-old leader lashed out at a reporter who asked if he was “sick of travelling”.

“You’re sick to ask that question. You are sick,” Trump told the reporter after returning to Washington from a campaign trip to South Carolina.

“I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape, you look like hell.”

Trump told reporters he did not “feel like I have to go to Kansas,” a Midwestern state where Senator Roger Marshall, a fellow Republican, is in an unexpectedly competitive race with Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton.

“He is doing very well,” Trump said of Marshall.

“We are going to have a strong Tuesday night.”

Later on Thursday, the Republican National Committee said in a statement that it would also cancel a planned rally in Iowa, home to several competitive congressional races.

Instead of the events in Kansas and Iowa, Trump will hold a “large number” of virtual “telerallies” in a series of states, the Republican National Committee said.

The canceled in-person rallies were set for Salina, Kansas, on Saturday, and Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.

Republicans are fighting to keep control of Congress in the November 3 midterms. Trump has urged the party to “pretend I’m on the ballot” to maximise turnout despite his poor approval ratings.

“With Republicans in a strong position in Kansas and Iowa, previously planned in-person rallies in those states will no longer take place as scheduled,” the RNC statement said.

The president is still expected to travel to rallies in several states before Tuesday’s election. Trump’s final election rally is now set to be in Florida on Friday.

Despite being the oldest elected president in US history, Trump has kept up a gruelling schedule of near-daily rallies throughout October to help Republicans in the midterms.

Since October 1, Trump has hosted 25 rallies in 19 states, often speaking for his party in rural areas of Republican-friendly states. Tuesday’s midterm elections will determine whether Republicans retain narrow control of the US Senate and House of Representatives.

MAGA Inc, a campaign funding group aligned with Trump, said on Thursday it would host a series of “tele-rallies” with the president in at least 19 states, including Kansas and Iowa, before Election Day.

Trump has noted that his recent series of more than hour-long campaign speeches has been challenging. Sounding hoarse in Mississippi on Monday, Trump said, “God didn’t make your vocal cords to do a rally every day.”

On Thursday, after campaigning for Senator Darline Graham in South Carolina, Trump ridiculed a Reuters reporter who asked how he felt after weeks of rallies and whether he was sick of travelling.

“You’ve been following me for two weeks,” Trump said before boarding his motorcade back to the White House.

“I feel perfect.”

Cryptocurrency platform Binance said Friday it was working to resolve a “complex attack” that hit around $6.3 billion in funds, with about half that amount frozen to prevent a massive theft.

The company — the world’s largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes — said investigations had “uncovered additional points of breach”, contrary to initial findings that suggested the hack involved a single compromised laptop.

“This was a complex attack, and we are doing all we can in coordination with law enforcement to resolve it,” Binance wrote on X.

The firm earlier posted a series of sometimes contradictory messages, insisting that “user funds are completely safe” but also saying it would “cover all losses.”

The company confirmed on its X account for Latin America that “the total estimated impact is around $6.3 billion.”

That is four times the amount impacted in the biggest-ever cyberattack of its kind to date: $1.5 billion taken in February last year from the Bybit platform.

Binance warned the figure “may continue to increase as our teams work closely with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets.”

It said around $3 billion in affected assets had been frozen.

The 2023 Bybit heist was attributed at the time to a group of hackers affiliated with North Korea called TraderTraitor.

Blockchain investigation firm TRM Labs said Thursday it had “high confidence” that the Binance hack was also orchestrated by TraderTraitor, citing “robust on and off-chain intelligence.”

“Several features of this attack match earlier North Korea-linked heists,” TRM said.

TraderTraitor is believed to be part of Lazarus Group – which gained notoriety in 2014 when it was accused of hacking into Sony Pictures as revenge for “The Interview,” a film that mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Fund freeze

At about 0900 GMT Friday, Binance said it was on track to resume withdrawals in 45 hours, after announcing earlier that all deposits and withdrawals had been “temporarily suspended”.

“Deposits remain unaffected,” it said.

The company had said on X that initial investigation suggested the hack involved a compromised laptop belonging to a “DevOps engineer,” allowing the unauthorised party to access a “service container” and execute unauthorised withdrawal transactions.

“We have found no evidence of any private key leaks from wallets,” it said, promising to share a detailed technical analysis once investigations were complete.

But it said later that “subsequent investigation has uncovered additional points of breach.”

Paolo Ardoino, the boss of Tether — a company that issues a cryptocurrency known as USDT — said his firm froze about $1.6 billion “related to a potential Binance exchange hack.”

Jeremy Allaire, who runs cryptocurrency platform Circle, said his company had frozen more than $800 million in USDC.

USDT and USDC are both “stablecoins” or digital currencies whose value is linked to a traditional currency, the US dollar.

The US Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Crypto prices tumble

For several hours before Binance confirmed the attack, industry observers said hackers had managed to reach the platform.

The prices of most major cryptocurrencies fell on news of the cyberattack, except for the stablecoins, which by definition can only fluctuate within tight margins.

Bitcoin and Ethereum plunged nearly 5 per cent and nearly 6pc respectively on the news. BNB, native to Binance, tumbled nearly 10pc.

The attack on Binance comes as many observers express worries that the ever-expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) models could compromise cryptography and IT security protocols.

Binance has secure asset fund

Binance runs a secure asset fund for users, which is a reserve held entirely in bitcoin that is intended to protect user assets in cases of security breaches, according to its website.

“It’s becoming very hard to counter hacks as AI can find vulnerabilities faster than you can fix them,” said Bernardo Brites, CEO of Trace Finance, a payments and stablecoin infrastructure company.

“My view is that users will move away from smaller and medium-sized exchanges, (it is) becoming too risky to park your money somewhere that couldn’t cover a hack of meaningful size.”

World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to US President Donald Trump and his family, said on Thursday it had worked with cryptocurrency custodian BitGo to freeze funds stolen in what it described as a Binance hack.

Binance’s Yi said $27 million in stablecoins and about $2 million worth of World Liberty tokens had been frozen.

Crypto firm Ripple also froze roughly $200 million in funds, Yi said. Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoins at Ripple, said the company was closely monitoring reports of a potential exploit involving Binance and was freezing affected funds and coordinating with relevant parties.

Incident adds to string of crypto thefts

The incident adds to a string of crypto thefts. Last year, attackers stole $2.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 attacks, according to researchers at TRM Labs.

In September, cryptocurrency exchange Bitget said roughly $350 million in crypto had been stolen from its platform, underscoring the industry’s vulnerability to hackers.

Authorities have warned that organised crime groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies to move funds across borders outside the traditional financial system.

Binance.US, a separate cryptocurrency exchange, said it was not affected by the security incident.

Coinbase said it was unaffected and was monitoring the situation.

In an unrelated incident earlier on Thursday, prediction market operator Polymarket temporarily halted trading after a security incident involving a third-party provider. It later resumed trading and said it would fully reimburse affected traders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp finished ahead of the opposition but remained well short of a majority, final results from general election showed on Friday, setting the stage for tough coalition talks or potentially another vote.

Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing and far-right parties won 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, with his Likud party remaining the largest faction with 27 seats.

The opposition bloc, led by centrist Gadi Eisenkot, secured 48 seats.

The results from the Central Elections Committee also cemented the emergence as potential kingmakers of the Arab party groupings Raam and the Joint List, with the two winning a combined 19 seats.

The fragmented outcome sets the stage for difficult negotiations to form a government that could last weeks, with no single bloc able to reach the 61-seat threshold needed and the prospect of another election remaining if talks fail.

The final tally came after Netanyahu’s camp spent Thursday amplifying unproven allegations that Arab-Israeli groups received foreign funding to influence the vote, accusations rejected by both Arab-majority lists and Qatar.

Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service said it was investigating suspected irregularities, but stressed the probe was not intended to “cast aspersions or place blame on an entire sector that went out to vote in a democratic and lawful manner”.

The electoral commission also sought to calm tensions, with its acting director general Dean Livne saying any suggestion of widespread issues was “entirely groundless”.

Political earthquake

The controversy centred on allegations that Raam received money from Qatar, the energy-rich Gulf powerbroker that has channels to Hamas, to finance vote-buying operations.

“The Raamgate scandal is a political earthquake. Israel’s elections have been stolen!” Netanyahu’s Likud party alleged on Thursday.

Raam leader Mansour Abbas denied any wrongdoing and welcomed an investigation, while the Joint List accused Netanyahu and his allies of conducting a “campaign of incitement” out of fear of Arab voters’ growing political influence.

Government officials have so far provided no evidence to back the allegations.

Opposition figures accused Netanyahu of attempting to undermine confidence in the results after failing to secure a governing majority.

“He is trying to challenge the election results,” left-wing candidate Yair Golan said.

Eisenkot said he was briefed by the Shin Bet and the election committee, adding it was “too early to understand what happened, and whether anything happened at all”.

But he continued: “It’s already clear that Likud and Netanyahu have embarked on a coordinated, organised campaign seeking to delegitimise the results of the election.”

Netanyahu himself has long been under the cloud of allegations related to Qatar after the arrests last year of two of his aides for allegedly receiving payments from the Gulf state.

Qatar called the latest accusations “ridiculous and dangerous”.

Kingmakers under pressure

Yousef Jabareen, head of the Joint List, told AFP that he is willing to cooperate with the opposition to bring down Netanyahu but without joining it in a government.

Netanyahu had tried during the voting to raise allegations of fraud, saying that Arab parties were caught with envelopes of cash, and Likud peddled the accusations throughout Thursday.

Police said they arrested three suspects but the election commission called it an isolated local case.

The United States has fired a top military planner, US media reported, with some outlets saying the dismissal was due to the officer allegedly leaking classified information.

Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia was removed from his role as head of strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Staff, US media reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.

CBS and Fox both reported that Sylvia’s dismissal was related to leaks, with the former citing a Pentagon official as saying the general failed three polygraphs about sharing classified information with the media.

A spokesperson for the Joint Staff, a top Pentagon body that handles planning and other issues, initially issued a statement that confirmed Sylvia’s departure and wished him well but later withdrew it, saying: “Upon further review, we determined that the statement did not appropriately reflect the full circumstances.”

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell then said in a post on X that the Defense Department “has zero tolerance for the intentional, unauthorised disclosure of classified information” and took “necessary personnel action to protect sensitive information.”

Parnell did not identify Sylvia by name and said “no further comment will be made regarding the individual or the circumstances of this action”.

“This matter, along with others, have been referred to the Justice Department for potential further legal action,” he added.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since returning to office early last year, Trump has overseen a purge of top military personnel, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, general Charles “CQ” Brown, whom he fired without explanation in February 2025.

Renewed Iran strikes?

Other senior officers pushed out include the heads of the US Army, Navy and Coast Guard, the general who headed the National Security Agency, the vice chief of staff of the US Air Force, a Navy admiral assigned to Nato, and three top military lawyers.

Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has insisted the president is simply choosing the leaders he wants, but Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about the potential politicisation of the traditionally neutral US military.

Hegseth said last month that the US had slashed the number of its generals and admirals by 20 per cent, in a move he said was aimed at “accountability”. He suggested the cuts targeted officers who failed to get on board with his efforts to ensure the military is focused on war-fighting rather than the “woke” policies of previous administrations, describing the reductions as an “accomplishment”.

The reported sacking of Sylvia comes as Trump is believed to be weighing fresh strikes against Iran after US midterm elections next Tuesday.

“We may do another little Epic Fury,” Trump said last week, referring to US-Israeli attacks on Tehran in February that triggered the war. He did not give any indication on timing.

Neither the US nor Iran has engaged in major attacks on land-based targets since early September, settling instead into a pattern of strikes on commercial ships.

No reason was given for Sylvia’s reported departure. His previous roles included leading the 101st Airborne Division — the US army’s air assault division — and heading a unit in Iraq.

A landslide triggered by heavy rainfall caused a rock spire to collapse in Turkiye’s Unesco World Heritage-listed Cappadocia region on Thursday, bringing the death toll to three, officials said.

Turkiye’s Cappadocia region, a magnet for tourists from around the world, is home to cone-shaped rock formations known as “fairy chimneys”, created by ancient volcanic activity.

“According to initial findings, two people were killed and five others injured in the incident,” Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said on X.

Rescue teams pulled another body from the rubble, bringing the death toll to three, Nevsehir Governor Huseyin Kok said.

The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known.

“Search and rescue teams are continuing intensive, coordinated operations to locate any other victims who may be trapped under the debris,” the minister said.

Television footage showed heavy machinery digging through the rubble as rescue teams gathered at the site in an effort to recover people. Excavators and rescue workers worked into the night at the site, using powerful floodlights as the search operation continued.

The incident occurred at 3:15pm local time (5:15pm PKT) when a landslide triggered a rockfall in the town of Goreme near the open-air museum, local governor Kok said.

The area was closed to the public following the collapse, according to reports.

Eyewitnesses described hearing a loud noise as the rock spire near a car park collapsed, sending up a huge cloud of dust.

Restoration

Turkiye’s culture and tourism ministry has launched restoration work in the region to help preserve the fragile rock formations from climate-related damage, natural erosion and human activity.

In 2024, another rockfall was reported in Cappadocia, although no deaths or injuries were recorded.

A Unesco heritage site since 1985, Goreme national park and the rock sites of Cappadocia are “a landscape of harmony combining human interaction and settlement with dramatic natural landforms,” according to the UN agency.

Some of the cones and pillars have experienced earthquake damage, but this is seen as a naturally occurring phenomenon.

“Overuse by tourists and some vandalism have been reported and some incompatible structures have been introduced,” it said on its website.

The Cappadocia region is also home to rock-carved underground cities and early Christian churches.

In 2025, some 4.5 million domestic and foreign tourists visited the region, according to tourism ministry figures.

Hot-air ballooning in Cappadocia is a thriving industry that sees dozens of balloons take to the skies on clear mornings. But concerns have been raised about safety following a series of accidents.

The European Union (EU) said on Thursday it does not want any more national-level bans on social media before a pan-European law is approved, as it blocked draft rules put forward by Austria.

Under EU law, member states must notify the European Commission to ensure their bills do not break the bloc’s rules. Austria wanted to ban children under 14 from social media, but the EU said no.

“The commission has decided to postpone for 12 months any draft national laws overlapping with the future harmonised rules,” EU spokesman Thomas Regnier said.

The European Commission last month proposed to ban children under 13 from social media, and permit only limited, supervised access until the age of 15.

The EU believes allowing countries to move ahead with national laws would divide the bloc, creating varying age-limits among member states.

Brussels also fears EU countries will not rush to pass the bloc-wide law if they have their own country-level rules in place.

“We need to now focus on the negotiations of the EU Kids Act and to ensure an effective enforcement of our rules,” Regnier said. The commission hopes EU countries and the European Parliament will reach a deal on the new rules in the next few months.

There will, however, be exceptions to the EU’s decision.

Although the commission demanded France’s proposed law be reworked, it is not expected to be blocked because Paris notified Brussels of the law before bloc-wide legislation was put forward.

And Greece has been able to pass its own rules, drafted long before September. Regnier would not be drawn on whether France would be prevented from enacting its national legislation.

The EU has yet to deliver verdicts on bans by other EU states, including Italy and Slovakia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc on Thursday piled pressure on Israeli Arab leaders over unproven accusations of foreign funding, in a push to neuter parties that could hold the key to forming a government after an inconclusive election.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog called for an investigation into allegations of fraud but cautioned against stigmatising the entire Arab Israeli community, who voted at unprecedented rates.

Israel was nearing the completion of ballot-counting from Tuesday’s election, in which neither Netanyahu nor the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot looked able to secure a majority in the parliament known as the Knesset.

The Netanyahu camp’s accusations, which a key Arab party has rejected, could bring uncertainty to the electoral process at a time when the threat of a return to war with Iran looms over the region.

Israel’s election saw soaring participation by Israeli Arabs, descendants of Palestinians who stayed after the country’s creation in 1948, as outrage boiled at calls by officials such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to treat their community much as Israel has dealt with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Following Netanyahu’s accusations of impropriety, Ben Gvir went so far as to encourage Israel to “immediately” order the arrests of Arab party leaders.

Raam party leader Mansour Abbas said he welcomed an investigation into claims of wrongdoing, adding that his party had “no connection” with the accusations.

The Arab parties together have enough votes to take the opposition bloc over the finish line, but Eisenkot has baulked after relentless attacks by Netanyahu, who warned his right-wing Jewish base that voting for the opposition would put Arabs in power.

‘Political earthquake’

Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, a conservative who heads the Central Election Commission, requested an investigation by the Shin Bet security service into allegations that Raam received money from Qatar.

“The Raamgate scandal is a political earthquake. Israel’s elections have been stolen!” Netanyahu’s Likud party said.

Government officials did not offer evidence to back the allegations, and left-wing candidate Yair Golan accused Netanyahu of attempting to stir controversy after failing to get a majority.

“Now he is trying to challenge the election results through an ugly delegitimisation campaign against the will of the people, and against the Arab public in particular.”

Netanyahu himself has long been under the cloud of allegations related to Qatar after the arrests last year of two of his aides for allegedly receiving payments from the Gulf state.

Meanwhile, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman on Thursday rejected accusations “made by certain Israeli politicians and their contacts in the media” that his country had interfered in the Israeli elections.

“We categorically deny allegations that Qatar has interfered in Israeli elections or funded any activities intended to influence their outcome,” said Majed Al Ansari.

“They accuse Qatar of buying off Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli political left and now, in this latest campaign, the Arab vote […] These accusations are ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure.”

Kingmakers under pressure

With nearly 93 per cent of the vote counted, Netanyahu’s bloc was at 53 seats and the opposition forces led by Eisenkot on 48 — both well under the 61 needed to form a government.

The two main Arab formations were on track for an unprecedented 19 seats between them.

Some observers quickly said that the allegations would help Netanyahu by making the Arab lawmakers even more toxic to Eisenkot.

Yousef Jabareen, the head of the leftist Arab-majority Joint List, told AFP on Wednesday that he was willing to cooperate with the opposition to bring down Netanyahu but without joining it in a government.

In response to the new allegations, Eisenkot said he was receiving updates and promised “utmost vigilance” against election interference.

“On the other hand, we cannot allow political actors to exploit the situation and influence the timing of the inauguration of the 26th Knesset,” he said.

One of Eisenkot’s right-leaning allies, Avigdor Lieberman, called the allegations “dramatic and unprecedented” and urged a swift investigation.

An Israeli police statement said that they would investigate every complaint about election integrity.

The great survivor

Netanyahu, who has led Israel on and off for more than 19 years, is known as a wily political operator.

He tried on Tuesday to raise allegations of fraud, saying that Arab parties were caught with envelopes of cash, and his Likud party peddled the accusations throughout Thursday.

Police said they arrested three suspects but the election commission called it an isolated local case.

Another factor that could play into the formation of a government is an attack on Iran.

Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran, with his ally US President Donald Trump signalling he was ready to attack after next Tuesday’s US midterm elections, in which his Republican Party is forecast to lose ground.

Eisenkot has warned the military that Netanyahu has no mandate and that officers must put Israel’s security over the premier’s “political needs”.

An attack could raise pressure on Eisenkot to join an emergency unity government, an option he has publicly ruled out, or keep the clock running until Israel can call new elections.

President Herzog will decide after the publication of the official results which person to task with a first chance of forming a government.

Palestinian president says hopes for peace talks with new govt

Meanwhile, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday that he hoped the election of a new Israeli government would allow for the resumption of peace talks.

“For many years now, we have been extending a hand to the Israeli side in order to achieve peace with them, so that Israel and Palestine may live in security, stability and peace,” Abbas said during a meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides in Nicosia.

“We hope that, immediately after a new Israeli government is formed, we will be able to engage in dialogue together,” he added.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been stalled for years, despite the recognition of the State of Palestine by a growing number of countries.

Under Netanyahu’s watch, settlement construction and violence against Palestinians has soared in the occupied West Bank, where Abbas’ Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule.

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan more than quadrupled in 2026 despite a Taliban government ban, the United Nations said on Thursday, urging that impoverished farmers needed alternatives to the lucrative crop.

Cultivated areas reached 43,000 hectares (around 106,200 acres), up from 10,000 hectares in 2025, while estimated opium production jumped fivefold from 300 tonnes to 1,500 tonnes, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report.

Long the world’s leading producer of poppies, Afghanistan was overtaken by Myanmar after a 2022 Taliban government ban crushed the trade in the country.

But rampant poverty has driven some farmers to return to the trade.

“Without opium, we cannot even afford basic food,” Mohammad, a 22-year-old farmer in Afghanistan’s northeast, told AFP.

Afghanistan’s 2022 crackdown drove cultivated areas down from more than 200,000 hectares to 10,000 hectares in 2025. Myanmar cultivated 53,000 hectares in 2025, with no 2026 figures available.

The Taliban authorities claim to have destroyed more than 22,000 hectares. But UNODC said many poppy plots were concealed among cereal crops or behind walls, making them difficult to detect.

Mohammad lives with his parents in Badakhshan, which has become Afghanistan’s main opium poppy-growing province.

“The Taliban threaten us and do not allow us to grow opium. We cultivate it with a great deal of fear,” he said, asking only to be identified by his first name.

“I want to buy a car, build a house and get married. Without opium, I cannot achieve these things,” he further explained.

‘The only way’

In May, two people were killed in clashes that erupted as Afghan security forces moved to destroy opium poppy fields in Badakhshan. Another 35-year-old farmer named Mohammad, who ploughs his poppy field with an ox, said: “If we grow wheat, it is not enough to sustain our lives. We are forced to grow poppies to earn a good income.”

Mohammad said that he is threatened by the authorities and sometimes his crops are destroyed, but he will continue. “It is the only way to cover living expenses,” he said. One hectare of wheat generated just over $770 in 2023, compared with $10,000 for a hectare of poppy, according to UNODC.

“Opium prices slightly decreased from $570 per kilogramme in 2025 to $500 per kilogramme in 2026, remaining well above pre-ban levels of less than $100 per kilogramme,” UNODC said in a press release.

“The fourfold increase in opium poppy cultivation shows the difficulty in sustaining decreases in illicit opium cultivation when poor farmers have no alternatives to feed their families,” said UNODC Executive Director Monica Juma.

The Taliban government acknowledged that the ban was not a “sustainable and long-term solution” without alternative livelihoods and economic support for farmers.

The challenge comes as Afghanistan faces the return of 6.6m Afghans since 2023, climate disasters, dwindling aid and banking isolation since the Taliban movement returned to power in 2021. With support from Japan and the European Union, UNODC has funded programmes to help farmers find alternatives.

‘International problem’

Through the NGO Afghan Aid, Zikrullah, 35, who supports an extended family of 12 in Badakhshan, received improved wheat seeds and fertiliser.

“We’re satisfied, it takes less effort than opium and we’re more at ease,” he told AFP, also asking to be identified only by his first name. A third farmer named Mohammad, 30, who has converted 80 per cent of his land to wheat, told AFP that the lack of water in recent years has affected crops other than poppy.

To curb opium production sustainably, alternative crops alone are insufficient, UNODC Country Representative for Afghanistan Polleak Ok Serei told AFP in an interview in Kabul.

“Sustainable alternative livelihood requires more than thinking in terms of alternative crops,” he said. Farmers “need access to markets, including international markets through trades. They need infrastructure, roads, irrigation, storage”.

UNODC estimated in 2025 that approach would require approximately $500m, but “only 10pc” had been funded by donors and the Taliban authorities, according to Ok Serei.

The strategy also takes time, he said.

“Thailand spent 15 years investing in alternative livelihood before starting eradicating,” Ok Serei said.

The problem extends far beyond Afghanistan, he said. “It truly is an international problem,” Ok Serei added, explaining that Afghan drugs were consumed across other continents. Afghan opium is the main source of heroin in the European Union, where approximately 850,000 people used opioids in 2024, according to the European Union Drugs Agency.

Addressing the problem requires international cooperation, the UN representative said. Ok Serei called for a “drug demand reduction strategy, not only in Afghanistan but also outside of Afghanistan”.

With a 30-year Ganges water-sharing treaty with India expiring in December, Bangladesh fears failure to strike a new deal could deepen water shortages, threatening tens of millions of livelihoods.

In Bangladesh’s parched Barind region, 72-year-old Bikash Soren remembers when the Ganges river flowing in from neighbouring India carried large boats past his village year-round.

“For almost three months a year, you hardly see the river flowing,” the Protestant priest said.

Two farmers died by suicide last season, he added, after dwindling water levels left their rice and wheat crops in tatters.

Shrinking flows in the Ganges have also slashed fish catches in the river, known in Bangladesh as the Padma.

“Where will we find fish now?” said Abu Bakar Siddique, 55, who has switched to fish farming in ponds.

“I used to catch many kinds.” The 2,525-kilometre Ganges flows through the world’s most populous river basin, home to 655 million people including more than 50 million in Bangladesh, according to the World Bank.

The 1996 treaty, which expires on December 12, governs dry-season water sharing at India’s Farakka Barrage, 20 kilometres upstream of Bangladesh.

But Bangladesh needs a new deal based on “mutual benefit and respect”, Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, a prime ministerial adviser who heads a technical committee on water-sharing, told AFP.

Water arguments over 54 cross-border rivers between India and Bangladesh stretch back decades, and the Ganges is among the most important.

Malik Fida A. Khan, a former Bangladeshi member of the Joint Rivers Commission (JRC), the body overseeing water-sharing, said India had built “additional dams” upstream.

“This time, the agreement must include provisions on climate change — and take the entire river basin into account,” he said.

Soured relations

Bangladesh said India had not responded to its request to negotiate a treaty renewal.

New Delhi’s foreign ministry said that “discussions regarding river-related matters” are a matter for the JRC commission, which held its last technical talks back in May.

The last officially confirmed ministerial-level JRC meeting was in 2022 — after a 12-year gap.

And a proposed water-sharing deal for the cross-border Teesta river has been stalled since 2011.

Relations between New Delhi and Dhaka have soured since Bangladesh’s ex-leader Sheikh Hasina fled to old ally India, where she remains, following a 2024 uprising.

Hasina, sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, has vowed to return to Bangladesh from India in December, the month the treaty she signed expires.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Tarique Rahman may also reportedly visit India before the treaty expires, but no visit has been confirmed.

Arguments date back to 1975, when India opened the 2.2-kilometre long Farakka Barrage. Bangladesh accused India of diverting most of the water.

The United Nations intervened in the dispute and a deal was agreed in 1977.

But water-sharing arrangements lapsed a decade later, bringing severe consequences, said Sheikh Rokon of Dhaka-based environmental group Riverine People.

“The Ganges suffered during the years without a treaty, and at least three rivers almost dried up,” Rokon said.

One was the Gorai, which carries freshwater into the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and a World Heritage site, helping limit saltwater intrusion as sea levels rise.

Bangladesh’s Ganges-Kobadak Irrigation Project, designed to water 955 square kilometres of farmland, the country’s largest, “became inoperative because of water scarcity”, Rokon said.

In May, Dhaka approved the Padma Barrage, a $2.8-billion project intended to ease shortages and include a 113-megawatt hydropower plant.

‘Disastrous’

The 1996 treaty has no automatic extension clause.

“If we fail to reach a deal, I fear the situation will be worse than what we experienced during the years without a treaty,” Rokon added.

“Demand for freshwater on both sides has increased significantly.” Even with the treaty in place, the Ganges-Kobadak project has shrunk to 550 square kilometres, according to Bangladeshi state news agency BSS.

“If the river does not carry enough water, the consequences could be disastrous,” said Chowdhury Sarwar Jahan, a geology professor at Bangladesh’s University of Rajshahi.

Bangladesh’s agriculture-dependent economy is already reeling from the impact of climate change, which compounds shifting river flows, alternating dry-season shortages and intense monsoon floods washing away farmland and villages.

In Chapainawabganj district, the river has widened by three kilometres in recent years — nearly doubling its size — according to Bangladesh’s Water Development Board.

Rehana Khatun, 50, described the “howling sound” as floods destroyed her home in Fielder Bazar village.

“The river turned wild and started swallowing everything along the bank,” said Khatun, who now lives in a bamboo shelter.

“And the trauma stays with children long after the waters recede.”

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is known for his unassuming and mild manner, but all eyes will soon be on him as he decides who to task with forming the next coalition government.

The decision is a weighty one given that partial results from Tuesday’s elections show neither the camp of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor that of his rival Gadi Eisenkot securing a majority in parliament.

After the official announcement of the results, Herzog will consult with party representatives and name a candidate who has the best chance of forming a government — not necessarily the one whose party holds the most seats.

Under the law, the president, whose position is otherwise largely ceremonial, is afforded broad discretion, with no guidelines on how to make the choice.

As votes were being tallied on Wednesday, Herzog said he would receive the official results the following week, after which consultations would begin.

“One thing must be clear, and I said this before the elections too: we must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” he said.

“So I expect everyone who comes here to come with an open mind.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s pivotal vote, Herzog acknowledged there would be tremendous pressure, but vowed not to let outside influence, notably from US President Donald Trump, sway his decision.

“I don’t think the president of the United States or anybody else can intervene in my discretion,” he told US outlet MS Now.

“It’s Israel’s democracy and Israel’s constitution, and that’s what counts for me.”

Herzog told MS Now he would do everything he could to avoid a fresh election — a possibility if neither camp can cobble together a coalition — including backing a unity government between Netanyahu and Eisenkot.

‘Worthy and wonderful man’

Modest, diplomatic and with a strong political pedigree, 66-year-old Herzog was sworn in as Israel’s president in 2021 after being elected by lawmakers in a landslide.

Yair Lapid, now a member of Eisenkot’s broad opposition bloc, praised Herzog at the time as “a worthy and wonderful man who is always focused on the good of the country and the Jewish people”.

As president, Herzog has faced pressure from Trump to grant Netanyahu a pardon in his long-running corruption trials, which could land him in prison if he loses power.

In April, Herzog invited Netanyahu’s lawyers and prosecutors to his residence for talks on the issue.

Before he served as head of state, Herzog was elected to Israel’s parliament in 2003 and held portfolios including housing, tourism and welfare.

In 2015, as leader of Israel’s centre-left Labour party, Herzog vied to oust Netanyahu as prime minister, presenting himself as a subdued, even-keeled alternative to the bombastic “Bibi”.

Netanyahu, now 77, is Israel’s longest-serving premier, having governed on-and-off for nearly two decades.

Tuesday’s election was seen as a referendum on the veteran leader’s tenure after he pushed the country sharply to the right and unleashed a wave of military campaigns in response to Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023 attack.

‘Bring a real change’

In an interview with AFP in March 2026, Herzog said the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran marked a “historical juncture”.

“There comes a moment that after well over a generation of endless wars, bloodshed and terror, the root cause of it, which comes from Tehran, will be blocked and stopped, and the whole direction of the region will change,” he said.

“Let’s help us bring a real change so that there will be a different future in the region.”

He also stressed the importance of talks with Lebanon, with the two sides sitting down the following month for direct negotiations that are still ongoing.

Herzog’s Irish-born father, Chaim Herzog, served as head of Israel’s military intelligence, then went on to become its ambassador to the United Nations and finally its sixth president, from 1983 to 1993.

Herzog’s grandfather and namesake — Rabbi Yitzhak (Isaac) HaLevi Herzog — was the first chief rabbi for Israel’s Ashkenazis, the branch of Judaism whose roots are in eastern Europe.

At the helm of the Labour party, Herzog worked to steer its focus back to peace with the Palestinians.

He answers to the nickname “Bougie” — reportedly given to him by his Egyptian-born mother, who mixed the French word for doll “poupee” with its Hebrew equivalent “buba”.

As labourers gathered at a roadside in northern Afghanistan, Ghulam Sakhi Barat joined the search for work, with millions of new arrivals intensifying pressure for jobs and homes.

More than six million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan in little over three years as the neighbouring countries have launched deportation drives after decades hosting those fleeing conflict.

With seven relatives to support in Sheberghan, the capital of Jawzjan province, Barat said “people are going hungry” as a result of the influx.

“Since the returnees arrived, there have been fewer jobs for local people,” the 83-year-old said, wearing a frayed waistcoat.

“Help is being given to the returnees, but no help is being given to the people who were already living here.”

Jawzjan may be hundreds of kilometres (miles) from the frontiers with Iran and Pakistan, but Afghans have travelled far and wide to reach areas they or their relatives fled years earlier.

Abdul Qader Hotak, 60, returned to the province after two decades in Pakistan, despite his family having no land or property in the area.

“My children used to go to school and study in Pakistan … Now, all of them collect rubbish to earn something,” he said, eight months after being deported.

In one part of the province, Aqcha, the United Nations projects the population will surge by more than 26 per cent due to the mass returns, with water becoming a “critical flashpoint” in the drought-hit district.

Faqir Mohammad Khudabakhsh, a mason who has spent two decades going back and forth to Iran, said he is now only able to get work three days a week.

“Everyone who has returned to Afghanistan needs a place to live and a job, but they have neither,” the 54-year-old said, surrounded by fellow labourers in Sheberghan.

“Instead of spending money on food and clothes, they have to spend it on rent. I’m sorry to say this, but we are suffering from malnutrition,” he added, in paint-splattered khaki trousers.

Nearly one in three Afghans — 15.9 million people — are facing food insecurity at crisis levels or worse, according to UN data.

Competition for housing is fierce, with residents who spoke to AFP reporting rent surging by as much as 150 percent in recent years.

‘God will surely provide’

At the provincial information directorate, the director said there are “no unresolved issues facing local residents or returnees”.

“We have no unemployed people in Afghanistan, unless someone is simply too fond of their own comfort and chooses not to work,” said Saifuddin Muhtasem, sitting beside a globe and a bookshelf shaped like the map of Afghanistan.

The government has established a committee operating nationwide to control rent prices and prevent hikes, he said.

But a 30-year-old civil servant told AFP he had never heard of such a committee and that his rent has doubled in 18 months.

“Economic problems have increased since the returnees arrived,” said Ahmadi, who only gave one name for security reasons.

Sustained support is vital for both the returnees and the communities hosting them, the UN warned in September.

“Competition over scarce resources risks fuelling grievances, increasing displacement and promoting instability,” said Georgette Gagnon, the deputy special representative of the UN mission in Afghanistan.

The challenges are compounded by prolonged drought in Jawzjan, where the air is imbued with dust and the landscape dotted with domed mud homes and camels grazing.

Most of the province’s water is now unfit for drinking or farming, said the information director, putting his hopes in a canal project which is expected to take another two years to complete.

“While the people of Afghanistan are not dying of hunger or thirst, they are in dire need of shelter,” said Muhtasem, who encouraged international organisations to come and build homes for returnees in the province.

“As for the rest, God will surely provide.”

President Donald Trump may be facing a political pounding at the US midterm elections next month — but in Europe expectations are low that a big Democrat win would change much.

From the battlefields of Ukraine to the boardrooms of Europe, Trump has sent multiple shockwaves across the continent since returning to power last year.

During a head-spinning 22 months, the mercurial leader has turned spectacularly on Kyiv, imposed tariffs on allies and threatened to take Greenland.

Ahead of the November 3 polls, it looks like American voters could punish Trump’s Republican party and hand control of one or both of the US House of Representatives or Senate to the Democrats.

But while the hope may be that Trump could be reined in by a hostile Congress, multiple officials at the EU and NATO told AFP they doubt a big loss would muzzle him on the international stage.

“We don’t think the unpredictability is going to change,” said one senior EU diplomat.

Publicly the European Union is keeping its cards close to its chest.

“We will not comment on any elections in the EU or abroad. Let’s wait for those and we’ll see where it goes,” said European Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho.

Behind closed doors as well, officials say that the midterms are not featuring much in the bloc’s internal discussions.

“I suspect because a) it is difficult to really predict the result, b) one wouldn’t want to get too high hopes for change and c) not sure how much even a Democratic wave would impact foreign policy issues,” said a second senior EU diplomat.

Ukraine, tariffs

Ahead of the midterms, Trump has rattled Europe by yet again lashing out at Ukraine and cosying up to Russia as Washington has renewed its push to end the fighting.

While a Democrat win could usher in a more vocal pro-Kyiv majority in Congress, the EU is not expecting US support for Ukraine to ramp up again. Officials in Brussels say they are focused on plugging a 70-billion-euro hole in Kyiv’s finances next year.

And while they’re pushing other countries like Britain, Canada and Japan to do more, they are certainly not counting on the United States. Meanwhile, there is equally little optimism for any major reversal on the tariffs Trump has slapped on Europe.

Diplomats and officials point out that it took months to get Democrat President Joe Biden to roll back tariffs on EU steel after Trump’s first term — and even then limitations remained.

In a recent poll from the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, only one quarter of Americans backed removing all the tariffs on the EU.

US forces in Europe?

At NATO the story is much the same. European allies are nervously waiting for the results of a Pentagon review of US forces on the continent that looks set to be unveiled in December.

The widespread expectation is that it will see the United States scale back its deployments, although the hope is the cuts will not be too severe.

Multiple diplomats at NATO said they didn’t envision the midterms having an impact on the review.

While a changed Congress could see US lawmakers more outspoken in support of the alliance, the direction of travel is already set with Europe stepping up efforts to take more responsibility for its defence.

“Whatever the outcome, we’ll keep going,” said one European diplomat.

Trump unleashed?

There is also a nagging fear that things could get worse after the midterms. If Republicans cling on, it could embolden Trump, meanwhile, if they lose, he could seek to distract from his woes at home by stirring up things abroad,

“We have a history in America of presidents who get in trouble domestically turning more to the international stage,” said Bruce Stokes, a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank. From an escalation in the Iran war to a more concerted push on Ukraine, there are numerous ways the White House can keep worrying Europe.

“Trump has demonstrated they can’t stand not to be the centre of attention,” said Stokes.“If that means he needs to do more on the world stage, positively or negatively, that may be what ends up happening”.

Ferocious winds and torrential rain lashed India’s southeastern coast after a cyclone made landfall on Wednesday, but there were no initial reports of deaths, a top official said.

Cyclone Arnab hit southeastern Andhra Pradesh state as a “very severe cyclonic storm”, with winds of 115-125 kilometres (71-77 miles) per hour and gusts reaching 140 kph, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in an update at 0830 am (0300 GMT).

It warned of flash floods along the coast between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu said there had been no reported deaths from the storm, congratulating government officers who had “worked tirelessly throughout the night”.

Naidu “expressed satisfaction that no loss of life occurred due to the proactive measures taken”, his office said in a statement on Wednesday morning.

Around 50,000 people were told to move to safer areas in Andhra Pradesh and another 48,000 in neighbouring Odisha state.

“Our homes get flooded, and we have to stay in the water,” said Rajeshwari, 65, who gave only one name and had been taken to a government-run shelter near Kakinada.

Overnight, gales battered trees and heavy rain lashed the port city of Kakinada, close to the heart of the storm, as powerful waves crashed ashore.

But at dawn on Wednesday, residents emerged onto flooded streets to assess what appeared to be limited damage in the city.

‘Safe indoors’

“Thank God, there was not as much damage this time,” said businessman Hussain, 43, who uses one name.“The sea is very rough, several trees have fallen, and sheds and hoardings have been damaged. The government declared a two-day holiday for schools, so people are staying safe indoors.”

Sadiq, 40, a Kakinada city resident, told AFP that the situation had become “very dangerous” on Tuesday night, but early warnings from authorities had helped people prepare.“Many people locked their houses and moved to safer places”, he said.

Cyclones, called hurricanes in the North Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific, are a regular menace in the Bay of Bengal and northern Indian Ocean.

The storm season, however, has been turbocharged by the El Nino weather phenomenon that has contributed to unprecedented warming.

Neighbouring Sri Lanka closed schools as its Department of Meteorology warned that storms could trigger flash floods and mudslides. Nepal’s disaster authority warned that the storm would move inland towards the Himalayas, bringing heavy rainfall and “a high risk of heavy snowfall, snowstorms and avalanches”.

Nepal is still recovering from a catastrophic August 26 flood triggered by a glacial mountain collapse, which killed more than 1,400 people and left over 5,000 missing.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned 81 on Tuesday, promising to work “24 hours a day” following his historic re-election for a fourth term.

Lula won Sunday’s runoff against Flavio Bolsonaro with 51.8 per cent of the vote to the right-wing senator’s 48.2pc.

He is one of the world’s oldest leaders; US President Donald Trump, who turned 80 in June, is only a few months younger.

“I’m going to deliver the best term any president has ever served in the history of this country,” the leftist leader said in a video posted on Instagram. “I will dedicate 24 hours a day to making this country into the country everyone dreams of.”

Amid questions over his age, he boasted while campaigning that he was “fitter than ever”, jogging during events and posting videos on social media of his gym workouts.

Following his shock first-round defeat to Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of jailed ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s campaign had a social media makeover. The president bought his first-ever cellphone and declared himself “king of the selfie.”

In a speech after his dramatic victory on Sunday, he thanked the “rebellious youth” of Brazil for campaigning on his behalf.

Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) called on supporters to celebrate his birthday outside the presidential residence in Brasilia on Tuesday.

UK anti-terrorism police said on Tuesday that two men have been charged with national security offences after an incident last month at a British airbase used by the United States, linking the scare to Iran.

The head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, Laurence Taylor, said two British men aged 24 had been charged: one with assisting a foreign intelligence service, believed to be in Iran, and another with entering a prohibited place for a purpose “prejudicial” to the United Kingdom.

This is the first time that anyone has been charged over the incident at RAF Fairford, after police arrested seven suspects in the days afterwards, before releasing them on bail.

Police were called to the Royal Air Force’s Fairford base in southwest England in the early hours of Sept 27 after a local farmer reported a group of men with several white vans engaged in “suspicious” activity.

“While some of the circumstances remain unclear, we are confident that this activity was conducted on behalf of a foreign intelligence service,” Taylor told reporters on Tuesday outside Metropolitan Police headquarters in London.

Days after the incident, the US withdrew all its B-1 bombers from the base.

Suspects charged

A week ago police said they had re-arrested two of the suspects, one of whom has now been charged.

Police charged 24-year-old Nouman Essghir with entering or approaching a “prohibited place” for a purpose “prejudicial” to the interests of the UK.

Essghir was arrested at the scene in Gloucestershire and then released on bail, before police re-arrested him a week ago.

The police chief said the charge against Essghir related to “suspected activity” more than a month earlier, on Saturday Aug 22, without giving any details.

The second man who has been charged, 24-year-old Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim, was arrested after being interviewed under caution over the last week, police said.

He has been charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service. “In this case, we believe that country to be Iran,” the police said.

Taylor said Counter Terrorism Policing had seen “a range of incidents in recent months that we believe have been directed by the Iranian state”.

“This is not a theoretical threat. This is something we are responding to every day,” he added.

Both of the charged men live in Westminster, a district in central London.

Six other men remain on bail, one of them a dual UK-Iranian national who had been re-arrested last week.

Taylor acknowledged that some of the police’s “decisions made during our investigations can sometimes appear illogical”.

“But I want to make it very clear that there will always be a good reason or rationale behind them,” he said.

Indian authorities ordered nearly 100,000 people to evacuate homes in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, ahead of a severe cyclone the national weather office expects to make landfall by Wednesday.

Neighbouring Nepal and Sri Lanka have also issued weather warnings.

Cyclone Arnab is forecast to hit India’s southwestern Andhra Pradesh coast as a “very severe cyclonic storm”, with gusts of up to 150 kilometres (93 miles) per hour on Wednesday morning, the India Meteorological Department said in a bulletin.

Torrential rain lashed the coast in the port city of Kakinda as heavy waves crashed on shore.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Kotesh Kumar, 35, told AFP, adding the government warned people to stock up on groceries.

“There was a cyclone here three years ago, but the water didn’t rise this much.”

Cyclones, called hurricanes in the North Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific, are a regular menace in the Bay of Bengal and northern Indian Ocean.

The storm season, however, has been turbocharged by the El Nino weather phenomenon that has caused unprecedented warming.

Neighbouring Sri Lanka, meanwhile, closed schools with warnings of torrential rain, with the island’s Department of Meteorology warning storms could trigger flash floods and mudslides.

The military has been placed on alert, Colombo’s Disaster Management Centre said.

Indian media reported that as many as 50,000 people have been told to move to safe areas in Andhra Pradesh, and 48,000 in Odisha.

‘Damage’

Nepal’s disaster authority issued a warning on Tuesday, saying that as the storm travels inland towards the Himalayas — likely overnight Thursday — it will bring heavy rainfall as well as “a high risk of heavy snowfall, snowstorms and avalanches”.

It called on tourists to avoid travelling to high mountain areas and advised those already there to remain in safe locations.

Nepal is still recovering from a catastrophic August 26 flood sparked by a glacial mountain collapse, which swept away more than 1,400 people and left over 5,000 missing.

India’s weather bureau said it expects the cyclone to result in “total destruction” of thatched houses and create localised flooding, uprooting of power and communication poles, and “widespread damage” to standing crops.

In Kakinada, police barricaded roads leading to the sea.

Andhra Pradesh State Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu ordered the storm to be “constantly monitored and advance precautions taken”, his office said in a statement on Monday.

“Adequate shelters and evacuation arrangements have been made,” New Delhi’s Cabinet Secretariat said in a statement.

The neighbouring Indian state of Odisha opened 1,735 cyclone shelters and imposed restrictions on movement in landslide-prone zone areas, the state’s information office said.

Local media reported that Andhra Pradesh authorities ordered evacuations in key, low-lying areas and shut “all educational institutions” in some districts from Tuesday until Saturday.

Over 4,700 pregnant women residing in potentially dangerous sites were moved to hospitals, according to The Indian Express newspaper.

Sudan’s warring sides have traded drone strikes that killed 21 people in the western Darfur region and left vast swathes of the country’s east without electricity, medics and witnesses said Tuesday.

A drone strike on a market in Nyala, the de facto capital of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Darfur, killed 21 people and wounded at least 40 others, a medical source and witnesses told AFP.

One Nyala resident said a market in the city’s north was struck by a drone on Monday around 8pm (11pm PKT).

Another said the market was frequented by young men, particularly RSF fighters.

“Twenty-one people were killed in last night’s bombing, and more than 40 others injured,” a medic at Nyala Hospital said, though he was unable to identify how many were RSF fighters.

Sudan’s military, at war with the RSF since April 2023, regularly strikes Nyala, where the RSF has declared an administration rivalling the army-backed internationally recognised government in Khartoum.

The RSF has in turn launched repeated strikes targeting Khartoum’s airport, as well as dams and power stations across the country’s east.

On Tuesday, “RSF militia drones targeted the Al-Markhiyat transformer station, disrupting the power supply across large parts of Khartoum and Al-Jazira states,” a source in the national electricity company told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The strike comes a day after a coordinated RSF drone attack on six power stations left millions without power in Al-Jazira, White Nile, Sennar and Gedaref states.

Famine risk

The war is currently being fought primarily via drones, with both sides launching sophisticated attacks from across the country, killing dozens of civilians at a time.

In the first three weeks of October alone, drone strikes killed over 300 people and injured hundreds more, according to a UN tally.

Since it began, the war has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and has triggered the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that attacks on power stations threaten health and services for millions of people.

Close to three million people have returned to Khartoum state since it was recaptured by the army last year, but many have struggled to rebuild their lives in a scarred city.

Power and water supplies remain unreliable, much of the capital remains unsafe from unexploded bombs, and many struggle to put food on the table in a collapsed economy.

On Monday, 30 countries including the United States, France and the United Kingdom warned that urgent action was needed to prevent famine expanding across the country.

Sudan is facing “an alarming deterioration” of food security, they said, citing the war, a currency in freefall, higher fuel prices due to the Middle East war and a drought induced by the El Nino climate phenomenon.

Sudan’s foreign ministry on Monday insisted the country’s food security was “reassuring”, in an attempt to “refute claims of famine”.

It accused “some countries and organisations” of “politically exploiting the humanitarian situation”.

The army has for years denied claims of documented famine and has been accused of blocking access to humanitarian aid.

Sitting outside his small shop in a warren of alleyways in Rawalpindi, Ahsan Shakeel buffed an antique brass pot to a high shine, pressing it against a mechanised wheel.

“We’ve removed all the dents, but it still needs polishing,” the 72-year-old restorer, among the last still practising his craft, told AFP as the spinning buffer sent fine metal dust into the air.

Quitting a job as a hotel cook, Shakeel followed in his father’s footsteps to become an antiques restorer, opening his workshop in the Bhabra Bazaar market in densely populated Rawalpindi in 1980.

Today, he is one of the last master restorers preserving antique metalware in Pakistan.

Rawalpindi’s roots stretch back to prehistoric human settlements and over centuries the garrison city evolved into a major commercial hub where metalcraft from the Mughal and British colonial periods converged.

Moving inside his shop, Shakeel navigated wall-to-wall shelves stacked with centuries-old ewer jugs, samovars for boiling, dishes, jars and teapots, most of which were made of copper or brass.

He took down various items and enthusiastically explained to AFP their materials and origins.

The vintage items are now increasingly rare in the modern era in which they have been replaced by stainless steel and plastic kitchenware.

“I used to travel everywhere, Lahore, Gujranwala, Karachi, back and forth (to purchase antiques),” he said.

‘Life back into the dead’

Shakeel procures the items he restores mostly from scrap yards, ports, or household clearances.

“Often, the condition of the items is so bad that no one would buy them,” he said.

The shop owner and his colleague Shakeel Ahmed restore the battered items by hammering out dents, re-tinning the interiors over coal fires, and polishing the metal. A badly damaged item could take a few days to fix.

After restoration, a piece can sell between $100 and $1,000. Shakeel’s customers are mostly collectors or antique enthusiasts, including foreigners.

Today, he mostly relies on online platforms and messaging applications to buy and sell antiques.

“I don’t have the same health anymore, so I travel less,” he said.

Prices for antiques are on the increase but the number of customers has fallen over time, Shakeel said.

“The money doesn’t turn over quickly in this business. It’s a very slow trade,” he said.

“Customers who still exist, they are not many. They collect these things because they understand these items. Those who don’t understand them would think it’s all useless,” Shakeel added.

Ahmed said he enjoyed restoring worn and damaged objects because they carry stories within them from different communities in the past or historical periods.

“This is a very old thing,” the 56-year-old man said at his own dimly lit workshop, as he gently used a small hammer to smooth out little dents on a large brass hookah pipe for smoking tobacco.

“What we do is like putting life back into the dead,” Ahmed said.

Header image: Antique dealer Ahsan Shakeel shows an artefact at his shop selling vintage items in Rawalpindi on October 20, 2026. —AFP

The Jordanian military said it had struck “terrorist organisations” in neighbouring Syria on Monday in retaliation for a deadly attack on a church last week, hours after authorities arrested three men they accused of the killings.

It said air force jets had “destroyed several terrorist positions” and killed and wounded “numerous members” of groups linked to the perpetrators of the church attack.

Syrian authorities reported civilian casualties from the raids, with health officials in Daraa province saying six people, including three children and a woman, were killed.

Syria’s civil defence agency reported seven deaths in total, six people in Daraa and one in neighbouring Sweida province.

On Friday, gunmen killed nine people during a funeral service at the Greek Orthodox St George’s Church in the village of Hammoud in Karak governorate, southern Jordan.

Karak is home to a significant Christian community in Muslim-majority Jordan, where Christians make up between two and three per cent of the population.

Major General Abdullah al-Maaytah, Jordan’s director of public security, on Monday named the three detained suspects as Hazza Zaidan Mohammed, Meshal Zaidan Mohammed and Ahmad Sami Hussein.

The trio, two of them brothers and the other related by marriage, were cornered at an abandoned house where they had barricaded themselves inside and opened fire on security forces.

“All three terrorists have been injured. They have been taken to hospital and are still receiving treatment,” Maaytah told a press conference.

‘We will show them’

One of the suspects was in critical condition, Jordan’s state broadcaster Al-Mamlaka reported. There were no casualties among the security forces, it added.

“This country must remain an oasis of security and stability, and we affirm that Jordan will remain impervious to anyone who dares to challenge it,” Maaytah said.

Under Jordanian law, murder is punishable by death by hanging.

A number of weapons and a large quantity of ammunition were seized from the three suspects, the Public Security Directorate said.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said in a post on X that security forces “chased them to the very end”.

“We vowed the terrorists would not escape punishment, and no proponent of dark ideologies that divide Jordanians will be tolerated,” he wrote.

Earlier, the king visited wounded victims of the church attack in hospital, dressed in military fatigues and carrying a pistol on his hip.

“We will show them,” he vowed.

Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya told Al-Mamlaka on Monday that the attackers were all Jordanians and “had been holed up in a building in one of the villages near the site of the attack”.

“There is no indication of any external contacts or collaboration with foreign parties,” he said.

Government communications minister Mohammad al-Momani said “we stand ready and will strike with an iron fist, without mercy or leniency, against anyone who attempts to undermine Jordan’s security”.

Attacks on houses of worship in Jordan are rare. In 2016 an attack in Karak targeted a security centre and police patrols, leaving 10 people dead.

On Friday, Prime Minister Jafar Hassan ordered a three-day period of national mourning for the victims of the church attack, with flags to be flown at half-mast over government and public institutions.

Eight of the nine victims were laid to rest on Sunday next to the church in a funeral that drew a huge crowd amid a large security presence, AFP images showed.

The ninth person, Mohammed al-Qasous, was buried in south Amman on Monday.