World, in brief

Air defences running short

Regional officials say Saudi Arabia is low on missile interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for help. [8] Poland switched its ground-based air defences to readiness and flew patrols on Saturday. [14] Russia says it shot down 249 drones over the Moscow region in one night. [13]

Fuel bills climbing

Germany is cutting fuel tax by 2.5 billion euros next month because pump prices keep rising. [24] Oil passed $100 a barrel two weeks ago for the first time since July. [24] Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has recovered to a six-month high. [5]

Europe paying for its own defence

The US defence department is weighing options to pull out up to a third of the 68,000 US troops in Europe. [16] Germany aims to double military spending past 200 billion euros by 2030. [17] France expects its debt to reach 119.3 per cent of what the country produces in a year. [26]

The Houthis' reach

The Yemeni group seized the port of Mokha and Perim Island, the gate to the Red Sea, and declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia. [6] Saudi Arabia says it stopped attacks on Riyadh, Yanbu, Taif, Baysh and Farasan on Saturday. [8] Turkey says Saudi Arabia is being dragged into a US-Iran war it never wanted. [11]

2 pressures seen across the day run through World too.

• Governments paying part of the fuel billHigh ↑ · seen in 3 beats→
• Lenders charging governments more for doubtHigh ↑ · seen in 2 beats→

1. 1Iran sends the US three conditions for ending the war, through Qatar
2. 2Saudi Arabia confirms a missile aimed at its capital
3. 3Riyadh's airport hits maximum disruption
4. 4Turkey offers Saudi Arabia military help
5. 5The Houthis hold the gate to the Red Sea

Iran has sent the United States a formal list of conditions for ending the war, carried by Qatar. [1]

Watch whether the US answers through Qatar at all.

A reply that leaves the naval blockade in place would tell Iran its list was read as a surrender demand, exactly as the former Pentagon official predicted.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Houthis said the group fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh at dawn on Saturday, and shot it down. [8]

It said attacks on Yanbu, the Red Sea port where a key Saudi pipeline ends, and on Taif, Baysh and Farasan were stopped too. [8][49]

The Houthis said they hit sensitive sites in Riyadh and Aramco plants at Yanbu. [10] An AFP reporter saw firefighters at a burnt-out Aramco fuel tank near Riyadh's airport. [6]

Saudi Arabia is low on interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for help, officials told the Associated Press. [8]

Saudi Arabia has been hit before, but never with its capital's airport burning and its stock of interceptors reported to be thinning.

It is being drawn into a war it did not start, and the United States has refused to fight the Houthis for it.

Leaders who need an agreement also need to look like winners at home, so they settle on loose words and then explain those words two different ways.

When the first base is built or the first payment falls due, one reading wins and the other side learns it lost.

From inside, each person is being honest with the people they answer to, and nobody sees the other version until the day it matters.

Flightradar24, a website that tracks aircraft, put Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport at 5.0 on its disruption scale on Saturday, the highest level it uses, meaning long delays and several cancelled flights. [9]

Residents heard explosions after overnight phone alerts from Saudi civil defence warning of danger, the first such alert since the fighting in Yemen intensified this month. [6][9]

The all-clear came on Saturday morning. [6] An Aramco fuel tank near the airport was on fire, an AFP journalist reported. [9]

Riyadh is one of the Gulf's busiest airports. Passengers there lost flights on Saturday because a fuel tank beside the runways was on fire.

Turkey's foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said his country could meet Saudi military needs under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed last month, which says an armed attack on any one of the three signatories counts as an attack on all. [11]

He said the attacks on Saudi territory were serious and that Turkey would have no issue supplying technical equipment. [11]

Fidan also said it was unacceptable for Saudi Arabia to be made part of a US-Iran war it never wanted to join, and that proposals to end the fighting had been passed to all sides. [11]

Trump has rebuffed Saudi requests for military help against the Houthis, so Riyadh is being offered a replacement protector.

Turkey gains a defence customer and a say in how the Yemen war ends.

The Houthis control the most populous parts of Yemen.

This month they took the port of Mokha and Perim Island, which gives them the Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow strait between Yemen and Africa that ships use to reach the Suez Canal. [6][12]

They declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in July, answering a Saudi blockade of ports in north-west Yemen. [6]

Saudi ships have used that sea route since the war with Iran largely shut the Strait of Hormuz. [6]

Haaretz reports they now want recognition, flights to Iran and a new settlement in Yemen. [12]

Saudi Arabia bombed this group for seven years.

It now controls a strait that Saudi oil tankers have to pass through, which is why Riyadh may end up negotiating with it.

Two people were killed and six hurt in what Moscow's regional governor, Andrei Vorobyev, called a massive overnight Ukrainian drone attack, and he said 249 drones were shot down. [13]

A 44-year-old woman died in Sofyino when a drone hit a three-storey block of flats, and an elderly man died in the Orekhovo-Zuevo district. [13]

Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said a facility at an oil refinery was damaged and that 152 drones heading for the city were downed. [13]

Sheremetyevo, Moscow's biggest airport, restricted flights and Vnukovo halted all arrivals and departures. [13]

Both sides are now aiming at the fuel and transport each other's economies run on, and the Russian capital is inside the range of that exchange.

Seven people, including two children, were killed in Russian attacks on the Kyiv and Sumy regions of Ukraine on Saturday, a Ukrainian official said. [13]

A mother and her two small children, a boy and a girl, died in the town of Fastiv, south-west of Kyiv, according to the head of the Kyiv region, Tymur Tkachenko, who said several houses were damaged. [13]

In Sumy, in the north-east, four people were killed when a Russian drone hit the car they were travelling in, the senior local official Oleh Hryhorov said. [13]

The drones over the Moscow region flew hours after these deaths. Each side is now striking the other's towns in the same 24 hours.

Poland began what its army called preventive military aviation operations on Saturday to protect its own airspace while Russia was striking Ukraine next door. [14]

Poland's army said on X that it had also put ground-based air defences and radar reconnaissance on a state of readiness. [14] Poland is a NATO member and borders Ukraine.

It gave no detail about how many aircraft were flying or for how long. [14]

Every Russian barrage on western Ukraine now costs a neighbouring country fuel, flying hours and crews on standby, whether or not anything crosses the border.

European governments are stepping up military and civilian preparations for a possible escalation by Russia, with officials warning of more drone, missile, sabotage and cyber operations against NATO countries that back Ukraine. [15]

The measures run from protecting critical infrastructure in France and hospitals in Germany to updated evacuation plans in Lithuania and stronger air defences in Poland. [15]

France's president, Emmanuel Macron, called party leaders and presidential hopefuls into the Elysee Palace crisis room on Friday to brief them on intelligence assessments, and said the Russian threat to Europe had intensified. [15]

Hospitals, power lines and evacuation plans are the parts of a country that take months to prepare, so a government preparing them is saying it expects this to last.

The US defence department is weighing options for cutting its forces in Europe, part of a NATO review announced in June, NBC News reported. [16]

One option would withdraw a third of the roughly 68,000 US troops there, mostly from Germany, Italy and Spain. [16]

A larger one would move 40,000 out with aircraft, ships and weapons. [16]

Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said in June the changes should push Europe into taking charge of its own defence. [16]

Senior members of Trump's own party warn it would send the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin. [16]

European countries are preparing for a Russian escalation in the same months their main protector is deciding how much of its army to take home.

Military chiefs from NATO's 32 countries elected General Carsten Breuer, Germany's most senior officer, to chair the alliance's military committee at a meeting in Copenhagen. [17][18]

The committee is NATO's senior military authority and its chair is the main military adviser to the alliance's political chief, Mark Rutte. [17]

Breuer, 61, takes over from Italy's Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone next July for a three-year term, beating Canada's chief of defence, Jennie Carignan. [17][18]

He campaigned on Germany's spending: the country aims to double military expenditure to more than 200 billion euros by 2030. [17]

The job usually follows the money, and Germany is now Europe's biggest military spender.

It also means a German officer holds the seat at the moment the US is deciding how far to step back.

Russia's election authorities said their online systems were attacked on the second day of the parliamentary vote, and the digital ministry said a sabotage attempt on communication lines in the Far East had been thwarted. [19]

The three-day vote, which began on Friday and ends on Sunday, elects Russia's State Duma, the lower house of its parliament, and most anti-war candidates were barred from standing. [20][19]

The opposition Yabloko party said one of its observers lost consciousness while being arrested at a St Petersburg polling station. [20]

Putin has accused Ukraine of trying to interfere, without providing evidence. [19]

The result will be presented as proof that Russians back the war, which is why who was allowed to stand matters more than the count.

Trump said on Friday that the United States, Denmark and Greenland had agreed a deal giving the US permanent control over security and all other needs on the Arctic island. [21][22]

Denmark and Greenland said on Saturday the agreement does not compromise Greenland's sovereignty, and Danish leaders called themselves cautiously optimistic. [22][23]

A long-standing agreement already allows US forces on the island, and it is not clear how this one differs. [22]

All three governments are due to sign at the UN next week, and the Danish and Greenland parliaments must then approve it. [22]

Trump spent months threatening to take Greenland from a NATO ally.

What has actually been agreed is unclear, because the three governments that signed it describe it differently and no text has been published.

Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced a 2.5 billion euro fuel tax cut, agreed with Germany's state governments, to take effect next month. [24]

He said people who rely on their cars every day are reaching their financial limits. [24]

Pump prices across Europe have climbed because of the war in Iran and the fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, and a main oil benchmark passed $100 a barrel two weeks ago for the first time since July. [24]

Merz's government also plans a temporary price cap on petrol and diesel by January 2027, copying Luxembourg and Belgium. [24]

This is the Gulf war arriving in a German driveway, and it is being paid for out of a stretched federal budget rather than by the oil companies making the profits.

Also seen in Finance and Climate.

Two German states voted on Sunday, after the far-right Alternative for Germany won the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. [25]

Polls suggest it will not repeat that win, but will confirm large gains and put fresh pressure on the firewall strategy, under which every other main party refuses to govern with it. [25]

Merz's approval rating has fallen as low as 14 per cent, and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania his Christian Democrats polled at 6 per cent, risking their worst-ever result there and exclusion from the state parliament. [25]

Senior figures in his party have rallied behind him for now. [25]

Germany is the country now expected to carry Europe's defence spending, and its chancellor is losing the domestic authority to promise anything for long.

France's finance ministry told the High Council of Public Finances that government debt will reach 119.3 per cent of everything the country produces in a year in 2026, and 121.7 per cent in 2027. [26]

The ratio was 115.7 per cent in 2025 and below 100 per cent in 2019. [26]

It expects to end this year with a budget deficit of 5.4 per cent of output. [26]

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has proposed 54 billion euros of savings in the 2027 budget, which he must get through a deeply divided parliament. [26]

France is one of the two European countries with a serious army and a nuclear deterrent, and it is being asked to spend more on defence in the year its borrowing passes its whole annual output.

Also seen in Finance.

Emmanuel Macron travelled to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a small French archipelago off the coast of Canada, to meet Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney. [27]

The French presidency said the point was to show France's presence across five oceans, including the Arctic. [27]

The islands give France a large exclusive economic zone and a permanent naval presence, currently one patrol boat, the Fulmar, which is due to be replaced. [27]

Talks covered undersea data cables, space activity and turning the islands into a base for polar cooperation with Canada, Denmark and Greenland. [27]

It is the same Arctic that Trump has been demanding a permanent security role in, and France is quietly reminding everyone it has territory there too.

The US military attacked a boat it said was smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea on Saturday, killing four people. [28]

That takes the toll to at least 231 people in 69 strikes since the campaign began almost a year ago. [28]

No evidence was published that the boat carried drugs; the video released shows a moving vessel and a flash. [28]

Trump's government wants to extend the operation onto land, and Hegseth said Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to joint operations. Guatemala denied it. [28]

A year of strikes has killed more people than most declared conflicts this year, with no charges, no trial and no published evidence in almost every case.

The US Treasury removed sanctions on Eritrea's ruling party, its military, several individuals including the financial official Hagos Ghebrehiwet, and the party-linked Red Sea Trading Corporation. [29]

The measures were imposed in 2021 over the conduct of Eritrean forces in the war in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, where tens of thousands are believed to have been killed before a peace accord in November 2022. [29]

Eritrea's information minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, said the sanctions were unwarranted and welcomed the move as remedial. [29]

Eritrea sits on the Red Sea coast opposite Yemen, and the country that was punished for Tigray is now useful to the United States for where it is.

Congo began giving the Ervebo Ebola vaccine to front-line health workers in the Bunia and Mongbwalu zones of Ituri province, the worst-hit areas of the country's deadliest Ebola outbreak. [30]

The campaign in Ituri and North Kivu aims to reach 20,000 workers over six to nine months. [30]

Ervebo works against a more common type of the virus; this outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which no licensed vaccine or treatment exists and trials are still running. [30]

Health workers are the people the virus kills first and the people without whom nothing else works, which is why they are at the front of a queue for a vaccine that is not an exact match.

Nine women's bodies have been found in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg in South Africa, and five are still unidentified. [31]

All were in their twenties or thirties, some were found naked or partly clothed, and several had similar bruising. [31]

Elizabeth Moselakgomo, 38, was found dead in Kempton Park after her daughter told police she had not come back from a run. [31]

Itumeleng Kekana, 32, a shopkeeper, was found on a bridge in July, 17 days after her family last saw her. [31]

The provincial police commissioner, Fred Kekana, said investigators are considering both one killer and several. [31]

South Africa records some of the world's highest rates of violence against women, and the fear spreading in Ekurhuleni is about whether the police can tell a pattern from a coincidence.

A US intelligence report written with a chatbot's help wrongly concluded that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear components to Iran during the war, CNN reported. [32]

The US military prepared to seize the vessel and had warplanes in the air before officials read the report again and found the chatbot had misidentified the cargo. [32]

An analyst had asked the chatbot about intelligence on the ship from US Special Operations Command Pacific, and it answered using open sources and secret intercepts. [32]

One source called the report entirely false and said it almost started a war. [32]

A chatbot got the cargo wrong. Nobody checked its answer until US warplanes were already in the air over a Chinese merchant ship.

MS NOW said its journalists were turned away from the grounds of the US president's residence and offices in Washington on Saturday morning, a day after Trump said he would ban the network. [33]

Reporters from CNN and Politico were turned away the same morning. [33]

The move follows a long run of restrictions on journalists Trump finds objectionable, and is being treated as a test of the free-speech protections in the US constitution's First Amendment. [33]

Which reporters may stand on the lawn decides which questions get asked out loud, in the week the UN General Assembly brings every other government to the same country.

China criticised the US law tightening sanctions on Russia and extending trade measures against Iran, which Trump signed late on Friday. [34]

A spokesperson for China's commerce ministry said the country has consistently opposed one-sided sanctions and sanctions aimed at third countries that keep trading with a target. [34]

The law lets the US president impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries that keep buying Russian energy, which in practice means China and India. [34]

It lands four days before Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a state dinner, which tells you how much either side wants the visit to go ahead anyway.

Iran hanged Hossein Pedaran after its supreme court upheld a death sentence for passing information about missile sites to Israel during last year's 12-day war, Iran's judiciary-run Mizan news agency said. [35]

He was convicted of espionage and intelligence cooperation with Israel. [35] The war began in late February, when US and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. [1]

A government that cannot reach the people who attacked it reaches the people it says helped them, and the executions are announced rather than hidden.

Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel peace prize in 2023 and was let out of prison this year for medical treatment after collapsing. [7]

She told the Associated Press that misery and repression have left no room for Iranians to breathe after a year and a half of war. [7]

Many still quietly defy their leaders, she said, a change she traces to the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old detained for breaking dress rules. [7]

Her memoir, written in prison with parts smuggled out by other inmates, is published this month in French, German and nine other languages. [7]