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Former Congo President Joseph Kabila Takes the Helm of a New Rebel Coalition With M23, Vowing to End ‘Tyranny’ by Force if Needed: October 13, 2026

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila has been named leader of a new political and military coalition that includes the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and aims to oust the government in Kinshasa, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported Tuesday.

The Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, or FRN, was unveiled Monday at a news conference at Kabila’s residence in Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, which M23 has held since January 2025. Coalition adviser Claude Ibalanky said the group would unite “resistance forces” to put an end to “tyranny” “by any means necessary, including the use of force,” according to Al Jazeera.

The BBC said M23 military leader Sultani Makenga is one of Kabila’s four deputies, all drawn from the AFC-M23 alliance, and Al Jazeera said Corneille Nangaa, who led the Congo River Alliance, is also among them. The unveiling is the clearest sign yet of Kabila’s direct involvement in an armed movement, a year after a military court sentenced him to death in absentia for treason; he had previously denied links to M23, the BBC reported. Kabila calls the case politically motivated.

There was no immediate response from the government of President Félix Tshisekedi. “You don’t make an announcement like this without having prepared the actions that follow,” Yvon Muya, a researcher at the University of Ottawa, told Al Jazeera. “We will likely witness an escalation on the military front.” Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Goma said there were fears government soldiers could defect to Kabila, a former army chief.

Kabila, 55, ruled Congo from 2001 until January 2019. Government and M23 representatives had been expected to meet in Qatar in November, and analysts warned the new coalition could undermine that process. The United Nations and Western governments accuse Rwanda of backing M23, which Rwanda denies. Tshisekedi’s second term ends in 2028, and parliament has passed a bill that could pave the way for a referendum on removing the constitution’s two-term limit, the BBC said.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera

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MI5 Chief Calls Russia ‘Aggressor Number One’ and Warns Iran Is Eyeing Military Sites as State Threats Match Terrorism in Scale: October 13, 2026

LONDON — The head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service said Tuesday that MI5 is now devoting more resources to countering hostile states than it did during the Cold War, naming Russia “aggressor number one” and warning that Iran has set its sights on “harder targets, like military sites,” BBC News and The Guardian reported.

In his annual threat update at MI5’s Thames House headquarters, Director General Sir Ken McCallum said threats from foreign states had quadrupled over the last decade, so that “our terrorism and state threats operational missions are pretty much of equal scale.” He said Russia was waging hybrid warfare while avoiding a joint NATO response, a line the Kremlin would be “foolish to cross.”

“With its traditional covert footprint eviscerated by almost 1,000 expulsions since the invasion, the Kremlin’s global toolkit is weak. So we see them scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding,” McCallum said, according to the BBC. “These are not the actions of a great power with the strategic upper hand.” He also said Moscow had tried to interfere in the 2016 Brexit referendum through RT, Sputnik and troll accounts, but that there was a big difference between “what may have been attempted and what actually resulted,” The Guardian reported.

MI5’s counter-Iran work led to more than 50 arrests in the past year, McCallum said, with much of the activity aimed at British Jewish communities. He did not directly address the arrests at RAF Fairford, which Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said were linked to a plot “almost certainly directed” by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, but said that “those who seek to cause mayhem on British streets — whether hired thugs here or their paymasters overseas — will meet an unflinching response.”

On terrorism, McCallum said “the most marked trend has been an increase in cases where extremist versions of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance are tipping into terrorist intent,” and that MI5 had recently investigated a radicalized 13-year-old. He said the service had “caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI to improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies, with AI-enabled drones adding a new twist,” and that his greatest worry was AI helping extremists build bioweapons — a threat “not yet realised.” The Guardian said he announced a new AI threat assessment centre. Britain’s terrorism threat level was raised to severe in April.

Sources: BBC News, The Guardian

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Drones Sink a Cargo Ship Off Bulgaria’s Black Sea Coast, Leaving 11 Sailors Missing, as Sofia Summons Russia’s Ambassador: October 13, 2026

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Drones struck two merchant ships just outside Bulgaria’s territorial waters in the Black Sea early Tuesday, sinking one and leaving 11 of its crew missing, and Prime Minister Rumen Radev summoned Russia’s ambassador over the attacks, BBC News, Al Jazeera and CBC News reported.

The Maltese-flagged, Ukrainian-owned Chelsea 3 was hit by three aerial drones about 18 nautical miles off the Bulgarian coast at around 1:30 a.m. local time, Radev said. All 15 of its crew, seven Ukrainians and eight Azerbaijanis, were rescued, and five were treated for minor injuries. The second vessel sank about 17 nautical miles east of the village of Krapets. One sailor from that ship was saved, the BBC said, and Bulgarian media identified it as the cargo ship Azov Concord, according to CBC.

“Another attack on merchant ships in the immediate vicinity of Bulgarian territorial waters is absolutely unacceptable,” Radev said after an emergency meeting of the country’s Security Council. He said there was no conclusive evidence of who was responsible, but that “logic suggests that the outcome benefits the Russian Federation.” Russia’s ambassador, Eleonora Mitrofanova, was later quoted by Bulgarian media as saying she had no information from Russia’s defence ministry about the attacks and that they could have been a provocation by a third party, the BBC reported.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the strikes. “The Black Sea has become another front of escalation of the Russian war in Ukraine. This is unacceptable,” she wrote on X.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who spoke with Radev, said the alliance had “already strengthened our posture along the eastern flank and will continue to monitor the security environment, adjusting our deterrence and defence posture as needed.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha blamed Moscow directly. “The Black Sea is a lifeline for global food security. Russia is attacking it to weaponise hunger and hold the world hostage,” he said. Russia’s military had not commented.

The attacks came exactly a week after drones hit two other ships in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone on Oct. 6. One of them, the Alfa Watan, sank, and all 10 of its crew are presumed dead, the BBC said. DW reported that at least 45 merchant vessels have been struck by drones in the Black Sea in the past 12 months. Had Tuesday’s strikes happened a few nautical miles farther west, inside Bulgarian waters, NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense clause could have come into play, the BBC noted.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera, CBC News, DW

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Federal Agents Search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington Home in a Criminal Investigation Three Weeks Before the Midterms: October 12, 2026

WASHINGTON — Federal agents searched the Washington home of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, The Associated Press reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The search was carried out by Homeland Security Investigations agents, the people said. The Justice Department said HSI agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the department in the Washington, D.C., area but gave no other details. “This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” the department said.

Fox News, citing unnamed sources, reported that agents were examining immigration paperwork that the congresswoman’s father filled out when she was a child, and posted video of what appeared to be officers in HSI jackets at the residence, according to The Guardian. Neither Omar’s office, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security nor the White House immediately responded to the Guardian’s requests for comment.

President Donald Trump and his allies have accused Omar of obtaining citizenship fraudulently, and Trump has openly talked about denaturalizing her. Omar has consistently denied the accusations.

Omar, 44, represents Minnesota’s 5th District, which includes Minneapolis. First elected in 2018, she and Rep. Rashida Tlaib became the first Muslim women in Congress. The search comes three weeks before the midterm elections and is likely to bring new accusations that Trump is using the government for political ends, The Guardian said.

Sources: The Associated Press, The Guardian

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India’s Opposition Marches on the Supreme Court to Demand the Election Chief Resign as Delhi Shuts Metro Stations and Floods Streets With Police: October 12, 2026

NEW DELHI, India — India’s opposition parties marched toward the Supreme Court in New Delhi on Monday to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged manipulation of voter rolls, as authorities closed metro stations and deployed thousands of security personnel for a third straight day, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported.

Opposition parties allege that voter-list revisions under Kumar favor Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. The Election Commission and the BJP reject the charge. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house, called on “all opposition parties, civil society groups [and] all those who believe in democracy” to join the march.

“Bring as much police as you want — 10 thousand, 20 thousand, 40 thousand, go ahead,” Gandhi wrote on X in a post aimed at Home Minister Amit Shah, according to Al Jazeera. “We are not the ones to get scared. We are not the ones to back down. This fight is not going to stop now!” The BBC reported that thousands of people lined Barakhamba Road as a bus carrying Gandhi and other leaders arrived, and that Gandhi climbed onto the roof of the bus at Mandi House to wave to crowds.

The opposition had sought to hand a memorandum to Chief Justice Surya Kant, but he declined the meeting, citing “certain reasons,” and asked them to file a petition, which they said they would do at the end of the march. “Every Indian citizen has the right to approach the court, and we will hear their concerns and grant whatever is due under the law,” he told reporters, the BBC reported.

The march follows a weekend in which police detained thousands of supporters of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party movement who tried to reach the Jantar Mantar protest site. Reporters Without Borders said at least 16 journalists were detained, and Communist Party of India (Marxist) lawmaker John Brittas said he was “manhandled, dragged, assaulted” by police. BJP President Nitin Nabin accused the opposition and the movement of trying to destabilize India “at the behest of foreign forces,” without saying who they were.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera

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Zelenskyy Accuses Russia of Breaking Trump’s ‘Energy Ceasefire’ and Vows to Respond as the Kremlin Rejects a 60-Day Truce: October 12, 2026

KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia on Monday of violating the “energy ceasefire” that U.S. President Donald Trump announced over the weekend and warned that Ukraine would respond if the attacks continued, while the Kremlin rejected his call for a 60-day truce, Al Jazeera, CBC News and The Guardian reported.

“There were Russian violations of the energy ceasefire announced by President Trump,” Zelenskyy told the Warsaw Security Forum by video link, according to CBC, which cited Reuters. “We are waiting for the details of the conditions between the Americans and Russians,” he said. “This energy ceasefire, it can work, and it can become a major step toward ending the war if the Americans truly step in now and make sure Russians respect it … If Russia does not agree to an energy ceasefire, we will respond.”

Zelenskyy said he was surprised by Trump’s post, which went online while Kyiv was under attack by Russian Shahed drones, and that Russia launched a “targeted attack” on a Kharkiv power station hours later. “It’s clear that Putin does not read Truth Social,” he said, according to The Guardian. Overnight, Russia struck gas production facilities in the Kharkiv region belonging to the state energy company Naftogaz, causing a fire, the company said. “The attack damaged critical equipment,” acting CEO Sergii Fedorenko wrote on Telegram.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said contacts on a possible energy ceasefire were ongoing but declined to say whether it would cover only oil refineries. He rejected Zelenskyy’s proposal of a 60-day ceasefire that would allow Ukraine to hold presidential elections. “In the Kremlin, both President Putin and officials at other levels have repeatedly stated that we do not want a ceasefire,” Peskov said. “We want long-term peace and are prepared to do everything possible to achieve it.”

European leaders said they had seen no sign of a Russian halt. “I have not noted, over the last 48 hours, any energy ceasefire coming from the Russian side,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters, Al Jazeera reported. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc welcomed the ceasefire “when it holds” but argued that a deal limited to refinery strikes favored Russia, which has far more refineries, The Guardian said.

The row began Friday when Trump eased sanctions on Russian diesel, saying it would lower fuel prices before next month’s U.S. midterm elections. Trump then said Zelenskyy should “damn well stop” hitting Russian refineries and that Ukraine needed a “new leader.” Trump made a similar claim on Sept. 14 that both countries had agreed not to hit each other’s energy infrastructure, and nothing came of it, CBC noted.

Sources: Al Jazeera, CBC News, The Guardian

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Brazil’s Electoral Court Gives Meta 48 Hours to Answer Lula’s Charge That It Throttled His Campaign Before the Runoff: October 11, 2026

BRASÍLIA, Brazil — Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court has given Meta 48 hours to explain whether it reduced the reach of posts by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s re-election campaign, after the campaign accused the tech giant of trying to interfere in the presidential race to benefit his rival, AFP and the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported.

In a statement on Saturday, Lula’s campaign said Meta had in recent days “prevented President Lula’s profile from promoting Instagram feed posts,” that a post on his official account “experienced an interruption in view counts,” and that before the first round the profiles of Lula and other leftist leaders “suddenly disappeared from Instagram’s search function.” The series of problems “raises strong suspicions that Meta’s actions constitute an attempt to interfere in the Brazilian electoral process to the benefit of Flavio Bolsonaro’s candidacy,” the statement said, according to AFP. The campaign also said it would file a complaint with Brazil’s data protection authority, G1 reported.

The court, known as the TSE, ordered Meta to preserve its moderation logs, ad data and metrics; report, profile by profile, every measure applied since Aug. 16 to Lula’s official accounts and to third-party accounts; explain anomalies in view counts on videos posted on Oct. 7; justify disabling the campaign’s ad account on Sept. 23; and say whether it had identified a network of 255 AI-run Instagram profiles that the fact-checking agency Lupa found drew 58 million views in a month attacking Lula, his Workers’ Party and first lady Janja da Silva, Estadão reported. The campaign and the electoral prosecutor will then have 24 hours each to respond before the court rules on an urgent injunction request.

Meta’s Brazil office called the accusations “simply false” and “not supported by the facts.” “Many of the technical issues mentioned did not affect only Brazil or specific accounts,” the company told AFP. “We comply with electoral regulations and are committed to a level playing field regarding the use of our platforms.”

Lula is seeking a fourth, non-consecutive term in the Oct. 25 runoff against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who finished first in last Sunday’s opening round. Lula, who does not use a mobile phone, launched a social media push after the first round that includes videos of him speaking directly to his followers.

Sources: AFP, Estadão, G1

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Pakistan Imposes Emergency and Governor’s Rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sidelining Imran Khan’s Party as Its March on Islamabad Rolls On: October 11, 2026

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s federal government on Sunday imposed a state of emergency and governor’s rule in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, effectively suspending the provincial government run by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, after President Asif Ali Zardari approved the cabinet’s recommendation, Al Jazeera and Dawn reported.

The emergency was invoked under Articles 232 and 234 of the constitution following a meeting of the federal cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. His office said ministers had taken note of the “provincial government’s deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism.” Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said the provincial governor would take charge with an advisory council, initially for six months, and the federal government named Muhammad Fakhr Alam Irfan as the province’s chief secretary, according to Dawn.

PTI leaders said Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and the party’s provincial president, Junaid Akbar, had been taken into custody, and provincial Information Minister Shafi Jan urged people across the province to gather in the provincial capital, Peshawar, The Express Tribune reported. Police and federal authorities had not officially confirmed the arrests, Pakistani media said.

PTI spokesman Zulfikar Bukhari said the decision would only lead to “further bloodshed, instability and collateral damage,” Reuters reported, according to Al Jazeera, and PTI leader Barrister Gohar called it “an extremely concerning and serious political mistake.” Governor Faisal Karim Kundi said the move was aimed at “establishing peace in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”

The emergency comes as the PTI presses a march on Islamabad, led by Afridi since Oct. 4, to demand Khan’s release. Khan has been in jail for more than three years but remains widely popular, and the government has blocked main routes into the capital with shipping containers and said it will not let the march enter the city.

Sources: Al Jazeera, Dawn, The Express Tribune

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Ukraine Knocks Out a Third Yandex Data Center in a Week Despite Trump’s Warning, as Zelensky Offers a Reciprocal Halt to Energy Strikes: October 11, 2026

KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian drone strike forced Russian tech giant Yandex to shut down a data center in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, on Sunday, the third attack on the company’s facilities this week, hours after President Donald Trump said Ukraine should “damn well stop” hitting Russian oil refineries, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported.

“Operations at the data centre have been completely suspended,” Yandex said in a service alert on Telegram, warning that “the remaining resource configuration is considered unstable” and advising users to activate disaster-recovery plans. No one was injured, but several of its services were unavailable, the company said. Ukrainian strikes shut down Yandex’s hub in Sasovo, southeast of Moscow, on Thursday — where two of the three supercomputers used to develop its AI model are housed — and partly knocked out its center in the Kaluga region on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said later on Sunday that “Ukraine will be ready to stop striking Russian oil refineries if Russia stops striking our energy infrastructure,” adding that “any de-escalation steps must be reciprocal and backed by real guarantees,” the BBC reported. Trump said Saturday it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president” after Zelensky condemned a U.S.-Russian deal to release Russian diesel onto world markets.

Kyiv says it is targeting businesses that feed Moscow’s war revenues. “We always respond in mirror-like fashion,” Zelensky said after the Sasovo strike, adding: “You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding,” according to Al Jazeera. Russia has struck several Ukrainian data centers and telecommunications sites over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv.

Russian attacks continued through the weekend. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said six people were injured overnight in four districts of the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, and Zelensky said search and rescue work in Zaporizhzhia ended Sunday morning with the death toll from Saturday’s glide-bomb strikes at 23, including four children.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera

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Poland Treats Possible Plot to Attack Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the Defence Minister as ‘Serious’ After Emergency Security Meeting: October 11, 2026

WARSAW, Poland — Polish police have received information about a possible plot to attack Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, authorities said Sunday, and security officials said after an emergency meeting that they were treating it as serious, The Guardian and Al Jazeera reported.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Karolina Gałęcka said on social media that the ministry had ordered “action to be taken in this matter” and that police, the State Protection Service and ministry officials would meet on Sunday. Government spokesman Adam Szłapka said Tusk had learned about the “exceptionally concerning” threat first thing Sunday morning.

“We take this matter extremely seriously,” said Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesman for the minister who oversees Poland’s intelligence services, after the meeting. He said the authorities considered there was a high probability that the threats would have been carried out, and that the information first reached the State Protection Service, which passed it to police, according to The Guardian. He gave no further details, though Polsat News quoted him as saying further action had been agreed, and Radio Zet reported that police had received an email about the threat, Al Jazeera said.

No information was immediately released about the origin of the alleged plot. Kosiniak-Kamysz is also deputy prime minister. Dobrzyński said Polish services are receiving a growing number of threats of various kinds every month.

Poland has been on high alert after three attacks at schools in central Poland’s Mazovia province in four days this week left one person dead and many wounded, including children, and amid fears of Russian “hybrid” sabotage aimed at weakening Western support for Ukraine. Tusk said last month that Moscow was likely to step up such attacks on NATO’s eastern flank; Russia denies any such plans.

Sources: The Guardian, Al Jazeera

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