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Two people have died and another remained missing after torrential rain and flooding swept through Spain's northeastern Catalonia region over the weekend, authorities said on Sunday, as a renewed burst of heavy rainfall on Monday kept travel disrupted across the Barcelona area. Red alert and flooded streets Catalan leader Salvador Illa confirmed that a man died in Tordera, a town north of Barcelona, after a wall collapsed on him. Firefighters said a second person died in Montornès del Vallès, while emergency services were searching for a missing person in Pineda de Mar, about 52 kilometres north of Barcelona. Catalan authorities issued a red weather alert and urged residents to stay indoors from 8 p.m. on Saturday until 2 p.m. on...

Breaking: The US military said on Sunday that four people were killed in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea — the latest in a series of attacks Washington says target "narco-terrorists" but which human rights experts condemn as extrajudicial killings. The US Southern Command said on X that it "executed a lethal, kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean." It cited what it called "confirmed intelligence" to allege the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking, without providing more details, and said four people it described as "narco-terrorists" were killed. The Trump administration has said the vessels it has struck since September 2025 were transporting...

Ukraine is facing its biggest budget crisis since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, with soaring war costs and shrinking tax revenues leaving a $56-billion hole in state coffers — roughly a quarter of economic output. The strain is visible in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's industrial hometown of 600,000 people. Russian airstrikes have brought its huge steel plant and mines to a standstill, and last month ArcelorMittal's sprawling complex, the city's largest employer, suspended operations after missile strikes. "In Kryvyi Rih, the situation is actually worse than anywhere else, apart from the front line itself," Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said. "It's about survival. Right now, we need to survive." War costs more...

The Omani co-pilot accused of attacking his captain and trying to bring down a flydubai passenger jet told investigators that he wanted to deliberately crash the aircraft and was "not afraid of death," according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a Saudi official briefed on his interrogation. The revelation marks the most chilling development yet in the investigation into the September 30 cockpit attack aboard flydubai Flight 1073, bound for Tel Aviv. What investigators say happened Hamam al-Hammami, 29, an Omani national, allegedly attacked Captain Smit Machchhar inside the cockpit with a crash axe before attempting to take control of the aircraft. The plane plunged more than 16,000 feet in around 30 seconds before the injured...

Trade negotiators from India and Canada began the fifth round of talks for the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in Ottawa on Monday, with both governments pushing to wrap up the pact before the end of 2026. The five-day round, led by the chief negotiators of both countries, is scheduled to run until October 9. It follows the fourth round of negotiations, which concluded in India on September 18. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said both sides agreed to fast-track the discussions, and officials say the pace has picked up sharply in recent weeks. Why this round matters The talks carry weight well beyond tariff schedules. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney set...

Delhi Police have registered an FIR in connection with the death of a 40-year-old IIT Delhi PhD scholar who died at AIIMS on October 3, more than 45 days after he was found unconscious and injured inside his rented house in Munirka. What happened According to police, the scholar was found unconscious and injured inside his rented accommodation in Munirka village on August 18. The door of the house was locked from inside and had to be broken open by neighbours. Police shifted him to the AIIMS Trauma Centre, where he remained under treatment for over 45 days before he died on October 3. The FIR FIR No. 243/2026 was registered at the Kishangarh police station on October 4 under Section 108 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which deals...

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced its candidates for three of the five Maharashtra Legislative Council seats going to polls on October 23, naming contestants for the graduates' and teachers' constituencies in Pune and Nagpur. The BJP's picks The party fielded Smita Yogesh Jadhav for the Pune Division Graduates' constituency, Sudhakar Vitthalrao Kohle for the Nagpur Division Graduates' constituency and Kaustubh Muralidhar Gawde for the Pune Division Teachers' constituency. The announcement came a day after the Election Commission's notification, with nominations closing on October 6. The poll schedule The Election Commission issued the notification for the biennial elections on September 29. Polling will be held on...

UP's Bhadohi District Renamed as Sant Ravidas Nagar Bhadohi, Yogi Adityanath Announces Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday announced that Bhadohi district would now be known as Sant Ravidas Nagar Bhadohi, restoring a name with deep political and cultural resonance in the state's eastern belt. "Now Bhadohi district will be called Sant Ravidas Nagar Bhadohi," Adityanath said while addressing a programme in the district, where he inaugurated and laid the foundation stones for 112 development projects worth over Rs 1,340 crore. The chief minister said the renaming honours Satguru Ravidas Maharaj, the medieval saint known for his spiritual teachings and message of social unity. He recalled that on Guru Purnima, the...

The United States has withdrawn all its B-1 bombers from Royal Air Force Fairford in Britain, the Pentagon confirmed on Sunday, a week after British police arrested several men near the base on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. A dozen B-1 bombers had been stationed at Fairford, northwest of London, where they were used for US strikes on Iran. A Pentagon spokesman said the aircraft have now been flown back to their home stations in the United States. Pentagon confirms the move "While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States," the...

Leaders of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia have issued a joint declaration after a four-way consultative summit in New Alamein City, Egypt, setting out a common position on regional security, Red Sea governance and Nile waters. The Quadrilateral Consultative Summit was held on Sunday, October 4, 2026, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi hosting Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the chairman of Sudan's Transitional Sovereignty Council, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan. A unified stance on Somaliland and the Nile In the El Alamein Joint Declaration, the four leaders rejected any recognition of or support for "Somaliland," affirming Somalia's territorial integrity. They also called...

Supporters of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan have set off on a protest march from the country's northwest towards Islamabad after talks with the government to call off the demonstration failed, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday. More than 5,000 people were reported to have begun the rally on Sunday, October 4. The march, organised by Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was originally scheduled for September 27 but was postponed to October 4 to allow negotiations between the government and the PTI leadership. Two rounds of talks fail Two rounds of talks over the weekend failed to break the deadlock, and the PTI decided to carry out its plan — the latest attempt to pressure the government into releasing Khan...

Nine fishermen from Tamil Nadu's Ramanathapuram district were detained by the Sri Lankan Navy on Saturday after their mechanised trawler was accused of poaching in the island nation's waters, the latest in the long-running cycle of mid-sea arrests in the Palk Strait. According to The Hindu, the fishermen, from Thangachimadam near Rameswaram, had ventured out after fisheries department officials issued tokens to 339 mechanised trawlers. Sri Lankan Navy personnel on surveillance claimed the trawler was indulging in poaching, interrogated the crew at mid-sea, and then detained the vessel along with the nine men and their catch, taking them to a naval port in Sri Lanka. Unrest in the coastal town News of the detention sent shockwaves...

Astronomers say they have directly detected, for the first time, radio emissions coming from a single planet outside the solar system — a signal traced to the gas giant Beta Pictoris b, 63 light-years from Earth, that points to one of the most powerful magnetic fields ever measured on a planet. The repeating radio bursts were picked up by South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope array by a team led by Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, with researchers from the University of Oregon also involved. The finding was described in a paper posted September 15 to the preprint platform arXiv and has not yet undergone peer review. The team concluded the bursts came from Beta Pictoris b rather than its...

The Supreme Court is set to hear on Monday two petitions questioning the functioning of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, with one plea calling for a special investigation team probe against him and others and both seeking the nationwide special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to be declared illegal. A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana will hear the matter, The Indian Express reported on Monday. The petitions were filed days after the newspaper reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders concerning the SIR of electoral rolls. The two commissioners...

US President Donald Trump has warned that Iran faces "the easy way or the hard way" as Washington weighs its next steps in the conflict, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States would retain all options — including military ones — if Tehran refuses to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Trump said Iran had been severely weakened during the conflict and indicated he was weighing further decisions. He also claimed Tehran was moving away from plans for a nuclear weapon and pointed to falling oil prices. His comments came as diplomatic efforts between Washington and Tehran remained uncertain. Hegseth: blockade is 'ironclad' Hegseth said the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz was "ironclad" and claimed that Washington...

The Ministry of Education has approved the establishment of five Centres of Excellence dedicated to the study of India's classical languages — Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit — officials said on Saturday. The approval was conveyed through an Office Memorandum issued by the Department of Higher Education's Language Division on October 1, 2026. The centres are intended to strengthen academic research, digitisation, preservation and wider dissemination of the linguistic and literary heritage of the five languages. Five languages, five institutions Each centre will focus on one classical language and will be housed at a university or research institution in a different state: - Classical Assamese: Tezpur University, Assam -...

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro held a narrowing lead over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round of Brazil's presidential election on Sunday, with pollster Datafolha projecting that the race will go to a runoff on October 25. The count so far With nearly 85 per cent of votes reported, the 45-year-old Flávio — son of former president Jair Bolsonaro — led Lula with 48.47 per cent to the president's 43.49 per cent, according to figures cited by Reuters. A candidate must pass 50 per cent of valid votes to win outright in the first round. The two leading candidates were expected to head into the second round, Datafolha said, with surveys showing them polling roughly even in an October 25 runoff. The outcome defied pre-election...

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has told a parliamentary consultative committee that Russia has agreed to take around 70,000 Indian skilled workers this year, people familiar with the discussions said. The minister shared the figure on Saturday while briefing the panel on India's wide-ranging engagement with Russia. Workers, trade and energy on the agenda The minister said the workers would be taken largely in construction and logistics, according to those familiar with the meeting. The briefing covered what Jaishankar described as India's "multifaceted" engagement with Moscow, spanning trade, investment, energy, connectivity, culture and people-to-people ties. On trade, Jaishankar told the panel that both countries share an...

President Donald Trump told supporters at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on Saturday that he may withhold federal financial assistance from the state if Democrats win the November 3 midterm elections. Campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Jon Husted and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump said Republicans in control of the state would have a direct line to his administration for federal help — but warned he would be less willing to work with Ohio if Democrats prevail. "If you do that, we're going to win, and we're going to win big, and we're going to shove it up their ass," Trump said of the upcoming elections. On Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, he added: "But I'm not going to help her." He also called...

France will totally or partly close up to 500 schools on Monday as student protests over staffing shortages and school conditions continue into a new week, Education Minister Edouard Geffray announced on Sunday. Geffray said lessons would be "totally or partly suspended" in between 400 and 500 lycees because the security conditions required to keep them open "have not been fulfilled". He added that 24 schools have been "burned or ransacked" since the protests began, and that at least 170 students and 78 education personnel have been injured in the unrest. A movement that keeps growing The scale of the disruption is already vast. On Friday, the education ministry said at least 400 of France's 3,700 high schools were closed, while 560...