© JOÃO PORFÍRIO/OBSERVADOR
The center's executive director has named an agent who has worked with ZZ Top and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee as the head of programming for the arts institution.
(Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP)
The center's executive director has named an agent who has worked with ZZ Top and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee as the head of programming for the arts institution.
(Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP)
© FILIPE AMORIM/OBSERVADOR
It has been one year since Hamas released the remaining Israeli hostages and President Trump promised an end to the war, but Palestinians say the past 12 months have been a ceasefire in name only.
(Image credit: Anas Baba)
In a blockbuster show, The Metropolitan Museum of Art places the work of two major 20th century artists side by side: the married couple Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.
(Image credit: Ernst Haas)
It has been one year since Hamas released the remaining Israeli hostages and President Trump promised an end to the war, but Palestinians say the past 12 months have been a ceasefire in name only.
(Image credit: Anas Baba)
© Google Maps
Austrian police detained Ukrainian investigative journalist Mykhailo Tkach and cameraman Yaroslav Bondarenko in Vienna yesterday, on 8 October. Both were later released, but the circumstances of their detention remain unclear, and the prosecutor’s office said suspicion against them had not been substantiated so far.
The detention lasted more than 12 hours, the first time Tkach had been held that long while on a reporting assignment abroad. The case unfolded alongside a separate Austrian espionage investigation involving two men suspected of working for Ukraine’s military intelligence. Authorities have not said whether the cases are connected.
In a video published by Ukrainska Pravda, Tkach said seven people wearing masks and carrying weapons approached their car at a traffic light about 3–5 kilometers from central Vienna, broke its windows, and pointed weapons at them.
He said the people did not identify themselves or explain their actions. The journalists were pulled from the car, forced face down onto the road, searched, and had their hands taped behind their backs, according to Tkach. He said he initially thought they were being kidnapped because he did not see identification or have time to notice police markings. He realized they were police only after seeing police vehicles.
“As I felt it, they detained us like terrorists,” Tkach said.
He added that people shouted and pointed weapons, and there was no communication. He said one person put a knee on his neck and shouted at him to be quiet. He also saw glass from the broken window fly into Bondarenko’s face.
In a second report, Ukrainska Pravda said Tkach’s account of a document presented to him listed three allegations: espionage in the interests of Ukrainian military intelligence, participation in a criminal organization, and, as far as he remembered, causing harm to Austria. He said investigators did not explain the evidence behind the allegations.
Vienna prosecutor’s office spokesperson Nina Bussek told the Austrian Press Agency (APA) that suspicion against the two journalists had arisen during other investigations but had not been substantiated. She said it currently appeared that the suspicion was not holding up. Austrian officials have not publicly addressed Tkach’s account of the force used.
Tkach and Bondarenko were in Vienna on an assignment to find Ruslan Kravchenko, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Kravchenko was dismissed on 15 September amid an investigation by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office into alleged protection of fraudulent call centers. He denied involvement. Der Standard reported that it remained unclear whether the journalists’ detention was connected to their reporting on him.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi confirmed Tkach’s release and said the Ukrainian consul had requested access to him, according to NV. Musaieva said Bondarenko had been injured and hospitalized.
A statement signed by Ukrainian media and civil society organizations, including Euromaidan Press, called for an immediate, transparent, and independent investigation of law enforcement’s actions. The signatories also demanded an independent review of the force used, the return of seized equipment, and necessary medical and legal assistance.
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner confirmed the arrests of four Ukrainians, according to ORF. The two men detained on 5 October were placed in pretrial detention until 21 October on suspicion of secret intelligence activity against Austria. APA reported that they were suspected employees of Ukraine’s military intelligence service. Both deny the allegations.
People in Russian-occupied Oleshky, a town in southern Ukraine, are running out of food and medicine and have no way out, a local resident told RBC-Ukraine. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman told the outlet that civilians there are dying of hunger every day.
The part of Kherson Oblast across the Dnipro River has been under Russian occupation since 2022, with civilians facing food and medicine shortages and restrictions on leaving. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented deteriorating conditions in Oleshky and neighboring Hola Prystan. There has been no practical breakthrough toward an organized evacuation, though 358 people who need help to leave Oleshky and nearby settlements have been verified. About 2,000 people remain in Oleshky, Kherson Oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin estimated.
The resident, who spoke anonymously, said food is extremely scarce, and residents are waiting for a humanitarian corridor to leave. The local market offers mostly vegetables and fruit, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, pears, and apples. Russia made its ruble the only legal currency in occupied Kherson Oblast from 1 January 2023, pushing out the Ukrainian hryvnia. Prices at the market start at 500 rubles (about $6), and "if you're lucky, 10 eggs can be bought for 3,000 rubles" (about $36), the resident said. That is about $3.60 an egg, nearly 20 times the US average of about $0.19, or $2.27 a dozen in August, US government data show.
Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, told RBC-Ukraine that civilians in the occupied area were dying every day.
"There is a humanitarian catastrophe there. Ukrainian civilians die there every day because they lack even basic food and water. There have been no medicines there for a long time. According to our information, there is simply hunger there," he said.
The resident said there were practically no medicines available. Expired drugs were being sold at about 100 rubles (about $1.20) a pill. His father has Parkinson's syndrome and has been concussed twice. The resident said he was forced to reduce his father's dose by 25% so the supply would last at least until the new year.
The resident's apartment had burned down, and his house remained damaged. His family had made the house livable and was living there, he said. His wife had lost more than 40 kilograms while the family relied on vegetables and fruit.
Four villages in the Hola Prystan community—Kokhany, Kardashynka, Velyka Kardashynka, and Mala Kardashynka—are effectively blocked, according to the Skhid-SOS fund. The fund told RBC-Ukraine that no transport reaches the villages and no humanitarian aid has been delivered for a prolonged period, although it is difficult to get more information from the villages. Residents are forced to walk or cycle to other settlements to find food, despite the risks of mines and drone strikes.
Lubinets also said Russian troops were using civilians as a buffer and as protection against the Ukrainian military, RBC-Ukraine reported. Because Ukrainian citizens remain in Oleshky, Ukraine cannot conduct active combat operations there, he said—which, in his view, allows Russia to hold civilians effectively as hostages on the front line.
Ukraine has delivered food to Oleshky by drone since March, Prokudin said. Nearly 400 parcels weighing almost 4 tons reached their drop-off points on the night of 4 October, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. How much of the food stays with residents is unclear. Prokudin has said Russian forces shoot down supply drones, confiscate or resell the packages, and detain and beat residents who receive them.
After a previous delivery, Tetiana Hasanenko, head of the Oleshky City Military Administration, said that Russian troops take drone-dropped food and accuse those who receive it of cooperating with Ukraine, and that some residents got several packages while others got none.
Duarte Nobre Guedes, presidente do Conselho Diretor da Associação Nacional dos Locadores de Veículos (ARAC), alertou para o "aumento de situações de criminalidade associadas ao roubo e ao uso indevido das viaturas de aluguer, com enormes prejuízos para o setor e para a sociedade" na sessão de abertura da VII Convenção Nacional da ARAC, que decorre esta sexta-feira, 9 de outubro, em Óbidos.
O presidente da Turismo Centro de Portugal, Rui Ventura, alertou que as dificuldades de mobilidade e acessibilidade podem comprometer a promoção turística dos territórios e a distribuição dos benefícios económicos do turismo.
Spanish trade unions representing millions of workers have announced a general strike for November 11. The announcement comes amid nationwide mobilizations for the right to housing and only days after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called early elections for November 29.
The strike was announced by the two largest union organizations, the General Union of Workers (UGT) and the Workers’ Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CCOO), alongside the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Basque unions ELA and LAB, and the Galician confederation CIG.
It will be the country’s first general strike in 14 years, excluding the feminist strike of March 8, 2018.
“A key demand of this strike is to vindicate decent salaries to afford housing,” the Madrid Tenants Union wrote.
In their strike call, unions emphasized several demands that have been on their agenda for months. These include reductions in working hours, wage increases, health and safety measures in the workplace, eradicating precarious employment and progress in collective bargaining – a process that has been obstructed by employers for almost a year.
Yet, echoing the sentiment voiced on the streets, where hundreds of thousands have protested and erected encampments against a predatory housing system, the trade union call links all these demands to the right to housing.
“This is a strike with very clear foundations and labor demands,” CCOO’s Carlos Gutiérrez said. “Is it being called because working families cannot access affordable housing? Yes. But we cannot separate the inability to access affordable housing from the wage situation in our country and what is happening in the workplace.”
The general strike builds on a protest wave triggered by the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal in late September. After years of battle to keep the home she had been living in for 70 years, Abascal was carried out of the apartment on a stretcher. She remained hospitalized until Wednesday, October 7, when the Madrid Tenants Union announced her death.
“Although a historic agreement was reached that would have allowed her to return to her home, this solution came too late,” the organization wrote. “An absolutely avoidable situation, following an agonizing process.”
Many of those participating in the protests recognized that Sánchez’s administration failed to implement policies that would truly address the housing crisis. Yet union and civil society statements emphasize the problem goes much further than the behavior of a specific political option.
“It’s important to make clear that this is not a strike against any particular government, but against those who do nothing to solve the housing crisis, and also against the employers, who have kept the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) blocked for nearly a year,” Patricia Ruiz from UGT was quoted as saying in Público.
Political parties from the center-left to the left have largely expressed support for the strike. Even PSOE figures who share the responsibility for not addressing the housing crisis signaled support for concerns outlined by trade unions.
While a general strike held only a couple of weeks ahead of an election would usually spell trouble for the incumbent administration, local political analysts say this is a peculiar situation that could swing both ways.
Right-wing options are polling high, but ongoing housing mobilizations could steer the electoral campaign away from scapegoating migrants toward issues of social justice – topics they are generally keen to avoid.
Lithuania plans to deploy up to 100 soldiers to support border guards along its frontier with Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said on 7 October.
Lithuanian Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas has described the deployment as a preventive measure linked to possible Russian mobilization and a recent incident on the Latvia-Belarus border, where masked, armed escorts tried to push a group of migrants into Latvia. Katelynas said Lithuania could face people trying to avoid mobilization and seeking asylum.
Kaunas said he had granted permission to use Lithuanian soldiers to strengthen border protection for the next several weeks.
“The order starts being implemented immediately,” he wrote on Facebook.
The Kremlin denies a new mobilization is coming. In early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin called reports of one "complete nonsense" and "an information attack on Russia." Ukraine's military and foreign intelligence services say Russia's General Staff has prepared a scenario to mobilize 600,000 people over 2026 and 2027. On 28 September, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that "in effect, the Russians have already begun additional mobilization."
On 8 October, the Lithuanian army said soldiers were being brought in to help the State Border Guard Service from that day. A company-sized unit was planned for the assignment, initially for two weeks, with the option to extend. Soldiers will patrol with border guards in frontier-station areas, while mobile patrols, mobile observation posts, and military police crews may be added as needed. The army described the deployment as preventive and a normal form of interagency cooperation.
Kaunas had told LRT TV the soldiers would stay until 16 October. On the morning of 8 October, he said the deployment "was supposed to start" overnight and that he would check with the army. On 8 October, the Lithuanian army said soldiers were being brought in to help the State Border Guard Service from that day. Kaunas also said that “on the Kaliningrad side” there were no physical barriers, unlike the border with Belarus.
On 8 October, Katelynas said the border guard service’s capacity was insufficient, with shifts growing while officer numbers were not increasing. He said the threat level had not changed. In a Facebook post the previous day, he said the situation at Lithuania’s border was calm and there was no reason to panic. He said Russia was planning mobilization after the elections and that Lithuania may face people trying to avoid it and seeking asylum.
Lithuania's State Border Guard Service had turned back 1,693 people trying to cross illegally from Belarus this year and about 26,300 since the migration crisis began, as reported by ELTA on 8 October. Katelynas said 43 migrants tried to enter southern Lithuania last week and were turned back.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia's handling of a suspected pneumonic plague case fit what he described as Moscow's history of concealing information about dangerous incidents, citing the 1979 anthrax outbreak, the Chornobyl disaster, and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to his post on X on 8 October.
A 28-year-old worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, Daria Shipilova, died at Shelekhov District Hospital on 2 October. The hospital was placed under quarantine, and nearly 200 people who had contact with her were put under medical observation.
Sybiha has called on Russia to disclose all the facts surrounding the case, provide transparent epidemiological data, and cooperate with international mechanisms.
"Russia has a long record of concealing the truth: the 1979 anthrax leak in Sverdlovsk, the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, and the true scale of COVID-19 in 2020–2022," he said.
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is usually found in small mammals and their fleas. Bubonic plague, the most common form, is caused by the bite of an infected flea. Pneumonic plague is the most virulent form: left untreated, it can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours of onset, though common antibiotics can cure it if given early.
But each time, the consequences were devastating.
Sybiha added that there is compelling evidence that Russia has used chemical weapons in Ukraine and has threatened to use nuclear weapons in its genocidal war. His remarks came amid rumors that the plague could have originated in a biological laboratory developing weapons.
"The world must not wait for another catastrophe before asking questions," he said.
Russia must disclose all the circumstances surrounding the case, provide transparent epidemiological data, and cooperate with international mechanisms because “when dangerous pathogens are involved, secrecy is a threat to everyone,” Sybiha added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it still lacks the data it needs for a full risk assessment, while Russia has told the organization that no cases of plague have recently been reported in Irkutsk Oblast.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that the organization has asked Russia for "further information on the laboratory tests conducted on the individual who died and the contacts," more details on what prompted the public health measures, and the health status of the contacts. The organization also seeks verification of media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause.
Based on "unofficial information," the public health risk to the general population appears to be low, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier says, according to Forbes.
On 6 October, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said information з приводу вирогідної хвороби from Russia was "still quite limited."
The next day at the White House, a reporter asked US President Donald Trump whether the plague in Russia was a bioweapon, according to CNN.
"Well, we don't think so. We're going to find out soon enough, but we don't think so," he said.
The reporter also asked whether Trump was “getting the same vibe right now from Russia that you got from China at the start of COVID.”
"Well, China didn't say much, and Russia's not saying much either, but they do say they have it very much under control," Trump answered.
The death toll from Russia's 7 October missile strike on Pryluky, a city in Chernihiv Oblast in northern Ukraine, has risen to 22, including five children, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said on 8 October. Another 54 people were injured, and 15 were rescued from the rubble.
Pryluky suffered the heaviest losses in Russia's 7 October attack, which struck cities across Ukraine. The attack involved about 70 missiles, many of them ballistic, as well as Shahed drones.
Seven of the injured are children, and the rescued include a 5-year-old. The search-and-rescue operation, which involved more than 500 emergency workers, has ended, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Russia attacked Pryluky with cruise missiles and directly hit a five-story apartment building, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. The strike came in the morning, when people were still asleep.
The strike hit the apartment building, a children's and youth creativity center, and a business, according to the National Police.
The death toll rose through 7 October and overnight. On the morning of 7 October, the National Police reported five dead and 26 injured. By the afternoon, the State Emergency Service put the figure at 14, including four children. By the morning of 8 October, it had reached 22, Chaus said. Four of the children died at the scene, and one died in hospital.
Russia attacked Kyiv and 12 oblasts overnight on 7 October, Zelenskyy said. Two people were killed in each of Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia.
Air defense downed or suppressed five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles, and 117 drones, while missiles and drones hit 18 locations, according to the Air Force.
Israel marked three years since the Oct. 7 attacks with memorials for those killed. And in Gaza, people are living among the ruins of a war they say has never ended.
Login