Israeli police said on Monday that they had arrested 10 people in the occupied West Bank after settler attacks on an American photographer and a French mayor that drew international condemnation but mixed messages from the government.

In a rare action against rising settler violence, police said they raided several locations across the occupied territory and seized cars and potential evidence related to the attacks.

“Following the severe incidents of violence over the past weekend, including the assault of a media worker and the suspected attacks on foreign civilians, an arrest operation was conducted before dawn,” said Major General Moshe Finchi, the Israeli police’s West Bank commander.

“Suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the violent incidents, violating a military commander’s order concerning a closed military zone, and illegal construction,” he said.

Witnesses say that settlers have been stepping up violent attacks on Palestinians during the ongoing olive harvest, aiming to seize their land during a season that carries cultural importance for the community.

Rights groups note that Israel rarely prosecutes settlers when the victims are Palestinian. The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said it documents 561 acts of settler or military violence against Palestinians since September 27 — more than 26 incidents a day.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a tight race for a new mandate, has tried to shore up his pro-settlement right-wing base and has cast doubt on the circumstances behind the recent settler attacks on Westerners.

Netanyahu’s tone has brought unusually strong criticism from the opposition, which has accused him of tarnishing Israel’s image.

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a staunch ally of Israel, had called Friday’s beating of veteran photographer Heidi Levine an “act of terror” and demanded punishment. He called Monday’s arrests a “very positive development”.

Levine, 65, who was on assignment for The Washington Post, was taken to a hospital with broken vertebrae. She was visited at her hospital bed both by President Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, and centre-left opposition leader Yair Golan.

Golan, in a social media post afterwards, said that if he takes power, there will no longer be “a reality in which Jews instil terror in the name of Jewish supremacy, and stain the state we built here”.

Rising international attention

One day after Levine’s beating, settlers attacked a convoy of European diplomats, including the French and Belgian consuls general in Jerusalem as they went through the town of Taybeh in the West Bank on Saturday.

The settlers beat up Bernard Baudoux, 78, the mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, who was wearing a sash in the French tricolour during a goodwill visit in which he helped harvest olives.

Netanyahu earlier questioned the facts behind the two recent incidents.

On Levine’s beating, he alleged that Palestinians and “far-left” activists were fanning violence. With the attack on the diplomatic convoy, he pointed out that the mayor was a leftist supporter of the Palestinian cause and said that diplomats should have coordinated with the Israeli military.

The top official on human rights in the US State Department, Riley Barnes, on Sunday visited the same town where the mayor was beaten, which is largely Christian, on a trip coordinated with the military. He was unharmed.

The violence by settlers has led British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband to accuse Israel of an “ethnic cleansing” campaign and for London to impose sanctions on goods from settlements.

Marking Monday’s deadline for Israel accepting construction tenders for the E1 settlements, a major new project that Palestinians fear will divide the West Bank in two, Miliband warned businesses about consequences.

“They should be aware of legal and reputational consequences, including the risk of involving themselves in serious breaches of international law,” Miliband said in a statement.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar hit back against what he called an “obsession” with Israel by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government.

“The days when Israel would quietly accept threats, sanctions and attempts to dictate its policies are over,” Saar said.

A New Delhi magistrate extended the detention of two leaders of India’s youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement by two days on Monday, after they were remanded in custody five days ago.

CJP activists and opposition parties have defied a security crackdown to demand the resignation of India’s chief election commissioner, accusing the poll body of manipulating voter rolls to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party.

The commission, which oversees voting in the world’s most populous nation, has denied any wrongdoing.

Television footage showed CJP leaders Ashutosh Ranka, 30, and Saurav Das, 27, being taken away in a blue police van from a police station where the hearing took place.

“This is an absolute mockery of the justice system,” the movement’s legal affairs head Ratna Singh told reporters.

Das and Ranka were taken into custody on Oct 14 for their “alleged repeated attempts to disturb public peace and violate the law”, the police said in a statement at the time.

The pair had jumped security barricades to wave the national flag at Jantar Mantar, a decades-old protest site that police have barred people from using.

“Their alleged attempts to instigate others through social media to engage in similar unlawful activities were also taken into consideration,” the statement said.

Jantar Mantar, in the heart of the capital, has been sealed off with yellow metal barricades for more than a week and guarded by security personnel.

Delhi police said last week they had removed the site from the list of designated protest venues.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that he would give every child in the United States a share in his SpaceX rocket company.

“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” Musk, the richest man in the world, said on X.

“This will be the first of many,” he said, without providing details about how the scheme would work.

There are around 73 million children under the age of 18 in the United States, according to 2024 data from the US Census Bureau.

Musk owns 38 per cent of SpaceX, according to Forbes.

His announcement comes after US President Donald Trump promised last month to give every American adult $5,000 if his Republican party retains control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

SpaceX set the record for the largest initial public offering in history, raising $85.7 billion in June.

The company’s Starship megarocket reached orbit for the first time in September, a milestone for the rocket central to Musk’s Mars ambitions.

France announced partial curfews in Paris and other cities on Monday after weekend demonstrations over soaring prices degenerated into some of the worst street violence in recent years.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu did not rule out imposing a state of emergency after the interior minister said police had “lost control”.

Tourists in Paris had a taste of the disruption on Monday when they found the Louvre closed because of a small group of student protesters.

Facing accusations that it failed to anticipate and respond to the violence, the government has vowed to re-establish order, while officials scrambled to contain public anger.

The unrest, erupting just six months before France elects a successor to President Emmanuel Macron, threatened to continue, with organisers calling for a new round of protests next Saturday.

Authorities said partial curfews would be enforced from Monday evening to Tuesday morning in a number of cities including Paris, Lille and Lyon, to protect businesses.

In the capital, a curfew was ordered from 11pm (2am PKT), while demonstrations were banned from 8pm.

“I’m absolutely determined to restore public order”, Lecornu said.

Other European countries have also seen demonstrations over rising prices, with smaller clashes breaking out in Milan and Belgium over the weekend and protests simmering in Spain and Portugal.

Some half a million people turned out across France on Saturday to denounce the surging cost of living, a culmination of four weeks of protests that began with students demanding better conditions at high schools.

What started as peaceful demonstrations descended into violence in many cities, as masked groups attacked law enforcement, broke into public buildings and set some ablaze, looted shops, and set fire to cars, bicycles and scooters.

Listings for ‘stolen goods’

On Monday, France’s digital minister, Anne Le Henanff, urged online resale platforms to remove listings for “stolen items” following Saturday’s looting and summoned representatives of companies including Vinted and eBay.

After the weekend scenes of chaos, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez offered his resignation, but Macron refused to accept it.

More than 2,500 people were arrested and nearly 1,000 members of the security forces injured. Protesters were also hurt, with one demonstrator’s hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade.

Macron acknowledged failures in the government response, which had seen 60,000 law enforcement personnel deployed on Saturday.

Nationwide, more than 2,513 people have been taken into police custody since the weekend, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said. He added that 67 had been jailed and “dozens” of criminal cases opened.

Darmanin also said authorities would use facial recognition on social media to identify perpetrators.

At least 3,000 shops were damaged, with the cost running into hundreds of millions of euros.

In an address to the nation on Sunday, Macron slammed the “unbridled” violence.

The European Union called the violence “unacceptable” but warned that the right to peaceful protest “must be protected” in France.

Germany condemned the violence and updated its travel advice for France, saying “further outbreaks of violence in the coming days cannot be ruled out”.

China has warned citizens travelling to France to be aware of risks and take safety precautions, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Louvre blocked

In Paris on Monday, a dozen demonstrators blocked the entrance to the Louvre, the most visited museum in the world, while bewildered tourists looked on.

“We don’t want to get involved. We want to stand back and get away from them,” Pat Boland, a tourist from Australia, said of the protests.

The pensioner, 73, spoke to AFP outside barricades that had been erected at the Louvre, which was closed because a small group of protesters stood by its famed glass pyramid entrance.

The unrest has flared before presidential elections in April and May that will elect a new French president after a decade of centrist Macron.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, is riding high in the polls.

The government has accused ultra-left groups of stoking the violence to boost the chances of the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon in the presidential polls.

The interior minister and intelligence services were to meet late Monday to discuss the violence.

Europe

During the weekend, clashes broke out on the sidelines of a cost-of-living demonstration in Milan.

“I’m very worried because it’s a new phenomenon, which also originates from an international scenario and therefore feeds itself,” mayor Giuseppe Sala said.

In Belgium, police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters in Brussels and Liege.

In Spain protesters have set up tents in the heart of Madrid to denounce soaring housing costs, with similar encampments going up in neighbouring Portugal’s main cities of Lisbon and Porto.

The World Food Programme said Monday it would end monthly assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza due to a funding shortfall, despite acute needs in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

With the cutbacks, 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza — still about half the population — will be receiving either food or cash assistance each month from the UN agency, in reduced amounts.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said its efforts had mitigated the effects during a famine last year in Gaza and warned that conditions had not improved to the point that it can take away aid.

“People are not safe. Airstrikes continue on a daily basis. People continue to be displaced,” Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told AFP at the agency’s office in east Jerusalem.

“Almost everybody remains without a permanent home to live in. And the humanitarian conditions are brutal,” he said.

According to the latest assessments, 1.4 million people — or two-thirds of Gaza’s population — are still “acutely food insecure” and need humanitarian assistance to survive, he said.

In August last year, the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said that Gaza was suffering famine conditions.

The famine classification was lifted in December, two months after a US-brokered ceasefire was announced in Gaza. Israel has kept striking Gaza since then, vowing to kill anyone involved in the October 7 attack.

Since the ceasefire, the WFP has been able to step up assistance and had been reaching between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people every month.

“This has been a lifeline. But now, rather than being able to sustain and scale up that assistance, we’re actually having to reduce it,” Hughes said.

“And that’s not because we don’t have humanitarian access to deliver food; that’s because we don’t have funding.”

Less aid to each recipient

In addition to reducing the number of people who receive rations, the WFP has been forced to shrink the content.

Families receiving food assistance will now get only one food parcel instead of two and a smaller bag of wheat flour, the WFP said in an operational note.

The 75,000 families who receive assistance in cash will see the amount reduced from 1,250 to 750 shekels ($400 to $240) per month.

The WFP is funded by governments as well as private donors. It has seen a sharp drop in resources, including after President Donald Trump returned to power in the United States and drastically slashed contributions to UN agencies as well as bilateral aid.

The agency says it needs about $450 million over the next six months for its operations in Gaza and the West Bank, but in 2026 it has only received about half the usual financing for the Palestinian territories.

In September, the agency also reduced by half the number of aid recipients in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, from 400,000 to 200,000.

“Now is not the time in the history of Palestine and Gaza to turn away from what is happening in Gaza,” Hughes said.

The WFP says that conditions have moderately improved in Gaza but noted that needs could rise again with the onset of winter.

Israel has allowed more goods into Gaza under the terms of the Trump ceasefire but still imposes heavy restrictions, turning away shipments of anything that is seen as having potential military use — a policy that has included blocking even prosthetic limbs, according to the United Nations.

Israel has ramped up longstanding criticism of the United Nations since the Gaza war, accusing the world body of bias and perpetuating dependency among Palestinians.

Britain’s Met Office says this year’s El Nino is “unprecedented.” Japan’s weather agency has called it the strongest ever observed. US forecasters say it still trails the biggest events in its record books.

How can they all be right? The answer lies in how they measure El Nino’s strength, with meteorological agencies using different methods to assess the climate phenomenon that make direct comparisons difficult.

“By any measure, we are looking at a very strong El Nino,” climate scientist Emily Becker of the University of Miami told AFP, adding that only once it is over will scientists be able to assess how big it is and “where it fits in the context of history.”

Natural climate driver

The Pacific Ocean’s El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the planet’s main natural climate driver. Normally, trade winds blow east to west along the equator, pushing warm water from South America toward Asia, while cold water rises from the depths to replace it.

El Ninos, which occur every two to seven years on average and last nine to 12 months, disrupt this pattern.

The trade winds weaken and warm water is pushed back east toward the Americas. That shift in where ocean heat is released into the atmosphere ripples across global weather, making some regions cooler and wetter and others hotter and drier.

In describing the El Nino as unprecedented, the Met Office points to raw temperatures in the Pacific.

“Our observations confirm that sea-surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific have now surpassed levels recorded during previous El Nino events,” it said in a statement to AFP.

But absolute temperatures are just one way of measuring El Nino’s strength.

Agencies also look at anomalies — how far temperatures rise above a historic baseline — to assess the event.

The Japan Meteorological Agency last week declared this El Nino the strongest on record based on how far sea surface temperatures were above normal in the Nino3 region of the eastern Pacific. By its count, the event beat 1997 in observations going back to 1949.

The US watches a neighboring box, Nino3.4, in the east-central Pacific.

It declares an El Nino when temperatures there run at least 0.5C above normal and the atmosphere responds, weakening the trade winds and shifting tropical rainfall eastward. This process is known as “ocean-atmosphere coupling.”

Accounting for climate change

How “normal” is defined has been a matter of significant debate.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other agencies including the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation long used the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI), which compares temperatures to a 30-year average that is updated every five years, so that the baseline keeps pace with a warming climate.

But with climate change speeding up and warming oceans worldwide, NOAA now uses the Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI), and the WMO is in the process of switching.

RONI also relies on a 30-year average but goes on to measure how warm or cool the east-central Pacific is compared to the rest of the tropical ocean, because it is that difference that drives the weather impacts we care about.

“We were finding a mismatch between the temperature of the tropical Pacific and the impacts,” said Becker about the old index. La Nina years, when the central and eastern tropical Pacific is cooler than normal, were producing stronger effects than their rating suggested, and El Ninos weaker ones.

NOAA projects this El Nino will be the strongest in its records, which go back to 1950, if the three-month average RONI anomaly reaches 2.5°C or higher, a level that would put it above the 1982-83, 2015-16, and 1997-98 events.

The chances are rated “high,” but not yet certain.

“Regardless of where we’re ranking or how we’re measuring this event, it’s an incredible opportunity to study and understand this very powerful phenomenon in the context of a warming world,” said Becker.

Alberta decides Monday if it wants to pursue a binding referendum on leaving Canada, with Prime Minister Mark Carney warning a separatist win would bring dangerous uncertainty during a trade war with the United States.

Polls indicate less than a quarter of people in the western Canadian province support independence.

But attention has focused on turnout in the days before the vote, and whether a motivated separatist camp could defy the polls, helped by complacent federalists.

“Don’t let anyone tell you this is already decided. Turnout will determine the outcome,” Carney told a rally on Thursday.

Carney, who grew up in Alberta, has called the referendum “a dangerous bluff” as US President Donald Trump imposes punishing tariffs and levels annexation threats aimed — the prime minister says — at breaking Canadian resolve.

“Vote like Canada depends on it, because it does,” Carney said.

Alberta has the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves and separatist momentum has been driven by anger over Ottawa’s management of the sector.

Many Albertans loathed Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who they accused of trying to suppress oil production to advance his pro-climate agenda.

“If you want me to pinpoint who is responsible for the separatist sentiment, I think it’s Justin Trudeau,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told the Canadaland podcast this month.

At a separatist rally in Edmonton on Saturday, 61-year-old Sandy Martel said people connected to the oil industry feel “robbed, cheated (and) mistreated.” “It’s time to stand up and say stop,” she told AFP.

The vote comes days after a fire at a military base in the province left at least four soldiers dead and wounded dozens, prompting a national outpouring of condolences.

‘Huge uncertainty’

Smith, a conservative, says she wants Alberta to remain in Canada but called the referendum to settle the divisive issue.

If a majority votes to separate, she has pledged to move forward with a binding referendum.

If the federalists win, Smith says the secession question should be considered closed.

Analysts have compared Smith’s tactics to those of former UK prime minister David Cameron, who had hoped to resolve the debate over Britain’s European Union membership with a vote.

Carney led the Bank of England through the turmoil that surrounded Brexit, and issued a warning to Albertans about that experience on Thursday.

“It wasn’t clear what ‘Brexit’ meant at the time,” he told a Calgary television station.

“For the next few years, while that was being determined, there was huge uncertainty, investments stopped, the economy started to underperform,” he added, cautioning over unintended economic consequences.

AI influence

Monday’s referendum features 10 questions, including several related to immigration, but focus is on question 10, which asks: “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada?” or should the province take the legal steps required for a definitive independence vote? Alberta’s election authority says ballots for question 10 will be counted first, with results expected in the early hours Tuesday.

The pre-referendum period was clouded by avalanches of manipulated AI content.

Carney has urged “a decisive result,” but experts are concerned about a contested outcome no matter the numbers.

“A very likely result of this referendum is going to be a community that sees this election as stolen or at least unfair,” said Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University.

Close Trump allies have also inserted themselves into the discussion, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who in January described Alberta as a “natural partner” for the United States.

After a separatist party won Quebec’s provincial election on October 5, tech billionaire Elon Musk posted that “they would be better off” if they seceded.

“Alberta and Saskatchewan should separate too,” he added.

Asked about alleged foreign interference, Carney said Thursday that foreign governments, including the US, should not “get themselves involved in our elections.”

French police battled protesters and looters for a second day on Sunday as the country reeled from the violent chaos left by a day of cost-of-living demonstrations in which around 2,000 people were arrested nationwide.

Paris city workers had not finished clearing up the torched cars, smashed shopfronts and burnt debris from Saturday’s unrest when the new troubles started and political recriminations erupted.

AFP journalists said several hundred people gathered in the Republique square in the capital following social media calls for a gathering that authorities said had not been approved.

Television footage showed the looting of a clothing store and bikes were also set alight nearby.

The Paris police prefecture said security forces moved in when “faced with the initial signs of tension”.

AFP journalists saw police firing tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of people gathered in the square. Bottles and rocks were hurled at police who made several arrests.

Some 550 people out of 855 arrested in Paris remained in detention from Saturday’s troubles and police stations were struggling to cope, according to the Legal Team Paris group of lawyers.

Government under pressure

Six months from a presidential election, the government faced opposition attacks over preparations for the nationwide day of action that followed weeks of mounting student protests over conditions in schools.

President Emmanuel Macron, who on Saturday vowed that anyone who engaged in vandalism or looting would be prosecuted, was to address the nation on Sunday evening at 1800 GMT.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate for the National Rally party, said the troubles showed that Macron’s administration was “running on fumes, exhausted and disoriented”.

“We are experiencing a profound crisis of trust and authority, which poses a threat to democracy,” said Le Pen, who leads opinion polls ahead of the election.

Le Pen has blamed ultra-left groups, while Jean-Luc Melenchon head of the far-left France Unbowed party accused authorities of inflaming tensions.

With images of French town halls burning and shops being looted grabbing headlines around the world, US President Donald Trump waded into the debate, blaming immigration for the unrest.

“France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country,” Trump said in a social media post.

Looting rampages were reported on Saturday in Paris and other cities, including Marseille, Bordeaux, Nice and Strasbourg, on the margins of protests over the cost of living.

Around 1,500 businesses were damaged with losses estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Retail and Trade Federation. One person died during the main march in Paris, but officials said the case was health-related.

“It’s like we had a war,” a 78-year-old Paris resident Mehmet Ozeden told AFP amid burnt street barricades from the protests.

‘Animals’

Another resident, Anita Gras, said she saw young men loot a sports shoe retailer.

“It’s appalling, terrifying — groups of young people came here yesterday, looting, smashing everything, with total impunity,” said 57-year-old Cecile Rogue surveying a pile of charred bicycles.

The city of Limoges lost its 19th-century town hall to a fire that local prefect, Maurice Barate, told news channel LCI had been deliberately set by “a wild horde”.

About 7,000 people staged a march in the central city on Sunday to show their anger at the devastation.

In Lyon, a store owner, Jean-Christian, said those behind the violence were “animals”.

“We saw them looting, men high on adrenaline.”

A tourist office in the city centre was set ablaze during the protests amid multiple clashes and looting.

On Sunday, a clothing store was also looted in Lyon.

Tourists stunned

In Paris, startled tourists were seen on Saturday running with suitcases along streets filled with tear gas and protesters.

A Danish tourist, Soren Petersen, said it was “sad” to see damage to Paris buildings. “It is not a protest, it’s far beyond a normal protest,” he told AFP.

Around 500 police, firefighters and paramedics were hurt in the protests, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.

The violence took place on the sidelines of nationwide protests that the interior ministry said drew 550,000 people. The CGT union said 800,000 people participated.

A 17-year-old boy had his right hand blown off by a crowd-control grenade in the southern city of Saint-Etienne. In Mulhouse a 17-year-old girl lost an eye, according to prosecutors.

France’s Yellow Vest movement, which staged street protests eight years ago against Macron’s government over planned fuel-tax hikes, had called Saturday’s “yellow and youth” demonstrations.

The normally close ties between Turkiye and Azerbaijan have come under strain, fuelled by a dispute over Baku’s restrictions on headscarves in schools and disagreements over Israel.

Public tensions have become evident in what has traditionally been a very close relationship between two nations which share a common language and whose bond is characterised by the slogan: One nation, two states.

Although the rhetoric has remained restrained at the top, senior officials have been more outspoken in their reactions.

On Monday, Oktay Saral, chief adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shed his normal diplomatic reserve to denounce as “unacceptable” Azerbaijan’s move to change school uniform regulations, banning anything that conflicts with the normal uniform or the secular principles of education.

“The headscarf is not an obstacle; it is a requirement of faith! The right to education cannot be sacrificed to any ideological imposition!” he wrote on X.

“We expect Azerbaijan to reverse this mistake as soon as possible.”

The following day, the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party (YAP) hit back with a sharply worded statement denouncing Saral and MPs from Erdogan’s AKP for their “populist and irresponsible statements”.

“The recent disinformation campaign targeting Azerbaijan has become increasingly aggressive, systematic, and openly slanderous,” it said.

The confrontation reflected sharp differences between Azerbaijan — one of the most secular states in the Muslim world — and the leadership in Ankara.

But it also highlighted tensions over the growing rapprochement between Azerbaijan and Israel since Baku’s 2020 Karabakh war with arch-foe Armenia, when the Israelis supplied them with drones and other weaponry.

Turkiye’s ties with Israel, by contrast, could hardly be worse, with Erdogan accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and Ankara regularly releasing images of top-level talks with the leaders of Hamas, whose October 2023 attacks on Israel sparked the latter’s onslaught on Gaza.

Baku more ‘pragmatic’

Turkiye’s pro-government media has held little back, with the Yeni Safak daily denouncing the headscarf regulations as a gesture towards Israel.

“We firmly reject attempts to deliberately distort Azerbaijani-Israeli relations, portray these ties as supposedly exceptional, and use this as a basis for making political accusations against Azerbaijan,” the country’s ruling party said.

The sharp response underscores Azerbaijan’s emergence as a regional middle power.

It is more willing to push back against Turkiye as Ankara seeks to project influence from the Black Sea, increasingly ensnared by the Russia-Ukraine war, and an ever-more volatile Middle East.

“The changing geopolitical order in the greater Eurasia has enabled Azerbaijan to pursue a more pragmatic foreign policy,” said Fuad Shahbazov, an independent political analyst, indicating that meant Baku now “categorically resists the attempts of external actors, even its ally Turkiye”.

But on Friday, Kursad Zorlu, deputy head of Erdogan’s AKP, said the two sides knew how to tackle problems “within the family” in what appeared to be a tacit call for online restraint.

At a regional summit in Baku on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan hailed “the unshakable bond … between our leaders” despite being tested “in very difficult times”.

Too much to lose

Observers agree the two nations share too much to risk a rupture.

“The sometimes-tense relations with Moscow and the Iran war happening next door mean that Baku cannot afford to alienate an otherwise good partner,” Ivan Klyszcz of the Estonia-based International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) told AFP.

“Moreover, energy cooperation, ongoing well before the current spat, is too important for both parties,” he stressed.

“For Turkiye, Azerbaijan is an essential gate for Central Asia, a region … seen by Ankara as strategic.”

Paradoxically, Baku seems to hold the cards, despite the fact that its population is ten times smaller than that of its ally.

“The litmus test of the Baku-Ankara axis will depend on the latter’s further attitude and commitment to quickly get back on diplomatic tracks to handle this crisis,” Shahbazov told AFP.

“Azerbaijan possesses energy leverage and access to the Central Asian region, giving it leverage over Turkiye,” he said.

And this is a crucial asset, given Ankara’s ambition to maintain its role as a transit hub between Europe and Asia.

Even so, points of friction remain.

On Friday, Baku said it had issued an “international arrest warrant” for a Turkish journalist working for the Sanliurfa Olay daily. According to prosecutors, Celal Ciftci called for a “coup d’tat” in Azerbaijan and promoted “religious extremism”.

With a sports car that somersaults through the air, Elon Musk is back in the headlines for technological daring — but his plunge into politics and his return to US President Donald Trump’s side mean the world’s richest man no longer enjoys the unqualified praise of years past.

“All the things that we were promised since the 1950s, of space travel and flying cars… he’s doing all of those things,” said Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida.

“And yet we’re not giving it the attention, we’re not giving it the awe that it probably truly deserves,” he added.

In recent weeks, Musk has seemed to be everywhere at once.

On Sept 28, SpaceX’s Starship megarocket reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink satellites before splashing down in the Pacific — a milestone for the rocket central to Musk’s Mars ambitions.

Musk’s central role in geopolitics has also been on display, with Ukraine complaining of disruptions to the Starshield satellite communications system its military relies on.

Even the platform formerly known as Twitter is enjoying something of a renaissance, with Musk’s X now the go-to social media app for Silicon Valley insiders and the main marketplace for talk about artificial intelligence.

But despite his continued success, Musk’s unrelenting commitment to right-wing politics has taken a toll.

No image captured that shift more than Musk brandishing a chainsaw on stage in February 2025 — a gift from Argentine President Javier Milei — as a symbol of his drive to slash the US government as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the early months of Trump’s second term.

Through DOGE, Musk’s allies fanned out across federal agencies, driving cuts that effectively dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and contributed to a net loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

‘National treasure’

That combative imagery has been matched by Musk’s posts on X, where hardline anti-immigration views and right-wing conspiracy theories sit alongside posts about rocket launches and Tesla robotaxis.

Now Musk is back in Trump’s good graces, after a spectacular falling-out that followed his exit from DOGE in May 2025.

Last week, Trump presented Musk with the nation’s top science medal, calling him a “national treasure” and “our modern-day Thomas Edison”.

The renewed relationship comes as Musk has spent at least $276 million on Republican political campaigns ahead of next month’s midterm elections, in which the president’s party is expected to struggle.

Of that, $158m is funding a massive advertising campaign in Texas, Musk’s home state, where the Republican candidate is trailing in the polls.

For left-leaning pundits, Musk is now increasingly seen as an agent of Trump and the tech billionaires rather than a technology savant working for the good of humanity.

That opposition plays out in ‘Musk’, a four-hour documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney now in US theatres, which traces the life and career of the South Africa-born billionaire.

“I once described him as somebody who can jump off the edge of a cliff and invent a parachute on the way down. I think he thrives on chaos,” Musk’s first wife Justine Musk, who features prominently in the film, told podcaster Kara Swisher.

Yet, she added, “I always assume that there’s a method to his madness,” and many of his loudest actions may in fact be deflections and “sleight of hand”. The same may be true of Musk’s dealings with Washington.

Few entrepreneurs depend as heavily on the federal government as Musk does.

SpaceX — which went public in June in the largest initial public offering in history — earns billions of dollars a year from Nasa and Pentagon contracts, while Tesla’s bet on robotaxis hinges on how quickly regulators allow driverless cars onto US roads.

Seen in that light, Musk’s millions for Republicans may be less a political conversion than an investment.

A speeding truck in India killed 13 people when it ploughed into a crowd at a Hindu festival, officials said on Sunday, with President Droupadi Murmu describing the deaths as “heartbreaking”.

The heavily loaded truck reportedly lost control in the early hours of Sunday and hit devotees gathered at a temple in Gwalior, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency cited hospital officials as saying 13 people had died.

“I express my deepest condolences to the bereaved families and pray for the swift recovery of those injured,” Murmu said on social media.

The Indian Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan expressed sorrow at the loss of life.

“Deeply saddened by the tragic loss of lives in the accident involving devotees in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families. I wish a speedy recovery to all those injured,” he wrote in a post on X.

The incident comes a day after at least 17 people were killed and two dozen more injured on Saturday in eastern India after a stampede that was likely caused by sudden rainfall during a Hindu religious gathering, officials said.

India, with 1.4 billion people, recorded more than 183,000 road traffic deaths in 2025, or over 500 a day, according to the roads ministry.

Many are linked to inadequate road infrastructure, ill-maintained vehicles and exhausted drivers, according to official data.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that President Donald Trump’s waiver of sweeping sanctions and tariffs on Russia would be a 60-day pause to “analyse” their impact on the global economy.

“The president wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyse what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the US economy,” Rubio said, noting that the economic restrictions involved a number of countries, not just Russia.

He said various conflicts were impacting global energy prices, including the US war on Iran and attacks on Saudi Arabia by Yemen’s Houthis.

“These conflicts around the world are starting to crash into each other, and they’re having an impact not just on global oil and diesel prices” but on economies as well, Rubio said.

Trump said late on Saturday his decision would benefit the US, though it was unclear if he had actually made up his mind on the matter.

“We’ll figure it out, and you’ll figure it out,” he said. “It’s a very good decision, and it’s going to be a decision that’s good for the country, and I think good for the world.”

US lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have sharply criticised Trump after he signed an executive order Friday that waived sweeping sanctions and tariffs targeting Russia — measures adopted by Congress last month.

The law passed in September, and signed by Trump, included sanctions targeting Russian officials, oligarchs and financial institutions, and provided Trump with the authority to impose sanctions on major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

The idea was to cut off sources of funding to supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his war on Ukraine.

But late Friday, two days before the law was due to take effect, Trump exempted Russia from those economic restrictions.

“Beyond irresponsible,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a frequent Trump critic who will leave office in January, said in a post on X.

“If the President wants to actually bring down energy prices, he can do it by solving the Iran problem, not by doing a solid for Vladimir Putin.” Ted Cruz, a senior Republican senator from Texas, called the move “a mistake” in comments aired on Fox News.

Trump’s executive order came after he struck a deal with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin to allow exports of Russian diesel in exchange for the easing of sanctions.

The impact of steep diesel price hikes due to the Iran war are beginning to filter into the US economy, and cost of living worries are top of mind for voters ahead of key midterm elections next month.

Polls show Trump’s Republicans are likely to receive a drubbing at the polls.

“The diesel that Putin was going to sell, they were (going to) make it available to the global market one way or the other. The only difference is how much of it the United States was going to get,” Rubio said, underscoring the importance of the vital fuel powering US road hauling, agriculture and construction.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he feared the United States would lift more sanctions on Russia and that Trump’s action “rewards” Putin.

Japanese scientists are preparing a mission to Mars’s moons to retrieve samples that could help unlock the origins of the solar system and life on Earth, in what aims to be the first round trip to the Martian region.

The unmanned Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) probe, a collaboration with US and European space agencies as well as numerous universities and tech companies, could also help lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration.

The flagship H3 rocket carrying the MMX is set to blast off from the Tanegashima Space Centre on Tuesday at 4:41 am (12:41am PKT), according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The spacecraft will arrive near Mars one year later, where it will orbit its moon Phobos for up to three years before landing and collecting at least 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of material from the surface.

A rover dubbed IDEFIX — the French name for the comic hero Asterix’s dog — will first conduct surface observations aimed at ensuring a safe landing.

“The sampling (from) Phobos is of course the world’s first, but it means… this is the first round trip to the Martian system,” MMX’s project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu told AFP.

JAXA said the mission will also explore the possibility of using Phobos as a “natural space station” by establishing the requirements for a round trip to Mars — something “essential for crewed Mars exploration”.

It will also observe the Red Planet’s moon Deimos, although it will not land on it, before returning to Earth.

Impact or capture

JAXA hopes the mission will reveal how Mars and its two moons formed, a key piece of knowledge in working out how the Solar System was born.

One theory for the origin of the Martian moons — the “giant impact” hypothesis — is that they formed after a celestial body collided with Mars.

The “capture” hypothesis, meanwhile, postulates that the moons are asteroids captured by Mars’s gravity.

Determining which is right will help reveal “how a habitable environment for life might have arisen on the terrestrial planets”, JAXA said, referring to the four rocky worlds closest to the Sun — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

“MMX will shed light on the transport mechanisms that delivered water, volatiles, and organic compounds from the outer solar system to the inner rocky planet region — processes that may have played a key role in making these worlds habitable,” said Patrick Michel, a French astrophysicist working on IDEFIX.

“If Phobos and Deimos are indeed remnants of these early delivery systems, they may hold clues to the origins of life itself, or, to be more correct, to the transport of the materials that were key to the emergence of life on rocky planets,” he told AFP.

Deep in the ‘gravity well’

MMX is a collaboration with France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Nasa, the European Space Agency (ESA), and about 20 universities and tech companies.

The development of the spacecraft’s landing legs was particularly difficult, as gravity on Phobos is extremely weak, JAXA scientists say.

Japan’s unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) — the “Moon Sniper” — tipped over after touching down on Earth’s Moon in 2024, but still transmitted data and survived several two-week lunar nights.

Japan also has experience in bringing back samples from space, including JAXA’s unmanned Hayabusa-2, which returned 5.4 grams of rock and dust collected from an asteroid several hundred million kilometres from Earth in 2020.

One of the differences between JAXA’s past asteroid probes and the MMX mission is that this time “we have to travel very close to Mars and return”, which means escaping the planet’s heavy gravity, Kawakatsu told reporters.

Phobos orbits about 6,000 kilometres above the Martian surface.

“Going deep into what we call the ‘gravity well’ is difficult,” Kawakatsu said.

China’s mission

US and Chinese space agencies have been racing to be the first to return rock samples from Mars’s surface back to Earth.

Nasa’s Perseverance rover, which has been roaming the Red Planet since 2021, has already collected samples.

The mission, however, was effectively cancelled by the administration of President Donald Trump following a vote by the US Congress in January.

China, meanwhile, has announced its Tianwen-3 spacecraft is scheduled for launch around 2028 and hopes to return Mars samples to Earth as early as 2031 — potentially before the MMX’s return.

JAXA scientists say sand and rocks from Phobos may offer a wider variety of samples than those on the planet itself, especially if it was formed by a collision between a celestial body and Mars.

Four soldiers were killed and dozens injured in a fire at a military base in Alberta province, one of the worst peacetime tragedies to hit Canada’s armed forces on home soil, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Sunday.

Carney made the solemn announcement without providing details on what caused the fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright on Saturday.

“It is with deep sadness that I can confirm, at this time, that four service members have lost their lives and that their loved ones have been notified,” Carney said in the capital Ottawa, adding that “dozens of others have been seriously injured”.

“This is one of the worst tragedies the Canadian Armed Forces have experienced on Canadian soil in peacetime,” he said.

Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty said late on Saturday there were “fatalities and injuries” following an incident at a military base in western Canada.

“I’m saddened to share that there have been both fatalities and injuries as a result of an incident on the base,” McGuinty said.

Prime Minister Mark Carney had posted to X earlier on Saturday that “a serious incident creating a major fire” had occurred at the base.

Neither offered details on the number of casualties or the nature of the incident at CFB Wainwright, located about 200 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.

“We will have more to say in the coming hours and days,” McGuinty said.

A doctor at a hospital in the city of Edmonton, about 200 km northwest of the base, told public broadcaster CBC that Wainwright’s health-care facilities were “completely overwhelmed” by the number of patients requiring care.

“It is more patients than any of us want to count right now,” Warren Thirsk said. “It’s a disaster. It’s a one in every 15 to 25-year disaster.”

According to the Department of National Defence, the fire broke out around 4pm local time on Saturday (3am PKT on Sunday) in the base’s training area.

The Municipal District of Wainwright posted on social media that the fire had “spread rapidly due to high winds”.

It said later on Saturday that the blaze was “being held at this time”, though firefighting crews would continue to monitor the area.

“Military and civilian crews fought this fire throughout the night in some of the worst conditions imaginable, risking their lives to protect their fellow Canadians,” Carney said.

The Wainwright base is one of the largest bases operated by the Canadian Armed Forces and it regularly hosts training exercises involving military personnel from Nato countries.

“We will care for the injured through every step of their recovery,” Carney said.

“And we will stand by the women and men of our armed forces as they bear the weight of this loss, they will not carry it alone because in Canada we take care of one another.”

The fire disrupted advance voting ahead of Monday’s vote on whether to begin the process toward a future referendum on Alberta’s independence from Canada.

Alberta’s office responsible for overseeing provincial elections said the advance voting station in Wainwright had closed.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to visit India for the second time this year, as Washington seeks to bolster ties with a strategic partner despite months of friction over a trade deal.

Rubio will meet senior Indian officials, but will bypass the Indian capital during the trip in the coming week.

Instead he will focus on investment and energy during visits to financial hub Mumbai and India’s oil hub of Jamnagar, which is home to billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s refining complex, the world’s largest.

The elephant in the room will be the inability by both countries to seal their long-awaited trade deal, experts say.

Several factors, including US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz, friction over energy imports and Washington’s warmer ties with India’s arch-rival Pakistan have made it harder for negotiators to clinch an agreement.

Rubio will start his six-day overseas trip on Saturday with a visit first to Uzbekistan before arriving in India, according to the US State Department.

Here are some of the challenges the trade pact has faced and the road ahead.

Why has the deal been delayed?

India and the United States agreed in February on the framework for an interim deal under which Washington would lower reciprocal tariffs from 25 per cent to 18pc and India would reduce duties on a range of industrial and agricultural goods.

Despite months of negotiations, the agreement has not yet been finalised and signed.

One reason is the legal uncertainty surrounding Trump’s tariff plans after court challenges undermined the reciprocal tariffs that formed their basis.

“The February framework had offered to reduce India’s reciprocal tariff… in return for substantial Indian concessions. Once that tariff regime was struck down, the value of the US offer became unclear,” trade expert Ajay Srivastava said in a note.

India is also wary of new trade measures by Washington that could impact it, including an investigation into alleged unfair practices in several countries and a new law that allows for up to 100pc tariffs on nations that purchase Russian oil.

Trump on Friday signed an executive order that waived those threatened sanctions.

Where do negotiations stand?

Progress appears to have hit several hurdles.

For the better part of this year, both governments spoke optimistically about the possibility of finalising the interim deal.

US ambassador to India Sergio Gor in June said negotiators were working on the “last one per cent” of the pact.

More recently, the tone has turned markedly cautious.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said last week that talks had hit a “plateau”, with little room for further concessions.

Her remarks came days after US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said an announcement was not “imminent”.

What have been the main sticking points?

Agriculture remains a sensitive area for India, which is reluctant to expose farmers to greater foreign competition.

Washington, meanwhile, wants India to buy more US energy supplies.

New Delhi has also insisted that its final tariff rate should be competitive with those received by other regional manufacturing rivals such as Vietnam.

Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal said this week that the first tranche of the deal was in its final stages, but added that it would not be operational until India secured an edge over its competitors.

“It’s going through the final contours, the legal drafting, and we hope to be able to finalise that soon and operationalise that once we get competitive advantage over our peer countries,” he said.

How has trade been holding up?

Goods exports to the US jumped 21pc in August to $8.3 billion compared to the same month a year earlier, when India faced 50pc tariffs.

The surge in exports has been a bright spot for the Indian economy, which has been roiled by high energy prices due to war in the Middle East.

If higher tariffs were to return, economists say it would cast a shadow on India’s growth outlook, hurt market sentiment and heap pressure on an already-weak rupee.

JERUSALEM: Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked a convoy of European diplomats and beat up a visiting French mayor, in a new escalation of violence during the Palestinian olive harvest, witnesses and diplomats said.

The 78-year-old mayor said masked settlers yelled defamatory comments about France, kicked him and hit him with iron bars as he joined Palestinian olive farmers in the occupied West Bank alongside the top French and Belgian representatives in Jerusalem and Polish diplomats.

“I think that if settlers are behaving like this, there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government,” Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, said after he was attacked.

“The whole world needs to know what’s happening,” he said. “For me, I’ll go back to my country and everything will be fine. Those who continue to suffer the most are those who are here.” Baudoux, who was wearing a sash with the French tricolour, was seen collapsed on the side of the car after the attack but he did not need hospital care.

The attack came just one day after settlers beat an American photographer for The Washington Post, who was in moderate condition with broken vertebrae on Saturday. Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on the diplomats and Israeli police promised to open an investigation.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, days away from an election in which he is seeking to shore up support from the far-right, instead alleged a “smear” campaign against settlers. Netanyahu said the diplomats should have coordinated their movements with the Israeli military and pointed out that Baudoux is a communist known for supporting the Palestinian cause.

“We urge caution before drawing conclusions” about the attacks, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

His main rival in the Oct 27 elections, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, strongly criticised Netanyahu over the violence, saying it was “burning away the little legitimacy the State of Israel still possesses”.

The attacks are “Jewish terrorism, under the auspices of the Israeli government”, Eisenkot said. Belgium called for an end to “impunity for violent settlers” after the latest attack.

Attacks on cultural symbol

Baudoux, the mayor, said he had come to the town of Taybeh, a Christian stronghold, along with his local pastor from France to sign a goodwill agreement. He was attacked just as he joined the harvest as a symbolic gesture with the Palestinians, for whom olives are an important cultural symbol.

Extremist Israelis have issued calls to stop the Palestinians’ harvest after months of growing attacks in which settlers have stolen land and property. There has also been violence against Israelis, with a Palestinian shooting dead a settler last month.

Bashar Fawadleh, a priest in Taybeh, said settlers had already attacked the harvest and snatched olives before beating the mayor. “One person was hit in the head and needed stitches. They also beat up an older lady in her 70s after insulting her with very bad words,” the pastor said.

The West Bank violence has shocked much of the world, with Britain leading economic sanctions that in turn caused Netanyahu to voice outrage. Netanyahu had also sought to throw doubt on the circumstances behind the beating of the photographer, Heidi Levine, alleging that Palestinians and “far-left” activists caused trouble.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026

At least 17 people were killed and two dozen more injured on Saturday in eastern India after a stampede that was likely caused by sudden rainfall during a Hindu religious gathering, officials said.

West Bengal’s Chief Minister Suvendhu Adhikari told reporters the fatalities included a seven-year-old girl, adding that 25 others were injured outside a pavilion “in a stampede” at the Hindu festival of Durga Puja in the city of Kolkata.

“Six bodies have so far been identified,” Adhikari said.

A senior police official at the scene told AFP an announcement caused “commotion” after it started raining at night and the “crowd waiting outside the pandal (pavilion) was pushing, pulling and rushing forward and fell on the ground, leading to the stampede”.

Deadly crowd incidents are a frequent occurrence at Indian mass events, such as religious festivals, due to poor management and safety lapses.

In August, a stampede at a Hindu temple in Bihar killed at least seven people and injured 19 others.

Last year, a stampede at India’s Kumbh Mela religious fair killed 30 people and injured several others, and 11 fans were crushed to death in Bengaluru during celebrations for the local cricket team’s first Indian Premier League title.

The same year, 36 people were killed after a stampede broke out at a campaign rally of a popular actor-turned-politician in southern Tamil Nadu state.

In 2024, 121 people were killed in northern Uttar Pradesh state during a Hindu religious gathering.

Police and protesters clashed violently in Paris and other French cities on Saturday on the sidelines of nationwide marches against soaring inflation, with one demonstrator’s hand blown off, multiple blazes set, and looters breaking into dozens of stores to strip them bare.

With just months to go before the two-round elections in April and May to choose Macron’s successor, the demonstrations follow weeks of high-school student blockades demanding better learning conditions.

Macron and his government were criticised by many of the demonstrators, who numbered 500,000 across the country, according to the CGT union. Authorities did not immediately give their estimate of the numbers.

Police used tear gas and water cannon against masked protesters in Paris and other cities who were throwing projectiles and aiming fireworks. Several parked cars were torched in the capital, and more than 130 arrests were made.

In the southern city of Saint-Etienne, a male protester had his hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade, a police source told AFP. His maiming came after a 15-year-old lost his hand on October 5 to a police stun grenade during another protest in the city of Lens.

The protests geared up with a handful of gatherings nationwide on Saturday morning, AFP reporters said.

In Lyon, protesters set ablaze a tourist office in the city centre, and smashed their way into town halls in the cities of Marseille and Lille, where they vandalised the premises before leaving.

Dozens of shops were looted, including many in Marseille, among them a Hermes boutique, an Apple store in Lille, several shops in Nice and at least one mobile phone outlet in Paris, AFP journalists saw.

A crowd of more than 300 protesters tried to move up Paris’s Champs-Elysees, home to flagship luxury stores. As police firing tear gas blocked their way, they yelled, “All cops are bastards”.

In the western city of Rennes, around 20 people set up a barricade using trash bins and large pallets on the outskirts of a shopping mall.

Christophe, a 47-year-old carpenter and former Yellow Vest protester who did not give his surname, said he was indignant after seeing what he viewed as police brutality against teenagers in recent weeks.

“We’ve reached the point where the repression is targeting our own children,” he told AFP.

‘Macron, resign’

The looting and confrontations with police were being carried out by masked youths on the sidelines of marches that were largely peaceful and which attracted people of all ages, including families with children.

Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire stressed that “the overwhelming majority of demonstrators” wanted to “march calmly”, but “acts of vandalism” were tarnishing their protest.

In Paris, tens of thousands marched across the east and north of the city in one major march, some shouting “Everyone hates the police” and “Macron, resign”.

One demonstrator, Jules Petrichor, 47, who had brought his son, said: “There was a good atmosphere and then suddenly they (the police) started gassing us, even though nothing was happening. Naturally that worsened things and the hot-heads got hot-headed.”

Another protester who gave his first name as Louis, 19, complained that police were trigger-happy any time there was a demonstration.

“We can’t protest any more, it’s frightening,” he said.

The country’s Yellow Vest movement, which eight years ago staged street protests against Macron’s government over planned fuel tax hikes, has called Saturday’s “yellow and youth” demonstrations. It has appealed to teachers and students, workers, pensioners and farmers to take part in the protests on the first day of half-term holidays.

The principal grievance was the cost of living — pushed up in part by the war in the Middle East — that has helped send inflation soaring in Europe as elsewhere.
But there were other issues too.

High school student Kamil Alahyan, 18, said he was protesting “for so many reasons — the elections coming up in 2027, politicians who lie, the ultra-rich who’ve been taking more and more wealth over the past 10 years”.

“For years we’ve had climate, economy and equality problems but the government is not doing anything about it,” said Agnes, a 50-year-old actor who did not give her second name.

Anae, a 24-year-old student who did not give her surname, said she was protesting because she did not have a “sustainable future”.

“Our planet’s burning. And we’ve got a government that doesn’t give a toss,” she said.

Le Pen blames ‘rioters’

Opposition politicians vying to succeed Macron have seized upon the protests.

Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who has sided with the police, said on X: “Looting, pillaging, attacking police — rioters have once again sullied the October 17 demonstrations over the cost of living.” She claimed that the protesters’ demands had been “hijacked by the far left”.

Her far-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon, insisted early Saturday that “everything is passing off peacefully”, while accusing television news of “flooding us with images of violence in dozens of cities”.

Several protesters sought to draw parallels with the French Revolution of 1789.

“It’s the Revolution — we’re taking the Bastille!” some shouted in Marseille during the forced entry of the mayor’s offices.

In the western city of La Rochelle, marchers streamed behind a placard reading: “Revolution or death.” And in the southern city of Montpellier, a giant blue sign reading “The people will win” was unfurled above a central square.

“The government is trembling and it’s right to tremble because when the French people are angry, they never let up,” Ryad Rani, the head of the LSU high school student representative body, told journalists in Paris.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that Tehran supports a “political process” to resolve the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Houthis have repeatedly attacked Saudi targets, including energy facilities and Riyadh’s international airport, where 13 people were killed in a major attack last week.

“We support an inclusive and comprehensive political process as the only practical and sustainable way to resolve the issue,” Araghchi said in a speech at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Baghdad.

Araghchi repeated Iran’s offer to mediate between the two sides. Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh previously said Riyadh has not responded to Iran’s overture.

On Friday, Iran denied having anything to do with the Houthi attacks, after Saudi Arabia accused Tehran of encouraging the group’s escalation.

In his speech, Araghchi also said “either we build security together, or we will endure insecurity together,” adding that Tehran was willing “to cooperate with all its brothers and neighbours to achieve the first option”.

The Houthis have repeatedly attacked Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers after a truce in their long-running war with Yemen’s coalition government unravelled in July.

On Wednesday, Yemen’s Houthi rebels said they had targeted facilities belonging to Saudi Aramco, after Saudi officials reported a strike on a building in Riyadh housing the energy giant’s operations centre.

Powerful explosions also rattled the Saudi capital, as the coalition fighting the Houthis said it had intercepted a missile fired by the group towards Riyadh.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia launched strikes on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, targeting fuel and energy facilities it said were being used to support missile and drone attacks, as the Yemeni group threatened a “harsh and painful” response against Saudi airports, refineries and oil installations.

Hours later, Saudi authorities issued warnings of potential hostile aerial threats in the kingdom’s eastern province and Riyadh.

Loud explosions were heard near Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in Dhahran, according to witnesses. Later, a Saudi energy ministry official confirmed the attack. Saudi Arabia’s civil defence agency said that four people — two women, a man and a child — were wounded by debris from two intercepted Houthi cruise missiles in the capital and that 15 homes were damaged.