Zelenskyy says it’s “increasingly clear” Moscow wants no part of Trump’s “energy ceasefire,” Riyadh’s main airport stays shut while the war on the ground in Yemen grinds on, and Iran says the oil shuttle out of Hormuz is now a target. Ten stories as of Monday morning, October 12.
1. Warsaw, Kyiv and Kharkiv / Ukraine and Russia. Speaking to the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had bombed six energy facilities that day, injuring 33 people, and that “it is becoming increasingly clear that Russia does not want to agree to the energy ceasefire proposed by the US,” The Guardian reported. “If Russia does not agree to an energy ceasefire this winter, we will respond,” he said, adding of Trump’s announcement: “It’s clear that Putin does not read Truth Social.” Europe lined up behind Kyiv. “I have not noted, over the last 48 hours, any energy ceasefire coming from the Russian side,” France’s Emmanuel Macron said, per Al Jazeera, and the EU’s Kaja Kallas said the bloc welcomes the truce “when it holds.” In Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office said Trump’s Russian diesel deal “will provide additional revenue for Russia and help finance its illegal, unjustifiable war,” The Globe and Mail reported, even as Carney thanked Trump for pushing the ceasefire.
2. Riyadh and Taiz / Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Saudi Arabia extended the suspension of all flights at King Khalid International Airport on Monday while it verifies the airport’s safety, and its military said more missile and drone threats had been detected, The Guardian reported. Saturday’s toll is now 13 dead. Inside Yemen, Saudi jets carried out eight strikes around Taiz, the country’s third city, where as many as 60 fighters from both sides died on Sunday; the governor warned a medicine shortage means Taiz will soon run out of emergency surgical and intensive care. The UN Security Council is expected on Tuesday to debate a resolution calling the Houthis a terrorist organisation. Delta, meanwhile, pushed its new Atlanta–Riyadh nonstop back to March 2027, CNBC reported.
3. Strait of Hormuz / Iran and United Arab Emirates. Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei said Sunday night that the U.S.-assisted shuttle moving Gulf crude past Iran’s grip on Hormuz is now an explicit target, Al Jazeera reported. He claimed U.S. Central Command and the UAE military are using smaller vessels to carry oil out to bigger tankers, and that Iran has been hitting five or six of those vessels nightly for weeks. “You are smuggling, but the strait is under Iran’s control, and we manage it,” he said. Rezaei also threatened U.S.-linked cables, data centers and AI facilities in the UAE, and accused Saudi Arabia of helping move the oil, though he stopped short of threatening Riyadh directly.
4. Peshawar / Pakistan. A day after President Asif Ali Zardari imposed emergency rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the government confirmed that suspended Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and some of his cabinet were taken into “preventive custody” at his house in Peshawar, minister Talal Chaudhry told Reuters, via The Guardian. Police told Dawn the assembly speaker was among eight Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leaders held, and hundreds of party politicians have been detained. Imran Khan’s party calls it a coup and says the emergency is meant to stop his supporters marching on Islamabad to demand his release. The government says the province failed to tackle Islamist militancy.
5. Berlin / Germany. Bärbel Bas resigned on Monday as Germany’s labor minister and as co-leader of the Social Democrats, citing the death of her stepdaughter and “open attacks” on her from inside Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition, DW reported. “I am currently unable to muster the strength to fully carry out my government and party duties,” she said. Alexander Schweitzer, the former SPD premier of Rhineland-Palatinate, takes over the labor ministry; a new party co-chair will be picked at a conference expected early next year. Merz’s conservatives had accused Bas of stalling pension and labor-law changes.
6. Aubagne and Paris / France. A 14-year-old pupil walked into Lakanal middle school in Aubagne, east of Marseille, with a shotgun in a guitar case on Monday morning and shot the head teacher and another teacher before a staff member restrained him, BBC News reported. Their injuries aren’t life-threatening, no children were hurt, and prosecutors opened an attempted-murder investigation. Separately, hackers took over refrigeration software at hundreds of Coopérative U and Intermarché supermarkets, heating some fridges and freezers to 50C overnight and spoiling food worth millions of euros; Paris prosecutors are investigating, BBC News reported. And a pre-dawn fire “totally destroyed” the Marché des Enfants Rouges, Paris’s oldest covered market, dating to 1615, The Guardian reported.
7. Washington, Brussels and Canberra / United States, European Union and Australia. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan: “I don’t see an elevated risk,” he said on Sunday, BBC News reported. Trump has signed off on the execution, but no final decision on the livestream has been made. The execution is scheduled for December 3. On Monday the European Commission warned platforms they must “enforce their own terms and conditions diligently” in Europe under the Digital Services Act, noting Meta bans livestreamed capital punishment, France 24 reported. In Australia, the Greens want eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to keep the video off Australian screens, The Guardian reported.
8. Jalisco and Islas Marías / Mexico. Hurricane Simon is crawling northwest just off Mexico’s Pacific coast. At 8 a.m. MST it had 110 mph winds and sat 55 miles west-southwest of Cabo Corrientes, moving at 3 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. Mexico downgraded the mainland hurricane warnings to a watch and a tropical storm warning, but forecasters expect Simon to turn northeast and approach west-central Mexico again on Wednesday into Thursday, possibly re-strengthening first. A hurricane warning is up for the Islas Marías and a watch runs from north of Cabo Corrientes to Bahía Tempehuaya. Isolated storm totals of 30 inches of rain are possible in Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco, with “life-threatening flooding and mudslides.”
9. Asunción and Belmopan / Paraguay and Belize. China sanctioned Paraguay’s communications minister, Gustavo Villate, and Belize’s foreign minister, Francis Fonseca, over their countries’ ties with Taiwan, freezing any assets in China, barring them from Hong Kong and Macau, and banning Chinese dealings with them, Al Jazeera and the AP reported. Beijing accused the pair of “egregious actions and statements” damaging its core interests. Villate had marked Taiwan’s National Day on social media, and Taiwan’s foreign minister visited Belize last month. Paraguay and Belize are two of the 12 countries that still formally recognize Taiwan.
10. South Africa. Lt Gen Shadrack Sibiya, South Africa’s deputy national police commissioner, resigned on Monday, three weeks after he was charged with sexual offences, BBC News reported. His lawyer handed in the letter at his disciplinary hearing, and police said his exit counts as a dishonourable discharge. The charges involve allegations that he groomed a 16-year-old girl and raped an 18-year-old woman, plus a trafficking charge; Sibiya denies them all and has been in custody since his bail was denied. The Madlanga Commission, probing police corruption, has also heard he was given 20 impalas by an alleged crime boss in exchange for a police contract.
Coming Up
Confirmed dates on The Watch and beyond: October 13, Pope Leo XIV goes into Rome’s Gemelli hospital for lung-nodule surgery, the Vatican says. Through October 18, the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, with G20 finance ministers there October 15. October 15–16, the European Council in Brussels. October 19, Alberta’s referendum on whether to move toward a binding independence vote.
Sources: The Guardian; Al Jazeera; BBC News; DW; The Globe and Mail; CNBC; Dawn; France 24; AP; Vatican News; U.S. National Hurricane Center.
