In the latest escalation of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is facing what city leaders describe as an unprecedentedly dramatic crisis after repeated Russian drone and missile strikes targeted key infrastructure, including a vital river bridge that serves as the city’s central transport artery. Vitaliy Klitschko, mayor of Kyiv, issued a stark warning following an emergency crisis meeting of Kyiv’s Defence Council that intensified Russian bombardment is tearing apart the capital, with critical infrastructure, logistics networks, residential buildings and other core facilities all bearing the brunt of the attacks. The focal point of the latest strikes is Pivdennyi Bridge, a major crossing over the Dnipro River that splits Kyiv into its western and eastern halves. The structure has been hit four times in just 48 hours, with two strikes occurring within the span of 24 hours: an overnight drone attack was followed by a second strike on Friday evening. In the wake of the latest assaults, all metro and road traffic across Pivdennyi Bridge has been fully suspended, with additional movement restrictions imposed on Kyiv’s two other key river crossings. The shutdown has triggered massive traffic gridlock across the capital, leaving hundreds of thousands of daily commuters stranded. With an estimated current population of three million, Kyiv relies heavily on its integrated metro and road networks to keep the city functioning, making the bridge closure a major disruption to daily life. Beyond the transport disruption, the strikes have already claimed civilian life: Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (DSNS) confirmed one civilian was killed overnight when a multi-story residential building was hit in an attack. Recent strikes have also targeted Kyiv’s data centers, triggering widespread internet outages across the capital that have disrupted communications and public services. Klitschko framed the current moment as an existential test for Kyiv, telling the gathered top military, security, emergency services and police leadership at Friday’s crisis meeting: “We’re talking about survival.” He added that Russia’s explicit goal is to sow widespread panic among the civilian population, but stressed that the capital would ultimately prevail, “but only through the joint efforts of those who love it and care for it.” The escalating strikes have drawn condemnation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of abandoning all international norms of warfare. In excerpts of an upcoming interview with the *Financial Times* published this week, Zelensky noted that Putin made the decision in early September to operate “with no rules” when targeting Ukraine. “The Russians have failed to occupy us. So now they are carrying out massive attacks and mass killings. They want to destroy our bridges, our data centres, the internet, mobile networks, hospitals, kindergartens, schools, universities – everything. They want people to flee their cities,” Zelensky said. For his part, Putin has attempted to justify the intensified strikes on Ukraine as a direct retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and Black Sea naval vessels. Speaking Thursday at the annual Valdai foreign policy forum, Putin pushed back against international calls for a de-escalation, claiming “they started it.” He admitted that Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries have had a measurable economic impact, saying Kyiv “got some results” from the attacks and that Russia has lost roughly 1% of its gross domestic product as a result. Ukraine has countered that its strikes on Russian oil infrastructure are a legitimate military target, as revenue from fossil fuel exports directly funds the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion that Russia launched in February 2022. This pattern of targeting energy infrastructure is not new: Russia has prioritized strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities every winter since the 2022 invasion, aiming to damage critical civilian infrastructure and break public morale amid the cold winter months. The latest wave of strikes on Kyiv marks a new escalation of this strategy, expanding beyond energy targets to core transport and digital infrastructure that millions of civilians depend on daily.
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Spanish PM Sánchez loses key housing crisis vote after eviction of woman, 87
MADRID – Spain’s minority socialist government led by Pedro Sánchez suffered a major parliamentary defeat Friday, when Congress voted down two emergency decree laws crafted to address the country’s escalating affordable housing crisis. The outcome has amplified widespread speculation that Sánchez will be forced to call an early general election, months ahead of the scheduled vote next summer.
The crisis that forced the government’s hand began last week, when 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal was evicted from her long-term central Madrid apartment after being unable to absorb a steep rent hike imposed by property owner Urbagestión. Mass public outrage over the eviction quickly spread nationwide, with thousands of protesters mobilizing to demand systemic reform of Spain’s unregulated rental market, where prices have surged to unaffordable levels for millions of working and low-income households in recent years. Under intense public pressure, Urbagestión later reversed course and agreed to allow Abascal to return to her home at a reduced rate, but the protest movement only gained momentum, spreading to city squares across the country and organizers called for a national strike over housing affordability.
In a rushed response to the growing social backlash, Sánchez’s left-wing coalition government pushed through two executive decrees packed with tenant protection measures, which required parliamentary approval to remain in force. The first decree included sweeping provisions: a moratorium on evictions for vulnerable renters through 2030, a two-year extension for rental leases set to expire before 2028, higher taxes on short-term tourist apartments, and new restrictions on residential property purchases by large investment firms the government labels “vulture funds.” The second, more contentious decree proposed automatic renewal of existing rental contracts, a core demand of tenant activists and left-wing organizers.
With the conservative People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox already committed to voting against both measures, Sánchez’s minority government relied on the support of small regional nationalist parties from Catalonia and the Basque Country to pass the reforms. However, centre-right pro-independence party Together for Catalonia (JxCat) announced it would oppose the decrees in the lead-up to the vote, dooming the government’s proposals to defeat. The final vote tallies reflected the narrow divide: the first decree was rejected 178 to 172, while the second failed by a wider margin of 184 to 166.
In a last-ditch emotional appeal moments before the vote, Sánchez pleaded with undecided lawmakers to back the measures, framing the reform as a moral and existential issue for Spanish society. “I don’t ask you, I beg you to be brave and consistent,” he said. “Because they are not just ambitious measures, they are necessary. We have to put order and humanity into this market, because if we don’t, it will bring down our society.” Social Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy, representing junior coalition partner Sumar, framed the vote as a choice between working-class Spaniards and wealthy foreign interests. “Today is about defending an international oligarchy which is extracting rent from salaries earned with the effort of working classes of this country,” he argued. “Voting against these decrees today means defending the interests of this oligarchy and turning your back on your own people.”
Critics of the decrees pushed back on both policy and procedural grounds. JxCat lawmaker Miriam Nogueras argued the reforms had been hastily drafted and would ultimately backfire, saying “these two decrees will allow [vulture] funds to keep buying, keep speculating and evictions to keep happening… they will provoke the opposite effect of what they aim to achieve.” The opposition PP echoed the criticism, arguing that government intervention in the rental market would discourage private homeowners from listing properties for rent, further reducing supply and driving up prices. “Housing doesn’t get cheaper with decrees, it gets cheaper with more homes,” said PP representative Juan Bravo.
As the vote unfolded inside Congress, hundreds of housing activists gathered outside the building, and angry demonstrations broke out after the results were announced. Protesters chanted “shame on you” and “your profits, our misery” to condemn the rejection of the reforms. The leading activist group coordinating the national movement, the Sindicato de Inquilinas (Tenants’ Union), announced during the congressional debate that it would end its week-long tent encampment in central Madrid to refocus its efforts on neighborhood organizing. “We will take the struggle to all the neighbourhoods, residential blocks and homes of Madrid, wherever there are rental increases, expulsions and abuses each day, and turn the energy of the last few days into a permanent organisation,” the group said. It has already scheduled a new series of mass marches for this weekend and continues to call for a national general strike over the housing crisis.
Friday’s defeat highlights the fragility of Sánchez’s minority government, which has already been weakened by a series of ongoing scandals and judicial investigations affecting the Socialist Party and its close allies. Political analysts now widely expect Sánchez to call a snap general election, rather than continue to govern without a working majority, more than eight months before the scheduled election in summer 2026.
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Watch: New York governor blasts handling of Cornell rape inquiry
A major controversy has erupted over the handling of a sexual assault inquiry at one of America’s most prestigious higher education institutions, with New York’s top elected official publicly calling out systemic failures in the process. Governor Kathy Hochul has delivered a blunt rebuke of both Cornell University’s police department and the local county prosecutor’s office, breaking her silence on the mishandled probe that has sparked widespread outrage across the state.
In a public statement that sent shockwaves through the state’s political and academic communities, Hochul revealed that she is “deeply disturbed” by the missteps that have marred the investigation into an alleged rape at the Ithaca-based Ivy League university. The governor’s criticism targeted two key players in the case: first, the university’s own law enforcement division, which she accused of bungling core procedural steps throughout the inquiry, and second, the local prosecutor, whose handling of the case has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.
The rebuke comes amid growing calls for systemic reform in how colleges and local law enforcement collaborate to investigate sexual violence on campus. Advocacy groups for sexual assault survivors have long argued that institutional complicity and miscommunication between university police and local prosecutors often allow perpetrators to avoid accountability, and Hochul’s public condemnation has amplified those calls, putting new pressure on state leaders to pursue policy changes that improve transparency and outcomes for survivors.
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‘I reduced my running because of urine leaks’ â Commonwealth finalist Korir
Kenyan middle-distance runner Naomi Korir has turned a 13-year battle with a congenital disabling condition into a story of global athletic success, reaching new career heights this summer when she crossed the line in fifth place at the 2024 Commonwealth Games mile final in Glasgow. But for the 28-year-old, reaching the world stage of elite track and field looked nearly impossible earlier in her life.
Born with congenital genitourinary fistula, a condition characterized by an abnormal opening between the bladder and vagina that causes constant, uncontrollable urine leakage, Korir fell in love with sport as a young girl, but her condition forced her to drastically adjust her early relationship with running. “I played most of the sports activities: football, netball, athletics, even rugby,” Korir recalled in an interview with BBC Sport Africa. “But it was difficult because [of] the training, and the urine is flowing continuously. It’s bad. I reduced my running to shorter distances to reduce the leaking. I began doing 100m hurdles.”
Beyond the physical discomfort, the condition carried severe social stigma that left Korir isolated from peers. Many people avoided her due to misunderstanding of the condition, but her love of athletics became a lifeline that kept her connected to activity and gave her a sense of purpose. “I could do it because I loved it, because most of the people could avoid me, I did a lot of activities just to pass time and not to feel that I’m excluded,” she said.
Fistula, a condition that affects an estimated 500,000 women globally, can develop either as a complication of prolonged obstructed childbirth or, as in Korir’s case, be present from birth. While widespread access to obstetric care and low-cost corrective surgery has all but eliminated the condition in high-income nations, it remains a persistent public health challenge in sub-Saharan Africa, where high-quality specialized care is often out of reach for low-income communities.
Korir endured two failed corrective surgeries before a third successful procedure finally brought her relief in August 2013, when she was 13 years old. The operation was performed at Eldoret’s Gynocare Hospital, a Kenyan facility that specializes in fistula treatment, obstetric care and reproductive health, which has treated thousands of patients from across East Africa since opening in 2011.
Caroline Mabeya, director of Gynocare, explained that the social isolation and stigma surrounding fistula often creates as much harm as the physical condition itself. “It’s a difficult condition to live with every day,” Mabeya said. “They are ostracised in the society. That’s the psychological torture that they face with the fistula.” Unlike many treatment providers, Gynocare offers free care for low-income patients and combines surgical intervention with long-term support to help women rebuild their self-esteem and reintegrate into their communities after treatment. “When they come into the facility, they are crushed, they have low esteem. So, there’s a huge amount of effort that is put in to make them at least be strong enough to be reintegrated and get back into the community,” Mabeya added.
For Korir, successful surgery opened the door to a second chance at both education and her athletic dreams. Through Gynocare’s Young Fistula Programme, she was able to complete her secondary education, while the end of her chronic symptoms allowed her to return to full-distance running training. By 2019, she had turned professional, quickly climbing the ranks of international track and field: in 2021, she claimed a silver medal in the 2x2x400m mixed relay at the World Relays in Poland alongside teammate Ferguson Rotich, followed by a gold medal in the 4x400m relay at the 2022 African Championships in Mauritius.
Her 2024 Commonwealth Games appearance marked her first start in a major global senior final, a milestone that has cemented her role as a beacon of hope for women living with fistula around the world. “I’m giving hope to young women maybe who have lost hope,” Korir said. “They need to come back again in living and enjoying life.”
Mabeya noted that Korir’s journey has become a powerful inspiration for both current patients at Gynocare and the hospital’s staff, who face daily challenges treating the condition and addressing its long-term social impacts. “She makes them realise that you can actually pull yourself out of these struggles and still make it in life and succeed,” Mabeya said. “Naomi actually is one of those patients that inspires us to continue working very hard, because we struggle with this condition and these women. The work is not easy.”
Once a young girl who assumed music would be her future, singing in church and playing keyboard, Korir now has her sights set on even bigger athletic milestones: the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Beijing and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Reflecting on her journey so far, she remains grounded in what her biggest victory has already been. “I know I’m a champion in life, because conquering fistula alone is being a champion,” she said. “Now I’m looking forward to be a champion in sport.”
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He’s seen nearly 500 executions. But never one like Christa Pike’s
A highly unusual botched execution attempt in Tennessee has sent shockwaves across U.S. capital punishment discourse, prompting an immediate halt to all scheduled executions in the state and triggering a wide-ranging independent investigation into lethal injection protocols. The incident, which saw convicted murderer Christa Pike remain alive and breathing after two full doses of the sedative pentobarbital, the standard drug used in Tennessee’s execution protocol, has reignited long-simmering debates over the reliability and ethics of lethal injection in the United States.
Veteran Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk, who has covered nearly 500 executions in Texas—more than any other American journalist— and continued this work even after his official retirement in 2018, says the outcome did not catch him completely off guard. Over his 46-year career with the AP, Graczyk witnessed rare procedural complications, including two instances where injection needles dislodged before being reinserted to complete the execution, but he had never seen an inmate survive after the full fatal dose was administered. Still, he had long considered this rare failure a distinct possibility. “It seems to me it was just a matter of time,” he told BBC News in the wake of the Tennessee incident.
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she tortured and killed alongside her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp during a confrontation at a job training camp. Following Wednesday night’s failed execution attempt, Pike was transferred to a local hospital and is currently receiving life-saving care, according to her legal team. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, who attended the attempted execution, described the chaotic ordeal to NBC News simply as “a mess.”
Tennessee’s existing execution protocol explicitly calls for a secondary backup set of pentobarbital syringes if the inmate survives the first dose, but it provides no clear guidance for what action to take if the second dose also fails to cause death. Hours after the failed procedure, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered a temporary pause on all executions in the state and launched an independent review of the state’s capital punishment procedures.
Botched executions have grown increasingly common in the U.S. over the past 15 years, following widespread shortages of the traditional lethal injection drugs that forced many death penalty states to alter their drug formulations or source drugs from unregulated, untested suppliers. The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan think tank that takes no official stance on capital punishment, has documented 64 botched executions across the U.S. since 1982, 51 of which involved lethal injection. In at least seven of those cases, executions were called off entirely after medical teams were unable to establish a functional IV line for the drug delivery. Some states have even responded to drug access challenges by reinstating archaic execution methods like firing squad as a last-resort alternative.
For Graczyk, 76, who still resides and reports in Texas—the U.S. state that has carried out more executions than any other since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment nationwide in 1976—covering executions has always been a core journalistic responsibility. Texas conducted the first ever lethal injection execution in U.S. history in 1982, and has overseen 602 executions in total, accounting for more than a third of the 1,683 executions carried out across the country since 1976. Graczyk argues that independent, neutral observers have a critical duty to witness the implementation of state capital punishment, to hold authorities accountable and document what occurs for the public.
“There is no greater authority, power, whatever you want to call it, that state or federal government has over us than the power to take our life,” he explained. “I always thought it was important for someone who has no stake in the outcome of a case to be there and to see the law being carried out and to make certain that it is done properly. That someone is there to see it and tell others: Here’s what I saw. Here’s what happened.”
Graczyk also notes a persistent imbalance in media coverage of executions, where the inmate receives the vast majority of public attention while crime victims and their families are often overlooked. In the Tennessee case, he points out, public discussion has centered almost exclusively on the failed execution and Pike’s status, with little focus on Slemmer, her life, or the grief her family has carried for nearly 30 years. “I feel bad for the victims in the case. They are the forgotten folks. They always have been,” he said. “Today, all the emphasis is on the inmate in Tennessee. No tears are being shed, other than the victim’s immediate family, for the victim … and I understand that’s the business we’re in, but it doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Over his decades of reporting, Graczyk has carried indelible memories of the executions he witnessed, including the 1998 execution of Jonathan Nobles, a Texas man convicted of stabbing two Austin women to death in 1986. As Nobles’ last words, he began singing the Christmas carol *Silent Night*—and stopped mid-verse, at the line “Round yon virgin,” when the sedative took effect and he lost consciousness. The moment has stayed with Graczyk for nearly 30 years. “To this day, when I’m in church on Christmas, and the choir is singing *Silent Night*, and all the congregation is joining in … I’m thinking of this execution. I’m sure I’m the only one in that congregation that is having that kind of recollection,” he said.
Texas’ execution procedures differ from Tennessee’s in key ways, Graczyk explains: in Texas, the IV line is set up before journalists and other observers are allowed into the death chamber viewing area, so reporters never witness the insertion process. When insertion fails at the first attempt on the arm’s crook, execution teams typically move the IV to the back of the hand, leg, neck, or alternate site. In all successful executions Graczyk has witnessed, inmates become visibly unconscious within seconds of receiving the dose, and are officially pronounced dead between 20 and 40 minutes later.
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US jobs market sees sharp slowdown in September
In the final monthly employment update ahead of November’s congressional midterm elections, the U.S. labor market delivered a far weaker performance than expected in September, new federal data shows, pointing to a noticeable cooling of the world’s largest economy and shifting expectations for future Federal Reserve monetary policy.
Figures published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveal that U.S. employers added just 29,000 net new jobs to their payrolls in September, a dramatic downturn from August’s revised 133,000 job gains. The slowdown cut across nearly all major sectors of the economy, from big tech to retail, where headcounts stayed largely flat as businesses opted to freeze hiring rather than expand or cut their workforces. The national unemployment rate also ticked upward slightly over the month, rising from 3.5% in August 3.8% in September.
The surprisingly soft jobs report has led economic analysts to downgrade their expectations for aggressive interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve, which has been raising borrowing costs for more than a year to curb persistent inflation. A cooling labor market eases upward pressure on wages, which central bank policymakers see as a key factor in bringing inflation back to their long-term 2% target. Many economists have noted that the weak September reading does not necessarily signal an impending deep recession, however.
George Brown, senior economist at asset management firm Schroders, pointed out that monthly job growth has been highly volatile throughout 2024, describing the trend as a “rollercoaster.” A single soft month of gains, he argued, is not enough to confirm a lasting, widespread collapse in employment. Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, echoed that tempered assessment, calling the lower-than-expected jobs figure “not disastrous.” He noted that the headline number was dragged down by one-off factors including a drop in temporary government positions and recent policy shifts affecting work visas that temporarily slowed hiring for foreign workers.
Beyond economic implications, the BLS data creates a major political challenge for former President Donald Trump and Republican candidates across the country, just four weeks before voters head to the polls for the 2026 midterm elections. This development stands in stark contradiction to Trump’s repeated public claims that the U.S. economy is booming, and that the country holds the title of the “hottest” economy in the world.
New public opinion polling underscores the growing gap between Trump’s upbeat economic messaging and public sentiment. A new AP-NORC poll released Thursday shows that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of cost-of-living issues, while just 26% approve of his overall management of the economy. Both approval marks hit new lows for Trump, falling below the lowest economic approval ratings recorded during President Joe Biden’s term in office.
Trump has privately and publicly acknowledged that his framing of the economy does not align with most Americans’ experiences. Earlier this week, he admitted during a White House event: “I’ve done a very bad job of explaining how good the country is doing.” The disconnect between the administration’s optimistic rhetoric and on-the-ground economic data leaves Republicans scrambling to defend their economic record on the campaign trail as voters prioritize inflation and jobs ahead of the critical midterm contests.
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‘Knowledge is power’ – Awoniyi
For professional football stars at the peak of their careers, stepping off the pitch and back into the classroom is a rare choice. But for Taiwo Awoniyi, the Nigerian international striker who plies his trade for Coventry City and has already built a multi-million career in top-tier soccer, continuing his education is not an extracurricular hobby – it is a lifelong promise he made to himself, rooted in a lesson from his father.\n\nAwoniyi, who previously built his reputation in the Premier League, has just marked a major personal milestone: he has graduated with a specialized diploma crafted to cultivate the next generation of leadership within the global football industry. In recent comments explaining his ongoing commitment to academic study alongside his demanding playing schedule, the forward emphasized the core wisdom passed down to him from his family: that knowledge is the most enduring form of power, and education holds irreplaceable value that no athletic success can replace.\n\nWhat makes Awoniyi’s choice stand out is that it breaks the common stereotype that top professional athletes set aside academic growth once they secure sporting fame and financial stability. As a millionaire player who has achieved widespread success in his career, his decision to prioritize education sends a powerful message to young aspiring athletes around the world, particularly emerging talent across the African continent. It highlights that athletic careers are finite, but the knowledge and skills gained through education can open doors to long-term leadership opportunities that extend well beyond a player’s time on the pitch.\n\nThis report was reported by Nizaar Kinsella, produced by Ian Williams, and edited by Aaron Akinyemi, published one hour ago in the Africa Sport subsection.
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School protests send shivers down French government’s spine
For more than five decades, every French administration has carried a hard-earned lesson etched into policy by the 1968 May student uprisings: mass youth mobilization on the streets poses an existential threat to sitting governments. Then-President Charles de Gaulle infamously dismissed the chaotic movement as chienlit – a crude term for unbridled disorder – and ever since, leaders have approached youth protests with extreme caution. Today, that long-held wariness has curdled into open anxiety for President Emmanuel Macron’s government, as a new youth-led protest movement that erupted just two weeks ago has swept across the nation, leaving widespread disruption, property damage, and political uncertainty in its wake.
The unrest first ignited in Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income, diverse northern suburb of Paris long marked by systemic underinvestment. What began as a local outcry over underfunded education has rapidly expanded, reaching every corner of France in less than a fortnight. At the peak of mobilization last Thursday, hundreds of lycées – France’s secondary schools for 15 to 18-year-old students – were blocked by protesters. By Friday, roughly 400 lycées remained shuttered, closed by administrative order to protect staff and learners, and university student unions have begun joining the movement, amplifying its scale.
The protests have not remained peaceful. On Thursday, arson destroyed the main assembly hall of a Nantes lycée, and hundreds of small blazes were set at school entrances across the country, with total damage estimated in the millions of euros. According to Education Minister Édouard Geffray, 65 education staff, including 40 school principals, have sustained injuries, with most injured employees reporting that their attackers were not their own students. Government data also shows 300 police officers and firefighters have required medical treatment for injuries, and roughly 2,000 people, the vast majority of whom are minors, have been taken into police custody. Protesters and student groups push back on this official narrative, compiling their own list of injuries at the hands of police, including two teenagers who suffered severe permanent eye damage and another who lost multiple teeth.
Beyond the immediate chaos of street protests and blockades, the movement presents a uniquely thorny challenge for Macron’s government, rooted in both social and political context. While the core demands of protesters remain loosely defined, they center on a single, broadly resonant grievance: chronic underfunding of France’s public education system. Protesters are calling for increased education spending, more teaching staff, smaller class sizes, and critical infrastructure upgrades to crumbling school buildings. This grievance has broad public sympathy: most French observers acknowledge that education conditions have deteriorated steadily as public budgets have tightened, and mass protest to demand government investment is a long-accepted norm in French political culture.
Yet the timing of the unrest could not be more politically charged, coming just months ahead of France’s 2026 presidential election. Last week, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu unveiled his 2027 draft national budget, anchored by a pledge to cut €54 billion in public spending to reduce France’s chronic deficit. For Macron’s government, the era of large-scale public spending to defuse social unrest is effectively over, meaning any major concessions to student demands are all but off the table. That leaves the administration with few tools to de-escalate the crisis.
The far greater political fear, however, is that the protests are being intentionally stoked by the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party and its presidential candidate, veteran leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as part of an election strategy to mobilize young voters ahead of the May vote. Centrist and right-wing political observers, as well as a leaked internal Paris police intelligence report, point to evidence of far-left coordination: the presence of non-student protesters at blockades, the loose framing of demands, the display of Palestinian and Algerian flags at rallies, and the use of radical-left protest tactics such as organizing secondary demonstrations outside police stations. The police report concludes the unrest could be part of a deliberate “flame-kindling strategy” to advance LFI’s political agenda ahead of the elections.
LFI has repeatedly denied manipulating the movement, saying it is merely offering principled support to a legitimate grassroots protest of young people. Mélenchon himself has publicly called on students to avoid violence, arguing that unrest only plays into the hands of political opponents. Even so, his political rivals are convinced the 75-year-old candidate is deliberately leveraging the protests to shore up his already strong base among young French voters. Polling bears out the scope of his support: Mélenchon captures roughly 40% of the vote among 18 to 24-year-olds, and his messaging around a “new France” and “creolization” – a framework that celebrates France’s diverse, changing population and linguistic landscape – resonates deeply in the working-class, high-immigration suburbs that are the epicenter of the current unrest.
A key challenge for Mélenchon, however, is that young people are the demographic with the lowest voter turnout in French elections. Political analysts broadly see the current unrest as a way for LFI to energize this disengaged base, reminding young voters that the party aligns with their grievances and that their votes can shift the outcome of the election. Even so, polling consistently shows that Mélenchon would lose heavily to hard-right candidate Marine Le Pen in a head-to-head runoff election – a result that would plunge France into unprecedented political instability. For Macron’s government and centrist voters across the country, the current wave of youth protests is not just a temporary public disruption: it is seen as a potential early warning sign of the deepening polarization and instability that could follow next spring’s election.
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More than 5,000 people killed or injured in Haiti due to gang violence this year, UN says
The Caribbean nation of Haiti has been grappling with spiraling gang-related bloodshed for decades, and a new United Nations update has laid bare the staggering human cost of the ongoing crisis between the start of 2026 and mid-September this year. According to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, more than 5,700 people have been killed or injured either at the hands of gang members or during government and multinational security operations targeting these armed groups. Beyond fatalities and injuries, over 230 people have been abducted, and an estimated 1,000 women and girls have been sexually assaulted — a figure High Commissioner Volker Türk warns is almost certainly a vast undercount of the true scale of gender-based violence in the country.
Decades of fragmented governance have allowed gangs to carve out increasing control across swathes of Haiti, but the current wave of unbridled violence traces its roots back to the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The power vacuum created by Moïse’s murder removed what little remaining state control existed, enabling violent factions to seize vast new swathes of territory, consolidate their influence, and expand their criminal operations. Even before the assassination, gang activity had reached rampant levels under Moïse’s tenure, but the post-assassination instability has pushed the country into an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
In his briefing released Friday, Türk detailed that more than half of all recorded casualties have occurred during security operations aimed at rooting out gangs. Hundreds of these civilian casualties have been caused by stray bullets and errant strikes from explosive drones, leaving ordinary people caught in the deadly crossfire between armed groups and security forces. Türk emphasized that gangs have continued to evolve and expand their territorial hold, with UN investigations confirming a coordinated strategy to capture new land and critical transportation corridors, a move that further erodes Haiti’s already fragile national stability.
While the High Commissioner noted a recent decline in extrajudicial executions carried out by specialized Haitian police units, people suspected of having ties to gangs still face severe risk of being killed without trial or due process. One of the most alarming developments highlighted in the update is the surge in child recruitment by gangs: the number of minors coerced or lured into joining armed groups has nearly tripled in recent months. For many young Haitians growing up in collapsed communities, Türk explained, joining a gang is often the only viable way to secure basic survival, leaving children trapped in a cycle of violence with no way out. “No child should be forced to choose between their lives and the security of their neighbours,” Türk said.
Haiti is currently scheduled to hold its first presidential and legislative elections since 2016 on December 13, a vote that was intended to mark a return to constitutional order after years of transitional rule. But Türk cast severe doubt on the feasibility of a free, fair, and credible vote this year, arguing that the current security and political climate makes it impossible to meet the basic conditions for a legitimate election. A multinational security support force, deployed in 2025 to help Haitian authorities curb escalating gang violence, has so far made limited progress; the force has struggled to even access large parts of the country that are fully controlled by armed factions, leaving millions of residents trapped in gang-held territory with little to no protection or access to basic services.
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A ‘dark cloud’ and ‘dismal’ mood: How it feels on Cornell campus right now
Nestled among the rolling hills of upstate New York, Cornell University’s iconic ivy-covered campus usually glows with warm autumn foliage at this time of year. For students, faculty, and alumni, however, a two-year-old alleged gang rape case has descended over the elite Ivy League institution like an unshakable dark cloud, igniting widespread outrage over the university’s handling of the incident and reigniting long-simmering debates about toxic fraternity culture on campus.
Tensions boiled over in recent weeks as the 2024 case resurfaced publicly, following a September 16 civil lawsuit filed by the accuser, known only anonymously as Jane Doe. In her legal filing, Jane Doe claims she was drugged and sexually assaulted by a group of seven men — dubbed the “Cornell Seven” — at a Chi Phi fraternity house on campus. She alleges that university leadership failed to protect her and did not deliver adequate disciplinary action against the men accused of the attack. The Chi Phi chapter at the center of the allegations was shut down in 2024 and remains permanently barred from Cornell’s campus, but students say that is far from enough accountability.
At a public student assembly held Thursday, hundreds of members of the Cornell community packed the room to vent their years-long frustration with the institution’s response. Many attendees labeled the perceived lack of transparent justice a disgrace to Cornell’s centuries-old prestige, with dozens calling for sweeping, systemic changes to how the university handles sexual assault claims. Undergraduate Sophia Riley Sim, one of the student speakers at the assembly, told the crowd that the university must prioritize student safety over its own carefully curated reputation. “We deserve to know that our institution values our safety more than its reputation,” Sim said, adding that she had been too distraught over the case’s outcome to attend classes for the entire previous week.
Freshman Eliana Dolven-Miller echoed that anger, telling reporters she felt disgusted paying tuition to an institution that she says has failed survivors of sexual violence. “There was a lot of anger in that room, I was very angry,” she said. Eeshaan Chaudhuri, chair of the student assembly, opened the meeting by affirming the campus community’s unified support for sexual violence survivors. “We don’t tolerate it here on campus, and I think I can speak for every single one of us, and I can say we’re absolutely ashamed of the events that happened on our campus,” Chaudhuri stated. The student body has advanced a formal resolution demanding that Cornell release a full public accounting of its handling of the case, including details of evidence collected and timelines for when law enforcement was notified.
University leadership has pushed back against criticism, defending its prior investigative work. Cornell officials note that the institution launched an extensive, months-long investigation immediately after receiving the initial report, and that all processes aligned with federal civil rights requirements. The university adds that its internal hearing panel issued a range of sanctions following the probe, including expulsions and suspensions for involved students. Cornell says it is legally barred from publicly disclosing specific individual disciplinary outcomes, a restriction that administrators acknowledge has fueled widespread frustration among the student body. The university has also agreed to a new independent investigation into Jane Doe’s allegations.
Shortly after Thursday’s assembly, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a major shift in the criminal probe: she has appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to take over the case, saying she had lost confidence in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who previously led the investigation. Van Houten’s office initially closed the case after concluding evidence did not meet the threshold for criminal charges, but the office reopened the criminal probe last week in response to the new civil lawsuit, a move Cornell has publicly supported.
Across the campus, community tension remains palpable. A tenured faculty member who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity described the overall campus mood as dismal, noting that most staff lack specialized training to support distressed students amid the ongoing controversy. She added that the incident is far from an isolated case, and that fraternity-related problems have plagued the campus for years. Even first-year students, who only arrived on campus last month, say the case has overshadowed their excitement about starting at an Ivy League school. One first-year male student said he and his peers are deeply disturbed by what happened to Jane Doe, and that the controversy has cast a pall over their first semester.
Student organizers are already preparing for a large-scale “Justice for Survivors” protest scheduled for October 5, with flyers advertising the demonstration posted across every part of the campus. Organizers are demanding concrete action: Cornell must expel the alleged perpetrators and revoke any degrees awarded to them, rewrite the university’s sexual assault disciplinary policies, launch a full external investigation into institutional handling of the case, and mandate ongoing sexual violence prevention training for all campus police.
Alumni have also added their voices to the calls for reform, with more than 1,300 Cornell graduates signing an open letter published in the campus student newspaper that demands swift, far-reaching action. The letter challenges Cornell leadership to confront the systemic problem of sexual violence on campus, rather than shying away from reform to protect the university’s global brand. “This is not an isolated incident,” the letter warns.