Politics

Abbas Cancels November Palestinian Legislative Vote and Sets Joint Presidential and Parliamentary Elections for September 2027: October 10, 2026

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday issued a decree cancelling legislative elections scheduled for Nov. 28 and setting simultaneous presidential and legislative elections for Sept. 11, 2027, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

The decree followed a decision by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee and consultations with Palestinian factions, WAFA said. It cited Israeli military attacks, settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, restrictions on movement, Israel’s withholding of Palestinian clearance revenues, and Israeli restrictions on access for election staff and international observers to Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In Gaza, the decree pointed to “exceptional security and humanitarian conditions,” the failure to deploy international stabilization and police forces under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803, the lack of progress on reconstruction and the incomplete withdrawal of Israeli forces, according to WAFA. It said the delay would also allow a comprehensive national dialogue to strengthen Palestinian unity.

The last Palestinian Legislative Council election, in 2006, was won by Hamas, leading to the rift between the group and Abbas’s Fatah party, The National reported. Abbas, elected in 2005, has overstayed his term by 17 years and rules by decree, the paper said, and faction sources told it the delay was mainly linked to holding a national dialogue in Egypt. An August poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 79 percent of respondents wanted him to resign.

The decree came on the first anniversary of the U.S.-backed Gaza ceasefire, which took effect on Oct. 10 last year. Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday that at least 1,481 Palestinians have been killed since then, and medical sources said Israeli attacks killed at least seven people across Gaza on Saturday, including an 8-year-old girl, Al Jazeera reported.

Sources: WAFA, The National, Reuters (via The Jerusalem Post), Al Jazeera

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India Detains Cockroach Movement Founder and Hundreds of Protesters as Police Lock Down Delhi Against Election-Chief Rally: October 10, 2026

NEW DELHI — Indian police detained the founder and top leaders of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party and hundreds of protesters on Saturday as tens of thousands of security personnel sealed off central New Delhi to block a rally demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, BBC News, Al Jazeera and DW reported.

Founder Abhijeet Dipke and fellow leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were detained on their flight from Mumbai after it landed, the movement said, adding that they had been taken to an undisclosed location and denied access to lawyers. Delhi Police, which had refused permission for the protest at Jantar Mantar, did not comment on the detentions, the BBC said. Before arriving, Dipke said: “If you think you can stop us by threatening us with jail or trying to intimidate us with the fear of imprisonment, you are mistaken.”

The government deployed nearly 30,000 personnel, cancelled trains to New Delhi, closed more than 50 metro stations and imposed an internet shutdown, and several students traveling to the capital were pulled off trains and buses and detained, Al Jazeera reported. “Narendra Modi just made EMERGENCY official,” Dipke wrote on X, invoking Indira Gandhi’s 1975 suspension of civil liberties, according to Al Jazeera. Interim leader Ajinkya Shinde told supporters that “wherever they stop you will become your Jantar Mantar.”

News outlets including Scroll and Newslaundry said their journalists were briefly detained while covering the protest, and the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Delhi Police to release all detained journalists and media workers, DW reported.

The protesters accuse Kumar of favoring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in a nationwide revision of voter rolls that Al Jazeera said has struck 130 million names; the Election Commission says the exercise is routine and removes dead, duplicate or ineligible voters, and it and the BJP deny any bias. The movement grew out of a viral post by Dipke in May after Chief Justice Surya Kant likened some jobless young people to “cockroaches,” and its protests in July forced the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera, DW

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Trump Strikes Deal With Putin to Release Russian Diesel, Drawing Zelensky’s Fury as Ukraine Talks Continue in Miami: October 10, 2026

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to release Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets, a sharp reversal of years of Western pressure on Moscow that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned as a gift to the Kremlin, BBC News and The Guardian reported.

In a Truth Social post after a call with Putin, Trump said Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November, 1 million tons after that and a further 3 million tons “within a short period,” depending on the condition of Russian refineries that Ukraine has attacked. “Diesel prices for Americans and, indeed, the world, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!” he wrote. The U.S. Treasury issued a temporary license allowing Russian diesel onto world markets through April 2027, DW reported.

The Kremlin said Putin had confirmed Russia’s “willingness to supply oil and petroleum products to the US market and global markets at large,” and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said additional volumes could begin flowing in October. Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev said “Russia-US co-operation on diesel and energy will benefit the world.”

Zelensky called the deal “an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged” and said Russia would repay it with “further terror and perfidy.” He told Axios it “looks like a happy birthday present for Putin,” according to The Guardian. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and two other Democratic senators said “this is what failure looks like,” and Republican Rep. Don Bacon wrote that “propping up Putin’s war economy is morally wrong.” Britain said it would maintain “the toughest sanctions regime ever imposed by the UK.”

Trump has spent months grappling with soaring fuel prices driven by the war with Iran, which began in February; the average U.S. diesel price is $6.28 a gallon, down from a record $6.53 at the end of September, according to AAA figures cited by the BBC. Analysts questioned the impact: the first tranche equals about 2.25 million barrels, against U.S. consumption of around 3.8 million barrels a day, Tim Armitage of Quilter Cheviot told the BBC. The announcement came as U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Ukrainian and European officials in Miami for talks on ending the war, which Witkoff described as “constructive,” DW said.

Sources: BBC News, The Guardian, DW, NPR

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ICC Judges Rule Rodrigo Duterte Fit to Stand Trial, Clearing the Way for His November Crimes Against Humanity Case: October 9, 2026

THE HAGUE — Judges at the International Criminal Court have ruled that former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is fit to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity, removing a major obstacle before his trial opens on Nov. 30, the court said.

Trial Chamber III on Thursday made public its decision, dated Sept. 28, which relied on an independent panel of experts that unanimously found Duterte able to understand the charges and the evidence, follow the proceedings and instruct his lawyers. “The Chamber was satisfied that the Accused is able to effectively exercise his fair trial rights in the proceedings,” the ICC said. The judges rejected a defense request for further medical examinations.

Duterte’s lawyer Peter Haynes had argued that the former president suffers from “significant memory impairment that prevents him from retaining recent information and reliably accessing memories,” GMA News reported. The chamber said it was mindful of the experts’ findings of cognitive impairment, but described it as “mild,” “incipient” or “pre-clinical,” Rappler reported. The judges said sitting hours would be set case by case and ordered that his health be continuously monitored by the medical officer at the court’s detention center.

Duterte faces three counts of crimes against humanity over killings linked to his “war on drugs” and the so-called Davao Death Squad; human rights groups say the crackdown killed nearly 30,000 people, according to Rappler. He was arrested and surrendered to the court in March 2025, and judges confirmed all charges in April.

Sources: International Criminal Court, GMA News, Rappler

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South Africa Pulls Asylum Directive After Anti-Migrant Riots Torch Cars in Durban and Soweto: October 9, 2026

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s government has withdrawn a directive on processing asylum applications after anti-immigrant protests turned violent in Durban and Johannesburg’s Soweto township, where at least 24 vehicles were set ablaze and foreign-owned shops were looted, police said, BBC News and DW reported.

Police said 14 vehicles were torched in Durban and 10 in Soweto, where gunshots were reported during confrontations between residents and foreign shopkeepers. In Durban, protesters gathered outside a government refugee reception center demanding that it stop accepting asylum applications, and police fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds. The violence followed allegations that a foreign national had assaulted a protester; three foreign nationals were arrested. “At the present moment, I can confirm that no injuries have been reported,” police spokesman Xolani Fihla told the public broadcaster SABC.

The Department of Home Affairs said its staff had been “overwhelmed” under the current policy and that “serious threats to public safety and order had emerged,” but that its new approach would still comply with the Constitutional Court, the BBC reported. In July the court struck down restrictions that barred some people from seeking asylum because of how they entered the country or because they missed deadlines, prompting long queues at reception centers. Government spokesman William Baloyi told Reuters that false claims had spread that undocumented migrants would automatically be granted legal status.

South Africa has seen repeated outbreaks of xenophobic violence, often aimed at migrants from neighboring countries. Anti-immigrant groups this year demanded that undocumented foreigners leave by June 30, and tens of thousands of people have fled the country, DW said. Acting national police commissioner Lt. Gen. Puleng Dimpane condemned the destruction, and authorities promised to pursue those responsible.

Sources: BBC News, DW

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Labour Holds Starmer’s Old London Seat, Beating Green Leader Zack Polanski in a Boost for Prime Minister Andy Burnham: October 9, 2026

LONDON — Britain’s Labour Party held the Holborn and St Pancras seat vacated by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, fending off a challenge from Green Party leader Zack Polanski in a by-election seen as a test of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, The Guardian and Al Jazeera reported.

Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali, leader of the local council, won 12,292 votes, or 45 percent, to Polanski’s 8,928, or 33 percent. Turnout was 38.7 percent, the lowest for any by-election in England during this parliament, The Guardian said. Labour has held the central London seat since it was created in 1983, and Starmer won it with 49 percent of the vote in 2024.

Abdi-Wali, who came to Britain from Somalia as a child refugee, used her victory speech to hit out at “those who seek to divide us.” “I hope this moment says something about who gets to belong,” she said. “This is Camden and this is Britain.” Polanski, who is not an MP, said he would stay on as leader: “Of course I can carry on as leader of the Green party,” he told the BBC, according to The Guardian. “I’ve taken a loss tonight but our movement is so much bigger than one election or one motion and we’re going to grow.”

The defeat capped a bruising week for the Greens, whose members voted at their conference on Sunday to adopt a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism and calling for a single Palestinian state, despite opposition from four of the party’s five MPs. Polanski did not vote on the motion. Burnham was recently installed by Labour lawmakers who feared Starmer’s unpopularity was opening the way for Reform UK at the next general election, Al Jazeera said.

Sources: The Guardian, Al Jazeera

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U.S. Prosecutors Add Torture Charges Against Venezuela’s Ousted Leader Nicolás Maduro and His Wife: October 9, 2026

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, with conspiracy to commit torture, in a superseding indictment unsealed Thursday that accuses them of presiding over a system of repression that targeted opponents and U.S. citizens, BBC News and the Associated Press reported.

The indictment alleges torture including “electric shock, asphyxiation, rape, forced nudity, prolonged isolation, starvation, punishment cells, and psychological torture,” the BBC said. According to the AP, it claims Maduro signed off on torture methods, received updates on specific victims, watched a video of a forced confession and personally threatened to kill a prisoner’s child. Three of the victims described are U.S. citizens. Flores, prosecutors allege, helped build the system and ordered that some people be tortured to protect family members’ illegal activities.

The indictment “alleges conduct that is truly unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said outside the courthouse. “This is the epitome of corruption,” he said, according to NPR. Maduro’s attorney, Barry Pollack, said his client denies the charges and looks forward to his day in court. Prosecutors also added Flores to an existing narco-terrorism charge, and U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Thursday denied her request to be released to house arrest.

Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have been held in a Brooklyn detention center since U.S. forces seized them in a raid on Caracas in January. They have pleaded not guilty to the earlier drug-trafficking and weapons charges, and their trial is set to begin in June 2027, the BBC said. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, now leads Venezuela as interim president; the prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal says more than 300 political prisoners remain behind bars.

Sources: BBC News, Associated Press (via NPR), The Guardian

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Brazil’s Supreme Court Orders the Arrest of Eduardo Bolsonaro Weeks Before His Brother’s Presidential Runoff: October 9, 2026

SÃO PAULO — Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued an arrest warrant Thursday for Eduardo Bolsonaro, a son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and brother of presidential front-runner Flávio Bolsonaro, and ordered him to begin serving his prison sentence immediately, the Associated Press reported.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 42, a former congressman who lives in Texas and holds a U.S. green card, was convicted in June of coercion for lobbying the Trump administration to sanction Brazilian officials and impose higher tariffs on Brazil’s exports during his father’s coup trial. Moraes declared the case closed to further appeals, ordered him to serve a sentence of four years and two months, initially under a semi-open regime, and canceled his Brazilian passports, Agência Brasil reported. The warrant was entered in the national arrest database, and federal police were told to detain him if he returns.

“The defendant cannot benefit from his own wrongdoing by fleeing the national territory to an unknown location for the purpose of thwarting the application of criminal law,” Moraes said in his ruling, according to the AP report published by Al Jazeera. Agência Brasil said he is unlikely to serve the sentence while abroad; the AP noted that the U.S. and Brazil have had an extradition agreement since 1961 but that it was unclear whether its terms would apply.

The ruling came less than three weeks before the Oct. 25 runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, who won the most votes in Sunday’s first round. Eduardo Bolsonaro has been a key link between his brother and the Trump administration and took him to meet Trump at the White House on May 26. His long absence in the U.S. cost him his seat in Congress and his job with the federal police. Moraes also led the investigation that resulted in Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced last year to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup.

Sources: Associated Press (via Al Jazeera), Associated Press (via ABC News), Agência Brasil

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Pentagon Says the Firing-Squad Execution of Fort Hood Gunman Nidal Hasan Will Be Livestreamed: October 9, 2026

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military’s planned firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, will be livestreamed, a Defense Department official said, in what would be the first public execution in the United States in almost a century, BBC News reported.

The execution is scheduled for Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, Texas. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Hasan would get “a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” DW reported. “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” he said. Hegseth also said that holding the execution at Fort Hood on a Thursday at 1 p.m. — the approximate time, day of the week and place of the shooting — was a “no brainer,” RNZ reported. The Pentagon official gave no further details.

It would be the first execution carried out by the U.S. military since 1961 and the first by firing squad since World War II. A Pentagon spokesperson said this week that President Donald Trump had approved Hegseth’s recommendation. Hasan, who also wounded 32 people, was sentenced to death by a military court in 2013; at his trial he said he had acted to protect Taliban members in Afghanistan from U.S. troops.

The U.N. human rights office told AFP that livestreaming would be “tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called the plan “disgusting,” and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said public executions were what “oppressive dictators” did. John Mills, a lawyer who works with death-row inmates, said Hasan’s appeals were not exhausted and that he would be surprised if the execution went ahead. Alonzo Lunsford, a former Army sergeant shot seven times in the attack, told the BBC that he supports the firing squad but that the livestream is “not something you should view for entertainment purposes.”

Sources: BBC News, DW, RNZ

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U.S. Accuses Prominent Fiji Businessman Zhao Fugang of Bribery to Advance China’s Interests: October 8, 2026

SUVA, Fiji — The United States on Wednesday designated Zhao Fugang, a prominent businessman in Fiji, for “significant corruption” on behalf of Chinese government, business and criminal interests, barring him and his immediate family from entering the U.S., RNZ Pacific and AFP reported.

“Zhao abused his public position by paying bribes to Fijian citizens to advance China-based government, business, and criminal interests,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said, according to AFP. “His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected US interests in Fiji.” Zhao is director of the Overseas Chinese Service Center in Suva and owns the Yue Lai Hotel, where the center is located.

Zhao denied the allegations. “They are unsubstantiated,” he said in a statement from his lawyers, according to AFP. “I have not been questioned by any Fijian authority about these matters, and no charge has been laid against me.” He said he had written to U.S. officials asking for details of the allegations. The U.S. Embassy in Suva said his actions had left Fiji open to “malign foreign influence” by Chinese government, business and criminal actors.

A 2024 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project alleged that Zhao was a key point man for Beijing’s interests in Fiji and that Australian law enforcement suspected him of being a top player in a syndicate linked to human trafficking, money laundering and drug smuggling, AFP said. His lawyer called those claims “false and misleading.” China’s embassy in Suva did not respond to AFP. The U.S. also issued corruption designations this year against Palauan politicians Hokkons Baules and Anderson Jibas, RNZ reported.

Sources: RNZ Pacific, AFP

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