World, in brief

Fuel running short

Diesel in the United States passed $6.20 a gallon on Sunday, a new record. [9] Saudi Arabia kept its oil pipeline around the Strait of Hormuz shut all weekend after drone strikes. [10] Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in southern Russia and killed two people in an oil town in Tatarstan. [11]

Big powers pushing their partners

US President Donald Trump told Ukraine to stop hitting Russian diesel. [12] His envoy Jared Kushner said the US used Israel's isolation in 2025 to push it into a Gaza deal. [13] Gulf governments are weighing their own talks with Iran after the US reportedly refused to strike Yemen's Houthis for Saudi Arabia. [14]

Ferries failing at sea

A ship carrying 243 people capsized in Indonesia's Java Sea, and 129 are still missing. [15] The death toll from a ferry fire in the Philippines reached 76. [16]

Leaders moving against critics

Israel's culture minister called for two filmmakers to lose their citizenship over a documentary about Gaza. [17] Ukraine's president put sanctions on his own former press secretary, who has criticised him. [18] Israel's ruling Likud party said it will seek to have two Arab parties barred from October's election. [19]

One pressure seen across the day runs through World too.

• Oil and fuel stuck behind the GulfHigh ↑ · seen in 3 beats→

1. 1Sweden's left bloc is projected to win by one seat, and the far right loses votes for the first time
2. 2Oman calls off Monday's Hormuz talks
3. 3A ship is hit off Iran's Qeshm Island
4. 4Saudi oil at Yanbu may last a week
5. 5Trump tells Ukraine to stop hitting Russian diesel

Sweden held a general election on Sunday, and the result is much closer than the polls showed for most of the year. [1][2]

Watch the votes cast abroad, which may not arrive until Wednesday: one seat moving would decide whether Andersson or Kristersson gets to try to form the next government. [2][3]

The first number after a vote or a disaster comes from whatever can be counted fastest, and it keeps moving as slower counts arrive.

Exit polls at 8pm gave the left 51.3% to 46.8%, and the count from most districts then showed a one-seat gap, with votes from abroad still to come.

By Monday six were dead, 108 rescued and 129 missing, so the death toll will stay open until the search for the missing ends.

The toll jumped by 41 to 76 in one day once searchers reached more of the ship, and naming the dead may take months.

One count of a memorial gives 2,300 dead and Ukraine's intelligence gives 3,000, because North Korea has never published its own figure.

The first number is most likely to move when the gap is small or the search is still going.

The numbers on this page are also counts from one Monday morning, and some of them will move.

Oman postponed a meeting set for Monday in Salalah, in southern Oman, where Iran and the Gulf states were to discuss shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. [10]

Oman's foreign minister said it was delayed in the interests of consensus. [20] An Iranian official said some countries in the region had asked for the delay. [9]

Only Iraq had publicly confirmed it would come, and Bahrain had refused. [20]

Iran's foreign minister had already said a deal with Oman would not reopen the strait until the US meets Iran's demands. [9]

Before the war began on 28 February, about a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied gas passed through Hormuz. [21]

Ship crossings fell to single digits a day over the weekend, against a ten-day average of 14. [10]

Also seen in Finance and Money.

Iranian state media said an attack on an Iranian commercial ship off Qeshm Island killed one person. [21]

Qeshm is the largest island in the Persian Gulf and sits on the Strait of Hormuz. [22] Reports differ on the wounded: three, according to AP, and four, according to Reuters. [22][9]

Britain's maritime security agency, UKMTO, separately reported a ship hit by a projectile in the strait, with a severe fire and the crew taken off. [21][9]

It is not clear whether both reports describe the same ship. [22]

Iran now makes ships ask its permission to cross and strikes those that do not, while the US bombs Iran's coast to challenge that control. [10]

The US military said on Saturday its forces had turned back 100 commercial ships in 60 days. [22]

Saudi Arabia kept its 1,200-kilometre East-West pipeline shut all weekend after drone strikes on Friday. [10]

The pipeline had become the main way to move Gulf oil to the Red Sea without passing through Hormuz. [9][14]

Traders and Saudi oil buyers told Reuters that oil stored at the port of Yanbu can keep exports going for only five to seven days if the line stays shut. [9]

After that, up to 4% of the world's oil supply could be at risk. [9] Oil prices jumped when markets opened on Monday. [10]

Shares in Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, fell to their lowest level since March. [23]

Saudi Arabia has not said how badly the pipeline is damaged, and estimates of the repair time range from days to weeks. [9]

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, must stop striking Russian diesel fuel. [12]

He said the attacks were causing a shortage that is hurting the world. [12]

Months of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries have cut Russia's fuel output and led to fuel rationing across Russia. [12][11]

Ukraine says refineries are fair targets, because oil pays for and fuels Russia's invasion. [12][11]

The average US price of diesel, which trucks, trains, ships and farm machines burn, rose above $6.20 a gallon on Sunday. [9][12]

High pump prices are a problem for Trump's Republican Party, which faces midterm elections in just over 50 days. [23]

Trump also said the Iran war should end right after that vote, or maybe before it. [23]

A Russian drone hit the engine of a Ukrainian passenger train bound for Warsaw, near Ukraine's border with Poland, on Sunday. [24][25]

The crew had been warned in advance, and no one was hurt. [24]

Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson and senior European security advisers had passed along the same line shortly before, on their way back from a conference in Kyiv. [25]

Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, said a drone struck 800 metres from the Polish border. [25] Russia said it hit infrastructure that carries military cargo from Europe. [26]

Ukraine's border crossings with Poland carry a large share of the military and humanitarian aid its allies send. [11]

On Tuesday two people died when Russian drones hit a crossing between Ukraine and Moldova. [11]

Russia launched 453 drones at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, and Ukraine's air force said it stopped 409 of them. [27][11]

Drones damaged a block of flats and buildings near a railway station in Stryi, a city in western Ukraine near Poland. [27]

A Russian attack on Odesa, Ukraine's main Black Sea port, injured at least nine people. [11]

Ukrainian drones killed two people in Nizhnekamsk, an oil and chemical centre in Russia's Tatarstan region, local officials said. [11]

Ukraine also said it hit an oil refinery at Slavyansk-on-Kuban in southern Russia. [11][27]

Russia is aiming at Ukraine's electricity before winter, while Ukraine aims mostly at Russia's oil and gas. [27]

The front line has barely moved this year, so both sides are trying to wear down each other's economy instead. [26]

Zelensky said on Saturday he would go to the G20 summit in Miami to meet Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. [27]

The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called that impossible and said Putin would meet Zelensky only in Moscow. [27]

Peskov also said India's Narendra Modi and China's Xi Jinping had both offered to help broker peace. [26]

He said Russia had not ruled out three-way talks with Ukraine and the US in October. [26] Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia would not stop fighting during any talks. [27]

Russia still demands that Ukraine pull out of the eastern Donbas region, which Ukraine says it will never do. [26]

Leaders of countries friendly to Russia, including India and Kazakhstan, have publicly told Putin the war should end. [26]

The head of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company, said Ukrainian strikes on Friday hit trucks bringing diesel to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. [28]

Alexei Likhachev said two Russian soldiers were killed and the strikes landed very close to the plant's edge. [28]

Zaporizhzhia has six reactors and is Europe's largest nuclear plant, and Russian forces have held it since the first weeks of the war. [28]

Diesel generators keep the nuclear fuel in its reactors cool whenever both of its outside power lines are down. [28] Both were down for nearly three weeks in August and September. [28]

Each side regularly accuses the other of raising the risk of a nuclear accident there. [28]

The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, keeps a team at the plant and helped arrange a local ceasefire for repairs last month. [28]

Zelensky put sanctions on Yuliia Mendel, his press secretary from 2019 to 2021, and nine other people on Sunday. [18]

His office accused them of spreading Russian propaganda and supporting Russia's attack on Ukraine. [18] The sanctions last ten years and include freezing their assets. [18]

Mendel has criticised Zelensky's record in interviews since last year, when several people close to him were caught up in corruption scandals. [18]

She said sanctions on Ukrainian citizens break the constitution and target anyone who argues for peace. [18]

Sanctions are an unusual measure against a former staff member, though Ukraine also used them against former president Petro Poroshenko in 2025. [18]

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and envoy, said the US used the global isolation Israel faced after its strike in Doha to push it into the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire. [13]

Israel struck Hamas leaders in Qatar's capital on 9 September 2025. [13] The strike killed a security officer and five lower-ranking Hamas members, but left the leaders largely unhurt. [13]

Kushner called it terrible and unsuccessful, speaking on Friday to the Yalta European Security Conference. [13]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party replied that the strike and Trump's pressure made Hamas release the hostages. [13]

The US pressed Netanyahu to apologise to Qatar's leaders at the time, and the ceasefire followed soon after. [13]

Likud faces an election on 27 October, and Kushner's account gives the credit to US pressure rather than to Netanyahu. [13]

NAZA, a documentary by the Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. [17]

It alleges AI-assisted killing of civilians in Gaza, and its makers say it draws on 24 Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers. [17]

Israel's culture minister, Miki Zohar, accused the makers of treason and said he would act to revoke their citizenship. [17][29]

Israel's army called one whistleblower's claim, that a strike expected to kill 500 civilians was once approved, completely false. [30]

Revoking citizenship is legal in Israel but rarely done, and it needs the interior minister, the justice minister and judges, not the culture minister. [17]

The director says the crew will do everything to show the film across Israel. [31]

Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that Israel will not leave the 700-square-kilometre security zone it holds in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed across the country. [19]

Hezbollah is the Iran-backed armed group and political party in Lebanon. He said the zone runs from the Mediterranean coast to Mount Hermon and includes the Ali Taher ridge. [19]

Israel's army killed Hezbollah fighters and destroyed its tunnels on that ridge. [19] Katz said anyone who approaches it will be destroyed. [19]

Three officials told Reuters this month that Iran warned the US it would respond forcefully to an Israeli offensive on the ridge. [19]

A foreign official said Israel had put off storming it because of US pressure. [19]

Netanyahu's Likud party said on Sunday it will ask for the Joint List and the United Arab List to be disqualified from Israel's election. [19]

Both parties are led by, and mostly voted for by, Israel's Arab citizens.

Likud said there is no place in parliament for parties that harm Israeli soldiers and will not call Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organisations. [19]

Removing a party from the ballot changes who can win seats before anyone has voted.

The election is on 27 October, and The Times of Israel says Likud is fighting an uphill battle to keep power in it. [13]

Young settlers from Tekoa, a settlement in the occupied West Bank, set up a camp over the weekend on land belonging to Majd al-Krum, an Arab town in Israel's Galilee. [32][33]

The Jewish National Fund, which owns a large share of Israel's land, said it leased the field only for grazing. [33]

Footage on Sunday showed tents, furniture and lights, and no animals. [33] Local owners fear the camp will block them from their olive groves at harvest. [33]

Last month Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, launched a plan to expand Jewish settlement into the Galilee and the Negev. [33][32]

Ofer Cassif, a lawmaker from the Arab-majority Hadash party, said the camp copies inside Israel the methods used to push Palestinians off land in the West Bank. [33]

In the West Bank itself, an off-duty Israeli soldier was arrested and suspended after firing towards the village of al-Mughayyir. [19]

An Israeli strike on a car in the Tel al-Hawa district of Gaza City killed two people on Sunday. [34] Palestinian media reported 13 wounded. [19]

Israel's military said the two were Hamas engineers who made weapons in systematic violation of the ceasefire, and named them. [35] Local medics asked the public to help identify the bodies. [34]

Gaza's health officials say more than 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since the ceasefire began, and Israel's army says four of its soldiers have been killed. [34]

The US-backed ceasefire of October 2025 stopped large-scale fighting but not Israeli strikes. [34]

There has been little progress on its next steps, which include Israel pulling out of Gaza and Hamas giving up its weapons. [34]

The New York Times reported on Sunday that a hard-line faction of Iran's Revolutionary Guards attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz in July without telling Iran's senior leaders. [19]

The report cited two members of the Guards and five Iranian officials. [19] On 7 July Iranian forces fired on three commercial ships and set fire to a Qatari gas tanker. [19]

The report said the Guards' commander, Ahmad Vahidi, had not authorised the attack, and that Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was furious. [19]

The attack wrecked efforts by more moderate Iranian officials to end the confrontation with the US. [19]

If the report is right, the people who sign a deal for Iran may not control every unit that can fire on a ship.

Yemen's Houthis, the Iran-backed group that holds northern Yemen, said they fired drones and missiles at a military base in Saudi Arabia's Najran region, without giving evidence. [22]

They have been attacking Saudi ships in the Red Sea since declaring a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in July. [19]

On Monday Saudi civil defence issued, then lifted, danger alerts for four southern cities: Najran, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Abha. [19]

Fighting between the Houthis and Yemen's Saudi-backed government risks a return to civil war after four years of truce. [22]

Regional sources told Reuters that the US's reported refusal to strike the Houthis for Saudi Arabia is making some Gulf governments see talks with Iran as a necessity. [14]

A Gulf source said Saudi Arabia's foreign minister had planned to attend the Oman meeting. [14]

Trump brushed aside a Wall Street Journal report about Chinese help for Iran. [36]

It said Chinese entities gave Iran satellite images of a US base in Jordan before an attack that killed three US soldiers in July. [36]

Trump said China basically does what the US does, and that the US spies on China too. [36]

The US officials quoted by the Journal did not name the Chinese entities or accuse China's government directly. [36]

Xi and Trump are expected to meet in the US on 24 September, though China has not confirmed it. [36]

Reuters said Trump's reply fits recent US efforts to play down tensions with China before that meeting. [36] It comes despite US frustration over China's close ties to Iran. [36]

The BRICS summit in New Delhi ended on Sunday. [37] BRICS is a group of 11 countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and Iran, with about half the world's people. [37]

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced a shared early-warning system for infectious diseases and handed the chair to China. [37]

Iran's president met the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and said they agreed to put the past behind them. [20][23]

Iran has fired missiles and drones at the UAE, a fellow BRICS member, during the war. [38]

A public meeting between the two is rare, because they sit on opposite sides of the Gulf war. [23][38]

The UAE cut economic ties with Iran in August, and still says the war needs a political solution. [23]

Genta Koja, backed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government, won the election for governor of Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture, on Sunday. [39][40]

He took 59% of the vote and beat the two-term governor, Denny Tamaki. [39]

His win ends 12 years of Okinawa governors who tried to shrink the large US military presence there. [39]

Koja accepts moving a US Marines air base from Futenma to Henoko, and his win could end Okinawa's court fight against it. [40][39]

Okinawa is part of a chain of islands that limits China's access to the Western Pacific, and Japan's westernmost island is 110km from Taiwan. [39]

Takaichi is preparing a security strategy expected to speed up Japan's biggest military build-up since the Second World War. [39]

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, South Korea's two biggest chipmakers, turned down a request to pay 25 trillion won ($18.7bn) in advance to the state power company, KEPCO. [41]

KEPCO wanted the money to build power supplies for planned clusters of chip factories. [41]

The companies said the request was difficult to accept after internal reviews, according to a document given to a lawmaker. [41]

A company official said they were unsure chip demand would last long enough to justify paying that much up front. [41]

The dispute is over who pays first for the power supply of chip factories that are still only planned. [41]

The Virgo Transport 8, carrying 243 people from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, capsized in bad weather early on Sunday. [15]

By Monday morning 108 people had been rescued, six were dead and 129 were missing. [15] An official said strong waves hit the ship's side and it leaned over. [15]

More than 600 rescuers and about 12 ships are searching. [15] Last month two Indonesian ferries caught fire, killing five people on one and one person on the other. [15]

Indonesia has about 17,000 islands, and ferries are cheaper and easier to reach than flights, so the country relies on them. [15] The cause is still being investigated. [15]

The death toll from the fire on the ferry MV June Aster, off Palawan in the Philippines, rose to 76 after rescuers recovered 41 more remains. [16]

Thirteen people are still unaccounted for. [16] The ferry was sailing from Manila to Coron, a trip of about 20 hours. [16]

Officials said most of the bodies are charred and identifying them could take weeks or much longer. [16] Survivors told the maritime authority they heard two explosions before the fire. [16]

Investigators have not yet reached the flooded lower decks or the engine room, where the cause may be found. [16]

The Philippines has more than 7,600 islands, and millions of people there rely on ferries and small boats. [16]

Sah, a 30-year-old foreman at the Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower station, reached his village of Tilathi Koiladi, near Nepal's border with India, on Sunday. [42]

He was one of only three people pulled alive from tunnels buried when a Himalayan glacier collapsed and sent a flood down the valleys. [42]

He survived in the dark by drinking floodwater and water seeping from the rock. [42] His family washed his feet in a traditional welcome. [42]

Nepal counts at least 1,386 dead and 5,130 missing, including about 900 power station workers. [42]

Other families in his village still have relatives missing from the hydropower stations. [42]

One family phoned him in hospital to ask whether he had seen their missing relative, and he had not. [42]

A new analysis by environmental groups says wood burned for energy has become a new cause of forest loss in Indonesia, and Japan is the biggest buyer. [43]

Coal power stations can burn wood pellets alongside coal, and Japan uses them to meet its renewable energy goals. [43]

Japan imported a record 8.64 million tons in 2025, and imports from Indonesia rose from 66,460 tons in 2023 to 402,310 tons. [43]

Indonesia has granted at least 45 concessions for this wood, covering more than 750,000 hectares of natural forest. [43]

Japan has stopped subsidies for new large projects, but projects already approved keep them for up to 20 years. [43]

South Korea used to be the biggest buyer, until it cut its own subsidies after criticism over deforestation. [43]

Kosovo's parliament voted in a new government under Prime Minister Albin Kurti on Sunday, with 62 votes in the 120-seat assembly. [44]

Opposition members stayed away, accusing Kurti of breaking post-election rules, and said they will go to the Constitutional Court. [44]

Kosovo has been stuck for more than 18 months, through elections in February 2025, December 2025 and June this year. [44]

Electing a president needs at least 80 lawmakers present, which Kurti does not have. [44]

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and both have been told to mend relations to move towards joining the EU. [44]