World, in brief

Sanctions used for bargaining

The US lifted sanctions on two Belarusian companies, and Belarus freed 25 prisoners the same day. [6] France asked the European Union to lift sanctions on a Russian billionaire after pressure from Azerbaijan, diplomats say. [7] Trump has held back a $14bn arms package for Taiwan and called it a negotiating chip. [8]

Saudi Arabia under attack

Saudi Arabia says it shot down a drone from Yemen's Houthis heading for Mecca, Islam's holiest city. [9] Officials say it is running low on missiles to shoot down attacks and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for help. [10] Only 21 ships passed the Red Sea's southern strait on Monday, against 47 a day in mid-July. [11]

Civilians killed away from any front

A Russian drone killed five people on a bus near Nikopol in southern Ukraine. [12] An Israeli drone strike in Gaza City killed a 15-year-old boy who ran to help a wounded paramedic. [13] At least 67 people died when a gold mine collapsed in Sudan, in an area with no rescue teams. [14]

Close votes deciding governments

Sweden's centre-left won the election by one seat, 175 to 174, with 99% of votes counted. [15] A new poll puts Netanyahu's side on 54 seats and his rivals on 52 before Israel votes on 27 October. [16][17] Germany's governing party faces two state elections on Sunday. [18]

One pressure seen across the day runs through World too.

• Fighting in the Gulf keeping fuel dearHigh ↑ · seen in 3 beats→

1. 1US Congress passes a Russia sanctions bill that lets Trump put 100% tariffs on India and China
2. 2Saudi Arabia says a drone was aimed at Mecca
3. 3Arms experts find new Houthi weapons
4. 4A war-damaged Gaza building collapses, killing 21
5. 5Israeli strike kills a boy helping a paramedic

Watch whether Trump signs the bill and uses the tariff power before meeting Xi on 24 September, or holds it back during trade talks with India. [4][8]

Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it shot down a drone fired by Yemen's Houthis towards Mecca, Islam's holiest city. [9] The Houthis, an armed group backed by Iran, denied it. [9]

Two regional officials say Saudi Arabia is running low on interceptors, the missiles that shoot down attacks. It has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for air defences. [10]

US officials met the Houthis in Oman at the weekend, several sources say. [19][10]

Turkey and Pakistan have a new defence pact with Saudi Arabia, but their officials say Saudi Arabia has not asked them for help. [10]

The US, its main arms supplier, is short of interceptors after six months of war with Iran. [10]

Also seen in Finance and Climate.

Conflict Armament Research, a British group that traces weapons, says the Houthis are testing loitering torpedoes, which no other armed group is known to have. [20]

Iran still ships them whole weapons and kits, but the group now does some research of its own. [20]

The Houthis took Yemen's whole Red Sea coast last week, and more than 125,000 people fled their homes. [20]

Only 21 ships passed the strait at the Red Sea's southern end on Monday, against about 47 a day in mid-July. [11]

Fewer ships in the Red Sea means less money for Egypt. The Suez Canal, at the sea's northern end, is one of its biggest sources of income. [11]

A damaged block of flats fell down in Gaza, killing at least 21 Palestinians. [21][22] One survivor, Hayat, lost nine relatives, including both parents. [21]

Her family had moved into a badly damaged third-floor flat about two months ago to get out of a tent. [21]

Rescue workers said they began digging with bare hands, because Israel limits what equipment can enter Gaza. They later borrowed heavy machines. [22]

Many families in Gaza still live in tents, because Israel restricts rebuilding. That pushes people into buildings that were hit during the war. [21]

An Israeli drone hit a group of Palestinians in the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City on Tuesday and wounded a paramedic. [13]

When people ran to help him, a second strike hit the same place. [13] It killed Mohammad Abdul Zinati, 15, who was walking home from school. [13]

Israel said it was targeting Hamas members. Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians across Gaza that day, including two children. [13][22]

The strikes came almost a year into a ceasefire that the US helped agree in October 2025. [13] Deaths in Gaza have not stopped under it. [22]

A Russian drone hit a bus near Nikopol in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, killing five people and wounding seven. [12][23]

Drones also struck a passenger train in the Mykolaiv region, where all 168 people on board got off safely, and a locomotive in Kovel near Poland. [23]

Ukraine's state rail company says Russia has attacked 1,700 railway sites this year, up from 1,206 in 2025. [23]

Ukraine's airspace has been closed since 2022, so buses and trains are how most people and goods get around. [23]

Ukraine's foreign minister says more than 500 locomotives have been damaged or destroyed. [12]

Mine shafts caved in at the al-Zaraa gold mine near al-Nuhud in West Kordofan, Sudan, on Tuesday. [24]

At least 67 people died, a medical group and survivors said, and Al Jazeera reported at least 70. [14][24]

No trained rescue teams came, and miners dug through loose sand with hand tools. [24]

The area is held by the Rapid Support Forces, the armed group fighting Sudan's army since April 2023. [14][24]

Smuggled gold is one of the main ways the Rapid Support Forces pay for their war. [24] The miners who dig it work with almost no safety rules. [24]

Antonio Guterres, the head of the UN, said countries that send weapons into Sudan's war should be held accountable. [25] He did not name them. [25]

A UN fact-finding team said this month that foreign weapons, drones and fighters are keeping the war going. [25]

At a UN meeting, Liberia's ambassador said an air attack on 30 August destroyed two marked food trucks near Dilling carrying 50 tonnes of food. [26]

The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes. [25]

Liberia said the attack on the food trucks was the eighth on the UN's food agency in Sudan this year. [26]

Trump hosts China's leader Xi Jinping on 24 September. [8] Officials in Japan and Taiwan fear he may soften US support for Taiwan to win a trade deal. [8]

China claims Taiwan, which governs itself, and has never ruled out force to take it. [8] A $14bn US arms package for Taiwan has waited for Trump's approval for months. [8]

China's foreign minister also backed Iran on Wednesday, and warned the fighting must not spread further into Yemen. [27]

Japan's biggest fear, two of its ruling-party lawmakers say, is Trump trading softer words on Taiwan for Chinese promises to buy US goods before the US midterm elections. [8]

A government that blocks something another country wants can later offer to lift the block, so the block becomes something to bargain with.

The US sanctions were about jailing critics and helping Russia's war, and the US lifted them from two companies in return for 25 prisoners.

Diplomats say Azerbaijan holds two French citizens, and France then asked the EU to lift sanctions on a man Azerbaijan wants freed from them.

Myanmar's leader has been kept out of his neighbours' meetings since 2021, and Malaysia now offers him a visit if Myanmar takes back 5,000 Rohingya.

Trump has held a $14bn arms package for Taiwan since May and called it a negotiating chip before he meets Xi.

None of them sets the price, and most will learn it only after the deal is done.

Belarus agreed to free 25 prisoners, John Coale, the US envoy for Belarus, said on Wednesday. [6] In return, the US lifts sanctions on two Belarusian companies, Lakokraska and Bellesbumprom. [6]

Belarus's leader Alexander Lukashenko has ruled for more than 30 years. Western countries sanctioned Belarus for jailing critics and for letting Russia invade Ukraine from its land. [6]

Coale says more releases will follow. [6]

Lukashenko has freed hundreds of political prisoners in US-brokered deals since Trump returned to office. [6] Each deal has also removed some US sanctions. [6]

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, offered Canada a new status of associate member of the European Union on Wednesday. [28][29]

Canada's prime minister Mark Carney came to hear the speech, though he had said Canada wants an alliance, not membership. [28] She did not say what the status would mean. [29]

A similar idea for Ukraine faded in May after EU governments pushed back. [29][28]

A poll found 49% of Canadians would back EU membership, after US tariffs and Trump's talk of taking over Canada. [29]

In the same speech, von der Leyen asked for an EU system to respond to drone incursions, sabotage and cyberattacks. [30]

Any member country could call all the others together, like Article 4 of NATO's treaty, which lets threatened allies call emergency talks. [30]

Germany, Denmark and Poland have accused Russia of drone flights, arson and sabotage. [30] This week NATO jets shot down a drone over Lithuania for the first time. [30]

European governments have no agreed answer to attacks that fall short of war. This plan is an attempt to give them one. [30]

Sweden's centre-left opposition won the election that took place on Sunday, the public broadcaster SVT said on Wednesday. [15]

With 99% counted, it was set for 175 of 349 seats, against 174 for the right-wing government, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats. [15] Only 26,169 votes separated the two sides. [15]

Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats is likely to be prime minister, but must win a vote in parliament, not before 29 September. [31]

Andersson's party and the Greens together have 121 seats. She still needs two partners that disagree with each other. [31]

Germany's chancellor Friedrich Merz has led the country for 16 months and is deeply unpopular. [18]

On 6 September the far-right AfD won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, against 17.2% for his Christian Democrats. [32] On Sunday two more states vote, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. [18]

Eight state premiers from his party wrote in his support, and Merz dropped a trip to the UN next week. [32][18]

His party could fall below 5% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. That would leave it with no seats in a state parliament for the first time. [18]

Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the US House foreign affairs committee, said he will block a $2.8bn sale of heavy bombs to Israel. [33]

The package includes 40,000 bombs weighing 2,000 pounds each. [33] He says the Trump government has not shown they will be used within US law in Gaza and Lebanon. [33]

Secretary of State Marco Rubio can skip the review by declaring an emergency, as he did last year. [33]

Most of the $2.8bn would be paid from US military aid to Israel. [34] That means US taxpayers would pay for most of the bombs. [34]

Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Wednesday two bills aimed at people who defame Israeli soldiers. [17]

One would take away their citizenship, and the other would raise defamation damages twentyfold. [17] He named NAZA, a documentary about the Gaza war by two Israeli filmmakers. [17]

Israel's Supreme Court allowed citizenship to be removed for breach of trust in 2022, and a new law would likely be challenged in court. [17]

Israel votes on 27 October, and polls show Netanyahu's coalition could lose. [17] He has accused rivals of being too soft on the film. [17]

A Channel 13 poll published on Wednesday gives the parties backing Netanyahu 54 of the 120 seats in Israel's parliament. [16]

The bloc led by the former army chief Gadi Eisenkot gets 52. [16] Eisenkot's Yashar party is the largest single party on 22 seats.

Netanyahu's Likud drops to 18, its lowest in months. [16] The poll asked 886 people and has a margin of error of 3.3%. [16]

Neither side reaches 61, the number needed to govern. Arab parties, on 14 seats, sit outside both blocs. [16]

The US State Department extended its ban on visas for Palestinian Authority officials. [35]

That stops the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas from going to the UN General Assembly in New York next week, for the second year running. [35]

The US accuses the Palestinian Authority of seeking statehood outside talks with Israel and of going to international courts. [35] Its regular UN staff can keep working. [35]

Abbas had planned to push for recognition of a Palestinian state, after Britain, France and Canada recognised one this month. [35] No Israeli officials face a similar ban. [35]

About 6,000 people still live in Rmeich, a mostly Christian town inside the zone Israel has held in southern Lebanon since its war with Hezbollah began in March. [36]

UN peacekeepers from UNIFIL escort food convoys to it, but their mission ends at the end of this year. [36]

Convoys were cancelled last week, and fresh food and fuel are running low. [36] An Israeli official said UNIFIL's role is not vital. [36]

This year's war has killed more than 4,300 people in Lebanon and left 300,000 still displaced. [36]

Without the peacekeepers, the town's only link to the rest of Lebanon runs through Israeli checkpoints. [36]

A Pakistani navy ship collided with an Indian warship in the north Arabian Sea on Tuesday, India says. [37] There was no major damage. [37]

India called in Pakistan's top diplomat and said the ship broke a 1991 agreement to keep warships three nautical miles apart. [37][38] Pakistan's government did not comment. [38]

It is the first open military incident between the two nuclear-armed neighbours since their four-day conflict last year. [37]

Both countries claim all of Kashmir, and they have fought three wars since 1947. [38]

Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, appeared in person at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Wednesday. [39]

He is accused over killings in his war on drugs, when police say 6,200 suspects died and rights groups say up to 30,000. [40]

His lawyers say memory loss makes him unfit for trial. [39] Judges have ordered a medical check, and the trial is set for 30 November. [39]

Families of people killed in the drug war watched in Manila. Llore Pasco, who lost two sons, said the families were happy he had finally appeared. [39]

Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine's drone forces, says his troops killed the Russian general Grunis on 12 September. [41]

A Russian commander, Apti Alaudinov, said Grunis had died but gave no details. [41]

In July, Grunis told President Vladimir Putin on television that his brigade had helped capture Kostiantynivka, a city Ukraine says it still holds. [41]

Brovdi says Grunis is the seventh Russian commander his forces have killed. [41]

Russia wants all of Ukraine's Donbas region, and that is its main demand in stalled peace talks. Kostiantynivka is one of the cities in that fight. [41]

Russia is electing the 450 members of its lower house of parliament, the Duma, for the first time since the full invasion of Ukraine. [42]

Nearly 200 war veterans are standing, officials say. [42] Yabloko, the only registered anti-war party, was removed from the ballot by Russia's Supreme Court in July. [42]

Some of its candidates who still run as individuals have been detained. [42]

Every party in the last Duma voted for 170 laws supporting the war, the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said. [42] So the vote is unlikely to change Russia's war policy. [42]

France has joined Slovakia in asking the European Union to lift sanctions on Alisher Usmanov, a Russian metals billionaire, EU diplomats say. [7]

He was sanctioned after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. [7] Diplomats say France told them privately that Azerbaijan is using Usmanov to pressure it over two French citizens held there. [7]

Azerbaijan has jailed one of them for spying. [7]

Ties between France and Azerbaijan have been poor since Azerbaijan took back the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2023. [7] Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also asked for Usmanov's sanctions to go. [7]

South Korea delayed announcing how it will invest $350bn in US industry, its foreign minister Cho Hyun said on Thursday. [43]

The pledge was its side of a deal last year that cut US tariffs on Korean goods to 15%. [43] $150bn is set aside for shipbuilding. [43]

Cho meets US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday, and a signing could come on 23 September. [43]

Delays in carrying out the deal led Trump to threaten South Korea with higher tariffs earlier this year. [43]

Malaysia's prime minister Anwar Ibrahim will invite Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar's leader, on an official visit if Myanmar takes back Rohingya refugees. [44]

Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a 2021 coup and became president in April after an army-run election. [44] Anwar says 5,000 Rohingya will return first. [44]

ASEAN, the group of Southeast Asian countries, has barred Myanmar's leaders from its summits since 2021. [44]

Myanmar's civil war has killed an estimated 100,000 people, and the army is accused of atrocities. [44] Anwar says Malaysia still does not recognise the new government. [44]

Indonesia's president Prabowo Subianto removed his finance minister Purbaya after a fight with the head of customs, three sources say. [45]

The row was over moving hundreds of officials in the tax and customs offices. [45] The customs chief served with Prabowo in the special forces and can see him directly. [45]

He denies there was a conflict. [45]

Investors welcomed the change for Indonesia's $1.5 trillion economy. [45] Analysts say it shows how Prabowo's trusted former soldiers can overrule experts. [45]

Japan's prime minister Sanae Takaichi is reshuffling her cabinet on Thursday, her first change since taking office last October. [46] She is expected to keep Satsuki Katayama as finance minister. [46]

Japan's 10-year borrowing costs hit their highest in three decades this week. [46] Japan's public debt is twice the size of its economy, the largest among rich countries. [46]

Analysts say lenders will welcome keeping Katayama, because they worry about Takaichi's big spending plans. She is also expected to keep a minister who wants more spending. [46]

A UN fact-finding team said Venezuela's system of repression is largely intact, eight months after the US seized President Nicolas Maduro. [47]

It said political detentions have fallen, and interim President Delcy Rodriguez closed El Helicoide, a notorious jail. [47] But hundreds are still held for political reasons, the team says.

It recorded claims of beatings and electric shocks in two prisons. [47] It also called the US operation a breach of international law. [47]

Officials linked to past abuses still hold key posts. [47] The report asks Venezuela's government to free political prisoners and break up its armed civilian groups. [47]

Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's opposition leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, plans to return home but has set no date, four opposition sources say. [48]

US officials privately asked her to delay after Venezuela's earthquakes in June. [48] US-backed talks on Venezuela's political future do not include her movement. [48]

Her approval rating fell to 53% in August from 72% in July. [48]

An analyst says the US worries she could upset its plans by rallying people to push out Maduro-era officials. [48] Trump has praised the interim president instead. [48]

Continental Resources, an Oklahoma oil company, signed a first agreement with Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA on Wednesday. [49][50]

ExxonMobil is in talks to return to the Orinoco Belt, a huge heavy-oil region, sources say. [49] Exxon left nearly 20 years ago after Hugo Chavez's government took over its projects. [49]

A US-backed $100bn plan is meant to rebuild Venezuela's oil industry. [50]

Continental is one of several companies that talked to the Trump government about investing after US forces removed Maduro in January. [50]

ConocoPhillips is holding back until it gets money it is owed, sources say. [49]

A federal judge in Tierra del Fuego ordered work stopped on Sea Lion, an oil project off the Falkland Islands. [51]

Argentina claims the islands, which Britain holds, and the two fought a war over them in 1982. [51] The companies, Israel's Navitas Petroleum and Britain's Rockhopper, say they will carry on. [51]

The judge admitted enforcement depends on them. [51]

Britain says Argentine law does not apply on the islands. [51] Trump has hinted the US could drop its neutral stance, because Britain did not back his war on Iran. [51]

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa bans on people he says take part in discrimination against white South Africans. [52][53] He named no one. [52]

South Africa's government calls the claims baseless. [52] The dispute centres on a 2025 law that lets the state take land without paying in rare cases.

In most cases the state must first try to reach a deal with the owner. [53]

The US has already cut aid, expelled South Africa's ambassador and offered refuge to Afrikaners, white descendants of Dutch and French settlers. [53]

More than 1,000 children have died in a measles outbreak in Bangladesh, and about 1,000 new suspected cases still arrive every day. [54]