Iran’s feared Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani, who had not been heard from since Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s capital Beirut early this month, has appeared in Tehran, Iranian sources say.

An 80-year-old former officer with East Germany’s feared Stasi secret police has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for the murder of a Polish firefighter at a Berlin border crossing 50 years ago.

The European Union imposed sanctions on seven Iranian officials and entities, including airlines, for supplying ballistic missiles and drones to Russia for use against Ukraine in its invasion.

China began surrounding Taiwan on Monday with a massive military force as part of drills it said was a warning against “separatist acts by Taiwan independence forces.”

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Russia, Iran and Syria to unite in protecting “Syria’s territorial integrity” against Israel, which he called “the most concrete threat to regional and global peace.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed hope that the war with Russia will end next year.

Pakistani authorities are investigating how dozens of attackers armed with guns, rockets, and hand grenades could storm a private coal mine in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 21 people.

A young Ukrainian journalist, who was captured and detained by Russia while covering Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine in 2023, has died, an advocacy group confirmed Thursday.

Reiterating similar remarks he made in the weeks after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year and triggered the current war in Gaza, President Tayyip Erdogan of NATO member Turkey stated this week that Israel is a “Zionist terrorist organization,” the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

Amid calls from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the people of Lebanon to rise up against Hezbollah, the United States is seeking regional support for the election of a new Lebanese president, the Wall Street Journal has reported. 

Hungary’s rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused the European Union’s executive of waging a “political intifada” against him and others disagreeing with its “pro-migration,” “pro-war” and “anti-family” policies.

The Bank of Russia has confirmed its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital ruble, is set for a mass rollout in the second half of 2025, Ledgerinsights reported on Wednesday, October 2.

The new mayor of Chilpancingo, a gang-controlled state capital in southern Mexico, has been brutally murdered less than one week after taking office, the Independent reports. Chilpancingo has long been plagued by feuds and the violence of two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos.

Hungary’s fiercely anti-migration prime minister lashed out at the European Union during a tense news conference interrupted by a furious activist and politician.

Reiterating his administration’s intent to “help Israel” in its response to the Iranian regime’s October 1 ballistic missile attack on the Jewish state, US President Joe Biden said last week that American and Israeli leaders were “in discussion” about how to respond and that striking Iran’s oil facilities was not off the table, the Times of Israel responded.