Haiti books an election in a capital it does not control

The election Haiti has called

Haiti has set a general election for 13 December, its first vote in a decade. On Thursday the Organization of American States, the main regional body for the Americas, said plainly that the country needs help to hold it [1].

Albert Ramdin, the OAS secretary general, had just finished a trip to Port-au-Prince. He met the prime minister and the new Gang Suppression Force, which is backed by the United Nations [1]. Armed groups control most of the capital and have spread into central and rural areas [1]. They also hold the main roads in and out of the city [1].

Ramdin’s list of priorities was not about politics. It was about physical access. He named securing the road to the international airport, keeping the airport and seaport open, and restoring safe passage to the southern region [1]. He also asked Haiti to step up the registration and identification of voters before December [1].

The Gang Suppression Force, he said, needs more people, more equipment and more money. “We also feel that we need to see more results and quicker,” Ramdin said [1].

Haiti has had no elected president since Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021 [1]. Gang violence has surged since, displacing a record 1.5 million people [1]. The OAS says it will work with the Pan American Health Organization to build trauma centres for wounded Haitian police officers [1].

Why now. A vote is the agreed route back to an elected government, and a date forces the question of whether one can physically be held. What changes. There is now a measurable test: how many Haitians get registered, and how many polling stations open, in territory the government does not hold. The angle. Watch the registration count rather than the campaign. Registration is the half of an election that depends on reach, not on politics.

A night of missiles in Kyiv, and a drone at Romania’s gas rig

Russia struck Kyiv again overnight into Thursday with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones [3]. The two counts you will see are not a contradiction; they measure different areas. Africanews, reporting on the city itself, put the toll at two killed and 33 wounded across 12 sites in three districts [2]. Al Jazeera, counting Kyiv plus the surrounding region, reported at least 16 killed and 28 locations hit across Ukraine [3].

In the Solomianskyi district the top two floors of a nine-storey block were destroyed, and nine injured people were pulled from the rubble [2]. A children’s hospital and an educational building were damaged [2]. Around 90,000 homes lost power; the utility DTEK had reconnected more than half by the time of reporting [2].

The war also reached further west. At 6:28am local time a commercial vessel spotted a marine drone a few hundred metres from Neptun Deep, Romania’s big offshore gas project [4]. F-16s were scrambled and destroyed it. Defence Minister Radu Miruta said it was “loaded with explosives” and that several hundred people work on the platform [4]. Ukraine confirmed the drone was not one of its own [4]. President Nicusor Dan blamed Russia [4].

Neptun Deep is owned by OMV Petrom and the state gas producer Romgaz [4]. When it starts up in 2027 it is expected to make Romania the EU’s largest gas producer [4]. Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey have between them cleared more than 150 mines drifting across Black Sea trade lanes [4]. In July they agreed to widen their joint task force to guard infrastructure [4]. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called it part of “an escalating campaign of threats” [5].

Two knock-on effects are already priced. Chicago wheat futures are up more than 17% since the start of July as attacks shut grain terminals in peak export season [6]. Asian mills booked roughly 2.0 to 2.5 million tonnes of Black Sea wheat for July to September [6]. That is about 30% to 50% of their import needs, and they now fear it will not arrive [6]. “By the end of August, the market will have to find solutions,” said Maxence Devillers, a grain analyst at Argus Media [6].

And Russia’s own fuel supply is buckling. Only 28% of its petrol stations had fuel on Wednesday, down from 41% a week earlier [7]. In Moscow, the common AI-92 grade was available at just 10% of stations, and Gazprom Neft capped fills at 40 litres [7]. Ukrainian drone strikes have damaged refineries accounting for 54% of national refining capacity [7]. Moscow has banned petrol exports, imported 25 times more from Belarus than a year ago, and re-authorised lower-grade fuels it outlawed in the 2010s [7]. President Vladimir Putin called the damage real but “non-critical” [7].

One quieter number sits underneath all of this. Around 29,000 Ukrainian soldiers have trained in Germany since the full-scale invasion, and Die Zeit found that some never return to their units [8]. About 80 cases are documented in Saxony-Anhalt alone; hundreds are reported nationwide [8]. Berlin has published no national figure [8].

The borders Europe is renting

In late July about 72,000 people crossed irregularly into Ceuta, Spain’s enclave on the Moroccan coast [9]. Around 100 died [9]. A separate report put the toll at at least 90 on both sides of the border, a difference of where the counting stops [10].

On Thursday Spain began moving people off the beach. Roughly 4,000 were still sleeping there; the first temporary shelters hold 1,800 [10]. The migration ministry called them facilities “that will be expanded progressively” [10]. Spain also plans to move 500 unaccompanied girls to the mainland, against the EU’s stated preference for returning minors to Morocco [10].

Brussels responded with money. The EU committed 222 million euros to Morocco’s migration management between 2021 and 2024, and now plans a further 190 million euros through 2027 [9]. Von der Leyen wrote that the bloc would “enhance border management and early-warning systems” and improve support to Rabat [9]. A wider EU-Morocco partnership, covering borders, security, digital policy and AI, is meant to be signed by the end of the year [9].

Britain is doing the same thing across the Channel. Under a deal agreed in April it is paying France 501 million pounds over three years, plus 161 million pounds for new methods [11]. The Home Office says French police intercepted 185 attempted crossings involving 4,300 migrants over four weeks this summer, and stopped 12 boats at sea [11]. The interception rate is now 61%, which the Home Office calls a five per cent increase on last year, and crossings are down about 40% [11]. It is not a wall: 250 people arrived on Monday, and 425 crossed in one recent week [11]. The opposition Conservatives called the announcement a “joke” [11].

Deported to a country you have never seen

Guatemala’s President Bernardo Arevalo confirmed his country has received about 2,284 Mexican nationals deported from the United States this year [12]. “They are arriving on planes carrying Guatemalan returnees,” he said, adding that Guatemala moves them on to Mexico within 24 hours [12].

Mexico objects. Its foreign ministry said it has told Washington that “every Mexican citizen has the right to enter the country” [12]. Mexico’s National Migration Institute said the US justified the practice as deterrence, to stop people crossing back [12]. The Department of Homeland Security said it was “utilising all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history” [12]. Mexicans have also been sent to Honduras. One of them, Arturo Trejo, told the broadcaster Telemundo: “They didn’t tell us anything, just to get on the flight” [12].

Separately, emails released this week show US immigration officials coordinated deportation flights with Iranian authorities [13]. Rights groups object because Iran’s government has, in the report’s words, a pattern of violent persecution of women, religious minorities and political dissidents [13].

Gaza’s uncounted, and a tender in the West Bank

At least 50 Palestinians were buried in Gaza City on Thursday, their bodies recovered from rubble in Tal al-Hawa, Zeitoun, Sabra, Sheikh Radwan and Shati [14]. They came from three families [14]. Gaza’s Civil Defence estimates about 8,000 people are still missing beneath collapsed buildings [14]. Search teams have one excavator [14].

Munir al-Bursh, director general of Gaza’s health ministry, asked for heavy machinery, recovery equipment and forensic supplies to be allowed in [14]. Al Jazeera reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,266 Palestinians since October’s ceasefire took effect, and that the war has killed at least 73,400 in total [14]. About 90% of Gaza’s buildings and services are damaged or destroyed [14].

In the West Bank, Israel opened bidding on Tuesday for 1,234 homes in the long-stalled E1 settlement project east of Jerusalem [15]. Britain summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires; Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the government “must halt E1 plans immediately, retract the tender” [15]. Australia summoned Israel’s envoy over the military’s decision to close an investigation into the killing of aid workers [15].

On Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that economic pressure would work: “we are going to collapse this regime” [16]. Tehran’s foreign ministry called the new sanctions “economic terrorism” [16].

What governments are being marked on

US federal debt passed 40 trillion dollars for the first time, according to a Treasury update on Wednesday [17]. It reached 39 trillion in March, so the last trillion took under five months [17]. In 2023 the Congressional Budget Office expected this level in 2028 [17]. For scale, it took nearly 200 years to reach the first trillion, in 1981 [17]. Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the debt “finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another” [17].

In Beijing, Vice Finance Minister Liao Min said China would add fiscal support “in a timely manner” as growth slows [18]. Most of his remarks were about plumbing rather than stimulus: clearer rules between central and local government, better budget management, and an “iron discipline” against hidden local-government debt [18].

Lebanon’s parliament passed the bank resolution law the IMF had demanded, which the fund called “a major step” [19]. Reuters notes the harder half is next, since problems implementing it could still delay recovery [19]. “We met 99% of what they wanted,” said Alain Aoun, a member of parliament’s finance committee [19]. Lebanese savers have been locked out of their deposits since 2019 [19].

South Africa votes in local elections on 4 November, and its governing ANC is on course to do worse than its historic 2024 result of 40.2% [21]. The complaint is service delivery: impassable roads, potholes, burst water pipes and uncollected rubbish [21]. Anti-migrant violence since April has forced more than 176,000 people to leave the country, most for Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique [21]. President Cyril Ramaphosa said he was “concerned and ashamed” [21].

From Karachi, a different kind of marking. Writing in Dawn on Friday, the banker Zafar Masud argued that Pakistan’s problem was never designing reforms but keeping them [23]. They were legitimised through individuals, so their authority expired with those individuals [23]. Independence for technocrats, he wrote, was “a loan of authority, and never a grant” [23].

Three smaller items point the same way. Nikkei Asia reports China is restricting or delaying exports of germanium- and quartz-based materials and some magnets to Taiwan, squeezing its aerospace and optics firms [20]. Nikkei also finds that fraud rings pushed out of Cambodia by US-driven crackdowns are reappearing in countries such as Sri Lanka, with AI cutting their costs [26]. And in Hangzhou, a 1.88-metre robot from the firm SUPCON now directs traffic and warns helmetless riders, with no power to arrest [22]. The company says its pilot cut some violations by more than 40%, a claim it has not had independently checked [22]. Libya, meanwhile, is 15 years past Gaddafi and still split between two rival administrations, with the US, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey pushing to merge them [24].

The story nobody’s covering: Guinea’s unmarked border

Guinea has not been attacked by armed extremist groups. That is precisely why the Institute for Security Studies, a South African research body, thinks the next few months matter.

In March, prosecutors in Conakry charged eleven people suspected of belonging to JNIM, an al-Qaeda-linked alliance active in Mali, in the gold towns along the Malian border [25]. On 16 March a Malian checkpoint at Yanfolila, 50km from Guinea, was attacked; on 4 July JNIM hit the prison at Kenieroba [25]. Since May the group has tried to choke the Bamako-Kouremale road that runs into Guinea [25].

Guinea’s answer has been military. On 22 April President Mamadi Doumbouya created a Special Operations Command by decree, the third such unit since 2018 [25]. The ISS researchers argue this treats the danger as something arriving from outside [25]. It misses what is already inside: intercommunal tension, trafficking, and a gold economy the state only partly regulates [25]. The border itself runs 858km and is not even marked [25]. In April a mining dispute between panners from a Malian village and one in Guinea’s Siguiri prefecture ended in a killing [25].

It is a small story with a large shape. The countries that fell to these groups did not fall because their armies were too small. They fell where the state had never really arrived.