World, in brief

Oil and gas running short

Saudi Arabia's oil exports are down more than 70% since January. [12] Bangladesh, which makes 40% of its power from imported gas, has blackouts and idle factories. [13] Europe's gas stores are 69% full, against 85% in a normal year. [14]

Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia

Debris from a Houthi drone killed a man in Taif, in western Saudi Arabia. [15] Houthi fighters, an armed group that holds much of Yemen, shot down a Saudi F-15 jet. [16] Italy told its navy to get ready to guard its ships near Yemen. [17]

Russian drones near NATO borders

Poland sent air raid warnings to two eastern provinces as Russia struck just across the border. [18] Poland's prime minister says intelligence services see Russian plans to hit NATO countries. [19] Russia fired nearly 160 drones at Ukraine in one night. [20]

People held without charge

Trinidad and Tobago still holds 2,250 people arrested under emergency rules who have never been charged. [21] A 21-year-old Palestinian held without trial died in an Israeli prison. [22] UN investigators say Iran jailed and tortured protesters. [1]

One pressure seen across the day runs through World too.

• Drones and war cutting the supply of fuelHigh ↑ · seen in 4 beats→

1. 1UN investigators find a likely US war crime at an Iranian school, and crimes against humanity by Iran's rulers
2. 2China quietly presses Iran over the Houthis
3. 3Houthi drone kills first civilian in Saudi Arabia
4. 4Saudi oil exports down by 70%
5. 5Italy readies its navy for the Red Sea

A UN fact-finding mission on Iran said on Thursday it has reasonable grounds to believe two US strikes were war crimes. [1][2]

Watch Monday's Human Rights Council session, and whether the US military publishes anything on Minab before Iran's president speaks at the UN on Wednesday. [6][10]

China has privately asked Iran to use its sway over Yemen's Houthis to stop the fighting spreading, after Saudi Arabia appealed for help, three Iranian sources told Reuters. [24]

The Houthis are an armed movement that holds much of Yemen, and Iran arms and funds them. [24]

China buys more than 80% of the oil Iran sells by sea, about 1.4 million barrels a day in 2025. [24]

Iran replied that calm in the region depends on ending the US-Israeli war on it. [24]

The Strait of Hormuz is already mostly shut, so Houthi attacks in the Red Sea would block the Middle East's other main oil route too.

China depends on both routes, and it is one of the few countries Iran still listens to. [24]

Debris from a Houthi drone shot down over Taif, in western Saudi Arabia, killed a Yemeni man living there and injured two others, Saudi civil defence said on Thursday. [15]

It is the first civilian death since the Houthis stepped up attacks on the kingdom. [15]

BBC Verify, the broadcaster's fact-checking team, matched Houthi videos to a crash site about 40km west of Marib, in Yemen. [16] Experts identified the wreck as a Saudi F-15 Strike Eagle. [16]

Saudi Arabia has avoided a full air war against the Houthis, fearing more attacks on its oil sites. [15]

Losing a jet makes the air support that Saudi-backed forces in Yemen rely on more costly. [16]

Saudi Arabia loaded about 2.1 million barrels of crude a day in early September, against more than 7.5 million in January. [12]

Satellite images show three pumping stations on its East-West pipeline were damaged in last week's drone attack, one more than first thought. [25]

The pipeline carried 4 to 5 million barrels a day to the Red Sea while Hormuz was shut, and repairs may take five to six weeks. [25]

Saudi Arabia is now offering oil through ship-to-ship transfers off Sohar, a port in Oman. [26]

Brent, the main world oil price, still fell 1% to about $104 a barrel on Friday, as traders bet the damage will be short-lived. [26]

Asian buyers take most Saudi oil, so they feel any gap first. [12]

Also seen in Climate, Food and Money.

Italy's defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said on Thursday he has told the navy to prepare to protect Italian ships passing the Bab el-Mandeb. [17]

The Houthis have seized parts of Yemen's coast that overlook this strait, the narrow southern entrance to the Red Sea. [17] Crosetto did not say which ships might go, or when. [17]

He said delays would push up transport costs and prices for families. [17]

Saudi oil that is rerouted around the closed Strait of Hormuz now has to pass the coast the Houthis hold. [17]

Crosetto also warned that undersea data cables and energy links are exposed. [17]

Asian prices for shipped gas are back near $30 a unit this week, up from about $10 before the war, because both Hormuz and the Red Sea are disrupted. [13]

Bangladesh gets more than 40% of its electricity from imported gas, and it now has blackouts and factory stoppages. [13]

A survey found 55% of knitwear factories had orders cut or cancelled since late August. [13]

Pakistan started a fuel subsidy on Wednesday, but people say signing up for it is hard. [13]

Clothes are Bangladesh's biggest export, so the power cuts reach factory jobs and foreign buyers. [13] Countries with little spare money feel the shortage hardest. [13]

Europe's gas stores are 69% full, against an average of 85% at this time of year over the last five years, the industry group Gas Infrastructure Europe says. [14]

Germany and the Netherlands, which hold 35% of the storage space, are furthest behind. [14]

Companies held off buying because they bet the Iran war would end fast and prices would fall. [14]

Diesel costs 38% more across the EU than a year ago, and petrol 24% more. [14]

Europe heats its homes from those stores in winter. [14] Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is weighing costly fuel help ahead of state elections this weekend. [14]

More than 30 governments have passed policies to use less fossil fuel or save energy since the Iran war began in February, AP reports. [27]

But global greenhouse gas emissions rose slightly. [27] Money spent on new wind and solar fell in the first half of 2026, mostly because of a drop in China. [27]

Solar spending grew in the US, Europe and India, which feel oil and gas prices more. [27]

Britain is installing more solar panels while it also considers more gas drilling. [27]

Indonesia is replacing some diesel power plants with solar while it doubles down on coal for heavy industry. [27]

Chile's energy ministry has drafted a plan to mix 10% ethanol, a fuel made from crops, into petrol, documents seen by Reuters show. [28]

Chile is one of Latin America's biggest oil importers, buying about 181,000 barrels of crude a day in 2025. [28]

Brent, the main world oil price, has risen from about $73 before the war to over $105. [28] The change could save Chile's government about $107 million a year. [28]

Chile already buys most of its ethanol from Argentina and Bolivia, so the plan would move more of its fuel spending inside South America. [28]

Russia and China vetoed a US plan on Thursday to keep a UN expert panel checking whether countries obey sanctions on Iran. [29]

The vote was 11 in favour and 2 against, with Somalia and Pakistan abstaining. [29] The sanctions came back in September 2025 under a clause in the 2015 nuclear deal.

They freeze Iran's money abroad and ban arms sales to it. [29] The same day, the US punished two firms it says help Iran dodge sanctions using digital money. [29]

The sanctions stay in force, but the UN's own experts can no longer report on who breaks them. [29] Iran's UN mission thanked Russia and China for the veto. [29]

President Donald Trump said he faces a big decision on whether to resume large-scale attacks on Iran, in a phone interview with the reporter Barak Ravid. [30]

He said he will first meet the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman at the UN on Tuesday. [30]

Fighting between Israel and Iran has mostly stopped since early April, but US-Iran clashes keep flaring. [30]

A US official said the current military set-up is hard to keep going for long. [30]

The Gulf states have taken most of Iran's revenge attacks, so what they tell Trump shapes whether the war restarts. [30]

He has not said whether he will decide before the US midterm elections in November. [30]

Russia fired ballistic and cruise missiles and nearly 160 drones at Ukraine overnight into Thursday, Ukraine's air force said. [20]

In Kyiv at least 16 people were hurt, among them a 10-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy, and seven more in Odesa. [31]

Russia said it hit arms factories and three cargo ships at the port of Chornomorsk. [31]

Ukraine said it struck the Yaroslavl oil refinery and an airfield in Rostov, both in Russia. [31]

Ukraine is running low on the US-made interceptors it needs to stop ballistic missiles. [20] The attack came hours after the US Congress passed its new Russia sanctions bill. [20]

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, said intelligence now points to Russian plans for drone and missile strikes on countries that back Ukraine, Poland included. [19]

He said they would be made to look like accidents. [19] He said Russia is also rolling out fast jet-powered drones that few armies can stop. [19]

On Thursday Poland scrambled jets and sent air raid warnings to two eastern provinces as Russia hit western Ukraine near the border. [18]

Tusk said four attacks hit Poland's border crossings with Ukraine in the past week, and those crossings carry supplies into Ukraine. [32]

He announced an overnight trip to Ukraine to discuss defence against the new drones. [32]

Five Ukrainian and Western defence officials told Reuters that the war in Ukraine moves so fast that some NATO weapons and tactics risk going out of date. [33]

Ukraine changes its methods in weeks, while NATO buys new systems over years. [33]

The co-owner of Fire Point, a Ukrainian missile and drone maker, said a drone costing about $5,000 can now destroy a tank. [33] Europe still spends heavily on tanks. [33]

The US Defense Department is reviewing how many US troops stay in Europe, so European armies may soon have to fight with less American help. [33]

Russia, India and China all rejected the US sanctions bill the day after Congress passed it. [34]

The bill would let President Trump put 100% sanctions on the biggest buyers of Russian fuel. [34] Since 2022 China has bought 50% of Russia's crude exports and India 37%. [34]

India warned the measures could damage its ties with the US. [35] The Kremlin, Russia's presidency, said new sanctions would make a peace deal in Ukraine harder. [36]

An expert at RUSI, a London defence research group, said Ukraine's gain for now is political, not economic. [36] Much depends on how hard the US actually enforces the bill. [36]

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the US Senate's foreign relations committee, says US ambassadors are shut out of a Pentagon review of US troops in Europe. [37]

US defence officials are considering pulling out about 25,000 of the roughly 80,000 US troops there. [37]

Separately, senators from both parties said Elbridge Colby, the US Defense Department's top policy official, skipped a required update on defence strategy on Thursday. [38]

Senators also asked about fears of troops at polling places in November. Colby said discussions about deploying the National Guard were taking place. [38]

A State Department official said diplomats are being consulted. [37] European allies facing Russian drones must wait for a review due to finish by the end of the year. [37]

Ulf Kristersson resigned as Sweden's prime minister on Thursday after the final count confirmed his right-wing bloc had lost. [39] The centre-left won by about 42,500 votes and two seats. [40]

The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party with roots in the neo-Nazi fringe, lost votes for the first time since entering parliament in 2010. [39]

Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democrats' leader, is expected to become prime minister again. [41]

Forming her government could take weeks: it took 37 days in 2022 and 134 in 2018. [41]

One possible partner, the Centre Party, will not join a coalition that includes the Left Party. [39]

Mark Carney, Canada's prime minister, told the European Parliament he welcomes closer ties, but stopped short of backing an 'associate member' status for Canada. [42]

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the EU's executive, floated that status, though it does not exist and EU governments were not asked first. [42]

Carney said Canada's parliament will vote on any deal. [42] President Trump said he might answer with serious tariffs. [42]

Detailed talks start at a Canada-EU summit in Montreal at the end of October. [42] Canada sees the EU as the easiest way to deepen trade it already has. [42]

John Healey, Britain's finance minister, will ask EU finance ministers in Dublin on Friday not to shut British firms out of the EU's 'Made in Europe' plan. [43]

That plan, still being written, would favour goods made inside the EU to protect factories from cheap Chinese competition. [43]

Talks for Britain to join an EU defence loans scheme collapsed last year over how much it would pay. [43]

British firms sell parts into European supply chains and could lose that business if the rules keep them out. [43]

Michael Healy-Rae, 59, one of Ireland's best-known independent lawmakers, was attacked in central Dublin on Wednesday and needed stitches to his face. [44] Police arrested a man in his 50s. [44]

Prime Minister Micheal Martin called it an attack on democracy and said hostility towards politicians is growing. [44]

Attacks on Irish politicians are rare, but lawmakers report more intimidation in recent years. [44]

Martin said Irish ministers, himself included, can still walk the streets freely. [44] Police have not ruled out that Healy-Rae was targeted because he is a public figure. [44]

Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic, opened a factory that will assemble combat drones designed in Israel. [45] It will employ about 100 people and build drones for Serbia's army and other countries. [45]

A regional news service reported in April that it would be run with Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms maker. [45] Vucic said at least three more such factories will follow. [45]

Vucic faces an early election on 25 October after nearly two years of protests against his rule. [45]

Serbia also buys arms from China and Russia while it seeks to join the EU. [45]

Tom Tugendhat, foreign affairs spokesman for Britain's opposition Conservatives, told Donald Trump 'don't be silly' about the Falkland Islands and Ireland. [46]

Trump said US policy on the Falklands is under review and hinted he would not help Britain in a future conflict with Argentina. [46]

He also said on a visit to Ireland that Irish unification would happen eventually. [46] Britain won a war with Argentina over the islands four decades ago. [46]

Argentina's president said this month that the winds of change favour his country's claim to the islands. [46]

Israel's High Court ruled unanimously on Thursday night that party agents at polling stations may not track who has voted. [47]

It overturned a decision by the Central Elections Committee earlier this month. [47] Likud, the prime minister's party, and the ultra-Orthodox parties have used such lists to push turnout. [47]

Justice Minister Yariv Levin accused the court of trying to swing the coming election. [47]

The court said the practice has no legal basis and breaks Israel's privacy law. [47] Likud's lawyers told the court the ban would badly hurt their election-day work. [47]

Israel's army discharged the officer who was the Gaza Division's intelligence chief on 7 October 2023, citing his failures before Hamas's attack. [48] Known only as Lt.

Col. A., he had already lost his command last year. [48]

Separately, the army said strikes in northern Gaza on Monday and Tuesday killed two members of Hamas's elite Nukhba force. [49]

It said one of them attacked the Erez crossing on 7 October. [49]

The army said both men were planning new attacks, which it calls a breach of the ceasefire. [49]

Moataz al-Atrash, 21, from the West Bank, died in Israel's Ofer Prison after being held without trial since late last year, Palestinian prisoner groups said. [22]

They say 92 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since the war began. [22]

On Thursday four rights groups asked Israel's High Court to enforce its June ruling that Red Cross visits to Palestinian security prisoners must restart. [50]

The visits stopped after 7 October 2023 and have not resumed. [50]

The court found in June that the ban had no basis in Israeli or international law. [50] Relatives say al-Atrash had no health problems before his arrest. [22]

An emergency takes a day to declare, but ending one means an official saying the danger is over and taking the blame if it returns.

The emergency was renewed several times from December 2024 and ran for about 16 of 20 months.

It ended only after killings fell and anger grew over 2,250 people held without charge.

Parliament renewed it a day before it expired. The reason given was police warnings that blockades might return, not any new blockade.

Israel stopped Red Cross prison visits after 7 October 2023 as a wartime step, and a court ruling in June has still not restarted them.

Most of us hear that an emergency was extended and never ask what it lets a government do.

The Board of Peace, the body Trump set up to oversee his plan for Gaza, will brief dozens of countries at the UN on 23 September. [51]

Its invitation promises an update on the plan for Hamas to give up its weapons. [51]

In Gaza, rescuers ended their search at a bomb-damaged building that collapsed this week, with 21 dead and 45 pulled out alive. [52]

Nearly a year after the ceasefire, rebuilding has not begun. [52]

More than 2 million people live squeezed into a third of Gaza, mostly in tents or damaged buildings. [52]

An Israeli man jailed in Iraq for 11 years has been released and is expected home soon, a former Israeli foreign ministry official who worked on his case said. [53]

He was convicted of killing a taxi driver and sentenced to death. [53]

An Iraqi court cut the sentence after evidence showed he acted in self-defence, and after a reconciliation with the driver's family. [53]

His release rested on evidence of self-defence and on the dead man's family agreeing to reconcile, not on a deal between governments.

Pakistan told the UN Security Council it will act 'in self-defence, as and when needed' against armed groups based in Afghanistan. [54]

Its envoy said more than 4,700 Pakistanis were killed by such attacks in three years. [54]

He named the Pakistani Taliban, the Baloch Liberation Army and the local branch of Islamic State. [54] A UN report says armed groups remain in Afghanistan. [54]

Pakistan says Afghanistan's Taliban government has taken no real action against these groups. [54] Its envoy said any response would follow international law, and blamed outside backers of the armed groups. [54]

Pakistan's Supreme Court suspended the 17-year prison sentences of rights lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, and ordered them freed on bail. [55]

Both were convicted in January over social media posts the court called anti-state. [55] Mazari is a critic of Pakistan's powerful military and has defended minorities and journalists. [55]

A lower court is due to rule on their appeal within weeks. [55]

The couple say they were punished for speaking out about activists who disappeared. [55] Rights monitors had questioned whether their trial was fair. [55]

Pakistan's finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, said Pakistan has used all of a 30 billion yuan credit line from China and will ask for more when it is renewed in 2027. [56]

He expects a US answer within two months on a $10 billion facility to steady Pakistan's currency. [56]

Pakistan relies on China, the Gulf states and international lenders to repay its debts. [56]

Loans from a US export bank could help Pakistan's newly privatised national airline buy Boeing planes. [56]

When Japan's finance minister, Satsuki Katayama, asked the US Treasury in June to help prop up the falling yen, Scott Bessent set conditions, sources told Reuters. [57]

He wanted Japan to cut its big spending and its central bank to raise interest rates. [57] The two countries then bought yen together in late July. [57]

Katayama later told G20 finance ministers that Japan would avoid tax cuts paid for with debt. [57]

Bessent worried a sell-off in Japanese government debt could spread to US debt. [57] Japan's leaders worried a weak yen would raise prices and cost Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi votes. [57]

China and the US are discussing steps to improve contact between their militaries, to be announced when Xi Jinping, China's president, visits Washington next week, sources told the South China Morning Post. [58]

One option is restarting arms-control talks that China suspended in 2024 over US arms sales to Taiwan. [58]

China's foreign minister Wang Yi called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday to settle final plans. [58]

Trump and Xi are due to meet on 24 September. [59] Wang told Rubio both sides should manage their differences and respect each other's core interests. [58]

Delegates at the Xiangshan Forum, China's main defence conference, warned that AI is shrinking the time governments have to decide in a crisis. [60]

About 2,000 officers, diplomats and academics from 100 countries attended. [60]

Separately, US and Chinese experts proposed red lines around nuclear weapons, human control over major cyberattacks and a hotline for AI accidents. [59]

They warned an AI fault in a nuclear command system could leave each side minutes to decide whether the other attacked. [59]

China and the US are still divided on controlling AI in weapons. [60] The experts' ideas were published ahead of planned government AI talks. [59]