Un troisième cycle de pourparlers a débuté hier mercredi à Caracas entre le gouvernement intérimaire du Venezuela et l’opposition. L’information a été annoncée par un responsable du département d’Etat américain. Car depuis le 3 janvier et l’enlèvement du Président Nicolas Maduro, le Venezuela se trouve sous tutelle américaine. Et Washington en profite, comme l’illustre un récent accord permettant aux Etats-Unis de capter plus de 20% des réserves pétrolières du pays.
Quelle est la situation politique et économique du Venezuela aujourd’hui ? Jusqu’où s’exerce l’influence des Etats-Unis ? Quelles perspectives ?
Beijing warns against ‘discriminatory’ step after France drops opposition to British role in Made in Europe package
No 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”.
Beijing warns against ‘discriminatory’ step after France drops opposition to British role in Made in Europe package
No 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”.
Shevaun Haviland argues PM is right to revisit Labour’s EU red lines as current trading relationship is bad for business
Repairing the economic damage of Brexit should be the top priority for Andy Burnham as he reconsiders Labour’s red lines on EU membership, the head of one of Britain’s leading business groups has said.
Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said she welcomed the prime minister reopening the Brexit battle lines despite the uncertainty it could create, arguing that the UK’s current trading relationship with the EU was bad for business.
In barely a day, hurricane Polo, which formed in late September in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico, reached the highest category — level 5, corresponding to winds above 252 kilometers (156 mph) per hour. It was the second most powerful tropical cyclone recorded in the Pacific to date. Polo later weakened before making landfall as a storm — at category 2 — in Baja California Sur, Mexico. It left behind torrential rains, floods and infrastructure damage in northwest Mexico and the southwestern United States, and five deaths linked to those floods in Mexico.
Endless illegal immigration, unaffordable energy, draconian speech policing – we're being conditioned to accept outrageous things as normal, says Nick Rendell. Now add to that economic crashes.
Un contingente de la 10.ª División de Montaña de EE.UU. inició su despliegue en Panamá con miras a extender operaciones militares a Colombia y Honduras. La maniobra busca intensificar las acciones antidrogas impulsadas por la Administración de Donald Trump en la región.
Entre las fallas se cuentan interrupciones del servicio de anuncios, caídas en el recuento de visualizaciones de publicaciones favorables al presidente brasileño y bloqueos temporales de la promoción de contenidos en Instagram.
Exclusive: Douglas Alexander, on trade delegation to India, talks up economic benefits of joint trading arrangements with Europe
Britain will benefit from much closer trading relations with the EU even if that means giving up its ability to negotiate free trade agreements, the Scotland secretary has said.
Douglas Alexander helped negotiate deals with India and the US when he was a trade minister under Keir Starmer.
US defense-tech company CHAOS Industries introduced its Vespid interceptor family in Washington on 12 October, as the Association of the US Army (AUSA) annual meeting opened there, the company announced. CHAOS pitches the drones as low-cost defense against small and mid-size drones and one-way attack munitions. The company expects initial production capacity of 12,000 interceptors a year, expandable to 50,000 as demand grows.
The pitch lands as Russia moves its strike drones to jet power. Russia has stopped building the Geran-3, an earlier jet model, and makes about 3,000 faster Geran-4s and Geran-5s a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) told Militarnyi in August. In mid-September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two Ukrainian companies had passed combat tests with interceptors against such drones, while 67 were still working on them. Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express measured the new US drones against exactly that threat.
One to carry, one to launch in batches
The Mk 1 made its first public appearance on 12 October aboard a Forterra MESA autonomous ground vehicle, Army Recognition reported. It fires from tubes on launchers such as the 10-round ISS Aerospace HAL10. It takes midcourse guidance from CHAOS radars or external command systems, then an AI-assisted infrared seeker handles the final approach, the company says. An electric ducted fan rather than a jet engine drives it, which CHAOS says cuts cost and logistics compared with turbojet interceptors.
The smaller Mk 0 is man-portable and needs no operator input once fired, its product page says. Both are rated to reach a target in under 100 seconds, with a listed range of 10+ km. Defense Express called that range a serious weakness that more launchers around a city could offset.
Explore further
Most drone interceptors ram or explode. This Ukrainian one just throws a net—six shots to a module
CHAOS lists cruise speeds of 100 m/s (360 km/h) for the Mk 0 and 150 m/s (540 km/h) for the Mk 1. Defense Express said those speeds may be enough to intercept the Geran-4 and Geran-5, which it puts at 340 km/h and 450–600 km/h.
Ukrainian makers say their interceptors already down jet Gerans
Wild Hornets’ Sting interceptors downed several of the slower jet-powered Geran-3s in November 2025. An unnamed Wild Hornets representative told NV, in an interview published on 22 September, that the company’s new interceptor had destroyed about ten Geran-4s and several Geran-5s in limited use. The company plans mass production within a month of finishing combat tests.
On 12 October, former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said he and Pavlo Yelizarov, commander of Lasar’s Group, had created a new interceptor with troops and engineers. He said it downed two Geran-5s headed for Kyiv.
Crews from Lasar’s Group, which Fedorov has called a National Guard special unit, flew those combat tests, he said. Separately, Fedorov reported in August that a Ukrainian jet interceptor with a top speed above 600 km/h had entered combat testing.
Prime minister reiterates UK backing after the Ukrainian president’s latest round of difficulties with Donald Trump
Andy Burnham will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday as the UK seeks to further underline its support for the Ukrainian president, in contrast to his difficulties with Donald Trump.
The UK prime minister said his message to Zelenskyy and his country would be: “We are with you for as long as it takes.”
On October 10, thousands of Ecuadorians took to the streets to protest against the government of right-wing President Daniel Noboa. The demonstration was organized by the Autonomous Front of Organized Resistance (FARO) under the slogan “Government vs. People.”
A esta hora, una marcha de rechazo al Gobierno de Daniel Noboa recorre las calles de Quito. La movilización está marcada por carteles de protesta y consignas contra el mandatario y su gestión. Los manifestantes atraviesan en este momento el paso deprimido del Guambra y avanzan… pic.twitter.com/WKPfT8D9jF
Saturday’s demonstration followed a protest on October 8, organized by labor unions also in Quito, to protest the security, energy, health, and employment crises facing the country. They also protested government cuts to education and health care, as well as alleged mistreatment of workers, according to Edwin Bedoya, president of the United Workers’ Front (FUT).
For its part, the October 10 demonstration – which consisted mainly of high school and college students – set out from the Central University and marched through Quito. Slogans such as “If the people have no peace, neither does the government” and “Out with Noboa, out with him!” were heard along the streets occupied by the demonstrators.
The president of the Catholic University Student Federation, Jatari Ulcuango, told protesters: “Four years ago, this government promised us electricity; two years ago, too – and now the blackouts have returned. Two months ago, the government told us it would provide us with medicine, and yet we’re only receiving 60% of the supply. They’re taking us for fools.”
He added: “We’re dying outside the hospitals. Criminals are kidnapping us, murdering us, and robbing us. That’s why we’ve come out this morning. They plan to dismantle public institutions to force us to hire private security. Who has gotten rich off the health crisis? The private healthcare sector, while the people are getting poorer and poorer.”
The peaceful march headed back to the Central University, where the students gathered. Later, the students reported on social media that they had been harassed and repressed by the police, who had accompanied the entire march.
Likewise, several media outlets reported that the police were aggressive toward them. This was reported by the outlet La Barra Espaciadora, which released a video showing police officers pushing journalists.
TeleSur journalist Elena Rodríguez also reported that law enforcement officers broke the microphone she was using and struck her on the head: “I’m sick and tired of having to recount, time and time again, police attacks against the press. Today, while I was trying to document the violence with which officers were beating young protesters, I was struck on the head from behind with a baton. I turned around, showed my Telesur microphone to identify myself as a journalist, and the response was another baton strike that ended up breaking it.”
She added: “If they think that by beating me up they’re going to get me to stop documenting police brutality, to put my microphone away, or to back off several blocks so I can report from a place where I won’t be a nuisance, they’re wrong. It is not we journalists who should distance ourselves from the events. It is the police who must stop attacking us. The right to report cannot be negotiated at the point of a baton.”
The protests are taking place against the backdrop of a widespread crisis in the country, which includes the worst security crisis in its history (tens of thousands of deaths due to violence between drug trafficking gangs), a very serious health crisis (a lack of supplies and medicines in the public health system), and other major crises such as those in education, public investment, and employment.
Local elections will be held in November, which will reveal the extent of support – or lack thereof – for President Noboa and his neoliberal government agenda, which aligns with the hemispheric security strategy led by the Trump administration.
The prime minister is correct to judge the time is right to push for closer links with the EU. The political risk is far outweighed by the potential rewards
The German philosopher GWF Hegel famously evoked the owl of Minerva when discussing the historical wisdom that comes through hindsight. This autumn, she has flown tirelessly over the landscape of British politics. Party conference season was dominated by conflicting Labour and Conservative accounts of the 1970s and 80s. And a decade after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Andy Burnham this week abandoned all equivocation over the damage – economic but also strategic – that resulted from that decision.
Having declared that it is time to “face up to the reality that Brexit has done more harm than good”, Mr Burnham told the House of Commons on Monday that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to explore all options for closer relations with Brussels. Though he confirmed that in this parliament he will honour the red lines in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto, all bets will subsequently be off.
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Almost half of workers helping families care for children, older people, and people with disabilities, who provide vital domestic support in Europe, have considered quitting due to low pay and bad working conditions, a labour-union report found on Tuesday (13 October).
The 2026 personal and household services (PHS) employment monitor drew on more than 8,000 responses from workers, service users, and employers in 36 countries.
Around one in four respondents worked between 35 and 40 hours per week.
Meanwhile, six in 10 workers reported work-related musculoskeletal disorders, including back pain and tendon inflammation.
One in four also said they had experienced or witnessed verbal abuse, while nearly 15 percent had experienced either sexual harassment, physical, and/or sexual violence.
Care poviders’ mental health is impacted, with around six out of 10 reporting sleeping issues.
But these same workers play “an essential role in providing a dignified life for everybody in our ageing European societies,” Oliver Roethig, regional secretary of UNI Europa said in a statement.
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Amid renewed speculation about an early General Election, now is the time to look at whom to put money on as the next party leaders, says Mark Littlewood in his latest Political Betting column for the Daily Sceptic.
Angela Rayner's department funnelled taxpayers' cash into Left-wing propaganda seeking to prevent a Reform or Tory government in the wake of the Southport murders.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.
Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:
In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.
Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.
I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.
To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.
I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR) released information on the components of Russia’s Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile and the companies involved in its production, according to a statement dated 12 October.
Russia has used Kinzhal missiles to strike targets across Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion. However, 22 of the 58 companies in Russia’s Kinzhal production network are not subject to sanctions, the intelligence agency noted.
Kinzhal missile: design, components, and production changes
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence has published an interactive 3D model of the Russian Kinzhal missile on its War&Sanctions portal.
The 9-S-7760 missile, known as the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, uses solid fuel and has a single stage. This means the missile does not consist of multiple stages that separate sequentially during flight. About 90% of its components are identical to those used in the 9M723 ballistic missile of the Iskander-M system, HUR noted.
The Kinzhal is equipped with a radar homing seeker, an active jamming station, and a decoy deployment system, according to the statement. The homing seeker helps the missile determine the direction to its target, while decoys are designed to make interception by air defense systems more difficult.
The missile can carry one of two types of warheads: a penetrating high-explosive warhead or a nuclear warhead. Russia is also developing a version with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead that strikes targets through an explosion and fragments. HUR believes this development may be linked to problems with the missile’s accuracy.
In 2026, Russia significantly reduced its state procurement order for Kinzhal missiles and redirected some production resources, components, and raw materials towards manufacturing Iskander-M missiles, HUR noted. Another reason is the limited number of MiG-31I and MiG-31K aircraft used to launch Kinzhal missiles, the intelligence agency reported.
Ukraine intercepts Kinzhal missiles, but has limited resources to do so
Despite their high speed, Russian Kinzhal missiles can be intercepted using US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. In particular, PAC-3 interceptor missiles are designed to destroy ballistic targets and can be used against threats such as the Kinzhal and Zircon, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported.
Ukraine is seeking additional Patriot interceptor missiles to defend against Russian ballistic attacks during the winter.
The Patriot PAC-3 surface-to-air missile system. Photo: Swedish Ministry of Defense
Most of the approximately 1,000 missiles Kyiv has contracted for are not expected to arrive for several years, prompting Ukraine to ask its allies to supply missiles from their existing stockpiles, Defense News reported on 12 October 2026.
Sanctions loopholes allow Russia to obtain foreign components for Kinzhal missiles
Russia continues to use foreign components in missile production despite sanctions. For instance, the US-made Texas Instruments processors were found again in a newer version of the Kinzhal missile, Ukrainian presidential commissioner for sanctions policy Vladyslav Vlasiuk said in September, Interfax reported. According to him, foreign electronics continue to reach Russia through various supply channels.
Earlier, Ukraine had provided its partners with information on more than 100 Russian companies involved in ballistic missile production and urged them to impose sanctions on those entities, according to the President's Office.
On 12 October, the EU Council imposed sanctions on 1,569 individuals and entities linked to Russia’s military-industrial complex, including 826 Russian companies and 743 company CEOs.
PM hails next month’s ‘reset’ summit as first step to closer ties, but tensions over trade may prove problematic
Andy Burnham has promised a “serious dialogue” over the UK’s future place in Europe, saying the existing relationship is “not good enough” as he framed next month’s Brussels summit as a possible first step to EU membership.
The prime minister said Britain must take a “clear-eyed rational look” at its long-term relationship with the bloc to boost economic growth and control immigration, which needed to go beyond Labour’s existing red lines.
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