World, in brief

The Iran war reaching shipping

Iran said it struck ten ships near the Strait of Hormuz after the United States sank five Iranian tankers [5]; Saudi Arabia lifted an air-raid alert in Khamis Mushait a day after Houthi strikes on its oil sites [42]

Europe hardening its eastern edge

Finland finished a 4.5-metre fence along 200km of its Russian border at a cost of 356 million euros [20]; a strike killed two people at Ukraine's road crossing into Moldova, which says 17 drones hit its territory in August alone [16]

New governments settling old cases

the nuclear agency closed Syria's fifteen-year case after the Syrian government that replaced Bashar al-Assad answered its questions [3]; Slovenia's new government scrapped every measure its predecessor took against Israel and opened an Israeli embassy [11]

Trade rules used as foreign policy

Britain will ban imports from Israeli settlements, and Israel answered by closing the British consulate in Jerusalem [10][6]; the European Commission proposed letting governments reject public-contract bids that are less than half European [22]

One pressure seen across the day runs through World too.

• The war on Iran reaching the ships that carry oilHigh ↑ · seen in 3 beats→

1. 1The UN's nuclear watchdog reports Iran, and Russia and China can stop what comes next
2. 2Iran and the US hit ten ships in a day
3. 3The nuclear agency closes Syria's case
4. 4Britain bans settlement imports, Israel shuts a consulate
5. 5Slovenia opens Israel's embassy as thousands protest

The board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body that inspects nuclear programmes, voted on Wednesday to report Iran to the UN Security Council. [1]

Watch whether the Security Council takes the file up at all: Russia and China can stop sanctions there, and Iran says inspectors will only come back as part of a deal that ends the war. [1][2]

Iran said on Wednesday it had attacked ten ships near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea lane at the mouth of the Gulf. [5]

American forces had sunk five Iranian oil tankers the day before. [5]

A tanker holding about 2 million barrels of Iraqi fuel oil caught fire in Iraqi waters with 22 crew aboard, and Britain's maritime agency reported several merchant vessels hit by disabling fire overnight. [5]

Iranian state media said two US Navy ships were among the targets; US Central Command said no American warship was struck. [6]

This is the largest declared wave of attacks on shipping by either side in the six-month war, and it pushed Brent crude above $100 a barrel for the first time since 24 July. [5][7]

Also seen in Finance and Climate.

The same 35-nation board adopted a second resolution on Wednesday, ending its investigation into Syria's secret nuclear work under Bashar al-Assad. [3]

Israel bombed a site in eastern Syria in 2007 that it said was a nearly finished reactor built by North Korea. [3]

The agency declared Syria in breach in June 2011 and reported it to the UN Security Council; Assad's government answered nothing. [3]

After Assad was overthrown in 2024 the new authorities worked with inspectors, and the resolution, written by Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, passed with nobody objecting. [3][4]

Fifteen years of pressure moved nothing while the same government was in office, and the case closed within two years of a different one taking over.

It is the exact opposite result to Iran's, decided by the same people on the same day. [3][1]

Outsiders can find a country at fault and keep the case open for years, and it only gets settled once different people are running that country.

So a case that nobody could move for fifteen years gets closed within two years of a change of leader.

Syria was found in breach in June 2011 and answered nothing for thirteen years, and then the Syrian government that replaced Bashar al-Assad answered the inspectors' questions and the board closed the case on Wednesday

the same step run backwards, and fast: Janez Jansa's government took office in March and scrapped the arms embargo, the settlement import ban and the entry bans its predecessor had imposed

a British official said the scope of the ban could depend on what Israel's next government does, so Britain is holding its own decision until after the vote on 27 October

the borrowing that Senegal's previous government misreported only became public when new leaders took office in 2024, and the bill has since reached about $13bn

Serbia votes on 25 October, and the man who has run the country for more than a decade plans to move from president to prime minister.

Most of us work somewhere in a line like that.

Britain announced on Tuesday that it will ban imports from Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley. [10]

A British official said Israel had promised Britain, France and Germany no new steps on the E1 settlement project before its election, then issued a housing tender closing a week before the vote. [10]

Israel replied by removing British officials from the International Gaza Support Centre at Kiryat Gat, and said the British consulate in Jerusalem will close within 30 days. [10][6]

Israel goes to the polls on 27 October, and the British official said the scope of the sanctions could depend on how the next Israeli government behaves.

Britain's prime minister, Andy Burnham, has not spoken to Benjamin Netanyahu since taking office in late July. [10]

Israel opened its first embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital, this week, and thousands of people protested. [11]

The previous Slovenian government, led by Robert Golob, had recognised a Palestinian state, imposed an arms embargo on Israel, banned imports from West Bank settlements and barred senior Israeli officials including Netanyahu from entering. [11]

Janez Jansa's government, which won the March election, scrapped all of it and took the Palestinian flag down from Slovenia's main government building. [11]

Two opposition parties filed a motion in parliament on Wednesday to impeach Jansa over the policy. [11]

A poll for the newspaper Delo in June found 56% of Slovenians opposed closer ties with Israel and 14% supported them.

Nothing about the West Bank changed between the two Slovenian positions. Slovenia's government did. [11]

The European Union's General Court, the bloc's second-highest court, threw out Hungary's challenge to the EU decision to spend the profits earned on frozen Russian central bank money on Ukraine's defence. [12]

The court did not rule on whether that decision was lawful. [12]

It said it had no jurisdiction over the matter, which means it had no power to hear the case at all. [12]

Hungary lost without its argument being examined, because the case turned on who is allowed to decide rather than on what was decided.

The profits keep going to Ukraine's defence in the meantime. [12]

President Aleksandar Vucic signed an order on Wednesday dissolving Serbia's parliament and calling an election for 25 October. [13]

Student-led protests have run since November 2024, when the roof of the railway station in Novi Sad collapsed and killed at least 16 people.

Protesters say corrupt contracting caused it, and their demand grew from an inquiry into calls for Vucic to go. [13]

Vucic cannot stand for president again, so he says he will resign the presidency and run for prime minister instead. [13]

He has held one of the two posts for more than a decade. [13]

The protesters asked for the man to go and are getting a date instead. If his party wins, the same person governs from a different office. [13]

Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told parliament on Wednesday that the far-right AfD's 'remigration' plans amount to ethnic cleansing. [14]

Remigration is the party's own word, covering everything from deporting people with no legal status to removing immigrants and their German-born descendants; the AfD gave it a chapter in its Saxony-Anhalt election programme. [14]

Merz said one in six German skilled-trades workers holds a foreign passport, and that under the policy no nursing home, hospital or restaurant in the country could keep operating. [14]

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel told him his time was up. [14]

The AfD won Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, just short of an outright majority, and is now the most popular party in national polls.

Merz's own party lost more than half its support in that state. [14]

Ukraine's air force recorded daily attacks by Russia's upgraded Geran drones for the first time, the BBC reported. [15]

Jet-powered drone attacks rose from 350 in June to 1,600 in July and 2,800 in August, and on five nights in August the jet models outnumbered the older propeller ones. [15]

The new drones cruise at more than 300mph, faster than Ukraine's interceptors, and Ukrainian military intelligence says some of their turbojet engines come from China. [15]

Earlier this year Ukraine was shooting down 94% of long-range drones. [15]

Ukraine's interceptors cannot catch something flying at over 300mph, so the defence that worked in the spring does not work now. [15]

Zelensky said the drones were part of an attack on 1 September that killed at least 12 people in Kyiv, six of them railway workers. [15]

An overnight strike hit the Starokozache border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova, about 500km south of Kyiv, killing two people and injuring three. [16]

The crossing was closed and photographs showed burnt-out cars and debris across the border post. [16]

Moldova's prime minister, Vasile Tofan, said 17 drones struck Moldovan territory in August alone, more than in the whole of last year. [16]

Russia's defence ministry said it shot down 596 Ukrainian drones overnight, and four people including a child were killed in the Russian Black Sea city of Novorossiysk. [16]

Moldova is not fighting in this war and the war is arriving on its territory anyway, seventeen times in August by its own count. [16]

Ukraine's road link into it is now shut. [16]

Norway's prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, said on Wednesday that the plane carrying Ukraine's president was nearly struck by a drone as it took off from Moldova on Tuesday. [17]

Volodymyr Zelensky was flying to Oslo for the funeral of Norway's King Harald. [17]

Store would not say where his information came from or how close the drone came, and Moldovan officials made no comment. [17][18]

In Oslo, Zelensky met defence company executives about a European anti-ballistic system codenamed FREYJA. [18]

If it is accurate, a head of state was nearly killed on a routine flight to a funeral in a country at peace.

Nobody has confirmed it beyond one prime minister's remark to a broadcaster. [17][18]

Germany's foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said his government could help Ukraine find Ukrainian men of fighting age living in Germany. [19] 'We know who lives here.

For example, who receives social benefits or who is registered here,' he said, adding that Ukraine's government could then contact them and that the process should run without coercion. [19]

About 1 million Ukrainians hold temporary residence permits in Germany, roughly 450,000 of them men. [19] Ukraine has barred men aged 25 to 60 from leaving the country since February 2022. [19]

The records were collected so people could claim a residence permit and social benefits. They would now be used to help another government call those same people up. [19]

Finland completed a 4.5-metre fence with cameras and sensors along 200km of its 1,340km border with Russia, at a cost of 356 million euros plus an estimated 2 to 3 million a year to maintain. [20]

Finland shut the land border in late 2023 after more than 1,300 people without visas arrived at it, and accused Russia of steering them there; Russia denied it. [20]

The border has stayed closed ever since. [20] Interior minister Mari Rantanen said the fence could be extended and asked the EU to pay for barriers on its eastern edge. [20]

Finland's border guard project manager said that despite rapid advances in drone technology, a physical barrier is still seen as the best answer for crowd control. [20]

Finland has also proposed extending to 2028 a law letting it refuse asylum claims at parts of the border, which legal experts say may breach EU law and its human rights obligations. [20]

The European Court of Auditors, the EU's own spending watchdog, said on Wednesday that the bloc's plan to stop buying Russian oil and gas is faltering.

It is not investing enough in other supplies, in renewables, or in the grid links between member states. [21]

Russian crude imports have been almost eliminated by sanctions, and Russian gas is down to 12% of EU gas imports from 45% before 2022. [21]

Europe's gas caverns are 67% full going into winter, against the 80% reached a year earlier. [21]

The auditors said the plan is stalling exactly as the Iran war squeezes global energy supply. Households and factories across 27 countries meet that in a bill. [21]

The European Commission proposed new public procurement rules on Wednesday that would let governments exclude bids with less than 50% European content by value. [22]

Public buying is about 15% of the EU's economy, roughly 2.5 trillion euros in 2025. [22]

Contracts would be awarded on a price-and-quality score with quality weighted at least 30%, and a single EU-wide platform would replace the tangle of national templates and languages firms complain about. [22]

The proposal follows warnings from the former European Central Bank head Mario Draghi that the bloc does not use its buying power. [22]

It turns everyday government purchasing into an industrial policy, and it lands on suppliers outside Europe who currently win those contracts.

It still has to be agreed by member states and the European Parliament. [22]

The European Commission also proposed the first common EU framework for restricting short-term holiday rentals such as Airbnb. [23]

Restrictions would have to be evidence-based, necessary and limited to the affected areas, and authorities could justify them by pointing to high house-price-to-income ratios or a ten-year upward trend. [23]

Paris, Barcelona and Venice each wrote their own rules, which drew legal challenges from the rental companies. [23] Airbnb shares fell about 3% in morning trading. [23]

Young Europeans have protested in tourist cities over rents and house prices.

The proposal gives city halls a defensible legal basis and gives the companies one clear set of rules to argue with. [23]

The criminal trial of Huawei, China's biggest maker of telecommunications equipment, opened on Wednesday in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York. [24]

The charges were first brought nearly eight years ago, and the case has been waiting ever since. [24] Prosecutor Taylor Stout gave the opening statement. [24]

Huawei denies stealing trade secrets and denies breaking American sanctions on Iran. [24]

An American jury is being asked to decide whether a Chinese company broke American rules about selling to Iran.

The allegations were made public in 2018, and the company has lived under them for eight years without a verdict. [24]

China bought 14 to 15 cargoes of American soybeans this week, around 1 million tonnes, four traders told Reuters. [25]

The state stockpiler Sinograin booked them for shipment from US Gulf terminals between December and February. [25]

The purchases take China's total to nearly half the 25 million tonnes a year the US government says China committed to buy through 2028. [25]

The US agriculture department reported 340,000 tonnes of sales to China on Wednesday. [25]

Xi Jinping visits the United States later this month. Buying ahead of a meeting is a cheap way to arrive with something already delivered. [25]

China's army has equipped a heavy combined-arms brigade of its 71st Group Army with 155mm PLZ-05 self-propelled howitzers, replacing older 122mm artillery, state broadcaster CCTV reported. [26]

The brigade has held its first live-fire test with them. [26]

It is the first time the PLZ-05 has been issued at brigade level; it was previously held at group-army level as a long-range suppression weapon. [26]

The 71st Group Army belongs to the Eastern Theatre Command, which covers Taiwan, the East China Sea and Japan. [26]

Pushing heavier guns down to brigades puts more range into the hands of units that would move first.

It is a quiet change, announced on state television rather than at a summit. [26]

Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Minoru Kihara, said on Thursday that Japan means to raise firmly the question of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents decades ago. [27]

He was speaking about a summit meeting the two governments are planning to organise. [27] Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic relations with each other. [27]

No venue and no date have been announced. [27]

Japan is naming the subject in public before a meeting that has not been arranged, which sets what its own voters will expect from it.

Kihara gave no sign that North Korea has agreed to discuss the abductions. [27]

Japan is in its biggest military expansion since the Second World War, buying long-range missiles, adding drones and building defence ties from Australia to Britain, driven by the risk that a fight over Taiwan pulls it in. [28]

Analysts told the South China Morning Post the hardest limits are at home.

They list a shrinking pool of recruits, an ageing population, tight public finances, a defence industry that cannot expand quickly, and doubt about how far the public would back using the force. [28]

Japan revises its main security documents by the end of the year. [28]

A government can vote itself a bigger army. It cannot vote itself more nineteen-year-olds, and Japan has fewer every year. [28]

Nepal is building its appeal for flood aid around climate justice, arguing that it emits almost nothing and is absorbing a disaster caused elsewhere. [29]

Its neighbours China and India are among the world's largest emitters, together with the United States. [29]

Officials are finishing a report on damage, losses and the money needed for shelters, schools and infrastructure, before Prime Minister Balendra Shah addresses the United Nations on 24 September. [29]

Nepal's tourist season and its electricity exports were both hit; hotels, roads and power plants were swept away in the north. [30]

Pakistan's experience is the warning.

It won about $11bn in pledges after its 2022 floods, but 42% of that was earmarked for oil imports rather than reconstruction, and only $3.4bn had actually been paid out by early 2024. [29]

With roads and bridges destroyed and helicopters tied up in the search, Nepal's army is flying food, medicine and essentials to cut-off villages using cargo drones. [31]

One mission crossed the Trishuli river to stranded residents in Devighat, in Nuwakot district. [31]

At least 1,367 people are confirmed dead and more than 5,000 are missing since a Himalayan glacier broke away near the Nepal-China border in late August and sent water and mud down the river valleys. [31]

A drone carrying a sack of rice is not a rescue, but it reaches people a helicopter cannot be spared for.

The missing outnumber the confirmed dead by nearly four to one. [31]

Fires burning through forest and peatland on Borneo and Sumatra released 19.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1 and 7 September, according to the European Union's Copernicus monitoring service. [32]

That overtook Russia and made up more than a third of the world total. [32] Indonesian authorities say these are the most intense fires in eleven years. [32]

Firefighters in Palembang, in South Sumatra, were beating at flames with tree branches this week. [32]

Peatland is waterlogged ground packed with old plant matter; once it dries out and catches, it burns underground and is very hard to put out. [32]

One country's week of fires produced more than a third of the carbon dioxide the whole world's fires gave off. [32]

About 400 athletes and officials were evacuated after torrential rain flooded roads in Nagoya, central Japan, and water entered some venues for the Asian Games. [33]

They later returned and no injuries were reported. [33] Nagoya's mayor, Ichiro Hirosawa, said the situation was not severe enough to threaten the opening on 19 September. [33]

The Games run to 4 October. [33]

Nine days before the opening, the host city was clearing water out of competition venues and moving athletes.

The mayor is the person who would have to say if the schedule slipped, and he says it will not. [33]

At least 14 people were killed when a weapons depot exploded in Syria's north-western Idlib province, state television said. [34]

Firefighters were sent to the site, but repeated explosions stopped them putting the fire out, and thick smoke rose for hours. [34]

Authorities have not said what set off the first blast. [34] A vehicle carrying ammunition blew up in Binnish, in the same province, on 1 September, killing five people. [34]

Two ammunition accidents in the same province in nine days, both of them fatal, and in neither case have the authorities said what set the first blast off. [34]

The war ended and the stockpiles it left behind did not. [34]

Spain declassified more than 40 security documents about the mass crossing into Ceuta, its city on Morocco's Mediterranean coast. [35][36]

A note dated 29 July from Spain's intelligence service, the CNI, told Morocco's DGST and DGED agencies that social media groups with about 180,000 followers were organising a crossing the next day. [35][36]

People would climb the border fence or swim around it while Morocco's Throne Day parades distracted the authorities. [35] The CNI warned the Spanish government's representative in Ceuta the same day. [35]

More than 70,000 people crossed on 30 and 31 July, and at least 100 died, according to figures from Ceuta's mayor. [35][36]

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday, shortly before the documents came out, that the mass arrival was not expected. [36]

Britain's prime minister's office said police should urgently consider whether more could have been done about anti-migrant protests in Dover and Portsmouth. [37]

Masked demonstrators brought Dover to a standstill on Saturday, and about 200 people in Portsmouth on Sunday tried to block vans taking migrants away for processing. [37]

Kent Police had called the Dover event spontaneous, then said information received the evening before was not fully assessed. [37] Hampshire police are investigating alleged assaults on officers and criminal damage. [37]

The question is not whether the protests were legal but whether the police read what was in front of them.

That is the same question Spain's government is answering about Ceuta this week. [37][36]

Sinn Fein will join protests against Donald Trump's visit to Ireland this weekend, party leader Mary Lou McDonald said. [38]

Trump is to meet Ireland's president, Catherine Connolly, and prime minister, Micheal Martin, before flying to his golf course at Doonbeg in County Clare to watch the Amgen Irish Open. [38]

Opposition politicians say the Irish government should not roll out the red carpet. [38] McDonald cited Gaza, settler violence in the West Bank and American support for Israel. [38]

McDonald said she would be shocked if there were no protest, and gave Gaza, settler violence in the West Bank and American support for Israel as the reasons. [38]

Trump is meeting Ireland's two most senior office-holders and then going to his own golf course in County Clare. [38]