Politics
Israeli troops were told to prepare for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon, after Israel pounded Hizbullah’s operations in the south of the country. Lebanese officials said 600 people had been killed in the bombardment, but gave no breakdown of civilians and combatants. At the start of the campaign an Israeli strike killed 45 people in Beirut, including Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hizbullah commander who was wanted for the bombings of the American embassy and marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Hizbullah fired a ballistic missile at Israel for the first time. It was shot down over Tel Aviv. America and 11 of its allies called for a 21-day ceasefire.
An explosion at a coal mine in Iran killed at least 50 people. Unsafe levels of methane gas hampered the rescue effort.
Police in Tanzania arrested three opposition leaders ahead of a planned anti-government protest. Although they were later released, critics worried that the detentions were the latest sign that the country is reverting to the repression which Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president, had promised to break. Earlier this month an opposition figure was found dead after being abducted by armed men.
Joe Biden gave his final speech to the UN General Assembly, where he insisted that a diplomatic solution to Israel’s war with Hamas and Hizbullah was still possible. Volodymyr Zelensky struck a more martial tone, telling the delegates that Russia must be “forced into peace”. The Ukrainian president spoke to the UN before unveiling his plan for victory to the Americans.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, visited Kyiv, where she announced that the EU would loan Ukraine €35bn ($39bn). The loan is backed by a G7 plan to tap profits of frozen Russian assets. Meanwhile, Russia claimed that 56 civilians had been killed up until September 20th in Ukraine’s incursion over the border into the Kursk region, and that 131,000 people had fled their homes.
Starmer’s no charmer
Labour held its first annual conference as Britain’s governing party for 15 years. Things have not gone smoothly for the new government since July’s election, and its poll ratings are sliding fast. In his conference speech Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said his policies would be “tough in the short term” but that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Businesses and households must wait for the budget on October 30th to find out whether their taxes will rise.
Germany’s government saw off a challenge from the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a state election in Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin. The Social Democrats (SPD), the party of Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, took 31% of the vote and the AfD 29%. The Greens and the Liberals, the SPD’s coalition partners, failed to muster enough support to get into the local assembly. After a string of poor results in local elections the two co-leaders of the Green party stepped down.
The new prime minister of France, Michel Barnier, named his cabinet, which has a distinctly conservative feel compared with the previous government’s centrist character. The new interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, pledged to crack down on illegal immigration and Islamists. The finance minister is Antoine Armand, who hails from Emmanuel Macron’s moderate Renaissance party. He takes over from Bruno Le Maire.
The Swedish Security Service revealed that Iran was behind a cyber-attack on Sweden’s text platforms last year, and had sent out messages urging people to respond to a spate of Koran burnings. Iran’s purpose was to sow discord, said the security agency.
Swiss police arrested several people in connection with the first reported death of someone in a suicide pod. Assisted dying is legal in some instances in Switzerland, but concerns have been raised about the pod, which slowly fills with nitrogen gas, cutting off oxygen supply.
China fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific, the first time it has made such a test public since 1980. The exercise is likely to raise international concerns about China’s increased long-range nuclear capabilities.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake won Sri Lanka’s presidential election in the country’s biggest political shake-up since independence in 1948. Mr Dissanayake comes from a party with a Marxist history. He promises to uphold democracy, tackle corruption and cronyism and alleviate poverty, but also wants to re-examine the terms of the IMF’s bail-out. Shortly after his victory Mr Dissanayake dissolved parliament and called a general election for November 14th.
In an unexpected twist, S. Iswaran, a former transport minister in Singapore, pleaded guilty to obtaining valuable items from a Formula One racing promoter while he was in office. It is the first corruption case involving a Singaporean minister since 1986.
The king of Thailand signed a bill into law, that paves the way for gay marriage to become legal on January 22nd.
Rot in the Big Apple
Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, said that charges brought against him by the federal government were “entirely false” and “based on lies”. Mr Adams has been under investigation for more than a year. Prosecutors had confiscated phones from several officials. The police and health commissioners and schools chancellor recently resigned.
Morena, Mexico’s ruling party, appointed a son of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to a party job. Andrés López Beltrán has been a quiet player behind the scenes. His new position adds to fears that Mr López Obrador will continue to influence the presidency after Claudia Sheinbaum takes office on October 1st.
A court in Argentina ordered the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic president, for alleged crimes against humanity. This came hours after the Venezuelan Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, on charges connected to the seizure of a Venezuelan cargo plane. Mr Maduro is clinging on to power despite losing July’s election.
Kenya said it would deploy another 600 peacekeepers to Haiti, boosting its force there to 1,000. The transitional government in Haiti recently created an electoral council with the aim of holding an election by February 2026, which would be the country’s first in a decade.
Correction (October 1st 2024): The original version of this article wrongly said that the suicide pod used in Switzerland filled with liquid nitrogen, as opposed to nitrogen gas.