Israeli minister claims ‘terrorist’ wanted to crash plane after Israel-bound flight’s emergency landing – latest

• The United Nations concluded its 81st General Assembly amid rising geopolitical tensions that threaten global cooperation and peace. • The organization is currently facing a rupture of multilateralism, which is the process of multiple countries working together to solve shared problems.

• Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger appointed Douglas Mercado, a visiting lecturer in public and international affairs, to the advisory board of the state’s Office of New Americans in September 2026. • Mercado cited his decades of professional experience supporting refugees, internally displaced persons, and disaster-impacted communities as the basis for his appointment.

• External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated that the United States and other partners must better understand India's concerns regarding cross-border terrorism. • The minister indicated that a lack of understanding on these specific security threats could negatively impact diplomatic relations.

• Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned on September 29 that mass draft evasion and the potential collapse of the Israel Defense Forces are the greatest dangers facing the country. • The Israel Defense Forces reported that its troops physically prevented harm to a Palestinian family during a settler riot in the West Bank.

• Interconnected conflicts are expanding on both sides of the Red Sea while the United States continues to provide inconsistent policy signals. • The African Union estimates that the conflict leading to the 2022 Pretoria Agreement resulted in approximately 600,000 deaths.

Support for white Afrikaners, anti-communism and others reveals how US redefining what qualifies as human rightsWith hours left before the funding expires, the Trump administration is pushing to direct more than $175m of the state department’s flagship human rights fund to a slate of awards that includes a massive $40m grant for an anti-communism fund, support for a group advancing white Afrikaner rights in South Africa, a campaign against Brazil’s supreme court, and programs that would reward ideological allies in Europe who protect “western civilisational norms”.Critics have focused on 43 awards of a combined $176.9m that will bolster rightwing and conservative causes around the world while likely angering US allies over interference in internal politics. The Guardian has seen a sample of the controversial grants, which makes up most of the $205m in funding that Congress has appropriated for the entire human rights and democracy fund (HRDF). Continue reading...

Study says UK-based banks provided $8.3bn in coal financing in four years, with Barclays and HSBC leading riseUK banks are Europe’s biggest financial backers of the global coal industry, providing billions of pounds in funding for the climate-wrecking fossil fuel in the past four years, according to a report.The study found UK-based banks had provided $8.3bn (£6.2bn) in coal financing since Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, when global leaders pledged to “phase down” coal use. This compared with $4.9bn from German banks and $3.4bn from French banks over the same period. Continue reading...

Trump administration can deport immigrants to countries other than their homeland. Plus, 550lb bear returns to LA neighborhoodGood morning. The supreme court has ruled the Trump administration can resume deporting immigrants to “third countries”, or countries other than their homeland, without giving them any opportunity to contest their removals.The six-justice conservative majority of the high court temporarily lifted a decision by a lower court that required the administration to provide immigrants sufficient notice and the opportunity to claim fear of torture or persecution in the countries where they were being sent.What has the administration asked the supreme court to rule on about trans prisoners? The administration asked the justices to allow it to deny gender-affirming care to transgender people in federal prisons. The solicitor general, D John Sauer, wrote that gender-reassignment surgeries, hormone therapy and social accommodations such as undergarments, makeup, padding and wigs “could no longer be justified.”Why is the EPA union suing the administration? The union, which represents more than 8,000 workers at the Environmental Protection Agency, has filed a lawsuit against the EPA and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, alleging it illegally terminated a collective bargaining agreement.Which legal battle has Trump appeared to have conceded? The president has agreed to stop fighting the disbursement of E Jean Carroll’s $5m verdict in her 2023 sexual abuse and defamation civil trial against him, a procedural development as the funds had already been distributed to her.What new product has OpenAI announced? Less than 24 hours after OpenAI said it would scrap the launch of a model over safety concerns, the company debuted a whole new suite of artificial intelligence tools, including “dots”, agents it said were “more ambitious” than ChatGPT and a “whole new way to work with AI.”Why is Greta Garbo making AI headlines? More than a century after her screen debut and decades after she was laid to rest, the actor has been reanimated by AI for a Swedish advert. Peter Bradshaw has given it a damning one-star review. Continue reading...

Kenjiro Tsuda wins case against TikTok account in landmark verdict to protect publicity rightsA court in Japan has ruled that the human voice has legal protection after a landmark case involving a well known actor and a TikTok account whose AI-generated videos, he claimed, had cloned his “lustrous” baritone voice.Tokyo district court said on Wednesday that voices enjoy the same protection as publicity rights, at the end of a closely watched legal action brought against TikTok by Kenjiro Tsuda – best known for voicing the character Kento Nanami in the anime Jujutsu Kaisen. Continue reading...

Iranian court upholds sentence against 29-year-old star Parastoo Ahmadi and other musicians in crackdown on women flouting hijab lawAn Iranian court’s decision to uphold a sentence of 74 lashes against the popular singer Parastoo Ahmadi for performing without a hijab has sparked outrage among rights groups, who described it as “a form of torture”.In June, Ahmadi, 29, and eight members of her production team, including musicians, were sentenced by a court in the city of Qom over a concert that was streamed online in 2024, which went viral and racked up millions of views. The court said the group had violated the country’s “legal and cultural norms” and called the performance “obscene and vulgar”. Continue reading...

Wave nearing southern California expected to reach San Francisco Bay Area by October as it crawls toward AlaskaCommunities across California are rushing to prepare for the imminent arrival of the so-called “Kelvin wave”, a massive underwater band of warm water threatening to inundate swaths of the vast North American shoreline.The wave is nearing southern California and expected to reach the San Francisco Bay Area by early October, as it crawls toward Alaska. Waters could rise by a foot along the California coast, according to scientists, who have warned that this could dramatically double the 8-12in rise in sea levels already caused by climate change over the last century. Continue reading...