Junior Digest

New Delhi, Sep 18,2026:The Election Commission of India on Friday allotted the name “Mamata All India Trinamool Congress” and the “Football Player” election symbol to the faction led by Mamata Banerjee, while assigning “Democratic Trinamool Congress” and the “Envelope” symbol to the rival group headed by Arup Roy, paving the way for candidates of both factions to contest the ongoing by-elections after the Commission froze the original “All India Trinamool Congress” name and its reserved “Flowers & Grass” symbol.

The Commission’s September 18 order was issued to safeguard the nominations of candidates fielded by the two rival factions after both sides had already submitted nomination papers claiming to represent the All India Trinamool Congress in the Rejinagar and Nandigram Assembly constituencies in West Bengal and the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency in Assam. The two groups have been recognised as political parties in West Bengal, Meghalaya and Tripura. The fresh arrangement follows the Commission’s September 17 order barring both factions from using the name

In Rejinagar, Safiuzzaman Saikh filed his nomination as an AITC candidate with a Form-B authorised by Arup Roy, while Rabiul Alam Chowdhury filed another nomination claiming the same party’s backing with a Form-B authorised by Mamata Banerjee. In Nandigram, Ehteshmul Haque was backed by Roy, while Sanchita Pradhan (Dey) was backed by Banerjee. In Assam’s Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency, Abdul Salam filed his nomination with a Form-B authorised by Banerjee. The Returning Officers had deferred scrutiny of the nominations to September 18.

The Commission noted that, without its intervention, the Returning Officers could have been faced with two candidates claiming to have been nominated by the same political party whose name and symbol had already been frozen. Such a situation could have resulted in both nominations facing rejection and potentially deprived electors of a genuine electoral contest. Invoking its “residuary and inherent powers” under Article 324 of the Constitution and the Election Symbols Order, the Commission said the intervention was intended “to protect the democratic rights of the electors, preserve the integrity of the electoral process, and ensure that no candidate or faction is unfairly prejudiced pending a final determination of the dispute.”

Accordingly, Chowdhury’s nomination in Rejinagar will be treated as having been filed by the Mamata All India Trinamool Congress with the “Football Player” symbol, while Saikh’s nomination will be treated as having been filed by the Democratic Trinamool Congress with the “Envelope” symbol. The same arrangement will apply in Nandigram, where Pradhan’s nomination will be treated as that of a Mamata All India Trinamool Congress candidate with the “Football Player” symbol, while Haque’s nomination will be treated as that of a Democratic Trinamool Congress candidate with the “Envelope” symbol. In Nagaon, Salam’s nomination will likewise be treated as having been filed by the Mamata All India Trinamool Congress with the “Football Player” symbol.

The Commission has made it clear that its September 18 order does not amount to a final determination on the validity of the nomination papers or the competing claims over the party’s identity and organisational control. The Returning Officers have been directed to take the order into account during scrutiny and allotment of symbols while independently examining the nominations under Section 36 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.

Sept 17,2026: U.S. President Donald Trump said he hoped an end to the war against Iran was near, as the conflict, in its seventh month, escalated with Saudi aircraft ​pounding Yemen and Houthi fighters launching drones and missiles at Saudi cities.
The Iran-backed Houthis’ lightning advance in Yemen along the Red Sea and ‌their attacks on Saudi Arabia, along with attacks that damaged Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline, have extended Tehran’s reach in the war and heightened global oil-supply risks.
As the war expands into a new theatre, the United States tightened its travel warning for Saudi Arabia, banning government employees from travelling within 20 miles (30 km) of the Yemen border.
Still, just hours after reports of the Houthis and ​Saudi Arabia fighting, Trump told reporters on Wednesday evening: “Well, hopefully we are towards the end of the war.”
TRUMP SAYS IRAN WANTS A DEAL, OIL PRICE ​STILL ELEVATED
“They want to make a deal. We’ll see how that works out,” he said, referring to Iran, reiterating past comments. ⁠Trump also said he had heard from Iran “directly”, without elaborating.
Trump has offered shifting goals and timelines for the war that began on February 28, when the U.S. ​and Israel attacked Iran and Tehran struck Israel and U.S. bases in Gulf states.
The extension of the war into Yemen threatens to worsen the global energy-supply shortage caused by ​the war, which has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait carried about 20% of global oil and LNG before the conflict.
Traders say a prolonged closure of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline could cut off as much as 4% of global oil supply.
TRUMP TO MEET GULF LEADERS, AXIOS SAYS, AS WAR SPREADS

Axios reported late on Wednesday that Trump was expected to meet Gulf leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday to discuss the next steps in the conflict.

The Houthis on Wednesday released battlefield video of fighters seizing armoured ​vehicles from Saudi-backed forces. The video also showed warplanes flying overhead and huge explosions billowing into the sky from desert ​dunes.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya ⁠Saree said the group had launched fresh drone and missile strikes on the major Saudi Red Sea oil port of Yanbu and at a southern Saudi airbase at Khamis Mushait. He did not say when the strikes had taken place.

Saree said the Saudis had carried out as many as 450 air strikes on Yemen this week. Officials in the Saudi-backed ⁠government that ​controls southern Yemen have acknowledged that their forces and those of Saudi Arabia were conducting air strikes ​on Houthi positions, though Riyadh has not confirmed them.

Saudi Arabia has led a coalition battling the Houthis since 2015. The conflict had largely quietened under a ceasefire in recent years, but reignited when the ​Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in July and fired at southern areas in the kingdom.

September 15, 2026: U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday revealed that the United States has deployed space-control weapons in orbit, while also disclosing new milestones for military satellite programs tied to missile defense and long-range targeting.
But it has not disclosed what those weapons are, how many exist, which satellites carry them, their orbits, or when they were launched.US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said the “on orbit” weapon was necessary to safeguard US forces against hostile enemy action.

Speaking at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Monday, Meink said the US was ready for “evolving threats”, but did not elaborate on the weapon’s capabilities or when it was put into orbit.

Senior military leaders have previously said they planned to boost military capabilities in space, citing Russian and Chinese programmes developing ways to attack and disrupt US satellites in a future conflict.

China responded on Tuesday by warning against an “arms race” in space.

“We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space,” AFP quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.

Details of how the weapon operates have not been disclosed by US officials.

A US Space Force spokesperson said: “Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain – employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities through disruption, degradation and even destruction, if necessary.

“These capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes at the direction of combatant commands.”

An expert on military uses of outer space noted that “precious little” was publicly known about the technology, and told the BBC there could be a “whole range of different weapons systems”.

Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Dr Bleddyn Bowen, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said he was “totally guessing” but that the US could have been referring to “some kind electronic warfare or radio jamming platform”.

That would be the sort of weapon that already exists on Earth and could disrupt radio communications, Bowen said.

An alternative would be “a kinetic kill vehicle of some sort – so a vehicle that would release a projectile of some sort that would ram into a satellite and destroy it”.

But this was less likely because such a physically destructive tool would be capable of creating a lot of debris, Bowen added.
The Trump administration has said that space-based capabilities – and interceptor missiles – are a crucial part of its planned “Golden Dome” defence system to protect the US from missiles and other airborne threats.

Last year President Donald Trump issued an executive order underlining the US Space Force’s role in not only defending assets, but also as an attacking force.

The US Space Force – the first new branch of the US military for more than 70 years – was launched in 2019 as a way to protect American assets in space, including hundreds of satellites used for communication and surveillance.

A 1967 treaty banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit. Since then, key powers including the US, Russia, and China have been exploring other capabilities outside of the treaty, such as targeting rivals’ satellites – which are key for military communications, surveillance and navigation.

In early February, it was revealed that two Russian satellites had likely intercepted the communications of at least a dozen European ones since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Such interceptions may have allowed Russian intelligence services to read the sensitive data they transmit, or hypothetically, even to take control of the satellites.

In 2024, the US said Russia had launched a satellite which it believed may be capable of attacking other such probes. Russia did not publicly comment on the issue.

The US Space Force says China “develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernisation strategy,” while Russia “views space as a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”.

CAIRO/WASHINGTON/DUBAI, Sept 10,2026: Iran-aligned Houthis seized control of c on Thursday, military sources said, posing a ​further threat to global energy supplies.

Four Yemeni government military sources said the Houthis had ‌gained further leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern outlet of the Red Sea and one of the world’s most important shipping routes, and were launching attacks on the strategic islands of Hanish.

Later, two Yemeni government sources reported the Houthis had reached the islands.

If the Houthis impose a stranglehold over the waterway, on the opposite side of the Arabian peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz, it could give their sponsor Iran a critical advantage in the war with the United States, reducing supplies ​through a second major transit corridor and sending oil prices surging.

Brent crude prices rose 3.5% to above $100 a barrel on Thursday on concern over disruption to supply routes.

The Houthis entered the current ​war alongside Iran with an attack on Israel on March 28, but largely stayed quiet before declaring a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in July and ⁠stepping up attacks on the south of the kingdom in September.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has relied on the Red Sea shipping route since the Iran conflict effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through ​which a fifth of global oil used to flow.

Tensions in the region were high on Thursday, with Saudi civil defence authorities issuing emergency alerts in the southwestern city of Khamis Mushait for the fourth time in ​24 hours, as the Houthis attacked.

Pakistan has delivered a Saudi warning to Iran to rein in its Yemeni Houthi allies in an effort to prevent the crisis from spiralling, Saudi, Pakistani and Iranian sources said.

A senior Iranian official confirmed that Pakistan conveyed the message to Tehran on Tuesday and its response was that “Iran does not control the Houthis”.

The conflict in Yemen between Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni allies in the internationally backed government and the Houthis, comes as Iran and the United States staged ​their biggest declared wave of tit-for-tat attacks on shipping in the Gulf region this week since the war began in February.
AXIS OF RESISTANCE
Seen as part of a regional alliance known as the “Axis of Resistance” backed ​by Iran, the Houthis have also rallied behind the Palestinians in the Gaza war, lobbing drones and missiles at Israel and attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Moscow, Sept 8,2026: Artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, which must be addressed promptly, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said. “I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity … I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI, before it is too late,” he said at the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council, as quoted by his office on Monday.

Turk added that he would send a corresponding letter to all leading AI development companies in the coming days. At the same time, he said that only a handful of people hold “almost unlimited power over AI.”

“At a minimum, we need countries hosting AI and those involved in its supply chains to come together around agreed red lines,” Turk said. In December 2025, Chief Economist for the Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Philip Schellekens warned that the military application of AI could pose an existential threat to humanity and lead to mass casualties, stressing the need for highly responsible regulation.
HORROR’ AT AUTONOMOUS DRONES

“I share the concerns ​of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” Turk told the body in Geneva.

“I ⁠am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI, before it ​is too late.”

Turk did not elaborate on the nature of the risks but a spokesperson for his office said failures involving powerful AI systems could ​disrupt critical infrastructure and democratic institutions.

She referred to the “dangerous agent-training behaviours” in July’s so-called Hugging Face incident where a swarm of OpenAI agents hacked an open-source platform, saying it suggested that frontier AI capabilities are advancing faster than the safeguards.

Turk warned that just a handful of men held “almost unlimited power over AI” without naming any. ​Top AI companies include Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google(GOOGL.O).
“At a minimum, we need countries hosting AI and those involved in its supply chains to come ​together around agreed red lines,” he said.

In January 2025, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called uncontrolled AI an existential threat, alongside climate change and nuclear weapons.

DUBAI, Sept 7,2026: Iran said it will announce a new restricted zone in the Gulf in the coming days, ​along with maps of a new shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz.

The new restricted zone ‌will begin from where the U.S. blockade of Iran begins and extend into areas of the Gulf, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday in an interview with state TV.

Few details were provided on the plan, but Rezaei said any ship entering the new zone would be added to a sanctions list.

In addition, maps detailing passage routes for the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy conduit largely closed to tanker traffic, would also be approved soon, Rezaei said.

“The maps of a new international corridor ​which lies in Iranian and Omani waters and in which Iran will have management have been agreed and should be signed in the coming days,” he said.

“We will only commit to the ​Strait of Hormuz being open when they (the Americans) stop the sabotage, threats and attacks on Iran,” Rezaei added.

Six months after U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran sparked the war, the ⁠conflict appears to be at a stalemate. A preliminary ceasefire accord reached in June has unravelled, and little progress has been made in diplomatic efforts to get the peace process back on track.

After a pause in ​military action for much of August, tit-for-tat strikes have resumed. U.S. forces struck three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said, including one off Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil export hub, following attacks by Iran’s Islamic ​Revolutionary Guard Corps on U.S. warships in the region.

Tehran has shown it retains the capability to attack U.S. interests in neighbouring countries and to shut down oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil supplies flowed prior to the conflict.

An average of 10 commodity ships transited the Strait per day in the past 10 days, the lowest since May, according to shipping data on Monday. That helped oil prices extend last week’s big gains, with Brent crude up 0.8% above $97 a ​barrel.
SANCTIONS, OIL BLOCKADE SQUEEZE ECONOMY

Iran has said it will step up efforts to tackle problems created by U.S. sanctions that are crippling its economy.

However, the U.S. campaign to throttle Iran’s economy by blockading its oil exports and ​stopping sanctions evasion is growing increasingly difficult to withstand, three senior Iranian sources have said.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Sunday that the U.S. should understand that the rules of the game have changed “before it is too late”.

“From now ‌on, any ⁠attack against Iran’s interests and security will receive a faster, heavier and more painful response,” he said in a speech published on his Telegram channel.

Qalibaf said that alongside the military front, Iran’s main battle was now over production and people’s livelihoods.

He cited sharp currency fluctuations, inflation, unemployment and market management as major challenges, adding Iranians could tolerate hardship but not mismanagement or inaction and expected the government to act quickly.

Iran’s Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh said Tehran planned to respond to U.S. economic pressure with reforms and rejected the notion that sanctions would cause it to change course, according to state media on Sunday.

“They speak of economic pressure and isolation, of breaking off ​financial ties and they think that by pressuring the ​economy of a country they can change the ⁠decisions of its people,” Madanizadeh said.

“I have to clarify one point: The responsibility of reforming Iran’s economy is with its government and people, not with the U.S. Treasury.”
KHARG ISLAND HIT 550 TIMES IN PRIOR MONTHS, IRAN SAYS

Iran is the third-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and exported 90% of its crude ​via its Kharg Island export hub before the war. Flows have been disrupted since a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports began in mid-April.

U.S. Central Command ​said on X that as of ⁠Sunday it had redirected 92 commercial vessels, disabled three and boarded two to ensure strict compliance with its blockade.

On August 31, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a one-line social media post accompanied by an AI-generated video depicting Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens.” Iranian authorities have vowed a strong response if Kharg is attacked.

In an interview aired on state TV on Sunday, Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said the island had been hit around 550 times in previous months ⁠but continued to ​operate.

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up fuel prices, weighing on Trump’s popularity as his Republican Party heads into ​elections in November when control of Congress is at stake.

However, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said oil was getting through the waterway.

“Our transits through the Strait are averaging over 9 million barrels a day now, and with the access pipelines that go around the strait, ​we’re probably two-thirds or more of pre-conflict flows. So Iranians are still causing trouble, but the United States Navy is winning that battle,” he told CNN.

New Delhi, September 3,2026: India will announce the final details of its Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) with the United States only after Washington agrees to offer preferential tariff terms over India’s competitors, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.”As soon as the US is able to give us the preferential rate in comparison to our competition, we will finalise the BTA and announce the final details,” Goyal said, addressing a national workshop on Leveraging FTAs Outreach program.
The minister said the trade pacts India has already concluded are opening up significant export opportunities for domestic businesses.He added that India is on track to conclude several more trade agreements in the coming months and years, naming Canada, Mexico, Chile, the Brazil-led Mercosur bloc, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), a South Africa-led group of nations, the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Israel as prospective partners.India and the US have been holding talks for a mutually beneficial Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA).During his June 22-24 visit to New Delhi, US Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal reviewed key elements of the agreement, including enhanced market access, digital trade, supply chain resilience, reduction of non-tariff barriers and cooperation in strategic sectors.Both sides had noted substantial progress by their negotiating teams and reaffirmed their commitment to an agreement that is balanced, commercially meaningful and delivers tangible benefits for businesses, farmers, workers and consumers in both countries.In February, India and the US had announced a framework for an Interim Agreement on reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade, reaffirming their commitment to the broader BTA negotiations.In the latest development in June, U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer led a delegation to New Delhi to meet Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, reviewing core BTA elements and pushing forward the interim deal.For 2025, India’s total goods exports to the U.S. reached USD 103.82 billion, while U.S. exports to India totalled approximately USD 45.6 billion, for a total bilateral trade of USD 149.42 billion.The bilateral services trade in 2025 was recorded at USD 92.23 billion, where India exported USD 48.67 billion worth of services to the US and imported USD 43.56 billion worth of services from the US.

Caracas, Aug 30,2026: Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez said that a landmark oil agreement with the United States will remain in effect for 25 years and aims to lift the country’s crude production to more than 1.5 million barrels per day, as Washington and Caracas move to deepen their rapidly evolving economic ties.

Rodriguez asserted that the country is preserving its sovereignty despite the announcement that it will hand over the rights to billions of barrels of its oil to the United States.

The “historic” deal with Washington to hand over 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil will last 25 years and allow Venezuela to develop its oil industry while preserving “ownership of and sovereignty” of its resources, Rodriguez said in a televised address to the nation.

Speaking to state broadcaster VTV, Rodriguez described the agreement as “historic” and said it would cover the development of eight oil fields in the Orinoco Oil Belt, one of Venezuela’s main petroleum-producing regions.

“Our goal is to go even further with the signing of other major agreements involving giant companies such as Chevron, Repsol, Eni, Shell and BP. We want to become an energy power,” Rodriguez said.

She said the agreement would provide Venezuela with about $19 for every barrel produced and sold, while the deal includes a minimum royalty rate of 16% and an income tax rate of 34%.

Based on an oil price of $65 a barrel, Rodriguez said Venezuela could generate about $209.335 billion in revenue from the agreement.

“It must be absolutely clear that Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources,” Rodriguez said, adding that the United States would provide capital, technology and operational expertise to help revive the country’s oil industry, which has been severely affected by sanctions.

Rodriguez also pledged transparency over the arrangement, saying Venezuelans “have the right to know how much is being invested, how much is being produced, how much revenue the state is receiving and what the conditions are for the operators.”

US President Donald Trump said that Washington had finalized what he called the “biggest oil deal in world history”, involving majority US control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves.

Trump said the agreement would be implemented through private industry and would not require taxpayer funding. He also claimed the deal would more than double existing US oil reserves and eventually help “substantially lower gas prices” for Americans.

Trump credited US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with Rodriguez, with helping finalize the agreement.

Rubio described the deal as a “huge win” for both countries and said it would bring nearly $100 billion in private investment to Venezuela.

Rodriguez thanked Trump and Rubio for their role in reaching the agreement, saying that “each side contributed what it does best.”

The deal marks a major shift in relations between Washington and Caracas and could provide Venezuela with significant new investment and technology to restore oil production and accelerate its economic recovery.

August 26,2026: Iran and Oman have agreed on a new temporary route for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, but insisted that the waterway will not reopen until the United States fulfils its commitments under an interim peace deal signed in June.
The remarks by Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, came on Tuesday, after Iran and Oman’s top diplomats held talks in Tehran to finalise the details of a phased framework for managing the strait.
Iran and Oman, both coastal nations on the strait, have been in on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strategic waterway, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the US-Israel war on Tehran began in February.

Most ⁠shipping in the strait has been shut down since then.

Gharibabadi, speaking on state television, said Iran and Oman had agreed the new route’s entry “would be through our territorial waters, and part of the exit route would also be through our territorial waters”.

The transit corridor would be seven miles (11.3km) wide, he said.

“The agreed-upon transit route with Oman is a temporary route,” he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with his Omani counterpart, Badr Albusaidi, in Tehran to discuss the temporary navigation corridor as well as a project to clear mines from the strait, according to a joint statement.

Albusaidi said on X he hoped the countries would “soon announce” the corridor, adding that “future management of the strait and a permanent solution will follow in due course.”

Technical talks are planned to develop a long-term arrangement, including mechanisms for information sharing and navigational and security services, according to the statement.

Mines in Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz became a flashpoint after Tehran responded to the US-Israel war by closing the waterway. It then announced a new shipping route through its territorial waters, bypassing the internationally recognised Traffic Separation Scheme adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 1968. Tehran said that route had been mined.

Then in June, when Iran and the US signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to end the war, Oman and the IMO announced a new transit corridor in the Strait of Hormuz – backed by the US – that hugged the Omani coast.

Iran said the so-called southern route violated the MoU and launched attacks on ships using the corridor, resulting in the collapse of the interim deal.

Diplomatic efforts towards a broader peace deal have since stalled, and passage through the strait remains dangerous. An oil tanker was disabled by an unidentified projectile on Tuesday near Oman’s Ash Shishah, close to the strait’s entrance, the United Kingdom’s maritime trade watchdog said.

Gharibabadi, in his comments on Tuesday, said Iran would not consider the strait open despite the agreement with Oman.

He also dismissed a claim by US President Donald Trump that all mines had been cleared from the strait’s international waters, saying it was “only aimed at calming the markets”. He warned that US mine-detection vessels would become “very good targets” if they entered the area.

Gharibabadi insisted the US must fulfil its commitments under the MoU – including sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian assets – if it wants a return to the diplomatic track.

He also urged countries to resist US pressure over sanctions on Iran.

Trump had announced last week the “most crushing economic operation ever” against Iran, and threatened sanctions against any country that does business with it.

“We are urging countries not to succumb to American pressure regarding the sanctions that Washington wants to impose on us,” Gharibabadi said, adding that Washington was “mistaken about its ability to enforce its sanctions against our neighbours”.

He said an earlier US sanctions campaign under Trump had failed to achieve its goals and predicted new measures would meet the same fate.

“The new American sanctions are doomed to failure, and we have our own methods to counter them,” he added.

New Delhi, Aug 25,2026: The Congress on Tuesday mounted a fresh attack on the Centre over the proposed methodology for caste enumeration in the upcoming census, with Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh calling the exercise a “deception” and a “whitewash” rather than a genuine caste census.

Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters, Ramesh said the methodology proposed by the government was fundamentally flawed and would fail to generate the accurate and comprehensive data needed to formulate policies aimed at ensuring social justice.

Drawing attention to the census notification issued on August 14, Ramesh said it contained 40 questions, with only one question concerning caste, placed at number 10. He described the approach as “self-sabotage” and questioned how a serious nationwide caste census could be conducted through what the Congress considers an inadequately designed format.

“The government’s current efforts towards a caste census are just a whitewash,” Ramesh said, demanding a credible, transparent and scientifically designed enumeration exercise.

The Congress leader also accused the Centre of failing to consult opposition parties and state governments on the structure and methodology of the census. He said the existing notification should be withdrawn and replaced with a comprehensive questionnaire prepared after consultations with political parties, experts, state governments and the public.

The party said the government should draw lessons from the detailed caste surveys conducted in Bihar and Telangana while designing the nationwide exercise.

The criticism comes against the backdrop of a letter written by Congress president and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, raising objections to the proposed methodology for recording caste details.

Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have urged the Prime Minister to scrap the existing questionnaire and formulate a fresh one after wide-ranging consultations, arguing that the credibility of the caste enumeration would depend not only on the decision to collect caste data but also on the ability of the methodology to produce accurate, comparable and reliable information about India’s social composition.

The two Leaders of Opposition particularly objected to what they described as an open-ended format for recording caste details. They warned that the approach could lead to inconsistencies and inaccuracies and place backward and extremely backward communities at a disadvantage.

“Your government has opted for an open-ended question format to record caste details in the census, which is misleading,” Kharge and Rahul Gandhi said in their letter.

They argued that respondents or enumerators should not be required to manually record caste names in an open-ended format and instead called for a comprehensive drop-down list of castes to ensure uniformity and accuracy in the collection of data.

“A drop-down list of castes should be created for recording castes in the census,” the two Leaders of Opposition said.

According to the Congress leaders, a properly designed digital and standardised system would reduce the possibility of errors, duplication and variations in the spelling or identification of caste names, thereby improving the reliability of the final data.

The Congress has consistently maintained that a nationwide caste census is necessary to develop evidence-based public policies and ensure that welfare programmes, affirmative action measures and systems of representation adequately reflect the social and economic realities of different communities.

The party has repeatedly accused the Narendra Modi government of delaying or diluting the caste enumeration exercise, arguing that an incomplete or poorly designed exercise could undermine the very purpose of collecting caste-related data.

The latest intervention by the Congress leadership comes amid an intensifying political debate over the methodology and scope of the proposed caste enumeration. While the Centre has moved towards collecting caste-related information, the opposition party has insisted that the process must be transparent, scientifically robust and based on wide-ranging consultations.

Urging Prime Minister Modi to personally intervene, Kharge and Rahul Gandhi said the existing questionnaire should be withdrawn and replaced with a more comprehensive format. They argued that a properly conducted caste census would provide a stronger empirical basis for policies relating to representation, reservations, welfare and the equitable distribution of resources.

Ramesh said the Congress’s position was unequivocal: the current framework should be scrapped and replaced with a scientifically designed, standardised and comprehensive questionnaire developed after consultations with political parties, domain experts, state governments and the public.

Aug 21,2026: Veteran ‌Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) ​leader ​Mirza Fakhrul Islam ⁠Alamgir ​was elected as the country’s 23rd President. The 78-year-old leader secured 255 votes in the Presidential election held at the Jatiya Sangsad, the country’s Parliament.

He defeated former army officer Oli Ahmad, the candidate backed by the 11-party opposition alliance led by the far-right Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and the country’s first major student-led political party, National Citizen Party (NCP), who received 88 votes.

A total of 343 members of Parliament cast their votes in the election, which was held under the supervision of Chief Election Commissioner ASM Nasir Uddin. The Chief Election Commissioner later announced the results, declaring Mr Alamgir as the newly elected President.

The election marked the first time in 35 years that more than one candidate contested the Bangladeshi presidential election. In previous polls, opposition parties had not fielded candidates, leaving only a single candidate in the race. Mr Alamgir’s election came after he was nominated by the BNP as its presidential candidate last week. Following his nomination, he resigned as BNP Secretary General and as a member of the party’s National Standing Committee.

Although the Jatiya Sangsad has 350 seats, voting was conducted among 349 members, as the election in one constituency had been suspended. Of the 349 MPs, 343 participated in the presidential election.

The election was necessitated after Mohammed Shahabuddin, who was elected unopposed in 2023 as a nominee of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL) party, resigned last month on health grounds before completing his five-year term.

He quit halfway through his five-year term after serving through Ms Hasina’s ouster in August 2024, the Muhammad Yunus-led interim administration, and the BNP’s return to power in February. Under the Constitution, a new President must be elected within 90 days of the office falling vacant.

The President in Bangladesh is elected by Members of Parliament. The BNP, which returned to power in the February 12 elections, has a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Aug 20,2026: More than 200,000 people have been newly displaced across Sudan’s Kordofan region due to intensified fighting since late last year, the United Nations has said, as continued drone attacks target critical water and electricity infrastructure in the region’s biggest city, El Obeid.
The warning from the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) came on Wednesday as seasonal flooding in nearby North Darfur state also compounded the displacement crisis.
“The warning signs are impossible to ignore,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope. “Across Sudan, families are fleeing violence, losing access to water, electricity and healthcare, and now facing the added burden of destructive floods.”
According to the IOM, displacement in the Sheikan district, which includes the city of El Obeid, has surged 25 percent over the past eight months.

In El Obeid, repeated fighting and drone attacks on the city’s main power transformer have knocked out electricity needed to pump water, run hospitals and keep phone lines working, the organisation said.

In Blue Nile state, some 78,000 people have also fled their homes, the IOM said, while in West Darfur, about 18,000 others were displaced in the first half of August.

Meanwhile in North Darfur, heavy rains in the Tawila area have damaged nearly 1,350 homes, displacing more than 1,000 families, the UN organisation added.

“Sudan is one of the world’s largest displacement crises,” Pope said. “The combined impact of conflict, infrastructure damage and flooding is stretching thousands of families beyond their limits.”

Since the war began in April 2023, an estimated 59,000 people have been killed, while 8.6 million people have been internally displaced. More than 4.2 million people have also fled to neighbouring countries.

Some 33.7 million people require humanitarian assistance, according to the UN.

Reporting from one of the main roads leading to El Obeid, Al Jazeera’s Almigdad Alruhaid described a route where drones belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary have targeted army vehicles, oil tankers and cargo trucks.

The Sudanese army-held city has endured one of the longest sieges of the war, but the RSF “still maintains position south and west to the city and still continues attacking nearby villages”, Alruhaid said, adding that this was further worsening the humanitarian situation in the region.

El Obeid had a population of 750,000 people before the war, but authorities now estimate the population has reached 3.4 million, according to the Sudan Tribune.

Save the Children, a humanitarian group, said that nearly 39,000 children have arrived here in the first six months of this year.

Aug 16,2025: Russia carried out a wave of ‌airstrikes on Ukraine overnight, killing two people at a steel plant, and Kyiv launched a heavy drone attack on the Moscow region that killed one person and set ablaze a warehouse used by Russia’s leading e-commerce retailer.
Romania, which borders Ukraine, said an F-18 fighter on a NATO air policing mission had shot down a drone that breached ​its airspace during the latest attacks. It did not specify the origin of the drone, which entered from Moldova, but a NATO ​spokesperson said it appeared to be Russian.
Russia struck Ukraine’s largest grain export port on the River Danube near the Romanian ⁠border last week after stepping up attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks. Ukraine has also intensified attacks on Russian targets including oil refineries, and both ​sides have struck commercial vessels in the Black Sea.
In the latest attacks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces struck Ukraine’s biggest steel plant ​overnight in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s home town.
At least two people were killed and 14 injured, Ukrainian officials said.
A Russian missile strike on Kyiv early on Sunday caused fires in at least two districts of the capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The ​city’s military administration said three people were injured.
Tymur Tkachenko, the Kyiv region’s governor, said three others, including a child, were injured in drone attacks across the region.

August 13, 2026: President Trump said Wednesday the U.S. has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz, a claim Iran has disputed and that comes as ships are hesitant to pass through the waterway. “I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Iran has rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that the United States has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz, saying the strategic waterway remains blocked and will not be reopened until Tehran’s conditions are accepted.

The Persian Gulf Strait Authority, in a post on X, said Trump’s claims and repeated statements by US officials that the Strait of Hormuz was no longer blocked did not change the situation.

The Iranian response came hours after Trump claimed on Truth Social that the US exercised “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz and “will keep it”. He described the US naval deployment in the region as a “WALL OF STEEL” and said, “there is nothing Iran can do about it”.

RIYADH/KARACHI/ANKARA, Aug 7,2026: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will sign a ​joint defence agreement in Mecca on Friday, sources with knowledge of the matter said, amid regional turmoil with Gulf states coming under fire from Iran ‌after it was attacked by the U.S. and Israel.

While the pact further cements a burgeoning grouping of major Sunni Muslim powers allied with the United States, there was no immediate clarity on each state’s commitments or how it might affect the wider crisis in the Middle East.

Two regional sources with direct knowledge of the matter said the deal would be signed on Friday, which was later confirmed by ​a Turkish official. Another regional source said it was not clear whether the agreement would also be publicly announced on Friday.

The three nations share growing ​concerns over Middle East chaos and the role of revolutionary Shi’ite Iran and an increasingly assertive Israel, as the United States struggles ⁠to contain regional threats.

Turkey has NATO’s second-largest military. Saudi Arabia, the strongest Gulf state, is home to Islam’s holiest sites and one of the world’s top oil exporters, while ​Pakistan is the only nuclear-armed Muslim country.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, accompanied by powerful army chief Asim Munir, arrived in Jeddah on Thursday and performed the Umrah pilgrimage in ​Mecca. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan departed for Jeddah on Friday.

They will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose country has been repeatedly struck by Iran, as well as by Tehran’s Houthi allies in Yemen and Shi’ite militia in Iraq, since the war began on February 28.

The conflict has also exposed Gulf states’ security vulnerabilities and disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of ​global oil and liquefied natural gas transited prior to the war.

New York, July 15 (UNI) India on Wednesday called for building resilient, transparent and diversified global supply chains for critical energy transition minerals, asserting that these resources should become “an engine for sustainable development, not another source of inequality.”

Addressing the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, said critical minerals are indispensable for the global clean energy transition and also present developing countries with an opportunity to accelerate industrialisation, generate quality employment and strengthen domestic manufacturing.

Parvathaneni said, “Critical energy transition minerals should become an engine for sustainable development, not another source of inequality.”

He added that India stands ready to work with all partners to build “resilient, transparent and diversified supply chains” that promote shared prosperity and ensure the benefits of the global energy transition are equitably distributed.

Welcoming the meeting, he thanked UN Secretary-General António Guterres for his leadership in advancing international dialogue on critical energy transition minerals.

“Critical minerals are indispensable for the clean energy transition, but for many developing countries they are also an opportunity to accelerate industrialization, create quality employment and strengthen domestic manufacturing,” Parvathaneni said.

He stressed that international cooperation should enable countries to achieve greater value addition and build resilient participation across global value chains.

Highlighting India’s efforts, the envoy said the country, one of the world’s fastest-growing renewable energy markets, is strengthening resilient and diversified critical mineral supply chains through the National Critical Mineral Mission, while Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL) is forging strategic international partnerships.

He also noted India’s active participation in the UN Secretary-General’s Initiative on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, describing it as a reflection of the country’s commitment to practical international cooperation that supports a secure, sustainable and equitable energy transition.

Outlining India’s priorities for implementing global cooperation, Parvathaneni underscored three key principles.

“National ownership and permanent sovereignty over natural resources must remain the foundation of international cooperation,” he said.

He further called for partnerships that promote “investment, technology transfer, capacity-building and skills development on mutually agreed terms,” enabling developing countries to expand their processing, refining and manufacturing capabilities.

The ambassador also said the United Nations should strengthen technical cooperation, facilitate knowledge-sharing and leverage existing institutional arrangements while “avoiding duplication of mandates.”