Who’s driving Sudan’s devastating war? Main armed groups and leaders

October 31, 2025

Who are the actors in Sudan's devastating war? — Children walk past a Sudanese army parade in the streets Gedaref in eastern Sudan (file image)

Smoke Over the Nile: Sudan’s Invisible War and the Foreign Hands That Tighten It

When I arrived in Khartoum — the city where the Blue and White Nile meet and where the dust always seems to taste faintly of iron — the skyline was broken by more than just unfinished apartments and telephone wires. Thin columns of smoke rose from neighbourhoods that had once been full of children’s cries and the smells of fresh bread. Street vendors who used to sell steamy cups of black tea spoke in whispers. A doctor at a makeshift clinic told me, “You get used to the sound of distant booming. You don’t get used to the silence after the ambulances stop coming.”

This is Sudan in the third year of a conflict that began between two men who once stood shoulder to shoulder.

The Two Generals, One Country Torn

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo — known to many as Hemedti — were once partners in a military transition that followed the 2019 ouster of Omar al-Bashir. In October 2021 they formalized power in a coup, and by April 2023 their partnership had cracked into open warfare. The fighting has killed tens of thousands, forced nearly 12 million people from their homes, and pushed Sudan into a humanitarian abyss that reverberates across the Sahel and Red Sea coasts.

Today, the army nominally governs from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, with a new prime minister, Kamil Idris, installed in May 2025. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose lineage traces back to the Janjaweed militias — horse and camel-mounted fighters accused of atrocities in Darfur two decades ago — have carved out their own administration in Nyala and now control much of western Sudan.

Lines on the Map, Threads from Afar

What started as a power struggle between two military leaders has become a patchwork of battle lines fed by accusations of foreign meddling. Each side accuses the other of importing weapons, mercenaries, and the technical means to strike from afar. The United Nations has repeatedly urged nations to “refrain from external interference,” but the calls have had the brittle ring of a plea thrown into a storm.

Who is accused of what?

Egypt: Cairo treats General Burhan as Sudan’s legitimate authority and has hosted him. Khartoum’s RSF has accused Egypt of providing direct military support — a claim Egypt denies.
United Arab Emirates: The army accuses Abu Dhabi of supplying the RSF with drones and even mercenaries. The UAE has denied interference despite UN and open-source reports suggesting otherwise.
Libya and Khalifa Haftar: Forces aligned with eastern Libyan strongman Haftar are accused of backing RSF offensives; Haftar denies these charges.
Chad: The army claims that Chad has been a conduit for supplies to the RSF — a charge that has splintered local politics in N’Djamena, which denies the allegations.
Turkey: Ankara has shown support for the army and, according to several outlets, supplied drones used against the RSF.
Iran: Diplomatic ties with Khartoum were restored in October 2023; the RSF has accused Iran of arming Burhan’s forces.
Russia: Long-standing military ties under the Bashir era and recent cooperation agreements keep Moscow in the background, with past talk of a Red Sea base that reverberates across regional security calculations.
Kenya: Weapons reportedly labelled “Made in Kenya” were found in RSF caches — an accusation Nairobi says is misleading. Kenya also hosted the RSF’s political wing at a founding meeting.

Voices from the Ground

“They fire at night,” said Mariam, a mother of four from Omdurman who now sleeps in a neighbour’s garage. “Not because our streets are military, but because they want the sky.” Her voice is weary, but precise. The fear she describes is not only for bullets but for the fragile infrastructure that pushes water into taps and keeps hospital lights on.

A humanitarian worker who has worked in Darfur and Khartoum for years told me, “The war used to be about farms and oil; now it’s about the drones and the supply chains. Whoever gets the advanced technology decides the tempo.” This worker asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons.

From Cairo, an analyst close to Egyptian policy said bluntly, “Egypt sees stability in Sudan as a matter of national security — Burhan is their guarantor.” In contrast, a diplomat in Abu Dhabi told me, “The UAE has strategic interests in the Red Sea, but we do not operate mercenaries in Sudan.” Both statements were made with the careful cadence of those who balance public posture with private posture.

Humanitarian Numbers and the Slow Burn

The scale of the crisis is not abstract. UN agencies and independent monitors estimate nearly 12 million people displaced within and outside the country. Hospitals are broken, wheat imports are threatened, and the Red Sea — a choke point for global shipping — hums with a new volatility as external powers maneuver for influence.

“This isn’t just a civil war,” said Professor Fatima El-Sayed, a political scientist who studies the Horn of Africa. “It’s a geopolitical contest remade by drones, deep pockets, and proxy logistics. When external actors arm, fund, and diplomatically prostrate themselves to local militias, they make the violence last longer, and they make it deadlier.”

What’s at Stake Beyond Sudan’s Borders?

The war in Sudan ripples beyond Khartoum’s burnt markets. It touches migration routes to Europe, destabilises neighbouring Chad and Libya, and threatens shipping lanes that feed the world. In the context of a resurgent great-power jockeying in Africa, Sudan is a mirror for wider competition: access to ports on the Red Sea, influence in the Horn of Africa, and the shadow economy of commodity trafficking.

Are we watching the future of interstate conflict — fought with outsourced fighters, remotely piloted aircraft, and deniable supply chains? Or is Sudan a tragic outlier, where local ambition meets reckless international appetite? The answer matters not only to policymakers but to the millions whose daily reality is fear, hunger, and the impossible task of rebuilding lives between intermittent truces.

Where to from Here?

There are no easy answers. The UN’s calls for restraint ring hollow without enforceable mechanisms. Local ceasefires can hold for days, sometimes weeks, but the underlying rivalry — a collision of two military machines and their patrons — endures. If anything, the international community’s failure to coordinate a clear, consistent response has been an accelerant.

“We need a regional compact,” said an African Union negotiator. “Not speeches. Not press releases. A real plan that ties reconstruction funding to disarmament and reconciles security needs with civilian governance.” Whether such a compact will emerge, or be powerful enough to tie the hands of external actors, is uncertain.

For now, the streets of Sudan wait. Markets will reopen. People will plant their small plots again. But the scars of this war — the bodies, the uprooted communities, the fractured trust — will take a long time to stitch together. And every time a foreign weapon arrives, every convoy that crosses a dusty border, the possibility of peace slips a little further away.

How willing is the world to defend the idea that borders should not be battlefields for others’ ambitions? And how long can ordinary people — those who knead bread, tend camels, teach children their letters — keep living under the shadow of foreign strings pulled far away?

Caribbean battered by Hurricane Melissa as death toll nears 50

hanad

October 31, 2025

Nearly 50 dead as Hurricane Melissa thrashes Caribbean — Residents rest amid debris of a damaged house after the passage of Hurricane Melissa in Boca de Dos Rios village, Santiago de Cuba

When the Sea Stayed and the Rain Kept Coming: The Wake of Hurricane Melissa

There are mornings when the island air smells like salt and coffee; there are mornings now when it smells like mud. Hurricane Melissa has left a ledger of loss across the northern Caribbean, and the numbers are more than statistics — they map out lives altered in an instant. Official tallies place the confirmed death toll at 49. But each figure is a neighbor, a child, a farmer — and for many communities, the accounting is still unfinished.

Haiti, spared a direct hit but not the storm’s mood, reported the heaviest toll: at least 30 dead and roughly 20 still missing after relentless rains turned rivers into roaring beasts. In Petit-Goavé, a southern town, one river overran its banks and swallowed whole families; local officials say 23 people — including 10 children — perished there. “The water arrived like a wall,” recounted Marie Toussaint, 42, whose cousin is among the missing. “We could hear shouts and then nothing.”

Jamaica, stunned by an unprecedented landfall, counted at least 19 fatalities and braced for more. Melissa struck southwestern Jamaica as a Category 5 storm — the most powerful hurricane to make landfall on the island in recorded memory — and left a landscape of torn roofs, downed power lines and fields scattered with debris. “It’s like a hand just swept across the parish,” said Corporal Deon Clarke of the Jamaica Defence Force, who has been coordinating rescue teams. “We’re still finding homes that are gone.”

On the Ground: Scents, Sounds and the Work of Rescue

In Montego Bay, supermarket entrances were ringed by anxious lines; pumps were dry or offline. “There is no petrol in most stations,” said Chevelle Fitzgerald, a visitor who’d been trying to reach the capital. “The roads were blocked with trees — it took six hours where it usually takes two.”

Seventy percent of Jamaican electricity customers were still without power days after the storm, Energy Minister Daryl Vaz reported. Ambulances and army personnel have had to tuck through paths cleared on foot to reach isolated pockets of the country. Satellite images show swathes of defoliated areas and neighborhoods reduced to skeletal frames — a visual silence that implies months of rebuilding ahead.

Across Cuba’s eastern provinces, authorities evacuated some 735,000 people — an extraordinary logistical feat that likely saved many lives. Yet preliminary reports indicated 241 communities remained isolated, communications down and up to 140,000 residents affected. “We were moved to a school with blankets and faces I’d only seen in the market,” said Rosa Elena, a teacher from Santiago de Cuba. “We’ll go back, but we don’t know if what we left will be standing.”

Numbers That Tell a Story

Some figures are blunt instruments: AccuWeather calculated damage and economic loss across the western Caribbean at between $48 billion and $52 billion. The forecaster also described Melissa as the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean and one of the slowest-moving storms — a speed that multiplied the rainfall and the damage.

At 3 a.m. Irish time on the day after landfall, Melissa was a Category 2 storm roughly 264 km west of Bermuda, with sustained winds of about 161 km/h, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Bermuda braced but breathed relatively easy as authorities closed causeways and suspended schools and ferries “out of an abundance of caution.”

In the Bahamas, warnings were lifted but officials resisted a full “all clear,” cautious about returning islanders to homes still under threat of unseen damage. U.S. search-and-rescue teams were dispatched to Jamaica to bolster recovery operations, and international pledges of aid began to trickle in — the U.K., for instance, announced an additional £5 million in emergency funding and supplies targeted at shelter and lighting for families without power.

Voices from the Rubble

Alone in a neighbourhood in St. Elizabeth, a 77-year-old man named Alfred Hines waded through mud and splintered boards, barefoot and bewildered. “One minute the water was up to my waist, then my neck,” he said, hands still trembling. “I thought I’d be gone.”

First responders tell similar stories of small rescues that felt like miracles: children pulled from roofs, elders ferried to temporary shelters in church halls, families reunited at a relief station by a bowl of hot soup. “We can’t replace a home in a day,” said Lieutenant Miriam Powell, a relief coordinator in Kingston. “But we can bring a blanket, wire a radio, tell someone they’re not alone.”

Climate, Preparedness and the Larger Reckoning

Melissa’s path is also a stark chapter in the larger story of warming oceans. Scientists long ago warned that higher sea surface temperatures would give storms more fuel, increasing both intensity and the prevalence of slow-moving systems that dump extraordinary amounts of rain. Caribbean leaders, already battered by successive storms, have amplified calls for financial support and climate reparations from high-emitting nations.

In 2023 the United Nations set up a fund to help developing countries access fast, reliable financing when disasters hit. But pledges have lagged and donations have not met targets — a gap the region is feeling now in the form of delayed reconstruction and strained emergency services. “We need predictable funding windows,” said Dr. Ana Morales, a climate adaptation specialist. “Right now, many countries are forced into a cycle of short-term relief rather than long-term resilience.”

What Comes Next?

As relief flights and aid convoys arrive, the immediate logistics — food, water, temporary shelter, power restoration — are urgent. But recovery will stretch beyond roofs and roads. Farmers need seeds and fertilizer; children need schoolbooks and stability; mental health services will be vital for communities that watched their lives wash away.

Immediate priorities: search-and-rescue, water and sanitation, power restoration.
Short-term needs: shelter kits, medical care, distribution of fuel and food.
Long-term tasks: rebuilding resilient infrastructure, debt relief, and climate adaptation funding.

International donations, however, can’t be the entire answer. Robust, locally led rebuilding — with building codes that consider rising seas and stronger winds; solar microgrids that replace fragile transmission lines; community-based flood defenses — will determine whether the Caribbean simply recovers, or finally becomes more resilient.

Looking at the Horizon

On streets strewn with palm fronds and corrugated iron, there’s a stubbornness that will not be catalogued by any list of needs. Children still play where there’s a patch of dry ground, elders sit under makeshift tarps and trade news, and volunteers map out the next push for relief. “We’ll put it back together,” said a woman setting up a community kitchen in Jamaica’s west. “It will take time, but people here know how to fight.”

So what does the world owe these communities? Immediate aid, yes. But also the conviction to treat Melissa not as an isolated calamity but as a warning. Will global systems choose to finance transformation over mere repair? Will conversations about emissions translate into hard cash for adaptation and debt relief? The answers will shape not just how quickly lives are rebuilt, but whether the next storm finds the same vulnerable shoreline waiting.

Until then, islands will sweep their beaches by hand, count their losses, and plan — stubbornly, lovingly — for tomorrow. And the rest of us, watching from far-flung coasts, might ask ourselves: when weather crosses borders, what does solidarity look like?

Trump limits refugee admissions to historic low of 7,500

hanad

October 31, 2025

Trump sets refugee ceiling at record-low 7,500 — In the 2024 fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States, the most in three decades (file image)

A Cap at the Door: America’s Refugee Ceiling Shrinks to 7,500

When a president sets a number, it does more than count heads—it signals values. On a late-September paper that will shape the lives of thousands, the U.S. announced a refugee admissions ceiling of 7,500 for the 2026 fiscal year. It is the lowest ceiling in modern American history, and it arrives wrapped in a reshaped moral argument about who deserves protection and why.

The document, dated September 30, makes clear this is not a neutral bureaucratic tweak. It directs much of Washington’s resettlement attention toward South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority—people who, according to the White House determination, are facing persecution in their homeland. That claim is already a flashpoint.

From Pause to Priorities: The Policy Pivot

When the administration took office, it froze all refugee admissions, a sweeping pause justified as a national-interest reassessment. Weeks into that moratorium, Washington quietly began carving out exceptions: Afrikaners were singled out for potential resettlement. By early September, just 138 South Africans had entered the United States under these early efforts—an initial trickle that hints at more significant shifts in policy intent than size.

The exclamation point, however, is the ceiling itself. To put it in perspective: the previous administration admitted roughly 100,000 refugees in fiscal year 2024. The new ceiling represents not merely a slowdown; it is a dramatic reimagining of America’s role in global protection.

What the Move Signals

This is about more than numbers. Washington has also moved oversight for refugee support programs from the State Department to the Department of Health and Human Services. That bureaucratic handoff is symbolic: the effort reframes resettlement from a foreign-policy instrument to a domestic welfare program, with implications for which cases get prioritized and how decisions are made.

“It’s a shift from diplomacy to domestic administration,” said a former senior State Department official who asked not to be named. “That changes how refugee status gets understood—are they a foreign policy responsibility or a domestic care obligation?”

Voices on the Ground: Fear, Doubt, and Hope

In the dusty towns of the Western Cape and the sprawling farmlands of the Free State, people are talking—quietly, urgently. At a church hall in a small Afrikaner community, a table of men and women sip coffee and pass around a laminated sheet with instructions on applying for U.S. admission.

“We’re not asking for much,” said Pieter van der Merwe, a third-generation sheep farmer. His hands, callused from years of repairing fences, trembled when he spoke. “We want a place where our children can walk to school without fear. If America offers that, we will go.”

Across Johannesburg, in the cramped offices of a refugee NGO, the tone is different—skeptical, guarded. “This feels like selection by politics,” said Lindiwe Mokoena, a caseworker who has represented asylum seekers from several countries. “Refugee protections are meant to be blind to a person’s political usefulness. When you pick groups by ethnicity or perceived politics, you hollow out the concept of asylum.”

South African officials have rejected allegations of systematic race-based persecution. A government spokesperson told local media, “There is no state-sponsored campaign against any minority. Problems on the ground—crime, inequality—are being addressed through the law and policy.”

Inside the Strategy: Who Qualifies?

The determination does allow for “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination” to be considered, and internal planning documents circulating earlier this year suggested even broader ambitions: prioritizing Europeans who claim persecution for expressing certain views, including opposition to mass migration or support for populist parties.

That language raises questions about the expansion of refugee definitions beyond classic persecution—race, religion, or political opinion—toward contested grounds such as ideological expression. At the United Nations General Assembly that followed, administration officials urged other nations to rethink post-war asylum protections, a move that would echo far beyond U.S. borders.

What This Could Mean

Smaller global resettlement pipeline: fewer slots mean more people left waiting in refugee camps or urban limbo.
Selective protection: groups with political resonance in Washington could be privileged over those in acute need.
Shifting international norms: if other countries follow suit, the post-World War II asylum framework could be weakened.

Economics and Empathy: The Counterarguments

Advocates argue it’s not just moral but practical folly to shrink resettlement. Refugees often plug labor shortages in fields ranging from agriculture to health care. “Dismantling this program is not putting America first,” said Gideon Maltz, CEO of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, in a statement that underscored how refugee workers have helped fill critical gaps in many communities.

Data supports the point: refugees are more likely to enter labor markets quickly and to start businesses at higher rates than native-born Americans—trends that have been well-documented in U.S. economic studies. In rural towns facing aging workforces, new arrivals can mean the difference between a shuttered school and a thriving one.

Global Ripples: A Test for the International Order

What happens in Washington rarely stays in Washington. The administration’s push at the UN to roll back asylum protections is a live experiment in how far national policies can reshape international norms. If other governments take the cue, asylum could become more transactional and less protective.

That matters not only for those fleeing war and persecution today, but for tomorrow’s crises—climate displacement, state collapse, mass unrest. The global system of asylum was designed after the Second World War to be a safety net for the most vulnerable. If countries begin to pick and choose whose vulnerability counts, how will the world respond when the next large-scale displacement event arrives?

Questions to Sit With

As you read this, consider: Are refugee policies best run as a matter of national security, international obligation, or domestic administration? Who decides which stories of suffering are worthy of rescue? And in an era when politics shape compassion, can we hold a global standard that treats human need, not political convenience, as the measure of who gets help?

Final Scene: The Human Aftermath

Back in that church hall, the table of applicants folded their papers into neat stacks. They laughed, nervously, about afrikaner radio programs and recipes for potjiekos—a cultural thread that will tug at them wherever they go. “I don’t know whether America will accept us, but if it does, we will bring our songs,” said Mariska, a teacher who keeps a worn hymnal in her bag. “You always take what you can carry: the language, the recipes, the small kindnesses.”

Policy documents and ceilings may decide how many feet cross a border—but they cannot remove the human impulse to seek safety. As this new chapter in refugee policy unfolds, the real test will be whether numbers on a page can accommodate the messy, stubborn dignity of the people they are meant to serve.

Five More Suspects Detained in Ongoing Investigation of Louvre Heist

hanad

October 31, 2025

Paris authorities urged to issue reward for stolen jewels — French police officers seal off the entrance to the Louvre Museum after a jewellery heist yesterday

The Louvre Heist: A Daylight Theft, a Fractured Crown and a Break in the Chase

Paris in autumn often feels like a film set — leaves falling, cafés steaming, tourists threading the galleries of the Louvre beneath the glass pyramid. On 19 October, that cinematic calm was punctured by something that read like a caper movie: a four-man team used a furniture lift and cutting tools to reach a first-floor gallery, snatch a trove of imperial jewellery and vanish within seven minutes.

This week French investigators announced what they called a breakthrough: five more people have been detained, including a prime suspect whose DNA was found at the scene. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau, who has overseen the probe, did not close the book — “It’s too early,” she said — but she offered a rare glint of progress. “We had him in our sights,” she told reporters, a simple line that carried the heavy relief of a case finally pivoting from bewilderment to momentum.

What we know so far

Dozens of detectives combed thousands of hours of footage and analyzed some 150 DNA and fingerprint traces after the brazen daylight robbery that stunned the museum world and captured imaginations across the globe.

Authorities have been certain that four people carried out the actual break-in; two allegedly forced entry into the gallery while two others waited outside. The thieves fled with an estimated cache of jewellery valued at roughly €88 million — including pieces once worn by French imperial women, jewellery as much museum artefact as glittering wealth.

So far, none of the missing pieces have been recovered. During the getaway, the gang dropped a crown studded with diamonds and emeralds that once belonged to Empress Eugénie; prosecutors said the crown was crushed while it was extracted from its display case but may be restorable. Eight other items were taken, including a diadem set with nearly 2,000 diamonds and an emerald-and-diamond necklace once given by Napoleon I to his wife, Empress Marie-Louise.

Arrests, names and the trail of evidence

The five recent detentions took place in and around Paris, with several arrests concentrated in Seine-Saint-Denis — the diverse, densely populated department northeast of the capital. Two individuals arrested Saturday were charged yesterday with theft and criminal conspiracy after “partially admitting to the charges,” prosecutors said.

One of those charged is a 34-year-old man of Algerian origin identified through DNA left on one of the scooters used during the escape; he was detained at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport as he prepared to board a flight to Algeria. The other is a 39-year-old unlicensed taxi driver from Aubervilliers, a suburb where minivan traffic mingles with bustling markets. Both are now in pre-trial detention and were reportedly known to police for past thefts.

“We’re following lines of inquiry that criss-cross the city,” an investigator told me on condition of anonymity. “There’s no single thread yet, but patterns show — scooters, a moving lift, surgical speed. This wasn’t an impulsive smash-and-grab. It was planned.”

Inside the gallery: the audacity of daylight

What makes this theft so striking is its brazenness. The thieves operated in broad daylight, some wearing balaclavas and high-visibility vests. They used a rented furniture elevator to access the upper floor and cutting tools to breach a display — a method more mechanical than cinematic but no less dramatic in its consequences.

Witnesses who frequented the museum described a surreal scene: “It was like watching actors, except nobody was applauding,” said Claire, a guide who works regular evening shifts. “People were confused first. Then someone shouted. The security doors closed like a stage curtain.”

How the jewels link past and present

The stolen pieces are not mere ornaments; they are objects that carry France’s layered history. The diadem with almost 2,000 diamonds, the necklace from Napoleon I, the crown of Empress Eugénie — each item threads through stories of monarchy, empire and the pageantry that once defined Europe’s courts.

Empress Eugénie’s crown: diamond and emerald studded; dropped during the escape and damaged.
Emerald-and-diamond necklace: reportedly gifted by Napoleon I to Empress Marie-Louise.
A diadem with nearly 2,000 diamonds: a dazzling, irreplaceable piece of imperial regalia.

To museums, such items are rare and irreplaceable. To thieves, their value on illicit markets can be intoxicating. “You’re not just stealing jewellery,” said Amélie Durand, a conservator who has worked with historic jewels. “You’re stealing a physical link to a nation’s cultural memory. The loss, whether temporary or permanent, is enormous.”

Seine-Saint-Denis and the social backdrop

This theft also refracts broader social realities. Seine-Saint-Denis — often referred to simply as “93” by locals — is a place of contrasts: vibrant immigrant communities, youthful energy, cultural innovation, and persistent economic challenges. It is not helpful to reduce an area to headlines, but the location of arrests has reopened conversations about opportunity, policing and marginalization in the suburbs that ring Paris.

“You can’t look at an arrest and pretend the social question isn’t there,” said Malik, a community organiser in Aubervilliers. “We have talented people blocked by lack of work. That doesn’t excuse crime. But it does explain why some take desperate shortcuts.”

Investigative reach and wider questions

Investigators are keeping multiple hypotheses on the table. While they are confident in identifying the four alleged perpetrators, prosecutors have not ruled out the involvement of backers or recipients waiting outside the immediate circle of the heist. Importantly, they have said there is no evidence of complicity from within the museum itself.

Art theft sits at the intersection of crime, culture and economics. Interpol and cultural heritage watchdogs have long warned that stolen art and antiques feed international networks of buyers who operate in legal grey zones. Recovering these pieces depends as much on police work as on diplomacy and international coordination.

Why this matters beyond Paris

There are lessons here for museums everywhere. Security budgets, visitor experience, and the ethical stewardship of cultural objects are not just operational concerns; they’re civic responsibilities. The Louvre is a global symbol — it welcomed nearly 9.6 million visitors in 2019, the last full pre-pandemic year — and an audacious theft at such an institution ripples outward, shaking confidence in urban public spaces and the systems that protect them.

“We must balance openness with vigilance,” said an art security consultant who has worked with several European institutions. “Museums exist to share culture, not to turn into fortresses. But this case is a reminder: the systems that protect that openness need constant re-evaluation.”

What comes next

As France continues its investigation, questions remain. Where are the missing jewels? Were they intended for resale to private collectors, hidden caches, or perhaps for demolition into raw gems? Will the arrests lead to more recoveries or merely to more leads?

For now, the Louvre remains open, its galleries humming with visitors who come for art and leave with stories. Perhaps some will walk past the display that was breached and feel the hush of history a little more keenly.

What would you do if you stood before those vitrines now — admire, mourn, or demand change? The theft forces not only a police response, but a cultural reckoning: how we value the past and how we protect it for the future.

There will be time for courtrooms and forensics and long investigative nights. But in the meantime, the city keeps moving. The pyramid continues to shine at night, tourists still queue with their cameras, and somewhere, maybe even in a back room of a Parisian café, someone is weighing a crushed crown against the hum of the city and wondering whether history can ever really be stolen for good.

Caribbean reels after Hurricane Melissa as islands begin damage assessments

hanad

October 30, 2025

Devastated Caribbean assesses Hurricane Melissa damage — An aerial view shows destroyed buildings following the passage of Hurricane Melissa in Black River, St Elizabeth, Jamaica

After the Eye: Walking the Wet, Wind-Scoured Streets Where Melissa Left Her Mark

By the time dawn peeled back the clouds over Santiago de Cuba, the world felt smaller—flattened into ruined roofs, tangle of telephone wires, and the slow, stubborn business of putting lives back together.

A farmer I met on a mud-churned lane held a shaking bundle of damp fur. “I found him under the mango tree,” he said, cradling a mud-caked dog as if it were an offering. “There’s nothing left of the shed. But he’s alive.” The dog whimpered; the man looked as if he had been carrying a week’s worth of grief in his chest.

Hurricane Melissa did not merely arrive. It announced itself with a kind of brutal certainty—storm surge, shrieking gusts and sheets of rain that turned streets into rivers. In many places the storm’s roar has subsided, but the work of counting losses, restoring power, and searching for missing kin has only just begun.

Numbers That Tell a Story

Across the Caribbean, the official counts are sobering: at least 24 confirmed deaths in Haiti, and large swathes of Jamaica and Cuba have been left in ruins. Cuban authorities say roughly 735,000 people were moved out of harm’s way—an enormous, logistically complex evacuation centered in the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Guantánamo.

Meteorologists placed Melissa as one of the most intense storms to reach land in the region in recent memory. As the system barreled northeast, the US National Hurricane Center forecast maximum sustained winds near 165 kilometers per hour as it approached Bermuda. For many islanders, those numbers are not abstractions—they are ceilings on what a roof might endure and thresholds between a building that stands and one that does not.

Where the Damage Is Concentrated

Haiti: 24 confirmed fatalities; heavy inland flooding and collapsed homes in coastal and low-lying areas.
Cuba: Extensive roof loss, snapped trees and widespread communications outages in the east; major evacuations undertaken.
Jamaica: Severe infrastructural damage in parts of western parishes; roads and bridges disrupted.
Bahamas: Flooding expected to ease in coming hours, according to regional forecasts.

Voices From the Rubble

“We woke to the sound of trees falling,” said María, a shopkeeper near El Cobre, wiping the streaks of salt and rain from her forehead. “You try to save what you can—photos, paperwork, one tin of food. But you look at your neighbors and you know they lost more.”

“Everything is gone,” Christopher Hacker, a grower from Seaford Town in Jamaica, told me, standing among the husks of banana plants. “We planted for a year; one night took it. How do you explain that to your children?”

Felicia—who asked that her last name not be used—sat on the threshold of a collapsed block home and laughed once, a small, heartbreaking sound. “We were already scraping by,” she said. “Now we wake up and we have to learn how to breathe again.” Her comment echoed a sentiment being voiced by countless people across the battered coastline: survival after Melissa will not be only about rebuilding walls, but rebuilding lives.

Communications and Aid: A Race Against Time

Downed power lines and disrupted mobile networks have made it difficult to get a full picture of the destruction. In many places, roads are impassable. Emergency responders and humanitarian agencies describe a patchwork of accessible towns and entirely cut-off communities.

The United States has said its teams are in contact with governments across the region—Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas—and US officials signaled they were preparing rescue and response assets. Notably, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US stands ready to provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba as well, despite longstanding political tensions.

The United Kingdom announced an immediate package of £2.5 million in emergency funding and a plan to operate limited charter flights to help British nationals evacuate.

International Response—Fast but Complex

US: Rescue and response teams being positioned; diplomatic offers extended to regional partners.
UK: £2.5 million in emergency funds and charter flights for nationals.
UN agencies: Teams coordinating assessments, with early appeals expected to scale up as damage reports solidify.

Climate, Attribution, and the New Normal

Behind the immediate anguish is a longer, colder arithmetic: storms of Melissa’s strength are becoming more frequent and more ferocious as a result of human-caused warming. A recent attribution study from Imperial College London suggested that Melissa was roughly four times more likely because of climate change—a stark reminder that the climate crisis is not theoretical for those living on low-lying islands and coastal plains; it is present, tracking from the sea into their homes.

“This is a brutal reminder,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, “that we need urgent and accelerated climate action at scale. Every storm like Melissa is another test of our collective ability to protect the most vulnerable.”

Scientific data show sea surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic have been above the 20th-century average for several consecutive seasons, fueling storms with more energy. NOAA has also noted that Melissa’s landfall matched some of the most intense historical events tracked in the modern record, tying a 1935 benchmark for intensity at impact in some areas.

How People Are Coping—And What Comes Next

In neighborhoods where power is out and stores are shuttered, makeshift relief efforts are taking shape. Local volunteers are distributing water and canned food from borrowed trucks; church halls have become shelters; small fishing boats have been repurposed to shuttle supplies where roads have failed.

“People here always help one another,” said Pastor Ricardo, who organized a supply run in a flooded district. “We share what little we have because the government cannot reach everyone at once. It’s how we survive storms and other things life throws our way.”

But the short-term goodwill cannot replace infrastructure: rebuilding roofs and restoring phone towers will require money—a lot of it—and political will. The eastern provinces of Cuba are already grappling with an economic crunch that predates Melissa, and Haiti’s rainy-season floods have amplified vulnerabilities that were already acute.

Questions to Carry With You

How do island nations, often contributing the least to global emissions, repeatedly absorb the worst costs of climate disruption? What does justice look like in an era when storms amplified by warming are increasingly routine? And for individuals on the ground who have lost livelihoods and loved ones, how do international promises translate into rapid, tangible support?

As Melissa shifts toward the north and weaker seas, leaving Bermuda to brace but the Caribbean to reckon with the aftermath, these questions will not evaporate. The people I spoke to want to mourn, and then to plan. They want to rebuild—but they also want to know who will help them do it this time, and next time, and the time after that.

For now, they sweep up the debris, huddle under salvaged tarps, and coax life back from the wreckage. It’s intimate work—slower and quieter than headlines, but ultimately the truest measure of resilience.

Trump Announces U.S. Will Restart Nuclear Weapons Testing Program

hanad

October 30, 2025

US to resume nuclear weapons testing, says Trump — Donald Trump noted the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country

In a controversial move, President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will restart its nuclear weapons testing program.

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UN Demands Halt to Sudan Siege Following Deadly Hospital Attacks

hanad

October 30, 2025

UN calls for end to Sudan siege after hospital killings — Displaced people who fled El-Fasher after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces arrive in the town of Tawila war-torn Sudan's western Darfur region

A hospital turned graveyard: El-Fasher and the reverberations of a broken peace

When the sun slides over El-Fasher these days, it lights a city where silence no longer holds the ordinary shape of everyday life. Markets that once smelled of roasted coffee and za’atar are shuttered. Donkey carts sit idle in dust-strewn lanes. The minaret of a mosque rings not with prayer but with the metallic clink of fear. And in the shell of what was the Saudi Maternity Hospital, cries have been replaced by a ledger of loss: more than 460 people, according to witness reports and aid agencies, were shot dead inside its wards and corridors.

“We came here to give life, not to count the dead,” Aisha, a midwife who managed to slip out with a bandage on her arm, told me by phone from Tawila, west of El-Fasher. “They took our colleagues. They burned records. Children who were born a week ago now have no papers, no names on a birth certificate—only a story of horror.”

What happened — and what the numbers say

The assault on the Saudi Maternity Hospital is the most chilling in a string of attacks on medical facilities in the region. The World Health Organization reports the hospital was attacked for the fourth time in a month; one nurse was killed and three other health workers were injured in one strike, and later six health staff — including four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist — were abducted. The WHO, voices from the field and satellite analysts say more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed.

Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab has supported those accounts with satellite imagery: they describe “mass killing events” with corroborated executions around the Saudi Hospital and at a former children’s hospital now suspected of being a detention site. The lab warned earlier of an “intentional process of ethnic cleansing” in Darfur. Whether counted in tens, hundreds, or thousands, the human toll in Sudan is unmistakable: tens of thousands killed, millions displaced, and the globe’s largest hunger and displacement crisis in living memory.

Maps of power: who controls what — and why it matters

Sudan’s war, which flared into full-blown fighting in April 2023, has cleaved the country into zones of control. The Rapid Support Forces — the RSF, rooted in the Janjaweed militias of two decades ago — now hold much of western Sudan, including El-Fasher, as well as vast swathes of the south and southwest. Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, the RSF commander often known as Hemedti, has publicly vowed to unify the country “by peace or through war.”

Opposing him is the regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, dominant in the north, east and centre, and, as of March, the owner of a retaken Khartoum. Analysts warn, and local residents fear, that the country is effectively partitioned — a brittle map that could prove almost impossible to stitch back together.

Control, disruption and the new rules of war

In El-Fasher, everyday communications were severed for most people — roads closed, satellite services cut off. But the RSF, interestingly, maintained access to Starlink networks in the city, a grim reminder of how modern tools can be swept into the hands of armed groups long before governance returns. The result is a fractured information landscape: footage of atrocities circulates, but independent verification becomes harder. That vacuum breeds rumor and terror.

Faces in the flood: displacement and desperation

Since the fall of El-Fasher, more than 33,000 people fled west to Tawila in a few days, joining a landscape already groaning under more than 650,000 displaced people. Photos from humanitarian convoys show families moving with what they could carry — mattresses, a few tins of food, the small bundle that is a lifetime. Some bear bandages or the awkward, faraway look of trauma.

“We walked for two days,” said Hassan, a 42-year-old shopkeeper, his voice low with grief. “My wife is pregnant. My son keeps asking when we will go home. How do you tell a child that home is not a place anymore?”

Inside El-Fasher itself, estimates suggest roughly 177,000 remain — people trapped in a city that once held over a million. Humanitarian corridors have been sporadic and perilous, and aid workers say the siege tactics resemble a slow-lock strategy: starve, isolate, and then claim control.

The echoes of Darfur’s past and the specter of ethnic targeting

Darfur is a place where memory presses heavily. Two decades ago, Janjaweed militias were accused of ethnic massacres that reshaped communities. Now, the RSF’s lineage from those groups has raised alarms that history could be repeating itself. Non-Arab communities in Darfur — the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa among them — have long borne the brunt of intercommunal and state-aligned violence.

“We are not just fighting for territory; we are fighting for existence,” said Amal, a Fur elder who crossed into Tawila last week. “When the killers come, they do not ask names. They ask what tribe you belong to.”

Sudanese government sources accuse the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians in recent operations, targeting mosques and even Red Crescent volunteers. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said five Sudanese volunteers were killed and three went missing in Bara, Kordofan — a stark example of how those trying to help the wounded have themselves become targets.

Diplomacy falters — and the world watches

Outside Sudan, a group known as the Quad — the United States, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — spent months trying to broker a truce. Those talks have stalled, with diplomats pointing fingers at “continued obstructionism” from army-aligned officials. For all the summitry and shuttle diplomacy, the fighting has continued, and with each failed negotiation the misery multiplies.

“We are running out of diplomatic adjectives to describe the disaster,” said a veteran UN official in Khartoum. “Each ceasefire paper signed and unsigned is another pile of unfulfilled promises to the people of Sudan.”

Why this should matter to you

It’s tempting, in a world of scrolling headlines, to treat this as a distant conflict — a tragic but remote item on a morning briefing. But the collapse of Sudan has ripple effects that reach beyond its borders: a foretaste of how state breakdowns fuel migration, famine and regional instability; a lesson in how modern technology can empower violent actors; an urgent reminder that when medical facilities become battlegrounds, the most basic rules of humanity are at risk.

How do we respond to images that demand action but only ever elicit words? What does it mean for the international system when healthcare workers are abducted and hospitals become killing fields? These are not just questions for diplomats; they are an invitation to every reader to reckon with the human costs of geopolitics.

What people on the ground want

Immediate and verifiable humanitarian access to El-Fasher and other besieged towns.
Protection for civilians and medical personnel under international law.
An end to the siege tactics and targeted ethnic violence.
Robust international monitoring to document crimes and prevent impunity.

Closing: a plea and a warning

“We are tired of being the story that no one remembers until it gets worse,” said Dr. Leila Mansour, a WHO coordinator who has coordinated evacuations and supplies under fire. “You cannot unsee the faces of a burned-out ward. You can, however, change the arc of what happens next.”

There is still time to act — to keep aid corridors open, to press for accountability, to stop the dissolution of a nation into carved-out fiefdoms. But time is not on the side of those trapped inside El-Fasher or the camps filling with people whose only crime was to live where power decided to make a spectacle of war.

As you read this, ask: what would we want the world to do if it were our family, our hospital, our market? The answers may be hard, but indecision will cost more lives than any headline ever could.

Russian strikes hit Ukrainian energy facilities, killing three people

hanad

October 30, 2025

Russia strikes Ukraine energy sites, killing three — A damaged building in the city of Zaporizhzhia

Nightfall, Power Outages, and the Sound of Sirens: Ukraine’s Winter of Uncertainty

It began as a traveler’s nightmare made real: a night punctured by air-raid sirens, the sky a scatter of flaming tracers and the distant thumps of intercepted missiles. When dawn arrived, the map of Ukraine looked patchier — dark blotches where electricity and heat had been cut, towns with fewer lights and more fear.

Last night, Ukrainian officials said, waves of aerial attacks struck energy infrastructure across the country. Local authorities reported three civilians killed — including a seven-year-old girl — and scores wounded as systems that keep hospitals, homes and schools warm and running came under fire. The assault, they said, involved hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles: more than 650 aerial weapons launched, according to Kyiv’s account, with the Ukrainian air force saying it had shot down 592 drones and 31 missiles.

There is a theatre to this violence: an aggressor attempting to make winter colder, darker, and therefore more devastating for a population already living under the weight of war. “They want to turn heating into a privilege,” said a man who gave his name as Andriy, standing outside a limestone-block apartment in Zaporizhzhia with a thermos of tea. “They think that if there are fewer lights, we will lose heart.”

Targets and Toll: Who Was Hit?

The strikes were not concentrated in one region. Officials reported damage to energy facilities across central, western and southeastern Ukraine. Two key installations in Lviv oblast, which borders Poland and the European Union, were hit, raising alarm in both Kyiv and across European capitals worried about escalation.

Zaporizhzhia, a heavily industrialized city on the Dnipro, bore a painful share of the damage. Regional officials said two men were killed there and at least 17 people were wounded in strikes on the city — six of them children. In the central Vinnystia (Vinnitsa) region, a seven-year-old girl was wounded and later died in hospital, officials reported. Water and heating disruptions were reported in multiple regions alongside nationwide limits on electricity for retail and industry.

At a checkpoint outside Zaporizhzhia, a volunteer named Maria handed out woolen hats and plastic-wrapped sandwiches. “People here have learned how to survive with less,” she told me, “but less is still dangerous. For elderly people with heart conditions, for babies, this is not political. This is life or death.”

Air Defences, Numbers, and the Fog of War

Ukrainian air defence units say they intercepted the bulk of the barrage, taking down hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles. The numbers are staggering, and they tell a story of attrition: officials credited air defences with shooting down 592 unmanned aerial vehicles and 31 missiles during the overnight assault.

Yet numbers can comfort as well as deceive. Ukrainian leaders warned that despite the high interception rates, some weapons found their marks. “Our systems are doing everything they can,” one Ukrainian officer told me, preferring not to be named. “But there are limits — logistical, financial, and physical. You can’t intercept what you don’t have the resources for.”

Moscow’s defence ministry described the operation differently, saying it had struck Ukrainian military-industrial targets and even reported downing dozens of Ukrainian drones. The Kremlin also claimed the capture of small settlements on the front lines, a reminder that turf continues to change in a conflict that has already reshaped frontiers and lives.

Who’s Saying What?

On social media and in terse government briefings, Kyiv appealed for more international support — particularly air-defence systems and stronger economic pressure on Moscow. “The goal is to plunge us into darkness,” said an official in Kyiv. “Our goal is to keep the lights on.”

Across the black line of the border, Russian spokespeople framed the strikes as retaliation for earlier Ukrainian actions, framing the strikes as military rather than civilian-targeted. In the real spaces between those statements lie towns with busted windows and interrupted hospital wards.

Energy Under Fire: The Practical Consequences

Beyond the human cost, the strikes carry a chilling logistical threat. Ukraine’s grid — already patched and strained after years of bombardment — faces new pressure as winter approaches. DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, reported attacks on several thermal power stations. “This looks like an attempt to break the backbone of civilian life,” said Elena Voronova, an energy analyst in Kyiv. “If thermal power plants go offline in a prolonged fashion, the ripple effects will hit water supply, heating and critical medical services.”

Authorities announced rolling electricity curbs to conserve supply. That means factories will work less or not at all, smaller shops will close early, and families may have to prioritize which rooms to heat. For many Ukrainians, such measures are a grim déjà vu: winter blackouts in 2022 and 2023 left communities scrambling, and the memory is fresh.

Voices from Below: Sheltering, Waiting, Resilience

In Kyiv, the city’s deep metro stations transformed again into communal bunkers as air alerts wailed across the night. I met Viktoria, a 39-year-old mother of a six-year-old, as she sat on a narrow bench with a blanket wrapped around her son.

“You wake a child at three a.m. and the world becomes a riddle,” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “He thinks it’s a game. We know it’s not. The crying is not from the sirens; it’s from the loss of normalcy.”

Outside of immediate danger, neighbors improvised. A bakery that usually closed at midnight stayed open to bake warm bread for those who slept in the station. A youth center turned its small gym into a charging hub for phones and a place to boil hot water. “We can’t control the missiles,” a community organizer named Oleg said, “but we can control the kindness.”

What This Means for the Wider World

When infrastructure becomes the target, the ripples reach beyond borders. Energy security, humanitarian access, and the rules of war — all are under strain. For policymakers in Europe and North America, the attacks renew pressing questions: Do more sanctions work? Should allies supply additional air-defence systems? Can diplomacy peel back an escalation when both sides claim to be responding to provocations?

Expert voices are cautious. “Weaponizing energy is a tactic seen in conflicts past,” said Dr. Rachel Mendes, an international security analyst. “It raises the stakes for civilians and forces a re-evaluation of resilience strategies — from decentralized energy to international legal responses.”

What Comes Next — and What You Can Reflect On

There are no easy answers. There is only the renewed urgency of support, preparedness and policy. Ukraine’s plea for heavier air-defence arms and tougher sanctions is not just a plea for military tools; it’s a plea to keep hospitals running and children warm. It is a reminder that the consequences of modern conflict are often measured in kilowatts and winter blankets as much as in territory.

So I ask you, reader: when conflict reaches the thermostat and the power switch, whose responsibility is it to protect warmth and light? How should the international community respond when civilian infrastructure becomes a battlefield?

In the ruined quiet of morning, people sweep broken glass, patch roofs, and boil water over gas burners. They do what people always do: they look for ways to survive and to weave hope into the small, tangible acts of solidarity. That quiet repair — the mending of a window, the sharing of bread, the keeping of a child warm — may be the most telling measure of resilience in a winter that has already started to chill the world’s attention.

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