World

A Tunisian man has been sentenced to death on charges of insulting the president and assaulting state security through posts on social media, the head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights and his lawyer said on Friday.

The ruling is unprecedented in Tunisia, where restrictions on free speech have been tightened since President Kais Saied seized almost all powers in 2021.

The man sentenced, 56-year-old day labourer Saber Chouchane, is a regular citizen with limited education who was simply writing posts critical of the president before his arrest last year, his lawyer, Oussama Bouthalja, told Reuters.

"The judge in the Nabeul court sentenced the man to death over Facebook posts. It is a shocking and unprecedented ruling," Bouthalja said. The judgement has been appealed, he added. The justice ministry was not immediately available to comment.

Though courts have occasionally handed down death sentences in Tunisia, none have been carried out for more than three decades.

"We can't believe it," Jamal Chouchane, Saber's brother, told Reuters by phone. "We are a family suffering from poverty, and now oppression and injustice have been added to poverty."

The sentence immediately sparked a wave of criticism and ridicule on social media among activists and ordinary Tunisians.

Many described the ruling as a deliberate attempt to instil fear among Saied's critics, warning that such harsh measures could further stifle free expression and deepen political tensions.

Since Saied dissolved the elected parliament and started ruling by decree, Tunisia has faced growing criticism by rights groups over the erosion of judicial independence. The opposition called Saied's power grab a coup.

Most opposition leaders, whom the president has labelled as traitors, are imprisoned on various charges.

(Source -reuters)

The Indian rupee dropped to a record low on Tuesday, with unresolved trade strains with the United States fuelling heavy dollar demand and prompting central bank intervention to support the currency.

The rupee hit a lifetime low of 88.80, slipping past the prior low of 88.7975 struck last week. It was last quoting at 88.7550.

Market participants have seen little reason to bet on a turn in fortunes for the currency with a trade deal with the U.S. remaining elusive, while a recent hike in U.S. H-1B visa fees has compounded the currency’s weakness.

Analysts warn the U.S. decision to hike H-1B visa fees could weigh on revenues in India’s technology sector and trigger renewed equity outflows.

Foreign investors have accelerated their selling of Indian stocks following the visa fee increase, pulling more than $2 billion from the market over the past six sessions.

That's a marked pickup from the roughly $800 million withdrawn in the first three weeks of September, underscoring the pressure on portfolio flows. The rupee's decline has been exacerbated by dollar demand from jewellery importers ahead of the October festival season.

The Reserve Bank of India has been intervening through state-run banks to temper the rupee’s decline, with intervention likely continuing on Tuesday.

Bankers said the central bank sold dollars to limit intraday volatility and prevent the currency’s record low from triggering a broader impact.

"The RBI is stepping in to keep the rupee from spiralling," said a Mumbai-based currency trader.

"While they’re selling dollars to smooth the market, the flows on the other side remain heavy."

The RBI intervened in the local spot market and the non-deliverable market last week, per bankers.

"RBI is widely expected to slow the pace of move in line with the stated policy of containing volatility and in order to keep market expectations from becoming 'one-sided' ahead of big figure change around 90," BofA Global Research said in a note.

However, "all rationale points towards a more measured approach this time" from the RBI.

(Source - reuters)

Britain will name a new Archbishop of Canterbury on Friday to lead the Church of England, mother church of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, and for the first time the centuries-old institution could be led by a woman.

Reforms under former leader Justin Welby, who resigned last year over a child abuse cover-up scandal, paved the way for women to be consecrated as bishops a decade ago, a change that now makes it possible for a woman to hold office as the senior-most bishop in England's established church.

"It would be incredibly exciting if the new Archbishop were a woman. That would be the first time in a history dating back to 597 AD... It would be momentous," David Monteith, the Dean of Canterbury, told the BBC.

As dean, he will place the new Archbishop in their seat of authority during a formal service expected in the coming months.

FRONTRUNNERS INCLUDE THREE WOMEN BISHOPS

Bishop Rachel Treweek, the CoE's first-ever female diocesan bishop, Iranian-born Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani, who came to Britain as a refugee with her parents after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Bishop Sarah Mullally of the key London diocese, have been leading bookmakers' lists to become the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury.

Another frontrunner is Bishop Martyn Snow, who stepped away from leading the CoE's process to bless same-sex couples, saying he could not unite the Church, while media reports have also named Pete Wilcox, Bishop of Sheffield.

Appointing a woman to the Archbishopric would be a defining moment for Christians across all denominations and continents, and is certain to deepen theological divides over the approach to same-sex couples and the role of women in the church.

The Archbishop's global role - shaped by the British Empire's spread of Christianity to its onetime colonies - has complicated efforts to unify the Church in modern times.

Previous office-holders have walked a tightrope between conservative churches in African nations, where homosexuality is outlawed in some places, and more liberal voices in the West.

The conservative Global Anglican Future Conference, which says it represents the majority of Anglicans worldwide and had rejected Welby's approach to homosexuality, believes only men should be consecrated as bishops.

On the other side, the British campaign group Women and the Church said there is still further to go, publishing a list - on the eve of the Archbishop's appointment - of churches in England that it claims limit women's role in ministry.

MONARCHY HAS HISTORIC ROLE IN ARCHBISHOP APPOINTMENT

Reflecting the CoE's status as England's established church, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office will announce the decision on Friday with the formal consent of King Charles.

As monarch, Charles is the supreme governor of the CoE, a role established in the 16th century when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church.

Unlike the Catholic Church, which elected Pope Leo just 17 days after Francis' death, the CoE has taken nearly a year to pick a new leader due to a complex vetting process that was led by a former spy and involved senior bishops and global representatives.

The commission comprised 17 voting members, including five representatives from the global Anglican Communion, three from Canterbury, and six from the CoE's governing body.

(Source - reuters)

At least 69 people have been killed in the Philippines after buildings and walls of houses collapsed in a magnitude-6.9 earthquake.

The quake, which struck the central Cebu province just before 10pm on Tuesday, injured many others and sent residents scrambling out of their homes into the night as the intense shaking cut off power, officials said.

The epicentre was about 19 kilometres north-east of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people.

Raffy Alejandro, a civil defence official, told reporters the hospital in Bogo city has been "overwhelmed".

The death toll of 69 was based on data from the Cebu provincial disaster office and was subject to validation, said Jane Abapo, an information officer at the regional Civil Defense office.

At least 12 residents died when they were hit by falling ceilings and walls of their houses, some while sleeping, in Medellin near Bogo, said Gemma Villamor, who heads the town's disaster-mitigation office.

In San Remigio town, also near Bogo, five people, consisting of three coastguard personnel, a firefighter, and a child, were killed separately by collapsing walls while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game, the town's vice-mayor, Alfie Reynes, told the DZMM radio network.

Cr Reynes appealed for food and water, saying San Remigio's water system had been damaged.

Earthquake monitoring agencies had pegged the depth of the quake at 10km and recorded multiple aftershocks, the strongest being a magnitude-6.

World Vision's Lucille Latonio was about 2-3 hours from the epicentre but still felt the earthquake.

"I was having dinner with my husband at a convenience store," she told the ABC.

"The place started to shake and items from the shop fell down … people were panicking, shouting."

She said many people were staying out of their homes because of fears of aftershocks.

"I'm a little tense because there are still aftershocks happening," Ms Latonio said.

"Some of my family members, we couldn't reach them. So there's that fear and anxiety."

Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, Bogo city disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot said.

"It's hard to move in the area because there are hazards," Glenn Ursal, another disaster-mitigation officer, said, adding that some survivors were brought to a hospital.

In Bogo, the quake damaged houses, a fire station and concrete and asphalt roads, firefighter Rey Cañete said.

"We were in our barracks to retire for the day when the ground started to shake and we rushed out but stumbled to the ground because of the intense shaking," Mr Cañete said, adding that he and three other firefighters sustained cuts and bruises.

Terrified residents gather in the open Hundreds of terrified residents gathered in the darkness in a grassy field near the fire station and refused to return home hours after the earthquake struck in Bogo.

Cebu Governor Pamela Baricuatro said the extent of the damage and injuries in Bogo and outlying towns in the northern section of the province would not be known until daybreak.

"It could be worse than we think," she said in a video message posted on Facebook.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology briefly issued a tsunami warning and advised people to stay away from the coastlines in Cebu and in the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 1 metre.

Teresito Bacolcol, director of the institute, said the tsunami warning was later lifted with no unusual waves being monitored.

Cebu and other provinces were still recovering from a storm that battered the central region on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead, knocking out power in entire cities and towns, and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

The Philippines, one of the world's most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year.

(Source - Wires/ABC)

A fire broke out at Chevron's El Segundo refinery, one of the largest on the U.S. west coast, California Governor Gavin Newsom's press office said on Thursday, with a county official adding that the flames had been confined to one area.

The cause of the blaze was not clear, the Los Angeles Times said, while broadcaster CBS said officers and firefighters rushed to the refinery in Los Angeles county after reports of an explosion.

"Our office is coordinating with local and state agencies to ... ensure public safety," Newsom's press office said on X.

CBS cited police as saying they were not aware of any immediate injuries or evacuations, adding that Los Angeles county supervisor Holly Mitchell had said crews contained the fire to one area of the refinery.

In a regulatory filing, the U.S. energy major also reported emergency flaring at El Segundo.

The refinery's rated capacity is 290,000 barrels per day, and its main products are gasoline, jet and diesel, Chevron says on its website. Its total storage capacity is 12.5 million barrels in about 150 major tanks.

The Los Angeles fire department is ready to assist with any request for aid, Mayor Karen Bass said.

"There is no known impact to LAX at this time," she added referring to the city's busy international airport.

(Source - reuters)

Lufthansa opens new tab could face a strike at its main airline after pilots' union VC on Tuesday said its members voted in favour of a walkout in a dispute over pensions.

The vote is the union's last attempt to escalate pressure on Lufthansa to agree to a better deal for pilots and comes only a day after the airline group held its capital markets day, presenting its plan to become more efficient.

The airline has pushed back on deeper pension changes and threatened to move more jobs to its cheaper subsidiaries, Discover and City Airlines.

VC, or Vereinigung Cockpit, said in a statement that a vast majority of members voted for a strike, but gave no timeline for the proposed industrial action.

Still, it opens the door to more costly and disruptive labour action for Lufthansa, which has already faced several labour challenges over recent years as it struggles to cut costs and pursue growth.

On Monday, it unveiled plans to cut 4,000 administrative jobs by 2030 and set higher profitability targets.

(Source - reuters)

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has, for the first time, been included in the list of billionaires. According to the latest rankings released by Hurun India, his net worth has reached USD 1.4 billion (approximately LKR 423.16 billion).

Last year, his wealth was estimated at USD 800 million, but this year’s ranking shows that he has significantly increased his fortune. With a net worth of USD 1.4 billion, Shah Rukh Khan is now considered the richest actor in India and, according to some reports, even the richest actor in the world.

A large share of his wealth comes from Red Chillies Entertainment, the film production company owned by his wife, as well as from his co-ownership of the Kolkata Knight Riders cricket team.

This year marks the 13th edition of the Hurun India Rich List, which is widely recognized in India.

The United States is planning to deport some 400 Iranians, most of whom entered the country illegally, as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's broader crackdown on immigration, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday.

"In the first step, they decided to deport 120 Iranians who entered the U.S. illegally, most of whom through Mexico," the Iranian foreign ministry's director general for parliament affairs, Hossein Noushabadi, told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The deportation, an uncommon instance of cooperation between the two countries, came after months of talks, according to the New York Times, which first reported the move.

CALL TO RESPECT IRANIANS' RIGHTS

Noushabadi said the U.S. was "planning to deport around 400 Iranians, most of whom entered the country illegally, in line with the new anti-immigrant approach of the U.S. government."

The first group of 120 would reach Iran in the next one or two days, he said.

The New York Times reported that a U.S.-chartered flight took off from Louisiana on Monday and was scheduled to arrive in Iran via Qatar sometime on Tuesday.

Some of the Iranians had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not, the newspaper said.

Noushabadi called on Washington to respect the rights of Iranian migrants in the United States.

"Some (returnees) had residence permits but due to reasons stated by the U.S. immigration office they were included in the list. Of course, their own consent was obtained for their return," he said.

The White House and the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Trump plans to deport a record number of people living in the U.S. without legal status, after what he describes as high illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

However, his administration has struggled to increase deportation levels, even as it has created new avenues to send migrants to countries other than their own. The U.S. in February deported 119 people from different countries, including Iran, to Panama as part of an agreement between the two countries.

(Source - reuters)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has set a historic milestone by becoming the first individual to hold a net worth above USD 500 billion (approximately GBP 370.9 billion).

Reports highlight that the surge in his wealth comes from the rising valuations of Tesla, his AI venture xAI, and rocket company SpaceX over the past year.

According to Forbes’ Billionaires Index, Musk’s fortune reached USD 500.1 billion by midday on October 1 in New York, before slightly easing to USD 499 billion later in the day.

The achievement further strengthens Musk’s position as the world’s wealthiest man, far ahead of other global tech leaders. Oracle founder Larry Ellison ranks second with an estimated net worth of USD 350.7 billion.

Musk’s wealth remains largely tied to his 12%+ stake in Tesla, whose share prices have jumped more than 20% this year alone. On October 1, the company’s stock rose by over 3.3%.

Market analysts note that investor confidence has grown as Musk dedicates more attention to his companies, particularly Tesla, in recent months.

Still, Musk continues to attract controversy, with critics pointing to his ties with the Trump administration earlier this year.

Beyond Tesla and SpaceX, Musk also owns the social media platform X, expanding his influence across multiple industries.

Internet and mobile telephone services were down across Afghanistan on Tuesday, residents and monitoring services said, but the Taliban administration offered no immediate explanation.

In the past, the Taliban have voiced concern about online pornography, and authorities cut fibre-optic links to some provinces in recent weeks, with officials citing morality concerns.

Internet connectivity in Afghanistan was flatlining around the 1% mark, said NetBlocks, an international internet access monitoring organisation.

Connectivity was cut in phases on Monday, with the final stage affecting telephone services, which share infrastructure with the Internet, NetBlocks said in an email to Reuters.

Private channel Tolo News, which warned viewers of a disruption to its services, said authorities had set a one-week deadline for the shutdown of 3G and 4G internet services for cell phones, leaving only the older 2G standard active.

Cloudflare Radar, a global internet traffic monitor, said that Kabul, the capital, suffered the sharpest drop in internet connectivity, followed by the western city of Herat and Kandahar in the south.

Strictures ordered by the Taliban leadership, based in Kandahar, have grown increasingly hardline.

This month, authorities stopped women working for the United Nations from entering its offices. Earlier, women were banned from many lines of employment and girls from attending high school.

The Taliban have said they respect women's rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law.

Women's rights activist Sanam Kabiri said the Taliban had already closed schools, universities, recreation, and sports facilities for women.

"The Taliban are using every tool at their disposal to suppress the people," Kabiri, who is based outside of Afghanistan, told journalists in a video posting.

"What else do these ignorant men of another century want from our oppressed people?"

Women faced with curbs on leaving their homes to work had turned to the internet for an economic lifeline that allowed some to work from home.

(Source - reuters)

The US plan ousts Hamas and forms an administration that will later be handed over to a reformed Palestinian Authority.

Tony Blair, who was British prime minister during the 2003 United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, and is regarded by many in the Arab world and in the United Kingdom as a “war criminal”, has helped develop “day after” plans for Israel’s war on Gaza.

The highly divisive figure is envisaged in United States President Donald Trump’s 21-point plan presented to Arab and Muslim leaders to become the de facto governor-general of the besieged and bombarded enclave after Hamas is pushed out, according to Israeli and Western media reports.

Some reports say Blair’s ultimate role is not finalised, but the outlines are clear.

Here’s a look at Trump’s plan, what we know about Blair’s role, and what it would mean for everyone involved if it were to all go ahead.

What’s the 21-point plan? After numerous attempts that have not ended the genocidal war on Gaza, Trump and his team have come up with a new proposal that also purports to leave the door open for the future formation of a sovereign Palestinian state – something Israel has repeatedly rejected.

The plan wants all 48 captives still held in Gaza to be released immediately, in exchange for allowing entry of humanitarian aid, freezing battle lines, and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli military jails.

The plan would also see Hamas disarm, offer fighters who renounce violence amnesty, and allow others who refuse to leave Gaza.

Crucially, it specifies that no Palestinians will be forced to leave their territory, and says anyone who leaves “voluntarily” will be allowed to return to their homes.

If true in practice, this would signal a U-turn for Trump, who shocked the world in February when he openly touted ethnic cleansing by musing about the US “taking over” Gaza and permanently moving out its more than two million residents, about half of them children. He also released a video generated through artificial intelligence to showcase his vision for the so-called “Gaza Riviera”.

The new proposal prides itself on offering a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood, marking another departure as the Republican president has been reluctant to endorse the two-state solution amid a surge of Western nations doing so, such as the UK, France and Canada.

The US and Israel reportedly wish to keep the notorious GHF, the humanitarian organisation they founded to push aside the United Nations and other international aid agencies delivering aid to Palestinians on the ground. Many hundreds of famine-stricken people, including children, have been shot by Israeli soldiers and US mercenaries operating at GHF sites.

Israeli figures and a US consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), have been linked with the GHF and the Gaza Riviera plans. In a response to a UK parliamentary committee inquiry published in late July, BCG said an investigation it commissioned found that some of its US-based staff sidestepped its risk controls to do work related to GHF and to “post-war reconstruction” for the Palestinian enclave.

Trump’s plan to broker a grand bargain has been presented to the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and Turkiye on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

But as the Israeli military continues to systematically destroy and seize Gaza City and starve Palestinians in Gaza while advancing with a vision to annex the occupied West Bank, the plan appears to be provisional at best. Neither Israel nor Hamas has officially commented on it.

Where does Blair fit in? The former UK prime minister, who fervently backed then-US President George W Bush in invading Iraq, is reportedly involved through his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which claims it wants to “turn bold ideas into reality”.

Trump’s plan reportedly considers appointing him as the head of a newly established entity called the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA), which would administer Gaza after Hamas is ousted for a transition period of up to several years.

GITA would seek a UN mandate, something Arab states have emphasised they will require, and would also initially sideline the Palestinian Authority (PA) – as Israel continues to say it will not allow the PA to have a future governance role.

The PA is urged to engage in serious reforms, get a revised constitution and hold elections for a new president and parliament before taking over from GITA, which will oversee the reconstruction of the Palestinian enclave.

An international stabilisation force, largely drawn from Arab and Muslim countries, would be deployed to provide security and train a new Palestinian security force in Gaza.

Prabowo Subianto, the president of Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, told the UNGA he was ready to send in thousands of peacekeeping forces, and ended his speech with “shalom”.

Blair has not commented on the new proposal. In January 2024, when Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Blair met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former war cabinet minister Benny Gantz in Israel in relation to a “voluntary resettlement” plan of Palestinians in Gaza, his institution said the report was a “lie”.

Why is this hugely controversial?

After serving as the UK prime minister for 10 years, when Blair resigned in 2007, he was immediately appointed as the Middle East envoy for the Quartet – the UN, US, European Union, and Russia. His official remit was to support Palestinian institution-building, economic development, and to liaise on governance and security reforms.

He formally stepped down from the role in mid-2015, but has continued projects through his institution.

So, he has some experience in the region.

However, the experience was not a happy one for most people in the region, especially the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were killed during the war, or the millions who were marked by the invasion that changed the face of the region.

To this day, critics in the Middle East and the UK brand Blair a “war criminal”, and he remains a toxic figure in some quarters.

Palestinian commentators have also said Blair failed them as peace envoy despite the quintessential British role in the conflict stretching over a century. They have argued that while he oversaw economic projects during his tenure, he did little to halt illegal Israeli settlement expansion and settler violence, or advance Palestinian statehood, with some even accusing him of impeding statehood as a friend of Israel.

Blair continues to be a polarising figure in domestic British politics as well, as his popularity vastly plummeted following the Iraq invasion. His involvement in determining the future of Gaza has been met with shock and scepticism among some commentators.

But beyond Blair, the 21-point plan has been criticised online and in some media as a neocolonial takeover of Gaza with no actual guarantees that a competent Palestinian leadership will be allowed to govern in the future.

The plan has been touted in Israeli media as a relatively better option compared with more extreme ideas floating around in Washington and Tel Aviv, particularly revolving around forcing as many Palestinians out of the enclave as Israel destroys the little infrastructure left in Gaza that supports their means of basic living, as it kills dozens of civilians daily.

For its part, Israel has emphasised it will retain “security control” over Gaza regardless of any future plans.

(Source - aljazeera)

In Indonesia, the collapse of a school building in Central Java has killed three students and trapped 38 others under the rubble, according to reports.

Foreign media report that 101 more people were injured and taken to hospitals.

Among the deceased is a 13-year-old boy, while many of the injured are reported to have serious injuries, and the death toll may rise.

Rescue operations are ongoing to free the 38 students believed to be trapped.

The students at the school were aged between 12 and 17. Reports say the building collapsed while they were gathered for a prayer session.