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As India prepares to host the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12, at Bharat Mandapam, the expanded geopolitical bloc faces its most critical diplomatic test to date. The summit brings together leaders from across the Global South under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability," yet the meeting is overshadowed by two simultaneous security crises involving major member states and key global powers.&nbsp;The bloc now sits at the intersection of two major war theatres: the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and escalating military confrontations involving Iran, the United States, and Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to attend in person, marking his second visit to New Delhi in under a year. At the same time, Iranian leadership continues to urge BRICS partners to present a unified diplomatic front against Western military actions and economic sanctions.&nbsp;Also read:<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/brics-summit-2026-should-the-bloc-grow-pakistan-bangladesh-among-aspirants-india-cautious-china-backs-expansion-1788850473062"> BRICS Summit 2026: Should the bloc grow? Pakistan, Bangladesh among aspirants, India cautious, China backs expansion</a>&nbsp;The dual conflicts highlight deep structural contradictions within the group. Following its recent expansion which brought Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia into the fold alongside original members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa BRICS now encompasses states with starkly divergent geopolitical alignments. While Moscow and Tehran seek to leverage the platform to actively counter Western pressure and foster non-dollar trade systems, other key members like India and the UAE maintain essential strategic, economic, and security relationships with Washington and Western nations.&nbsp;The broader economic impacts of these conflicts remain a core focus for the summit. Military disruptions near the Strait of Hormuz and broader West Asian volatility have rattled global energy markets, keeping crude oil prices hovering above $80 per barrel and threatening international maritime shipping lines. In response, the summit’s economic agenda emphasises building resilient global value chains, strengthening trade access for small businesses, and advancing cross-border payment mechanisms using local currencies and interconnected digital infrastructure to mitigate exposure to international supply shocks.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/brics-summit-2026-from-delhi-to-g20-in-florida-is-india-emerging-as-the-voice-of-the-global-south-1788848244799">From Delhi to G20 in Florida, is India emerging as voice of the Global South?</a>&nbsp;For host nation India, the summit represents a delicate balancing act of strategic autonomy. New Delhi will be navigating internal ideological divisions while preserving the bloc’s core mandate as a constructive platform for multilateral governance reform and global economic stability. As world leaders convene, the gathering underscores how an expanded BRICS must manage the uneasy peace among its diverse membership while addressing the far-reaching spillovers of global warfare.

As geopolitical friction intensifies across Eurasia and the Middle East, the BRICS summit brings key global players together under one roof. Explore how the bloc attempts to broker diplomacy and manage an uneasy peace amidst the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and rising Iran-US-Israel tensions.

As India prepares to host the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12, at Bharat Mandapam, the expanded geopolitical bloc faces its most critical diplomatic test to date. The summit brings together leaders from across the Global South under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability," yet the meeting is overshadowed by two simultaneous security crises involving major member states and key global powers. The bloc now sits at the intersection of two major war theatres: the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and escalating military confrontations involving Iran, the United States, and Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to attend in person, marking his second visit to New Delhi in under a year. At the same time, Iranian leadership continues to urge BRICS partners to present a unified diplomatic front against Western military actions and economic sanctions. Also read: BRICS Summit 2026: Should the bloc grow? Pakistan, Bangladesh among aspirants, India cautious, China backs expansion The dual conflicts highlight deep structural contradictions within the group. Following its recent expansion which brought Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia into the fold alongside original members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa BRICS now encompasses states with starkly divergent geopolitical alignments. While Moscow and Tehran seek to leverage the platform to actively counter Western pressure and foster non-dollar trade systems, other key members like India and the UAE maintain essential strategic, economic, and security relationships with Washington and Western nations. The broader economic impacts of these conflicts remain a core focus for the summit. Military disruptions near the Strait of Hormuz and broader West Asian volatility have rattled global energy markets, keeping crude oil prices hovering above $80 per barrel and threatening international maritime shipping lines. In response, the summit’s economic agenda emphasises building resilient global value chains, strengthening trade access for small businesses, and advancing cross-border payment mechanisms using local currencies and interconnected digital infrastructure to mitigate exposure to international supply shocks. Also read: From Delhi to G20 in Florida, is India emerging as voice of the Global South? For host nation India, the summit represents a delicate balancing act of strategic autonomy. New Delhi will be navigating internal ideological divisions while preserving the bloc’s core mandate as a constructive platform for multilateral governance reform and global economic stability. As world leaders convene, the gathering underscores how an expanded BRICS must manage the uneasy peace among its diverse membership while addressing the far-reaching spillovers of global warfare.

As geopolitical friction intensifies across Eurasia and the Middle East, the BRICS summit brings key global players together under one roof. Explore how the bloc attempts to broker diplomacy and manage an uneasy peace amidst the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and rising Iran-US-Israel tensions.

Two fronts, one stage: Russia-Ukraine and West Asia crises shadow BRICS Summit

BRICS Summit 2026 is scheduled for September 12–13, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi with India chairing the grouping this year. It has evolved from a small grouping of emerging economies into a larger platform representing a broad section of the Global South. With its expansion to 11 full members and growing interest from several countries, the question now is whether the bloc should continue adding members or pause to consolidate its existing structure.&nbsp;&nbsp;BRICS currently has 11 full members and 10 officially recognised ‘Partner Countries.’ More than 30 other nations have expressed interest in joining the bloc. The Partner Country framework allows nations such as Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam to participate in BRICS-related cooperation without the full rights of membership. Among countries seeking greater involvement are Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Bahrain, Cambodia, Laos and several African nations.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/relations-continue-to-develop-iran-hails-india-ties-ahead-of-brics-summit-as-us-keeps-close-watch-1788847544834">'Relations continue to develop': Iran hails India ties ahead of BRICS Summi</a><h2>India’s stand on BRICS Expansion</h2>India supports expansion but has adopted a cautious and criteria-based approach. New Delhi has supported the broader representation of the Global South but has emphasised that future expansion should follow mutually agreed criteria. India has also stressed that prospective members should maintain friendly relations with all existing BRICS countries. For India, this approach is particularly important because BRICS should remain a platform for economic cooperation and greater representation in global institutions rather than evolve into an explicitly anti-Western or anti-American bloc. New Delhi has sought to maintain strategic autonomy, working with BRICS while simultaneously maintaining important relationships with the United States, Europe and other Western partners.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-brics-evolved-in-20-years-full-timeline-of-members-expansion-and-major-summits-brics-summit-new-delhi-2026-news-1788767833400">How BRICS evolved in 20 years</a><h2>China pushes for larger BRICS, Russia supports cautious approach</h2>China has generally been among the strongest advocates of BRICS expansion. Beijing sees a larger grouping as a way to increase the collective weight of emerging economies and strengthen BRICS as an alternative centre of global influence particularly against America. China has also supported the inclusion of countries such as Pakistan.&nbsp;Russia favoured BRICS expansion, particularly as the bloc provides Moscow with an important platform for strengthening economic and diplomatic ties outside the West. However, after the admission of several new members, Russia has indicated support for taking a more measured approach.The concern is that BRICS needs time to adapt to its expanded membership. Rather than immediately adding another wave of full members, Moscow has favoured consolidating the existing group and improving its internal mechanisms.&nbsp;<h2>Brazil and South Africa’s Positions</h2>Brazil has also taken a more cautious position, particularly over the impact of uncontrolled expansion on the bloc’s identity and decision-making process. Brasília has emphasised the importance of consensus and does not want BRICS to become so large that its members struggle to agree on common priorities. South Africa, meanwhile, has generally supported expansion, particularly when it strengthens Africa’s representation in global governance. The admission of Egypt and Ethiopia has already increased Africa’s presence within BRICS, giving South Africa a stronger regional voice in pushing for a more representative international system.<h2>The Pakistan and Bangladesh Question</h2>Pakistan’s interest in BRICS shows how geopolitical considerations complicate the expansion debate. Islamabad has formally sought BRICS membership, seeing the bloc as an opportunity to diversify its trade relationships. India’s opposition has effectively prevented Pakistan from becoming a full member, while China's support has provided weightage to Islamabad's demand. India-Pakistan tensions and the broader strategic rivalry between India and China make Pakistan’s possible entry particularly sensitive. Its membership would also raise questions about whether BRICS should prioritise economic representation or give greater weight to geopolitical compatibility among its members.&nbsp;Same is true for Bangladesh as it has also expressed strong interest in joining BRICS. Dhaka views membership as a way to expand trade opportunities, secure development financing and strengthen its position within the emerging Global South economic architecture. Bangladesh also falls in the same bracket as Pakistan as its inclusion would trigger a debate between economic representation and geopolitical affinities.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Should BRICS expand further or consolidate its 11-member grouping? While expansion could boost Global South representation, trade and alternative financing, concerns over consensus and geopolitical differences remain.

BRICS Summit 2026 is scheduled for September 12–13, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi with India chairing the grouping this year. It has evolved from a small grouping of emerging economies into a larger platform representing a broad section of the Global South. With its expansion to 11 full members and growing interest from several countries, the question now is whether the bloc should continue adding members or pause to consolidate its existing structure. BRICS currently has 11 full members and 10 officially recognised ‘Partner Countries.’ More than 30 other nations have expressed interest in joining the bloc. The Partner Country framework allows nations such as Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam to participate in BRICS-related cooperation without the full rights of membership. Among countries seeking greater involvement are Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Bahrain, Cambodia, Laos and several African nations. Also Read: 'Relations continue to develop': Iran hails India ties ahead of BRICS Summi India’s stand on BRICS Expansion India supports expansion but has adopted a cautious and criteria-based approach. New Delhi has supported the broader representation of the Global South but has emphasised that future expansion should follow mutually agreed criteria. India has also stressed that prospective members should maintain friendly relations with all existing BRICS countries. For India, this approach is particularly important because BRICS should remain a platform for economic cooperation and greater representation in global institutions rather than evolve into an explicitly anti-Western or anti-American bloc. New Delhi has sought to maintain strategic autonomy, working with BRICS while simultaneously maintaining important relationships with the United States, Europe and other Western partners. Also Read: How BRICS evolved in 20 years China pushes for larger BRICS, Russia supports cautious approach China has generally been among the strongest advocates of BRICS expansion. Beijing sees a larger grouping as a way to increase the collective weight of emerging economies and strengthen BRICS as an alternative centre of global influence particularly against America. China has also supported the inclusion of countries such as Pakistan. Russia favoured BRICS expansion, particularly as the bloc provides Moscow with an important platform for strengthening economic and diplomatic ties outside the West. However, after the admission of several new members, Russia has indicated support for taking a more measured approach. The concern is that BRICS needs time to adapt to its expanded membership. Rather than immediately adding another wave of full members, Moscow has favoured consolidating the existing group and improving its internal mechanisms. Brazil and South Africa’s Positions Brazil has also taken a more cautious position, particularly over the impact of uncontrolled expansion on the bloc’s identity and decision-making process. Brasília has emphasised the importance of consensus and does not want BRICS to become so large that its members struggle to agree on common priorities. South Africa, meanwhile, has generally supported expansion, particularly when it strengthens Africa’s representation in global governance. The admission of Egypt and Ethiopia has already increased Africa’s presence within BRICS, giving South Africa a stronger regional voice in pushing for a more representative international system. The Pakistan and Bangladesh Question Pakistan’s interest in BRICS shows how geopolitical considerations complicate the expansion debate. Islamabad has formally sought BRICS membership, seeing the bloc as an opportunity to diversify its trade relationships. India’s opposition has effectively prevented Pakistan from becoming a full member, while China's support has provided weightage to Islamabad's demand. India-Pakistan tensions and the broader strategic rivalry between India and China make Pakistan’s possible entry particularly sensitive. Its membership would also raise questions about whether BRICS should prioritise economic representation or give greater weight to geopolitical compatibility among its members. Same is true for Bangladesh as it has also expressed strong interest in joining BRICS. Dhaka views membership as a way to expand trade opportunities, secure development financing and strengthen its position within the emerging Global South economic architecture. Bangladesh also falls in the same bracket as Pakistan as its inclusion would trigger a debate between economic representation and geopolitical affinities.

Should BRICS expand further or consolidate its 11-member grouping? While expansion could boost Global South representation, trade and alternative financing, concerns over consensus and geopolitical differences remain.

BRICS Summit 2026: Should the bloc grow? Pakistan, Bangladesh among aspirants, India cautious, China backs expansion

The newly imposed US sanctions are disrupting the ambitions of Iranian students seeking to study abroad by suspending international English proficiency exams within Iran. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the US-based organisation administering the TOEFL exam, confirmed the suspension after the US Treasury halted the necessary licenses. According to Iranian media, alternative options like the Pearson Test of English and Duolingo online tests have also been suspended. While ETS noted on its website that Iranian students can still take tests in neighbouring countries, this alternative remains financially out of reach for many.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/short-videos/iran-to-announce-new-restricted-zone-in-the-gulf-top-security-official-says-1788756621453/embed">https://www.wionews.com/short-videos/iran-to-announce-new-restricted-zone-in-the-gulf-top-security-official-says-1788756621453/embed</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The testing freeze comes as part of Washington's “economic asphyxiation” strategy following broader geopolitical conflicts. Decades of sanctions, paired with recent economic volatility, have caused the Iranian rial to plunge to record lows around 2.2 million to the US dollar while annual inflation reached 89 per cent in late August.As reported by news agency AFP, students are left grappling with heavy financial and emotional strains Nikki, a 32-year-old pastry shop worker from Lahijan aiming to study psychology in Italy, recounted her dismay upon learning her TOEFL test was canceled. "When I found out that the exam had been cancelled... I did not leave my room for several days because I was crying.” She is currently seeking a loan to travel to Armenia for the test.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/more-severe-than-before-iran-warns-us-of-tougher-retaliation-after-three-tankers-destroyed-1788636991378">Iran retaliates after US destroys three tankers, warns of wider attacks</a>&nbsp;Leila, a 32-year-old Tehran resident who deferred a graduate arts program in Berlin, expressed "sheer despair" over the situation. "I have no plans to take the exam elsewhere; financially, I can't take it outside Iran, she noted that she now plans to pursue her studies domestically instead.&nbsp;On social media platforms like Telegram, thousands of students are calculating travel costs to destinations such as Armenia, Iraq, or Turkey, though many note that options like Istanbul are reserved "for the rich who can afford flights."&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/iran-war-is-small-potatoes-for-us-says-trump-as-he-defends-vance-1788601061216">Iran war is "small potatoes" for US, says Trump as he defends Vance</a>&nbsp;Iranian officials strongly criticised the sanctions. According to AFP, Science Minister Hossein Simaei Saraf condemned the restrictions as "'Stone Age' behaviour," arguing that the move demonstrates Washington's intent to target "every Iranian citizen in every field."

Sweeping US sanctions have suspended essential English proficiency exams like TOEFL in Iran, leaving students facing crippling travel costs or lost academic opportunities. Learn how expanding restrictions are impacting young Iranians hoping to study abroad. 

The newly imposed US sanctions are disrupting the ambitions of Iranian students seeking to study abroad by suspending international English proficiency exams within Iran. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the US-based organisation administering the TOEFL exam, confirmed the suspension after the US Treasury halted the necessary licenses. According to Iranian media, alternative options like the Pearson Test of English and Duolingo online tests have also been suspended. While ETS noted on its website that Iranian students can still take tests in neighbouring countries, this alternative remains financially out of reach for many. https://www.wionews.com/short-videos/iran-to-announce-new-restricted-zone-in-the-gulf-top-security-official-says-1788756621453/embed The testing freeze comes as part of Washington's “economic asphyxiation” strategy following broader geopolitical conflicts. Decades of sanctions, paired with recent economic volatility, have caused the Iranian rial to plunge to record lows around 2.2 million to the US dollar while annual inflation reached 89 per cent in late August. As reported by news agency AFP, students are left grappling with heavy financial and emotional strains Nikki, a 32-year-old pastry shop worker from Lahijan aiming to study psychology in Italy, recounted her dismay upon learning her TOEFL test was canceled. "When I found out that the exam had been cancelled... I did not leave my room for several days because I was crying.” She is currently seeking a loan to travel to Armenia for the test. Also read: Iran retaliates after US destroys three tankers, warns of wider attacks Leila, a 32-year-old Tehran resident who deferred a graduate arts program in Berlin, expressed "sheer despair" over the situation. "I have no plans to take the exam elsewhere; financially, I can't take it outside Iran, she noted that she now plans to pursue her studies domestically instead. On social media platforms like Telegram, thousands of students are calculating travel costs to destinations such as Armenia, Iraq, or Turkey, though many note that options like Istanbul are reserved "for the rich who can afford flights." Also read: Iran war is "small potatoes" for US, says Trump as he defends Vance Iranian officials strongly criticised the sanctions. According to AFP, Science Minister Hossein Simaei Saraf condemned the restrictions as "'Stone Age' behaviour," arguing that the move demonstrates Washington's intent to target "every Iranian citizen in every field."

Sweeping US sanctions have suspended essential English proficiency exams like TOEFL in Iran, leaving students facing crippling travel costs or lost academic opportunities. Learn how expanding restrictions are impacting young Iranians hoping to study abroad.

US sanctions freeze TOEFL exams in Iran, crushing dreams of studying abroad

India's BRICS presidency is giving New Delhi another opportunity to test something it began building at the G20 summit in Delhi in 2023: a larger diplomatic role as a voice for the Global South. The question is no longer simply whether India can host another major international summit. It is whether New Delhi can turn its ability to bring developing and emerging economies together into lasting influence on the global agenda.The road to BRICS 2026 runs through Delhi's G20 moment.&nbsp;When India hosted the G20 in September 2023, it put developing countries' concerns at the centre of its presidency. The inclusion of the African Union as a permanent G20 member was one of the clearest symbols of that approach. India also convened the Voice of Global South Summit, seeking to bring the concerns of countries outside the traditional centres of global power into major international discussions. Three years later, the setting has changed, but the broad ambition remains.&nbsp;India is hosting the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, bringing together an expanded group of emerging economies and developing countries. Under India's chairship, more than 350 meetings and high-level engagements have already been held across more than 25 Indian cities. The official theme, “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, reflects New Delhi's attempt to present BRICS as a practical platform for development and cooperation rather than simply an alternative to the West. That distinction is important. BRICS today is much larger and more diverse than the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Its expansion has brought in countries with different political systems, economic interests and relationships with the United States and Europe. That makes it difficult to turn BRICS into a single geopolitical bloc.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/relations-continue-to-develop-iran-hails-india-ties-ahead-of-brics-summit-as-us-keeps-close-watch-1788847544834">'Relations continue to develop': Iran hails India ties ahead of BRICS Summit as US keeps close watch</a>&nbsp;India appears more interested in using that diversity to its advantage. New Delhi wants BRICS to push for greater representation for developing economies in institutions such as the UN, IMF and World Bank, while also focusing on issues such as trade, development finance, technology, food and energy security and resilient supply chains. India's recent BRICS trade agenda has also focused on MSME finance, services trade and diversified global value chains. This is where India's Global South pitch becomes different from a straightforward China-Russia narrative.&nbsp;For Beijing and Moscow, BRICS can be part of a broader push towards a more multipolar international system. For New Delhi, however, the grouping must also remain useful to countries that do not want to choose sides between Washington and Beijing. India's strength lies precisely in that space.It can sit with China and Russia in BRICS, engage the US and its Western partners through other platforms, and simultaneously speak about the priorities of developing economies. That multi-alignment gives New Delhi diplomatic room that few other major powers possess. Recent analysis has described this approach as strategic multi-engagement, allowing India to work across competing power centres without formally joining any one bloc. The BRICS summit in Delhi, therefore, should be seen as more than a two-day diplomatic event.&nbsp;It is a test of whether India can move from being a country that hosts conversations to one that shapes them. And the next test comes just three months later. The 2026 G20 Leaders' Summit will be held in Miami on December 14-15 under the US presidency. That puts India in an interesting position. After hosting BRICS and making the Global South a central part of its diplomatic messaging, New Delhi will enter a G20 setting led by Washington, where the agenda and political tone could be very different.&nbsp;That transition could reveal the real extent of India's diplomatic influence. Can India carry the concerns it raises in BRICS into the G20? Can it push for a stronger voice for developing economies without allowing the Global South agenda to become a contest between China and the United States? And can New Delhi persuade countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East that India's version of multipolarity is about giving them greater agency rather than asking them to pick a camp?&nbsp;That is the larger story behind BRICS 2026. India's G20 presidency in 2023 gave it the platform. The Voice of Global South initiative gave the idea political shape. BRICS 2026 allows New Delhi to expand that role across a much broader coalition of emerging economies. The real measure of success, however, may come in Miami. If India can carry its Global South agenda from Delhi's BRICS table into the US-led G20, it would suggest that New Delhi is not merely seeking a larger seat at the global table. It is learning how to influence what is discussed at that table.

BRICS Summit 2026 tests India's growing Global South role as New Delhi builds on its 2023 G20 presidency and seeks greater influence in global affairs

India's BRICS presidency is giving New Delhi another opportunity to test something it began building at the G20 summit in Delhi in 2023: a larger diplomatic role as a voice for the Global South. The question is no longer simply whether India can host another major international summit. It is whether New Delhi can turn its ability to bring developing and emerging economies together into lasting influence on the global agenda. The road to BRICS 2026 runs through Delhi's G20 moment. When India hosted the G20 in September 2023, it put developing countries' concerns at the centre of its presidency. The inclusion of the African Union as a permanent G20 member was one of the clearest symbols of that approach. India also convened the Voice of Global South Summit, seeking to bring the concerns of countries outside the traditional centres of global power into major international discussions. Three years later, the setting has changed, but the broad ambition remains. India is hosting the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, bringing together an expanded group of emerging economies and developing countries. Under India's chairship, more than 350 meetings and high-level engagements have already been held across more than 25 Indian cities. The official theme, “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, reflects New Delhi's attempt to present BRICS as a practical platform for development and cooperation rather than simply an alternative to the West. That distinction is important. BRICS today is much larger and more diverse than the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Its expansion has brought in countries with different political systems, economic interests and relationships with the United States and Europe. That makes it difficult to turn BRICS into a single geopolitical bloc. Also Read: 'Relations continue to develop': Iran hails India ties ahead of BRICS Summit as US keeps close watch India appears more interested in using that diversity to its advantage. New Delhi wants BRICS to push for greater representation for developing economies in institutions such as the UN, IMF and World Bank, while also focusing on issues such as trade, development finance, technology, food and energy security and resilient supply chains. India's recent BRICS trade agenda has also focused on MSME finance, services trade and diversified global value chains. This is where India's Global South pitch becomes different from a straightforward China-Russia narrative. For Beijing and Moscow, BRICS can be part of a broader push towards a more multipolar international system. For New Delhi, however, the grouping must also remain useful to countries that do not want to choose sides between Washington and Beijing. India's strength lies precisely in that space. It can sit with China and Russia in BRICS, engage the US and its Western partners through other platforms, and simultaneously speak about the priorities of developing economies. That multi-alignment gives New Delhi diplomatic room that few other major powers possess. Recent analysis has described this approach as strategic multi-engagement, allowing India to work across competing power centres without formally joining any one bloc. The BRICS summit in Delhi, therefore, should be seen as more than a two-day diplomatic event. It is a test of whether India can move from being a country that hosts conversations to one that shapes them. And the next test comes just three months later. The 2026 G20 Leaders' Summit will be held in Miami on December 14-15 under the US presidency. That puts India in an interesting position. After hosting BRICS and making the Global South a central part of its diplomatic messaging, New Delhi will enter a G20 setting led by Washington, where the agenda and political tone could be very different. That transition could reveal the real extent of India's diplomatic influence. Can India carry the concerns it raises in BRICS into the G20? Can it push for a stronger voice for developing economies without allowing the Global South agenda to become a contest between China and the United States? And can New Delhi persuade countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East that India's version of multipolarity is about giving them greater agency rather than asking them to pick a camp? That is the larger story behind BRICS 2026. India's G20 presidency in 2023 gave it the platform. The Voice of Global South initiative gave the idea political shape. BRICS 2026 allows New Delhi to expand that role across a much broader coalition of emerging economies. The real measure of success, however, may come in Miami. If India can carry its Global South agenda from Delhi's BRICS table into the US-led G20, it would suggest that New Delhi is not merely seeking a larger seat at the global table. It is learning how to influence what is discussed at that table.

BRICS 2026 tests whether India can turn its G20 Delhi momentum into lasting influence as a voice for the Global South on the world stage

BRICS Summit 2026: From Delhi to G20 in Florida, is India emerging as the voice of the Global South?

Iran on Monday (Sep 7) praised its ties with India as “very good" and said it attaches “great importance" to the relationship. The remark is Iran's first since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Bishkek. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei in a statement said that the two countries share a “long-standing, historic and civilisational relationship and it “continues to develop." Pezeshkian is scheduled to visit New Delhi to attend the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12–13.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/will-ric-emerge-from-brics-the-question-of-a-power-trio-that-hesitates-to-unite-1788807393512">Will RIC emerge from BRICS? The question of a power trio that hesitates to unite</a>&nbsp;Speaking at a press briefing, he said, “India is a member of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. It is also one of the countries with which we have good relations in various areas, particularly trade and economic cooperation," he added. Baghaei said Iran would use the BRICS Summit as an opportunity to continue discussions with India on areas of mutual interest. “Various issues are usually discussed during consultations between Iran and India, including the Chabahar Port, which is important to both countries. We will certainly make use of the opportunity provided by the BRICS Summit to continue our discussions and consultations with India in areas of mutual interest," he said.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/brics-summit-2026-will-bangladesh-pm-tarique-rahman-travel-to-new-delhi-1788766230040">BRICS Summit 2026: Will Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman travel to New Delhi and why it matters?</a><h2>US watching the BRICS Summit closely</h2>Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after Modi-Pezeshkian meet said that he did not believe that the meeting was aimed at paving the way for an India-Iran trade deal. Speaking to Fox News Radio, Rubio had said countries could pursue their own foreign policies but warned against helping Iran bypass US sanctions. “No country should be out there helping them create mechanisms by which they can generate revenue that they will then use to sponsor terrorism and try to build a nuclear weapon. And if countries decide to do that, then we’re going to have to sanction them too," Rubio said, adding that countries helping Tehran evade sanctions could face US sanctions. As Pezeshkian is headed to India, the US administration will be keenly watching the developments and interactions during the BRICS summit.

Iran has praised its “very good” ties with India, stressing the importance of bilateral cooperation in trade and the Chabahar Port. Tehran plans to use the BRICS Summit to deepen discussions with India, amid US warnings over sanctions and India’s engagement with Iran.

Iran on Monday (Sep 7) praised its ties with India as “very good" and said it attaches “great importance" to the relationship. The remark is Iran's first since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Bishkek. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei in a statement said that the two countries share a “long-standing, historic and civilisational relationship and it “continues to develop." Pezeshkian is scheduled to visit New Delhi to attend the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12–13. Also Read: Will RIC emerge from BRICS? The question of a power trio that hesitates to unite Speaking at a press briefing, he said, “India is a member of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. It is also one of the countries with which we have good relations in various areas, particularly trade and economic cooperation," he added. Baghaei said Iran would use the BRICS Summit as an opportunity to continue discussions with India on areas of mutual interest. “Various issues are usually discussed during consultations between Iran and India, including the Chabahar Port, which is important to both countries. We will certainly make use of the opportunity provided by the BRICS Summit to continue our discussions and consultations with India in areas of mutual interest," he said. Also Read: BRICS Summit 2026: Will Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman travel to New Delhi and why it matters? US watching the BRICS Summit closely Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after Modi-Pezeshkian meet said that he did not believe that the meeting was aimed at paving the way for an India-Iran trade deal. Speaking to Fox News Radio, Rubio had said countries could pursue their own foreign policies but warned against helping Iran bypass US sanctions. “No country should be out there helping them create mechanisms by which they can generate revenue that they will then use to sponsor terrorism and try to build a nuclear weapon. And if countries decide to do that, then we’re going to have to sanction them too," Rubio said, adding that countries helping Tehran evade sanctions could face US sanctions. As Pezeshkian is headed to India, the US administration will be keenly watching the developments and interactions during the BRICS summit.

Iran has praised its “very good” ties with India, stressing the importance of bilateral cooperation in trade and the Chabahar Port. Tehran plans to use the BRICS Summit to deepen discussions with India, amid US warnings over sanctions and India’s engagement with Iran.

'Relations continue to develop': Iran hails India ties ahead of BRICS Summit as US keeps close watch

Yemen's Houthis launched a series of drone and missile strikes against multiple key sites in Saudi Arabia. According to the group’s media arm, Ansarollah, the offensive targeted critical infrastructure in Abha and Jizan, including Abha International Airport, the King Khalid air base, and facilities operated by state oil giant Saudi Aramco.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/houthis-launch-missile-salvo-on-saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-facilities-hit-1788798034354/embed">https://www.wionews.com/videos/houthis-launch-missile-salvo-on-saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-facilities-hit-1788798034354/embed</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;The strikes mark a sharp escalation in hostilities following cross-border accusations between the warring parties. Prior to the attacks, the Houthis accused Riyadh of launching bombardments across Yemen. Rebel outlets reported that a Saudi airstrike targeted a detention facility in Jawf province. Hassan Saboula, civil defence director for the region, stated via Almasirah media that the prison strike left 11 people dead and 20 inmates trapped beneath rubble. The Houthi-affiliated Saba news agency added that a visiting child was among the fatalities.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/iran-plans-new-maritime-transit-corridor-and-exclusion-zone-near-strait-of-hormuz-1788755880218">Iran plans new maritime transit corridor and exclusion zone near Strait of Hormuz</a>&nbsp;Saudi authorities did not issue an immediate response regarding the reported strikes on its oil and military facilities. However, the escalation comes alongside intense ground combat near Yemen’s Red Sea coast, where the Houthis are attempting to secure territory bordering the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait. Days of heavy clashes in the region have claimed more than 300 lives and forced hundreds of families from their homes.&nbsp;Also read:<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/death-toll-crosses-300-in-yemen-as-houthi-offensive-forces-thousands-to-flee-1788754670547"> Death toll crosses 300 in Yemen as Houthi offensive forces thousands to abandon homes</a>&nbsp;The conflict carries significant geopolitical implications for global energy security. The Bab al-Mandab Strait serves as a crucial maritime gateway connecting the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. The waterway’s strategic value for Saudi crude oil exports has heightened substantially due to Tehran’s ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz amid the broader US-Iran conflict. As fighting intensifies along the coastal corridor, the security of key regional shipping arteries remains critically compromised.

Yemen's Houthi rebel media reported fresh strikes on key targets inside Saudi Arabia. Read the latest updates on the escalating regional tension and military developments in the Middle East.

Yemen's Houthis launched a series of drone and missile strikes against multiple key sites in Saudi Arabia. According to the group’s media arm, Ansarollah, the offensive targeted critical infrastructure in Abha and Jizan, including Abha International Airport, the King Khalid air base, and facilities operated by state oil giant Saudi Aramco. https://www.wionews.com/videos/houthis-launch-missile-salvo-on-saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-facilities-hit-1788798034354/embed The strikes mark a sharp escalation in hostilities following cross-border accusations between the warring parties. Prior to the attacks, the Houthis accused Riyadh of launching bombardments across Yemen. Rebel outlets reported that a Saudi airstrike targeted a detention facility in Jawf province. Hassan Saboula, civil defence director for the region, stated via Almasirah media that the prison strike left 11 people dead and 20 inmates trapped beneath rubble. The Houthi-affiliated Saba news agency added that a visiting child was among the fatalities. Also read: Iran plans new maritime transit corridor and exclusion zone near Strait of Hormuz Saudi authorities did not issue an immediate response regarding the reported strikes on its oil and military facilities. However, the escalation comes alongside intense ground combat near Yemen’s Red Sea coast, where the Houthis are attempting to secure territory bordering the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait. Days of heavy clashes in the region have claimed more than 300 lives and forced hundreds of families from their homes. Also read: Death toll crosses 300 in Yemen as Houthi offensive forces thousands to abandon homes The conflict carries significant geopolitical implications for global energy security. The Bab al-Mandab Strait serves as a crucial maritime gateway connecting the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. The waterway’s strategic value for Saudi crude oil exports has heightened substantially due to Tehran’s ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz amid the broader US-Iran conflict. As fighting intensifies along the coastal corridor, the security of key regional shipping arteries remains critically compromised.

Yemen's Houthi rebel media reported fresh strikes on key targets inside Saudi Arabia. Read the latest updates on the escalating regional tension and military developments in the Middle East.

Houthi strikes Saudi Arabia: Rebel media claims attack on strategic targets

Following the catastrophic August 26 flash floods and mudslides near the Nepal–Tibet border, the Indian Embassy in Beijing has urged families of missing Indian nationals to submit DNA samples to aid identification efforts. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal echoed the directive, sharing an official embassy press release after Chinese authorities confirmed they are equipped to match international DNA profiles.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/nepal-death-toll-rises-1-355-killed-rescue-operations-continue-1788789928456/embed">https://www.wionews.com/videos/nepal-death-toll-rises-1-355-killed-rescue-operations-continue-1788789928456/embed</a>&nbsp;To facilitate identification across borders, families must submit DNA profiles formatted under the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) the internationally recognised profiling standard. The Indian Embassy will collect the standardised data and relay it to Chinese authorities. Should a match occur, officials will notify the embassy, which will immediately inform the victim’s relatives.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">DNA Profile Matching for Missing Indian Nationals Please see the press release below for details ⬇️ <a href="https://t.co/IuAZbk24IC">https://t.co/IuAZbk24IC</a>&mdash; Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) <a href="https://x.com/MEAIndia/status/2096951577315815721?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/short-videos/nepal-floods-trishuli-valley-struggles-to-rebuild-after-deadly-glacier-triggered-floods-1788709787361">NEPAL FLOODS | Trishuli Valley Struggles To Rebuild After Deadly Glacier-Triggered Floods</a>&nbsp;The embassy requested primary blood samples from first-degree relatives, prioritising biological parents, spouses, and children, and encouraging samples from multiple siblings where possible. If no immediate family members survive, samples should be drawn from siblings, maternal relatives, or paternal relatives. Technical guidelines require DNA STR data for all samples, alongside Y-STR data specifically for missing males. Each submission must strictly display the missing individual's name, nationality, and passport number, paired with the relative’s passport details and sample ID. Guidance is available via the embassy’s dedicated helpline (+86 18514284905) or official email (cons1.beijing@mea.gov.in).&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/short-videos/nepal-rescue-operation-indian-team-searches-trishuli-tunnels-for-survivors-after-deadly-floods-1788709837020">Nepal Rescue Operation | Indian Team Searches Trishuli Tunnels for Survivors After Deadly Floods</a>&nbsp;The flood disaster was triggered when the surging Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers severely inundated Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading, washing away bridges, hydropower projects, and vital infrastructure.&nbsp;Ahead of Nepal's national day of mourning, Prime Minister Balendra "Balen" Shah commended security and rescue personnel navigating hazardous terrain to recover bodies and restore critical services. With cross-border search and rescue operations ongoing, regional authorities continue processing DNA data to offer closure to affected families.

Indian Embassy in Beijing has requested families of Indian nationals missing after recent flash floods and mudslides in the Tibet-Nepal border region to submit DNA samples. Chinese authorities are coordinating with the mission to help identify victims using CODIS-formatted DNA profile matching. 

Following the catastrophic August 26 flash floods and mudslides near the Nepal–Tibet border, the Indian Embassy in Beijing has urged families of missing Indian nationals to submit DNA samples to aid identification efforts. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal echoed the directive, sharing an official embassy press release after Chinese authorities confirmed they are equipped to match international DNA profiles. https://www.wionews.com/videos/nepal-death-toll-rises-1-355-killed-rescue-operations-continue-1788789928456/embed To facilitate identification across borders, families must submit DNA profiles formatted under the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) the internationally recognised profiling standard. The Indian Embassy will collect the standardised data and relay it to Chinese authorities. Should a match occur, officials will notify the embassy, which will immediately inform the victim’s relatives.

Indian Embassy in Beijing has requested families of Indian nationals missing after recent flash floods in the Tibet-Nepal border region to submit DNA samples. Chinese authorities are coordinating with the mission to help identify victims using CODIS-formatted DNA profile matching.

Indian embassy in China requests DNA samples from families to identify missing citizens

At least 11 people were killed and six others injured after an avalanche struck a group of climbers on Mount Mizhirgi in Russia’s Kabardino-Balkaria region in the North Caucasus, local emergency services said. The avalanche swept down the mountain at around 5 pm local time on Sunday, hitting a group of 33 climbers. By 9 am local time on Monday, 10 climbers had managed to make their own way down the mountain, while the fate of six others remained unknown, emergency services said.&nbsp;More than 50 emergency workers were involved in the search and rescue operation. However, difficult mountain terrain and a high risk of further avalanches were hampering rescue efforts. Search operations were continuing Monday as emergency crews worked to locate the six missing climbers. Mount Mizhirgi is one of the highest peaks in Russia’s North Caucasus region and is located in the mountainous Kabardino-Balkaria area. Officials said the avalanche struck the group while they were on the mountain, leaving emergency teams facing challenging conditions as they searched for survivors and missing climbers.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/eiffel-tower-female-staff-told-to-make-themselves-invisible-for-hindu-group-s-visit-1788837788815">Eiffel Tower female staff told to 'make themselves invisible' for Hindu group's visit</a>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">Tragedy in the Caucasus. An avalanche on Mount Mizhirgi killed 11 climbers in Russia’s North Caucasus. The slide hit a group of 33 in Bezengi Gorge, Kabardino-Balkaria. 6 injured. 6 still missing. 10 walked down on their own. 50+ rescuers are searching in unstable terrain with… <a href="https://t.co/elzGwl6qAR">pic.twitter.com/elzGwl6qAR</a>&mdash; Sunil Yadav (@sunilyadav21) <a href="https://x.com/sunilyadav21/status/2096913930807644505?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<h2>What is an avalanche?</h2>An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow, ice, and sometimes rocks down the side of a mountain or steep hill. It occurs when the snowpack becomes unstable and gravity causes it to break loose. Avalanches can travel at speeds of over 80 km/h (50 mph), and some large avalanches can exceed 300 km/h (190 mph) under the right conditions.<h2>Causes of avalanche</h2>There are several common causes:<ul><li>Heavy snowfall that adds too much weight.</li><li>Rapid warming from sunshine or warmer temperatures.</li><li>Strong winds that pile snow into unstable drifts.</li><li>Human activity, such as skiing, snowboarding, or snowmobiling, which can trigger an already unstable slope.</li></ul>

Russia avalanche kills 11 climbers on Mount Mizhirgi in Kabardino-Balkaria, injures six and leaves six missing as rescue teams continue the search

At least 11 people were killed and six others injured after an avalanche struck a group of climbers on Mount Mizhirgi in Russia’s Kabardino-Balkaria region in the North Caucasus, local emergency services said. The avalanche swept down the mountain at around 5 pm local time on Sunday, hitting a group of 33 climbers. By 9 am local time on Monday, 10 climbers had managed to make their own way down the mountain, while the fate of six others remained unknown, emergency services said. More than 50 emergency workers were involved in the search and rescue operation. However, difficult mountain terrain and a high risk of further avalanches were hampering rescue efforts. Search operations were continuing Monday as emergency crews worked to locate the six missing climbers. Mount Mizhirgi is one of the highest peaks in Russia’s North Caucasus region and is located in the mountainous Kabardino-Balkaria area. Officials said the avalanche struck the group while they were on the mountain, leaving emergency teams facing challenging conditions as they searched for survivors and missing climbers. Also Read: Eiffel Tower female staff told to 'make themselves invisible' for Hindu group's visit

An avalanche on Russia’s Mount Mizhirgi killed at least 11 people, injured six and left six climbers missing as rescue teams searched the mountain

Russia avalanche kills at least 11 climbers on Mount Mizhirgi, six missing

Latest News Today Live Updates: The Satya Niketan building collapse has triggered protests by both ABVP and NSUI, with the student groups demanding accountability and action against those responsible. ABVP has sought a crackdown on illegal PGs and demanded safety audits, while NSUI has questioned the authorities' response and raised concerns over student hostel facilities. The Delhi government has ordered structural audits of PG hubs within a week.In Delhi, a 54-year-old Manipuri guitarist and music teacher, Chongtham Vikram Singh, was allegedly beaten to death outside his home in southeast Delhi after objecting to a commotion. Seven adults have been arrested and a 15-year-old boy apprehended in the case. Nearly 100 people from the Northeast later held a candlelight march, demanding swift action and justice.The Eiffel Tower was shut after staff went on strike amid a controversy over a visit by a delegation linked to the BAPS Hindu spiritual movement. A union representative alleged that female workers were asked to leave their workplaces to make way for male staff during the delegation's visit. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire has said the circumstances will be investigated.Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched attacks on Saudi Arabia, with at least 73 people reported injured, according to the Saudi-led coalition. The attacks targeted areas including Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, escalating tensions as fighting between Houthi and Saudi-backed forces intensifies in Yemen. US President Donald Trump said oil prices will fall “precipitously” once the US wins its war with Iran, predicting that gasoline prices could eventually drop below $2 per gallon. His remarks came as crude prices remained elevated amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.Russia launched a fresh overnight assault on Kyiv, firing ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones at the Ukrainian capital after a brief pause during the visit of US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The attack marked an end to the temporary respite announced by Moscow as the US officials held diplomatic talks in the region.India is set to host BRICS Summit 2026 and WION is leading the coverage. Stay with us for more latest news, breaking updates and developments as they unfold.

The newly imposed US sanctions are disrupting the ambitions of Iranian students seeking to study abroad by suspending international English proficiency exams within Iran. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the US-based organisation administering the TOEFL exam, confirmed the suspension after the US Treasury halted the necessary licenses. According to Iranian media, alternative options like the Pearson Test of English and Duolingo online tests have also been suspended. While ETS noted on its website that Iranian students can still take tests in neighbouring countries, this alternative remains financially out of reach for many.<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-sanctions-freeze-toefl-exams-in-iran-crushing-dreams-of-studying-abroad-1788854190464">Read more</a>

President Donald Trump has sparked fresh controversy after sharing an image on Truth Social on Monday depicting the United States stretching across continental North America and Greenland. The post is the latest in a series of provocative messages carrying apparent imperial overtones, as Washington’s escalating trade conflict with Canada continues to fuel tensions. Critics quickly condemned the image. “He’s f*****g insane,” the group Republicans Against Trump wrote on X.<a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/he-s-f-ing-insane-trump-posts-explosive-map-showing-us-stretching-across-north-america-and-greenland-sparks-outrage-1788837033915">Read more</a>

Trump sparks fury with map showing US stretching across North America, Greenland

<h2>Delhi building collapse: CM Rekha Gupta orders demolition of structure next to Hostel Daze PG.<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/delhi-building-collapse-cm-rekha-gupta-orders-demolition-of-structure-besides-hostel-daze-pg-1788850551053"> READ MORE</a></h2>

Delhi building collapse: CM Rekha Gupta orders demolition of structure next to Hostel Daze PG

Iran has praised its “very good” ties with India, stressing the importance of bilateral cooperation in trade and the Chabahar Port. Tehran plans to use the BRICS Summit to deepen discussions with India, amid US warnings over sanctions and India’s engagement with Iran. <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/relations-continue-to-develop-iran-hails-india-ties-ahead-of-brics-summit-as-us-keeps-close-watch-1788847544834">READ MORE</a>

Following the catastrophic August 26 flash floods and mudslides near the Nepal–Tibet border, the Indian Embassy in Beijing has urged families of missing Indian nationals to submit DNA samples to aid identification efforts. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal echoed the directive, sharing an official embassy press release after Chinese authorities confirmed they are equipped to match international DNA profiles.<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/indian-embassy-in-china-requests-dna-samples-from-families-to-identify-missing-citizens-1788845362841"> READ MORE</a>

&lt;blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"&gt;&lt;p lang="en" dir="ltr"&gt;🇧🇷 Brazil’s Independence Day rally in São Paulo came with a giant inflatable Trump holding Lula as a prisoner.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;The rally backed Flávio Bolsonaro, who is running against Lula in October.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;USP researchers estimated around 28,500 people on Avenida Paulista.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;And a Quaest poll…&lt;/p&gt;&amp;mdash; Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) &lt;a href="https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2097114442597343611?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"&gt;September 8, 2026&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

Thousands of Brazilians rally for Bolsonaro in tight presidential race against Lula

&lt;blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"&gt;&lt;p lang="en" dir="ltr"&gt;A shop worker has been hailed a ‘hero’ after CCTV video showed him diving into traffic to save a child who had walked out onto a busy road in Puebla, Mexico. &lt;a href="https://t.co/E6DSsuMTFL"&gt;pic.twitter.com/E6DSsuMTFL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&amp;mdash; Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) &lt;a href="https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/2097047249629118582?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"&gt;September 7, 2026&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

WATCH | Shop worker dives into traffic to save child on busy road in Mexico

The Guwahati High Court has directed the Assam government to pay ₹2 lakh in interim compensation to the husband of a Bengali-origin Muslim woman who was deported to Bangladesh without being given an opportunity to challenge the Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) order.

Assam told to pay ₹2 lakh to husband of woman pushed into Bangladesh

At least 20 people have lost their lives and more than 22 lakh people have been affected by floods across 12 districts of Bihar, even as the water level of the Ganga began receding on Monday. Despite the decline, the flood situation in the state continues to remain critical.

Bihar villagers face severe flood threat

Manipur Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam informed the State Assembly on Monday that the state police are investigating the attack carried out by armed militants on three border villages in Kamjong district. On May 7 this year, armed militants attacked Z Choro, Namlee and Wanglee villages in Kamjong district, which borders Myanmar. According to a release, the villages are located in close proximity to the international border. Responding to a question raised by Congress MLA K Ranjit Singh, the Home Minister said that one person was injured and 23 houses were set ablaze during the militant attack.

Manipur Police probing the attack on three border villages in May this year, says state Home Minister

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh embarked on a three-day official visit to Sri Lanka on Tuesday, where he is scheduled to engage in high-level discussions with the country’s leadership on a range of bilateral issues. During his visit, he will also interact with members of the Indian diaspora in Colombo. Announcing his departure on X, Rajnath Singh said, “Leaving New Delhi for Sri Lanka on a three-day official visit.”

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to visit Sri Lanka from September 8 to 10

Pakistan's Senate Standing Committee on Interior &nbsp;passed a series of key criminal law amendments, including a bill proposing the death penalty for acid attacks, as it moved to strengthen protections for vulnerable groups and public safety.

Pakistan senate panel passes bill proposing death penalty for perpetrators of acid attacks

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan warned the government against dividing any of the country's provinces without a broad public and political consensus

Pakistan divided over proposed provinces 

US President Donald Trump claimed that oil prices will drop sharply once the United States achieves victory in its conflict with Iran, forecasting that gas prices could fall below two dollars per gallon. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump linked high energy costs directly to ongoing military operations in the West Asia, asserting that post-war markets would stabilise rapidly. <img src="https://cdn1.wionews.com/prod/wion/images/2026/20260908/image-1788843642699.png">

Trump Claims Oil Prices will Drop Below $2 After US Wins War with Iran

Netanyahu Puts Political Survival Above Israel's Security, Says Top RivalGadi Eisenkot, the main challenger to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the sitting premier of looking merely after his own political survival and not the country's security, at a rally in central Israel on Monday. "In the face of the great rift that opened on October 7, and in the face of the immense challenges before the State of Israel, I believe we need a leadership that knows how to rise to the magnitude of the hour, that knows how to unite and bring unity around what we share, and to fundamentally restore the principles of stateliness and Zionism," Eisenkot said.Board of Peace's Mladenov: Gaza deadlock, West Bank escalation make two-state solution impossible Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the Strip under US-backed Board of Peace said that a failure to move forward in Gaza paired with rising violence in the West Bank are making a two-state solution “impossible. “I would say that if Gaza continues the way it is now, or does not move into implementing… the plan that we have under the comprehensive plan, the two-state solution will become practically impossible,” he said.UK government expected to announce restrictions on trade with West Bank settlementsThe UK government is preparing to announce new curbs on the purchase of goods produced in Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to the BBC. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband is expected to present the measures in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The proposed steps could include restrictions on imports of agricultural products originating from the settlements. Miliband said last week that the government was planning a “comprehensive reset” of its approach to Israel. Israel has previously warned that it could take retaliatory action if Britain imposes further measures against the country.Israel threatens war with Palestinian Authority in case of October 7-style attack Israel on Monday (September 7, 2026) threatened a "full-scale war" against the Palestinian Authority if it prepared an attack against Israeli forces or settlements similar to the one launched by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Ukraine's chief prosecutor resigns over call centre corruption scandal

The legal process for confiscating assets of people including deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina convicted over 2024 July uprising-related crime against humanity cases and using them to compensate victims’ families is being finalised, International Crimes Tribunal chief prosecutor Md Aminul Islam said on Monday.

Bangladesh to clarify seizure of Hasina, other convicts’ assets

Russia launched a fresh overnight assault on Kyiv, firing ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones at the Ukrainian capital after a brief pause during the visit of US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/explosions-rock-kyiv-as-russia-resumes-attacks-after-three-day-pause-amid-us-peace-push-1788831896881">READ MORE</a>

Russia launched a fresh overnight assault on Ukraine

The Eiffel Tower was shut after staff went on strike amid a controversy over a visit by a delegation linked to the BAPS Hindu spiritual movement. A union representative alleged that female workers were asked to leave their workplaces to make way for male staff during the delegation's visit. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire has said the circumstances will be investigated. <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/eiffel-tower-female-staff-told-to-make-themselves-invisible-for-hindu-group-s-visit-1788837788815">READ MORE</a>

Eiffel Tower was shut: Here's what happened

In Delhi, a 54-year-old Manipuri guitarist and music teacher, Chongtham Vikram Singh, was allegedly beaten to death outside his home in southeast Delhi after objecting to a commotion. Seven adults have been arrested and a 15-year-old boy apprehended in the case. Nearly 100 people from the Northeast later held a candlelight march, demanding swift action and justice. <a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/manipuri-musician-chongtham-vikram-dies-after-alleged-assault-in-delhi-suspects-detained-1788831821385">READ MORE</a>

Manipuri guitarist killed in Delhi

&nbsp;The Satya Niketan building collapse has triggered protests by both ABVP and NSUI, with the student groups demanding accountability and action against those responsible. ABVP has sought a crackdown on illegal PGs and demanded safety audits, while NSUI has questioned the authorities' response and raised concerns over student hostel facilities. The Delhi government has ordered structural audits of PG hubs within a week. <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/delhi-building-collapse-abvp-warns-pg-owners-nsui-alleges-death-toll-cover-up-as-govt-orders-audit-of-pg-hubs-1788836602313">READ MORE</a>

Satya Niketan building collapse updatesc

India is officially hosting the 18th BRICS Summit from September 12–13, 2026, at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. As the current BRICS Chair, India is steering the summit under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” focusing heavily on a people-centric, "Humanity First" approach.<a href="https://www.wionews.com/tags/brics-summit-2026"> TRACK WION'S COVERAGE HERE</a>

India is set to host BRICS Summit 2026 and WION is leading the coverage

Latest News Today Live Updates: Satya Niketan collapse sparks ABVP-NSUI protests as Delhi orders PG safety audits. A Manipuri musician’s killing triggers outrage, while the Eiffel Tower row, Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, Russia’s Kyiv strike and Trump’s oil prediction make headlines.

Latest News Today Live Updates: The Satya Niketan building collapse has triggered protests by both ABVP and NSUI, with the student groups demanding accountability and action against those responsible. ABVP has sought a crackdown on illegal PGs and demanded safety audits, while NSUI has questioned the authorities' response and raised concerns over student hostel facilities. The Delhi government has ordered structural audits of PG hubs within a week. In Delhi, a 54-year-old Manipuri guitarist and music teacher, Chongtham Vikram Singh, was allegedly beaten to death outside his home in southeast Delhi after objecting to a commotion. Seven adults have been arrested and a 15-year-old boy apprehended in the case. Nearly 100 people from the Northeast later held a candlelight march, demanding swift action and justice. The Eiffel Tower was shut after staff went on strike amid a controversy over a visit by a delegation linked to the BAPS Hindu spiritual movement. A union representative alleged that female workers were asked to leave their workplaces to make way for male staff during the delegation's visit. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire has said the circumstances will be investigated. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched attacks on Saudi Arabia, with at least 73 people reported injured, according to the Saudi-led coalition. The attacks targeted areas including Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, escalating tensions as fighting between Houthi and Saudi-backed forces intensifies in Yemen. US President Donald Trump said oil prices will fall “precipitously” once the US wins its war with Iran, predicting that gasoline prices could eventually drop below $2 per gallon. His remarks came as crude prices remained elevated amid escalating tensions in the Middle East. Russia launched a fresh overnight assault on Kyiv, firing ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones at the Ukrainian capital after a brief pause during the visit of US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The attack marked an end to the temporary respite announced by Moscow as the US officials held diplomatic talks in the region. India is set to host BRICS Summit 2026 and WION is leading the coverage. Stay with us for more latest news, breaking updates and developments as they unfold.

Latest News Today Live Updates: Satya Niketan collapse sparks ABVP-NSUI protests as Delhi orders PG safety audits. A Manipuri musician’s killing triggers outrage, while the Eiffel Tower row, Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, Russia’s Kyiv strike and Trump’s oil prediction make headlines.

Latest News India and World LIVE Updates: Delhi building collapse, BRICS Summit countdown, and more

The Eiffel Tower authorities have said that the female staff were asked to move and put men in their places for the visit of an Indian group over the weekend. The staff went on strike on Monday to register their anger at the bizarre demand. Nearly 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) group visited the monument on Saturday. According to staff union representative Diane Davoine, women were told to move from their positions.&nbsp;"During the visit of this delegation, women were asked to leave their places of work in order to place men there," she told Reuters, adding that the management has apologised to them for the incident. The representatives of this group were in France for the inauguration of a Hindu temple in the Paris suburbs.<h2>Group allegedly asked for limited interaction with women</h2>According to the female staff, the management told them to "make themselves invisible" before the group arrived and male staff were put in their places. Reports suggest that the group had specifically demanded that "interactions with women" be limited at the Eiffel Tower when they came. Meanwhile, SETE, the operating company, has said: "these conditions should not have been accepted".&nbsp;The women were left feeling humiliated and shocked by the request. "That absolutely does not go down well with the employees, with women obviously, who are all humiliated by what happened, by the way some were treated," Davoine said. They organised a meeting on Monday to ensure the women are never treated this way again.<h2>Eiffel Tower operating company reacts</h2>&nbsp;SETE said it was ready for any consequences and admitted that the demand was "not in line with SETE's values, nor the principles of equality between men and women". SETE president Ariel Weil said, "It is clearly not an acceptable practice. I restate the Eiffel Tower's commitment to republican values and to the equality of men and women."&nbsp;Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire has announced that an investigation will be launched into the incident. French equality minister Aurore Berge slammed the absurd request and wrote in a post on X, "In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic."

A religious group from India was in Paris for the inauguration of a temple, and they also visited the Eiffel Tower. They reportedly demanded that interaction with female staff be limited, after which the women were replaced bymen.

The Eiffel Tower authorities have said that the female staff were asked to move and put men in their places for the visit of an Indian group over the weekend. The staff went on strike on Monday to register their anger at the bizarre demand. Nearly 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) group visited the monument on Saturday. According to staff union representative Diane Davoine, women were told to move from their positions. "During the visit of this delegation, women were asked to leave their places of work in order to place men there," she told Reuters, adding that the management has apologised to them for the incident. The representatives of this group were in France for the inauguration of a Hindu temple in the Paris suburbs. Group allegedly asked for limited interaction with women According to the female staff, the management told them to "make themselves invisible" before the group arrived and male staff were put in their places. Reports suggest that the group had specifically demanded that "interactions with women" be limited at the Eiffel Tower when they came. Meanwhile, SETE, the operating company, has said: "these conditions should not have been accepted". The women were left feeling humiliated and shocked by the request. "That absolutely does not go down well with the employees, with women obviously, who are all humiliated by what happened, by the way some were treated," Davoine said. They organised a meeting on Monday to ensure the women are never treated this way again. Eiffel Tower operating company reacts SETE said it was ready for any consequences and admitted that the demand was "not in line with SETE's values, nor the principles of equality between men and women". SETE president Ariel Weil said, "It is clearly not an acceptable practice. I restate the Eiffel Tower's commitment to republican values and to the equality of men and women." Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire has announced that an investigation will be launched into the incident. French equality minister Aurore Berge slammed the absurd request and wrote in a post on X, "In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic."

A religious group from India was in Paris for the inauguration of a temple, and they also visited the Eiffel Tower. They reportedly demanded that interaction with female staff be limited, after which the women were replaced by men.

Eiffel Tower female staff told to 'make themselves invisible' for Hindu group's visit

President Donald Trump has sparked fresh controversy after sharing an image on Truth Social on Monday depicting the United States stretching across continental North America and Greenland. The post is the latest in a series of provocative messages carrying apparent imperial overtones, as Washington’s escalating trade conflict with Canada continues to fuel tensions. Critics quickly condemned the image. “He’s f*king insane,” the group Republicans Against Trump wrote on X.&nbsp;Foreign policy scholar Kurt Taylor Gaubatz also criticised Trump’s recent activity, suggesting that the president’s social media posts were distracting from more serious developments. “I propose all news sources just put a small box in the corner labeled ‘crazy things Trump did yesterday’ and we put his Truth postings and hair changes and the like in that box so they don't distract from the everyday stories about how he is undermining America, democracy, and the world,” foreign policy scholar Kurt Taylor Gaubatz wrote on Bluesky after the presidents posting spree.&nbsp;Trump’s supporters, meanwhile, responded positively to the latest image. The post came after a weekend of similarly provocative messages, including suggestions involving the Strait of Hormuz and a proposal to rename New Mexico “New America.” “LMFAO!” commentator Eric Daugherty wrote on X, adding that Trump was going “full North American empire mode” and “Democrats will be filing Articles of Impeachment over this, worrying that he's going to launch mass invasions.”&nbsp;Trump has previously shared maps and images that appear designed to provoke his political opponents and international rivals. However, his administration has also taken concrete steps involving U.S. geographic naming and foreign policy. Last week, amid the continuing trade dispute with Canada, Trump referred to Lake Ontario as Lake America on US maps. The administration previously changed the US government's designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.&nbsp;The developments come alongside a broader foreign policy approach that critics describe as more aggressive and expansionist than the strategy associated with Trump’s first presidency. That shift is notable because Trump built much of his political identity around criticism of foreign entanglements and skepticism toward traditional US international commitments.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/amazon-cargo-plane-crash-ntsb-recovers-flight-recorders-at-miami-airport-as-victim-recovery-continues-1788834694876">Amazon cargo plane crash: NTSB recovers flight recorders at Miami airport as victim recovery continues</a>

<h2>Trump declares himself ‘greatest’ in Labour Day social media spree</h2>Trump also drew attention over Labour Day with a series of Truth Social posts focused heavily on his own political legacy and claims of personal greatness. In one post, the president appeared to channel imagery associated with Snow White and Muhammad Ali, sharing a picture of a man resembling former President Barack Obama looking into a mirror and seeing Trump.“Mirror mirror on the wall who’s the greatest president of them all,” the image read.&nbsp;Trump followed the image with further claims about his standing among American presidents, presenting himself as the “greatest” president in US history. Another graphic placed Trump’s portrait beneath the words, “The Greatest,” while previous presidents were categorized under labels including “Great,” “Near Great,” “Average,” “Below Average” and “Failures.”

Among those placed in the “Great” category were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama were listed among the “Failures,” continuing Trump’s frequent attacks against the two Democratic leaders.&nbsp;The posts arrived as Trump faces mounting political pressure and scrutiny over his administration’s policies, including its handling of the economy, foreign conflicts and relations with other countries. The combination of provocative maps, proposed geographic name changes and self-congratulatory social media posts has intensified debate over Trump’s governing style and his vision of America’s role in the world.

Donald Trump sparks backlash with a North American map post and Labour Day messages claiming greatness as critics question his foreign policy and leadership

President Donald Trump has sparked fresh controversy after sharing an image on Truth Social on Monday depicting the United States stretching across continental North America and Greenland. The post is the latest in a series of provocative messages carrying apparent imperial overtones, as Washington’s escalating trade conflict with Canada continues to fuel tensions. Critics quickly condemned the image. “He’s f*king insane,” the group Republicans Against Trump wrote on X. Foreign policy scholar Kurt Taylor Gaubatz also criticised Trump’s recent activity, suggesting that the president’s social media posts were distracting from more serious developments. “I propose all news sources just put a small box in the corner labeled ‘crazy things Trump did yesterday’ and we put his Truth postings and hair changes and the like in that box so they don't distract from the everyday stories about how he is undermining America, democracy, and the world,” foreign policy scholar Kurt Taylor Gaubatz wrote on Bluesky after the presidents posting spree. Trump’s supporters, meanwhile, responded positively to the latest image. The post came after a weekend of similarly provocative messages, including suggestions involving the Strait of Hormuz and a proposal to rename New Mexico “New America.” “LMFAO!” commentator Eric Daugherty wrote on X, adding that Trump was going “full North American empire mode” and “Democrats will be filing Articles of Impeachment over this, worrying that he's going to launch mass invasions.” Trump has previously shared maps and images that appear designed to provoke his political opponents and international rivals. However, his administration has also taken concrete steps involving U.S. geographic naming and foreign policy. Last week, amid the continuing trade dispute with Canada, Trump referred to Lake Ontario as Lake America on US maps. The administration previously changed the US government's designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The developments come alongside a broader foreign policy approach that critics describe as more aggressive and expansionist than the strategy associated with Trump’s first presidency. That shift is notable because Trump built much of his political identity around criticism of foreign entanglements and skepticism toward traditional US international commitments. Also Read: Amazon cargo plane crash: NTSB recovers flight recorders at Miami airport as victim recovery continues

Donald Trump sparks backlash after sharing an expansionist North American map, while his Labour Day posts praising his presidency draw further criticism

'He's f***ing insane': Trump posts explosive map showing US stretching across North America and Greenland, sparks outrage

Investigators have recovered both flight recorders from the Amazon cargo plane that crashed at Miami International Airport, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says the immediate priority remains recovering the victims. Five people were killed and five others seriously injured after a Boeing 767-300 operated by 21 Air overshot the runway shortly before 14:00 local time on Sunday.&nbsp;The aircraft, which was carrying two crew members, had arrived from San Juan, Puerto Rico, on its third flight of the day, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said during a press conference at Miami International Airport on Monday. After overrunning the runway, the aircraft struck navigational aids and other airport equipment before crashing into a white Ford van operated by a contract cleaning company. The van was carrying seven people.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/explosions-rock-kyiv-as-russia-resumes-attacks-after-three-day-pause-amid-us-peace-push-1788831896881">Explosions rock Kyiv as Russia resumes attacks after three-day pause amid US peace push</a>&nbsp;The aircraft then broke through a perimeter fence and collided with a Toyota Corolla carrying three passengers. It eventually came to rest around 1,300ft (394m) beyond the runway. Homendy said the crash site was "devastating", with debris from the aircraft, vehicles and airport fencing spread across the area. "It's hard to see, and I'm sure very difficult for the first responders as well," she said. She stressed that investigators were still in the early stages of determining what happened and that no conclusions could yet be drawn about the cause of the accident.&nbsp;Homendy said recovering victims' bodies was the current priority, adding: “The investigation and access to the aircraft, as well as evidence, can wait.” The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have now been recovered and will be transported to NTSB headquarters for detailed examination. Investigators are expected to study the aircraft's flight history, the crew's experience and training, radar information and aircraft performance. Separate teams will inspect the plane's systems and engines, while a meteorologist will assess weather conditions during the landing.&nbsp;The NTSB will also investigate whether the runway should have been equipped with an engineered materials arresting system (EMAS), which is designed to help slow and stop aircraft that overrun a runway. Homendy described the question of whether an EMAS system should have been installed as a 'key' part of the investigation. The investigation remains in the fact-finding stage, and officials have cautioned against drawing conclusions about the cause of the crash until all available evidence has been examined.

NTSB recovers flight recorders from an Amazon cargo plane crash at Miami International Airport that killed five and seriously injured five others

Investigators have recovered both flight recorders from the Amazon cargo plane that crashed at Miami International Airport, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says the immediate priority remains recovering the victims. Five people were killed and five others seriously injured after a Boeing 767-300 operated by 21 Air overshot the runway shortly before 14:00 local time on Sunday. The aircraft, which was carrying two crew members, had arrived from San Juan, Puerto Rico, on its third flight of the day, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said during a press conference at Miami International Airport on Monday. After overrunning the runway, the aircraft struck navigational aids and other airport equipment before crashing into a white Ford van operated by a contract cleaning company. The van was carrying seven people. Also Read: Explosions rock Kyiv as Russia resumes attacks after three-day pause amid US peace push The aircraft then broke through a perimeter fence and collided with a Toyota Corolla carrying three passengers. It eventually came to rest around 1,300ft (394m) beyond the runway. Homendy said the crash site was "devastating", with debris from the aircraft, vehicles and airport fencing spread across the area. "It's hard to see, and I'm sure very difficult for the first responders as well," she said. She stressed that investigators were still in the early stages of determining what happened and that no conclusions could yet be drawn about the cause of the accident. Homendy said recovering victims' bodies was the current priority, adding: “The investigation and access to the aircraft, as well as evidence, can wait.” The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have now been recovered and will be transported to NTSB headquarters for detailed examination. Investigators are expected to study the aircraft's flight history, the crew's experience and training, radar information and aircraft performance. Separate teams will inspect the plane's systems and engines, while a meteorologist will assess weather conditions during the landing. The NTSB will also investigate whether the runway should have been equipped with an engineered materials arresting system (EMAS), which is designed to help slow and stop aircraft that overrun a runway. Homendy described the question of whether an EMAS system should have been installed as a 'key' part of the investigation. The investigation remains in the fact-finding stage, and officials have cautioned against drawing conclusions about the cause of the crash until all available evidence has been examined.

NTSB recovers flight recorders after an Amazon cargo plane crash at Miami airport kills five, injures five, as investigators examine the cause

Amazon cargo plane crash: NTSB recovers flight recorders at Miami airport as victim recovery continues

A plane crashed on the runway at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego, California, killing two people on Monday evening (Sep 7), according to the San Diego Police Department. The moment the plane crashed it became fully engulfed in flames. About 30 personnel with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department were at the scene responding to the incident. In the meantime, the airport was temporarily closed during emergency operations, San Diego Fire Department wrote on X.&nbsp;&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/short-videos/cargo-plane-crashes-at-miami-airport-as-emergency-vehicles-surround-wreckage-1788746719572">Cargo plane crashes at Miami Airport as emergency vehicles surround wreckage</a>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">So. A plane that I have around 60 hours in is balled up off 28L and on fire. Apparently the crew didn’t get out. Odds are pretty good I know the instructor onboard 🙁 <a href="https://t.co/f6lZmIXs2G">pic.twitter.com/f6lZmIXs2G</a>&mdash; El Dub (@SunCoastChief) <a href="https://x.com/SunCoastChief/status/2097126733191459302?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<h2>What fire officials said about the cause of the fire?</h2>Briefing on the incident, San Diego Fire official said that the plane was still in the crash location. The official said he does not have the information on whether it was taken off or landing but confirmed that it was a small plane and a small fire. “We're still working on an active fuel leak. When the plane crashed, the plane was heavily damaged. There was active fuel leaking and burning, so we extinguished the fire, and there is still a small fuel leak. It is not spreading anywhere else. But that is something that we will work with -- airport personnel on the cleanup of the plane -- fuel.” He said that currently STPD is holding the scene for investigation. When asked about the reopening of the airport, he said, “We're also working with Montgomery Field Airport personnel on the cleanup of the jet fuel, so they have a contractor en route to make sure that the fuel is properly cleaned up. Assuming once that's cleaned up, then they reopen the airport. They will reopen the airport based on NTSB recommendations and whatever they have to do.” Explaining about the location, he said that the crash happened in the middle of the runway. “So there were no exposures or no danger of anything else catching fire,” he said, adding: “So like I said, that's been extinguished and now we're working on a small fuel leak that will need to be cleaned up.”

On the same day, another plane made a hard landing in the Montgomery County Airpark airport in Maryland. Two crew members were stuck but they were rescued without injuries.&nbsp;&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/plane-crash-in-california-leaves-2-dead-2-injured-probe-underway-1788658628179">Plane crashes in California's Fresno, leaves 2 dead, 2 injured; probe underway</a>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">Update <a href="https://x.com/MontgomeryCoMD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MontgomeryCoMD</a> Airpark - small twin engine aircraft has landed ‘hard’ w/o front landing gear, no fire, no serious injuries, 2persons on board being evaluated, Montgomery Airpark is CLOSED to air traffic, <a href="https://x.com/mcfrs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mcfrs</a> on scene <a href="https://t.co/Fbn21j7seb">https://t.co/Fbn21j7seb</a> <a href="https://t.co/JWuIbYBYIa">pic.twitter.com/JWuIbYBYIa</a>&mdash; Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) <a href="https://x.com/mcfrsPIO/status/2097102276988960827?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

A small plane crashed and caught fire at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego on September 7, killing two people. Around 30 San Diego Fire-Rescue personnel responded, while airport operations in Kearny Mesa were temporarily suspended during emergency operations

A plane crashed on the runway at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego, California, killing two people on Monday evening (Sep 7), according to the San Diego Police Department. The moment the plane crashed it became fully engulfed in flames. About 30 personnel with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department were at the scene responding to the incident. In the meantime, the airport was temporarily closed during emergency operations, San Diego Fire Department wrote on X. Also Read: Cargo plane crashes at Miami Airport as emergency vehicles surround wreckage

A small plane crashed and caught fire at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego on September 7, killing two people. Around 30 San Diego Fire-Rescue personnel responded, while airport operations in Kearny Mesa were temporarily suspended during emergency operations

Plane crashes, bursts into flames at San Diego airport runway, 2 killed

Explosions were reported in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Tuesday morning as Russia resumed attacks after a three-day pause during a visit by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Kyiv officials said residential buildings in two districts of the capital were reportedly damaged. They also said ballistic missiles had been launched towards the city. “Please remain in shelters until the air raid alert is lifted,” officials said on Telegram. The renewed attacks came after Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, met Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on Sunday. Their visit followed intensive talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow a day earlier.&nbsp;Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said people were reportedly trapped inside a residential building following the latest attacks, which triggered fires at several locations across the Ukrainian capital, including an educational institution. “Substantive progress was made, including movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks,” Witkoff said on X following the talks, although no major breakthrough was announced.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/secret-reactor-in-syria-could-have-been-used-for-nuclear-weapons-says-iaea-after-finding-73-tonnes-of-natural-uranium-1788812570475">‘Secret reactor in Syria could have been used for nuclear weapons,’ says IAEA after finding 73 tonnes of natural uranium</a>&nbsp;Russia and Ukraine had agreed to suspend attacks on each other’s capitals during the weekend of diplomatic activity. The temporary truce came after months of little meaningful progress toward resolving the conflict. The 72-hour pause expired on Tuesday, bringing an end to the brief reprieve following weeks of intense Russian attacks on Kyiv. Among the recent strikes was a daytime attack on the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service on Friday. It marked the first reported time the building had been struck during the conflict.&nbsp;The attack was viewed as a significant escalation and highlighted Kyiv’s growing difficulties in protecting key infrastructure amid critical shortages of interceptor missiles. Ukraine has also intensified its own aerial campaign in recent months, carrying out strikes against targets deeper inside Russian territory. On Tuesday morning, the governor of Russia’s Saratov region said a Ukrainian drone attack had struck civilian infrastructure in the city and injured several people, according to a report by Reuters news agency.

Russia resumes attacks on Kyiv after a three-day halt as ballistic missiles target Ukraine’s capital amid renewed US efforts to end the war

Explosions were reported in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Tuesday morning as Russia resumed attacks after a three-day pause during a visit by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Kyiv officials said residential buildings in two districts of the capital were reportedly damaged. They also said ballistic missiles had been launched towards the city. “Please remain in shelters until the air raid alert is lifted,” officials said on Telegram. The renewed attacks came after Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, met Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on Sunday. Their visit followed intensive talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow a day earlier. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said people were reportedly trapped inside a residential building following the latest attacks, which triggered fires at several locations across the Ukrainian capital, including an educational institution. “Substantive progress was made, including movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks,” Witkoff said on X following the talks, although no major breakthrough was announced. Also Read: ‘Secret reactor in Syria could have been used for nuclear weapons,’ says IAEA after finding 73 tonnes of natural uranium Russia and Ukraine had agreed to suspend attacks on each other’s capitals during the weekend of diplomatic activity. The temporary truce came after months of little meaningful progress toward resolving the conflict. The 72-hour pause expired on Tuesday, bringing an end to the brief reprieve following weeks of intense Russian attacks on Kyiv. Among the recent strikes was a daytime attack on the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service on Friday. It marked the first reported time the building had been struck during the conflict. The attack was viewed as a significant escalation and highlighted Kyiv’s growing difficulties in protecting key infrastructure amid critical shortages of interceptor missiles. Ukraine has also intensified its own aerial campaign in recent months, carrying out strikes against targets deeper inside Russian territory. On Tuesday morning, the governor of Russia’s Saratov region said a Ukrainian drone attack had struck civilian infrastructure in the city and injured several people, according to a report by Reuters news agency.

Explosions rocked Kyiv as Russia resumed missile attacks after a three-day halt, amid renewed US diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine war

Explosions rock Kyiv as Russia resumes attacks after three-day pause amid US peace push

Twelve disclosed AI chip funding rounds between January and August raised $5.37 billion. Inference-focused companies accounted for eight of the twelve deals and about 67 per cent of the capital.&nbsp;For most of the current AI cycle, the money and the attention went to training hardware — the chips used to build models. That is no longer where the majority of new chip capital is going.&nbsp;The Distinction, Briefly&nbsp;Training is the process of building a model: enormously compute-intensive, performed a limited number of times, dominated by a small number of organisations with the capital to attempt it.&nbsp;Inference is running the finished model to answer a query. Each individual operation is far cheaper, but it happens continuously, at whatever scale the product has users.&nbsp;Over a successful model's life, inference is where most of the compute is ultimately consumed. It is the recurring cost, and it scales with adoption rather than with ambition.&nbsp;Why Investors Have Turned&nbsp;Two reasons, and they point in the same direction.&nbsp;The first is market structure. Training hardware is a market Nvidia dominates comprehensively, and a startup entering it competes against both the silicon and the software ecosystem built around it over fifteen years. Inference is more fragmented, more sensitive to cost per query and latency, and more open to specialised designs that do one thing efficiently rather than everything adequately.&nbsp;The second is that the shape of AI spending is changing. If models are being deployed into production — and agentic systems running continuously are the clearest example — then the volume of inference grows with usage while training spend stays lumpy and episodic. Investors backing inference are backing the recurring half of the bill.&nbsp;What It Signals&nbsp;This is a bet that the AI buildout is entering its deployment phase rather than its construction phase.&nbsp;Capital allocated to inference assumes models good enough to deploy already exist, and that the constraint ahead is serving them economically rather than building better ones. That is a meaningfully different view of the next few years from the one implied by ever-larger training clusters.&nbsp;Both can be true simultaneously — frontier labs will keep building larger models while everyone else optimises the cost of running what exists. But the capital is now split in a way it was not eighteen months ago.&nbsp;The Caution&nbsp;Two qualifiers belong on these numbers.&nbsp;Twelve disclosed rounds is a small sample, and disclosure is selective — private rounds that never surface are absent by definition, which may bias the picture in either direction. And $5.37 billion, while substantial for chip startups, is modest against the tens of billions flowing into AI infrastructure overall. This is a signal about where new venture capital is going, not a measurement of total spending.&nbsp;The direction is more reliable than the magnitude.&nbsp;What To Watch&nbsp;Whether any of these companies reaches volume deployment against Nvidia's inference offerings, which is where previous challengers have failed rather than at the design stage. Whether the ratio holds through the rest of the year or reverts as new training clusters are announced. And whether the large cloud providers keep building inference silicon in-house, which would compress the market these startups are being funded to enter.

Twelve disclosed AI chip rounds raised $5.37bn this year, and inference companies took eight of them and about 67% of the capital — a bet that the constraint ahead is serving models, not building them.

Twelve disclosed AI chip funding rounds between January and August raised $5.37 billion. Inference-focused companies accounted for eight of the twelve deals and about 67 per cent of the capital. For most of the current AI cycle, the money and the attention went to training hardware — the chips used to build models. That is no longer where the majority of new chip capital is going. The Distinction, Briefly Training is the process of building a model: enormously compute-intensive, performed a limited number of times, dominated by a small number of organisations with the capital to attempt it. Inference is running the finished model to answer a query. Each individual operation is far cheaper, but it happens continuously, at whatever scale the product has users. Over a successful model's life, inference is where most of the compute is ultimately consumed. It is the recurring cost, and it scales with adoption rather than with ambition. Why Investors Have Turned Two reasons, and they point in the same direction. The first is market structure. Training hardware is a market Nvidia dominates comprehensively, and a startup entering it competes against both the silicon and the software ecosystem built around it over fifteen years. Inference is more fragmented, more sensitive to cost per query and latency, and more open to specialised designs that do one thing efficiently rather than everything adequately. The second is that the shape of AI spending is changing. If models are being deployed into production — and agentic systems running continuously are the clearest example — then the volume of inference grows with usage while training spend stays lumpy and episodic. Investors backing inference are backing the recurring half of the bill. What It Signals This is a bet that the AI buildout is entering its deployment phase rather than its construction phase. Capital allocated to inference assumes models good enough to deploy already exist, and that the constraint ahead is serving them economically rather than building better ones. That is a meaningfully different view of the next few years from the one implied by ever-larger training clusters. Both can be true simultaneously — frontier labs will keep building larger models while everyone else optimises the cost of running what exists. But the capital is now split in a way it was not eighteen months ago. The Caution Two qualifiers belong on these numbers. Twelve disclosed rounds is a small sample, and disclosure is selective — private rounds that never surface are absent by definition, which may bias the picture in either direction. And $5.37 billion, while substantial for chip startups, is modest against the tens of billions flowing into AI infrastructure overall. This is a signal about where new venture capital is going, not a measurement of total spending. The direction is more reliable than the magnitude. What To Watch Whether any of these companies reaches volume deployment against Nvidia's inference offerings, which is where previous challengers have failed rather than at the design stage. Whether the ratio holds through the rest of the year or reverts as new training clusters are announced. And whether the large cloud providers keep building inference silicon in-house, which would compress the market these startups are being funded to enter.

Between January and August, twelve disclosed AI chip funding rounds raised $5.37 billion. Inference-focused companies took eight of those deals and roughly 67 per cent of the capital — a reversal from the years when training hardware attracted almost everything, and a signal about where investors think the durable spending lies.

The AI chip money has quietly moved from training to inference

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added seven vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue. One of them is in the AI stack.&nbsp;CVE-2026-59822, carrying a CVSS score of 8.8, is an authentication bypass in the MCP Streamable HTTP endpoint of LiteLLM — an open-source proxy widely used to sit between applications and the various language model providers they call.&nbsp;What The Listing Means&nbsp;The KEV catalogue is a specific claim, and it is stronger than a vulnerability disclosure.&nbsp;Entries are added when there is reliable evidence of active exploitation in the wild. This is not a researcher's proof of concept or a theoretical attack path — it means someone has been using it. For US federal civilian agencies, KEV inclusion carries a binding remediation deadline, and most large enterprises treat the catalogue as a de facto patch priority list.&nbsp;Why This Component Matters&nbsp;LiteLLM is infrastructure most people using it never think about, which is precisely what makes it worth attention.&nbsp;A proxy of this kind sits at an unusually sensitive point. To do its job it typically holds provider API keys for every model an organisation calls, and it sees the traffic in both directions — the prompts going out and the completions coming back. That traffic frequently contains exactly the material an organisation would least like to lose: internal documents, customer records, source code, credentials pasted into a prompt by someone in a hurry.&nbsp;An authentication bypass on a component like that is not a peripheral issue. It is access to the keys and the conversation at once.&nbsp;The Broader Point&nbsp;This is the part worth generalising, because it will recur.&nbsp;Enormous attention has gone to whether models themselves can be manipulated — prompt injection, jailbreaks, data extraction from training sets. Far less has gone to the ordinary software assembled around them: proxies, gateways, orchestration layers, vector databases, the connective tissue that turns a model into a product.&nbsp;That layer is conventional software with conventional vulnerabilities. It has often been adopted very fast, by teams under pressure to ship AI features, with less security review than an equivalently sensitive component would normally receive. And it is frequently open source maintained by a small number of people relative to how widely it has been deployed.&nbsp;The attack surface of an AI system is not primarily the model. It is everything that was built around the model in a hurry.&nbsp;What Organisations Should Actually Do&nbsp;The immediate action is narrow: identify whether LiteLLM is deployed anywhere in the estate, patch it, and rotate every provider API key it held. A bypass that may have exposed stored credentials is not remediated by patching alone.&nbsp;The broader action is an inventory. Most organisations that adopted AI tooling quickly do not have a clear list of what is sitting in the path between their applications and their model providers, and cannot answer what any of those components hold.&nbsp;What To Watch&nbsp;Whether further AI infrastructure components appear in the KEV catalogue in the coming months, which would confirm this as a pattern rather than an incident. Whether the AI tooling ecosystem adopts the disclosure and patching discipline of more mature infrastructure software. And whether enterprises begin treating the model-adjacent stack as security-critical, which most currently do not.

CISA has added LiteLLM's CVE-2026-59822, an authentication bypass scoring 8.8, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue — meaning it is being used, on a component that holds API keys and sees every prompt.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added seven vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue. One of them is in the AI stack. CVE-2026-59822, carrying a CVSS score of 8.8, is an authentication bypass in the MCP Streamable HTTP endpoint of LiteLLM — an open-source proxy widely used to sit between applications and the various language model providers they call. What The Listing Means The KEV catalogue is a specific claim, and it is stronger than a vulnerability disclosure. Entries are added when there is reliable evidence of active exploitation in the wild. This is not a researcher's proof of concept or a theoretical attack path — it means someone has been using it. For US federal civilian agencies, KEV inclusion carries a binding remediation deadline, and most large enterprises treat the catalogue as a de facto patch priority list. Why This Component Matters LiteLLM is infrastructure most people using it never think about, which is precisely what makes it worth attention. A proxy of this kind sits at an unusually sensitive point. To do its job it typically holds provider API keys for every model an organisation calls, and it sees the traffic in both directions — the prompts going out and the completions coming back. That traffic frequently contains exactly the material an organisation would least like to lose: internal documents, customer records, source code, credentials pasted into a prompt by someone in a hurry. An authentication bypass on a component like that is not a peripheral issue. It is access to the keys and the conversation at once. The Broader Point This is the part worth generalising, because it will recur. Enormous attention has gone to whether models themselves can be manipulated — prompt injection, jailbreaks, data extraction from training sets. Far less has gone to the ordinary software assembled around them: proxies, gateways, orchestration layers, vector databases, the connective tissue that turns a model into a product. That layer is conventional software with conventional vulnerabilities. It has often been adopted very fast, by teams under pressure to ship AI features, with less security review than an equivalently sensitive component would normally receive. And it is frequently open source maintained by a small number of people relative to how widely it has been deployed. The attack surface of an AI system is not primarily the model. It is everything that was built around the model in a hurry. What Organisations Should Actually Do The immediate action is narrow: identify whether LiteLLM is deployed anywhere in the estate, patch it, and rotate every provider API key it held. A bypass that may have exposed stored credentials is not remediated by patching alone. The broader action is an inventory. Most organisations that adopted AI tooling quickly do not have a clear list of what is sitting in the path between their applications and their model providers, and cannot answer what any of those components hold. What To Watch Whether further AI infrastructure components appear in the KEV catalogue in the coming months, which would confirm this as a pattern rather than an incident. Whether the AI tooling ecosystem adopts the disclosure and patching discipline of more mature infrastructure software. And whether enterprises begin treating the model-adjacent stack as security-critical, which most currently do not.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added seven vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue, among them an authentication bypass in LiteLLM — a widely deployed proxy that sits between applications and the language models they call. Inclusion in the catalogue means it is not theoretical.

A flaw in a widely used AI proxy is now on the US list of actively exploited bugs

Nvidia's equity investments in AI companies stood at roughly $99 billion as of late July, according to a CNBC tally. A year earlier the figure was about $7 billion.&nbsp;That is a fourteen-fold expansion in twelve months, and it has made the world's most important chip supplier simultaneously one of the largest investors in the companies that buy its chips.&nbsp;Where The Money Went&nbsp;The single largest position is OpenAI, where Nvidia invested $30 billion as part of a $110 billion funding round.&nbsp;Beyond that, its 2026 equity commitments run past $40 billion across the stack, including seven multi-billion-dollar stakes in public companies — among them up to $3.2 billion for Corning and $2.1 billion for IREN. Separately, the company has signed memoranda of understanding targeting more than $500 billion of third-party capital over time.&nbsp;The Structural Detail&nbsp;The most consequential fact about this strategy is what it is not.&nbsp;Nvidia has vertically integrated the AI economy without acquiring any of the participants. Every position is a minority equity stake, not a purchase — which means none of it passes through merger review, in any jurisdiction, at any threshold.&nbsp;An acquisition of comparable scope would attract antitrust scrutiny in Washington, Brussels and Beijing simultaneously. A minority stake attracts almost none, while delivering a substantial share of the strategic benefit: influence over roadmaps, early visibility into demand, and a claim on the upside of customers whose growth Nvidia's own supply enables.&nbsp;This is not a loophole in any illegal sense. It is a straightforward reading of where the regulatory perimeter sits, and a decision to operate just inside it.&nbsp;The Circularity Problem&nbsp;There is a criticism of this arrangement that has been made repeatedly, and it is not baseless.&nbsp;When a supplier invests billions in its own customers, some portion of the revenue those customers generate for the supplier was funded by the supplier. Demand of that kind is real in an accounting sense but is not independent evidence that the underlying market is as large as the revenue suggests.&nbsp;Nvidia's counter is that these are minority positions in companies with substantial independent funding, that it has no control over purchasing decisions, and that the AI infrastructure buildout would proceed with or without its participation. Both readings can be partly true, and the honest position is that nobody outside the companies involved can currently separate the two.&nbsp;What it does mean is that anyone reading Nvidia's demand figures as a clean signal of independent market appetite should discount them somewhat, and the size of that discount is unknown.&nbsp;The Risk It Creates&nbsp;The strategy concentrates a second kind of exposure on top of the first.&nbsp;Nvidia already carries the risk that AI infrastructure demand slows. It now additionally carries the mark-to-market risk on $99 billion of equity in companies whose valuations depend on the same demand. Those risks are not independent — they would arrive together, and a correction in AI valuations would hit both sides of the balance sheet at once.&nbsp;For a company of Nvidia's size that is survivable. It is still a materially different risk profile from selling chips for cash.&nbsp;What To Watch&nbsp;Whether regulators show any interest in minority stakes at this concentration, which would be a novel application of merger doctrine. Whether the $500 billion of memoranda converts into deployed capital or stays aspirational. And how much of Nvidia's reported demand can be traced to entities it has itself funded — a disclosure no one currently requires it to make.

Nvidia's AI equity book went from about $7bn to roughly $99bn in twelve months, $30bn of it in OpenAI. Every position is a minority stake — which keeps the whole strategy outside merger review.

Nvidia's equity investments in AI companies stood at roughly $99 billion as of late July, according to a CNBC tally. A year earlier the figure was about $7 billion. That is a fourteen-fold expansion in twelve months, and it has made the world's most important chip supplier simultaneously one of the largest investors in the companies that buy its chips. Where The Money Went The single largest position is OpenAI, where Nvidia invested $30 billion as part of a $110 billion funding round. Beyond that, its 2026 equity commitments run past $40 billion across the stack, including seven multi-billion-dollar stakes in public companies — among them up to $3.2 billion for Corning and $2.1 billion for IREN. Separately, the company has signed memoranda of understanding targeting more than $500 billion of third-party capital over time. The Structural Detail The most consequential fact about this strategy is what it is not. Nvidia has vertically integrated the AI economy without acquiring any of the participants. Every position is a minority equity stake, not a purchase — which means none of it passes through merger review, in any jurisdiction, at any threshold. An acquisition of comparable scope would attract antitrust scrutiny in Washington, Brussels and Beijing simultaneously. A minority stake attracts almost none, while delivering a substantial share of the strategic benefit: influence over roadmaps, early visibility into demand, and a claim on the upside of customers whose growth Nvidia's own supply enables. This is not a loophole in any illegal sense. It is a straightforward reading of where the regulatory perimeter sits, and a decision to operate just inside it. The Circularity Problem There is a criticism of this arrangement that has been made repeatedly, and it is not baseless. When a supplier invests billions in its own customers, some portion of the revenue those customers generate for the supplier was funded by the supplier. Demand of that kind is real in an accounting sense but is not independent evidence that the underlying market is as large as the revenue suggests. Nvidia's counter is that these are minority positions in companies with substantial independent funding, that it has no control over purchasing decisions, and that the AI infrastructure buildout would proceed with or without its participation. Both readings can be partly true, and the honest position is that nobody outside the companies involved can currently separate the two. What it does mean is that anyone reading Nvidia's demand figures as a clean signal of independent market appetite should discount them somewhat, and the size of that discount is unknown. The Risk It Creates The strategy concentrates a second kind of exposure on top of the first. Nvidia already carries the risk that AI infrastructure demand slows. It now additionally carries the mark-to-market risk on $99 billion of equity in companies whose valuations depend on the same demand. Those risks are not independent — they would arrive together, and a correction in AI valuations would hit both sides of the balance sheet at once. For a company of Nvidia's size that is survivable. It is still a materially different risk profile from selling chips for cash. What To Watch Whether regulators show any interest in minority stakes at this concentration, which would be a novel application of merger doctrine. Whether the $500 billion of memoranda converts into deployed capital or stays aspirational. And how much of Nvidia's reported demand can be traced to entities it has itself funded — a disclosure no one currently requires it to make.

Nvidia's equity investments in AI companies reached roughly $99 billion as of late July, up from about $7 billion a year earlier, according to CNBC's tally. The structure is what stands out: the company has positioned itself across the entire AI stack through minority stakes rather than acquisitions, which keeps it out of the path of merger review.

Nvidia has taken $99 billion in equity stakes across AI in a year

The frontier AI labs have spent years making broadly the same argument about regulation: that they take safety seriously, that they welcome sensible oversight, and that rules should be workable. In Massachusetts, that consensus has visibly broken.&nbsp;A state Senate proposal, carried as part of a larger economic development bill, would require large AI developers to commission independent evaluators to assess catastrophic risks in their models every four months.&nbsp;Anthropic is backing it and has described its preferred version as the most robust AI safety legislation in the nation. OpenAI and Google are opposing it.&nbsp;What Is Actually In Dispute&nbsp;The disagreement is narrower than 'safety versus no safety', and it is worth stating precisely.&nbsp;Nobody in this argument is opposing third-party review. The dispute is about cadence and independence. Anthropic wants independent risk assessments every four to six months. OpenAI favours something closer to the approach Illinois took — annual third-party audits.&nbsp;The gap between four months and twelve months sounds procedural. It is not. Frontier models now ship substantially revised versions several times a year, and an annual audit can assess a model that has already been superseded twice. A four-month cadence is an attempt to make evaluation track the release cycle rather than the calendar.&nbsp;The Case Against, Taken Seriously&nbsp;OpenAI's objection is not obviously self-serving, and it should be engaged with rather than dismissed.&nbsp;Its argument is that aggressive state-by-state regulation produces a patchwork of inconsistent rules, and that the compliance burden of satisfying fifty different regimes delays the release of beneficial models — including, it notes, tools used for cybersecurity defence.&nbsp;That is a real problem. A company shipping into all fifty states under conflicting evaluation regimes faces genuine cost, and there is no federal framework to preempt it. The patchwork concern is the strongest argument available to the opposing side.&nbsp;The weakness is that it is an argument for federal legislation, and the same companies have not conspicuously pushed for a federal standard strict enough to preempt anything. An objection to state rules that does not come with a proposed alternative functions, in practice, as an objection to rules.&nbsp;Why Anthropic's Position Is Also Not Free&nbsp;It would be naive to read Anthropic's stance as pure principle.&nbsp;The company has built its market identity on safety, and a regulation that makes rigorous evaluation mandatory converts that identity into a competitive moat. Compliance costs that are burdensome for a smaller competitor are absorbable for a company already running the evaluations internally.&nbsp;That does not make the position wrong. A rule can be simultaneously good policy and commercially convenient for whoever proposed it, and the coincidence is a reason to examine the rule rather than the motive.&nbsp;What Makes This Consequential&nbsp;State law has become the actual venue for AI regulation in the United States, in the absence of anything federal. What Massachusetts settles on will be copied, adapted or reacted against by other legislatures, in the way California's privacy law set the template a decade ago.&nbsp;It is also the first time the frontier labs have publicly taken opposing sides on a specific binding rule rather than on principles. That breaks the industry's ability to speak with one voice to legislators, which is a more significant development than the bill itself.&nbsp;What To Watch&nbsp;Whether the four-month cadence survives into the final text or is negotiated toward the annual model. Whether other states move before Massachusetts concludes. And whether any of these companies now supports a federal standard with teeth — because that is the test of whether the patchwork objection was about the patchwork.

Massachusetts would require independent evaluations of catastrophic AI risk every four months. Anthropic backs it; OpenAI and Google want annual audits — the first public split between frontier labs on a binding rule.

The frontier AI labs have spent years making broadly the same argument about regulation: that they take safety seriously, that they welcome sensible oversight, and that rules should be workable. In Massachusetts, that consensus has visibly broken. A state Senate proposal, carried as part of a larger economic development bill, would require large AI developers to commission independent evaluators to assess catastrophic risks in their models every four months. Anthropic is backing it and has described its preferred version as the most robust AI safety legislation in the nation. OpenAI and Google are opposing it. What Is Actually In Dispute The disagreement is narrower than 'safety versus no safety', and it is worth stating precisely. Nobody in this argument is opposing third-party review. The dispute is about cadence and independence. Anthropic wants independent risk assessments every four to six months. OpenAI favours something closer to the approach Illinois took — annual third-party audits. The gap between four months and twelve months sounds procedural. It is not. Frontier models now ship substantially revised versions several times a year, and an annual audit can assess a model that has already been superseded twice. A four-month cadence is an attempt to make evaluation track the release cycle rather than the calendar. The Case Against, Taken Seriously OpenAI's objection is not obviously self-serving, and it should be engaged with rather than dismissed. Its argument is that aggressive state-by-state regulation produces a patchwork of inconsistent rules, and that the compliance burden of satisfying fifty different regimes delays the release of beneficial models — including, it notes, tools used for cybersecurity defence. That is a real problem. A company shipping into all fifty states under conflicting evaluation regimes faces genuine cost, and there is no federal framework to preempt it. The patchwork concern is the strongest argument available to the opposing side. The weakness is that it is an argument for federal legislation, and the same companies have not conspicuously pushed for a federal standard strict enough to preempt anything. An objection to state rules that does not come with a proposed alternative functions, in practice, as an objection to rules. Why Anthropic's Position Is Also Not Free It would be naive to read Anthropic's stance as pure principle. The company has built its market identity on safety, and a regulation that makes rigorous evaluation mandatory converts that identity into a competitive moat. Compliance costs that are burdensome for a smaller competitor are absorbable for a company already running the evaluations internally. That does not make the position wrong. A rule can be simultaneously good policy and commercially convenient for whoever proposed it, and the coincidence is a reason to examine the rule rather than the motive. What Makes This Consequential State law has become the actual venue for AI regulation in the United States, in the absence of anything federal. What Massachusetts settles on will be copied, adapted or reacted against by other legislatures, in the way California's privacy law set the template a decade ago. It is also the first time the frontier labs have publicly taken opposing sides on a specific binding rule rather than on principles. That breaks the industry's ability to speak with one voice to legislators, which is a more significant development than the bill itself. What To Watch Whether the four-month cadence survives into the final text or is negotiated toward the annual model. Whether other states move before Massachusetts concludes. And whether any of these companies now supports a federal standard with teeth — because that is the test of whether the patchwork objection was about the patchwork.

A Massachusetts proposal would require large AI developers to hire independent evaluators to assess catastrophic risk in their models every four months — a cadence stricter than anything else at state level in the United States. Anthropic supports it. OpenAI and Google are opposing it, arguing for annual third-party audits instead.

Anthropic has broken with OpenAI and Google over the toughest AI safety bill in America

Greg Brockman ended OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra briefing with a line engineered to be quoted: ‘Welcome to the AGI era.’&nbsp;The evidence offered was a score. On ARC-AGI-3 — a benchmark built specifically to test whether a system can solve problems it has never encountered — Astra was reported at 99.9 per cent.&nbsp;ARC Prize, which runs the benchmark, has since published its own analysis. The number it leads with is 63 per cent.&nbsp;Two Numbers, One Model&nbsp;Both figures are real, and the gap between them is the story.&nbsp;On the shared test, under the conditions every other model is measured in, Astra's best observed score was 62.7 per cent. The 99.9 per cent came from what ARC Prize calls a provider adapter harness — scaffolding that preserves reasoning chains between individual requests and automatically summarises long runs.&nbsp;A third figure, 98.55 per cent, circulated early and was widely rounded to 98.6. It also came from the harness, at maximum reasoning settings.&nbsp;So the headline number does not describe the model. It describes the model plus an apparatus that gives it persistent memory across attempts and manages its context automatically.&nbsp;Why That Distinction Is Not Pedantry&nbsp;ARC-AGI-3 exists to measure something specific: whether a system can build a working model of an unfamiliar environment from scratch. Its value depends entirely on the environment staying unfamiliar.&nbsp;Scaffolding that carries reasoning between attempts changes the nature of the test. The system is no longer solving a novel problem in one pass; it is accumulating knowledge across passes. That may well be the more useful configuration in practice — but it is not the thing the benchmark was designed to measure, and a number produced under it cannot be compared with numbers that were not.&nbsp;This is the oldest problem in benchmarking, and it has not been solved by making the models better.&nbsp;What Astra Genuinely Did Do&nbsp;The result that survives scrutiny is more interesting than the headline, and it is about efficiency rather than accuracy.&nbsp;Astra used fewer actions than the median human tester on 96 per cent of the levels it completed, averaging 51.7 per cent fewer. The human baseline comes from roughly 500 general participants playing the same games.&nbsp;That is a real and unusual finding. It says the model is not brute-forcing its way through novel environments but building a precise internal model of how they work, and then acting on it economically. ARC Prize described it as the most precise symbolic model of novel environments it has seen.&nbsp;Efficiency of that kind is harder to fake with scaffolding than a raw score is, which is precisely why it is the more persuasive number.&nbsp;On The AGI Claim Itself&nbsp;Brockman was more careful than the quote suggests, and this deserves acknowledging.&nbsp;He did not present the score as mathematical proof of anything. He said he personally believes the threshold has been crossed, that looking back people might identify this moment and this model, and left the definition to others. There is no industry-agreed test that separates a very capable model from artificial general intelligence, and he did not claim there was.&nbsp;The claim is therefore not falsifiable, which makes it a statement of belief rather than a finding. That is not dishonest. It is simply a different kind of statement from the one a benchmark score appears to be.&nbsp;What To Watch&nbsp;Whether OpenAI reports harness-assisted and bare scores side by side in future, or continues to lead with the higher one. Whether ARC Prize formalises separate categories so the comparison stops being ambiguous. And whether the efficiency finding replicates on benchmarks that OpenAI did not help design the evaluation conditions for.&nbsp;The honest summary is narrower than either camp will like. Astra is a genuine advance on novel-problem solving, its efficiency result is remarkable, and its most-quoted number is not what it appears to be.

OpenAI's AGI claim rests on a near-perfect ARC-AGI-3 score. The benchmark's own organisers put the bare model at 62.7% — the difference is scaffolding, not capability.

Greg Brockman ended OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra briefing with a line engineered to be quoted: ‘Welcome to the AGI era.’ The evidence offered was a score. On ARC-AGI-3 — a benchmark built specifically to test whether a system can solve problems it has never encountered — Astra was reported at 99.9 per cent. ARC Prize, which runs the benchmark, has since published its own analysis. The number it leads with is 63 per cent. Two Numbers, One Model Both figures are real, and the gap between them is the story. On the shared test, under the conditions every other model is measured in, Astra's best observed score was 62.7 per cent. The 99.9 per cent came from what ARC Prize calls a provider adapter harness — scaffolding that preserves reasoning chains between individual requests and automatically summarises long runs. A third figure, 98.55 per cent, circulated early and was widely rounded to 98.6. It also came from the harness, at maximum reasoning settings. So the headline number does not describe the model. It describes the model plus an apparatus that gives it persistent memory across attempts and manages its context automatically. Why That Distinction Is Not Pedantry ARC-AGI-3 exists to measure something specific: whether a system can build a working model of an unfamiliar environment from scratch. Its value depends entirely on the environment staying unfamiliar. Scaffolding that carries reasoning between attempts changes the nature of the test. The system is no longer solving a novel problem in one pass; it is accumulating knowledge across passes. That may well be the more useful configuration in practice — but it is not the thing the benchmark was designed to measure, and a number produced under it cannot be compared with numbers that were not. This is the oldest problem in benchmarking, and it has not been solved by making the models better. What Astra Genuinely Did Do The result that survives scrutiny is more interesting than the headline, and it is about efficiency rather than accuracy. Astra used fewer actions than the median human tester on 96 per cent of the levels it completed, averaging 51.7 per cent fewer. The human baseline comes from roughly 500 general participants playing the same games. That is a real and unusual finding. It says the model is not brute-forcing its way through novel environments but building a precise internal model of how they work, and then acting on it economically. ARC Prize described it as the most precise symbolic model of novel environments it has seen. Efficiency of that kind is harder to fake with scaffolding than a raw score is, which is precisely why it is the more persuasive number. On The AGI Claim Itself Brockman was more careful than the quote suggests, and this deserves acknowledging. He did not present the score as mathematical proof of anything. He said he personally believes the threshold has been crossed, that looking back people might identify this moment and this model, and left the definition to others. There is no industry-agreed test that separates a very capable model from artificial general intelligence, and he did not claim there was. The claim is therefore not falsifiable, which makes it a statement of belief rather than a finding. That is not dishonest. It is simply a different kind of statement from the one a benchmark score appears to be. What To Watch Whether OpenAI reports harness-assisted and bare scores side by side in future, or continues to lead with the higher one. Whether ARC Prize formalises separate categories so the comparison stops being ambiguous. And whether the efficiency finding replicates on benchmarks that OpenAI did not help design the evaluation conditions for. The honest summary is narrower than either camp will like. Astra is a genuine advance on novel-problem solving, its efficiency result is remarkable, and its most-quoted number is not what it appears to be.

OpenAI president Greg Brockman ended the GPT-6 Astra briefing with the words ‘Welcome to the AGI era’, pointing to a near-perfect score on ARC-AGI-3. But the benchmark's own organisers have published two very different numbers for the same model, and the difference is not the model at all — it is the scaffolding wrapped around it.

Astra's 99.9 per cent came from the harness, not the model

A nuclear reactor built secretly during the rule of the toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in Syria would have been able to produce the needed fissile material for possible use in nuclear weapons, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog has revealed.&nbsp;Last month, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited two sites, one in Deir ez-Zor and a second in an undisclosed location identified to them by Syrian authorities.&nbsp;IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday it was “obvious that the previous government was pursuing a number of clandestine” activities. “They didn’t want the world to know what they were doing,” Grossi told reporters after opening the Vienna-based agency’s quarterly board of governors meeting.&nbsp;“Given the configuration, the technical features of that type of reactor, this is a reactor that is very efficient in the production of fissile material that could be used directly for the fabrication of nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that building the reactor was a “very important step”.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/pa-c-k-of-lies-pakistan-s-ai-victory-video-claims-hits-on-32-iaf-bases-8-aircraft-2-s-400s-and-indian-parliament-1788792189590">Pa(c)k of lies: Pakistan’s AI ‘victory’ video claims hits on 32 IAF bases, 8 aircraft, 2 S-400s and Indian Parliament</a><h2>Syria was running an undeclared nuclear programme under Assad</h2>&nbsp;The revelation proves that Syria was running an extensive undeclared nuclear programme under Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in the eastern Deir ez-Zor province.&nbsp;After Assad was ousted in December 2024, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites.&nbsp;During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor”.&nbsp;&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/man-kills-wife-stores-her-severed-head-and-chopped-fingers-in-fridge-arrested-1788785818077">Man kills wife, stores her severed head and chopped fingers in fridge; arrested</a>&nbsp;Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country.&nbsp;<h2>‘IAEA finds 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal at site’</h2>&nbsp;In 2018, Israel admitted carrying out a top-secret air raid on the site 11 years earlier.Much earlier, in 2008, less than a year after the Israeli strike, US officials had accused Syria of having sought to build a secret nuclear reactor and acknowledged that Israel had destroyed it in the raid.&nbsp;Syria notified the agency of the site’s existence in a 17 July letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and of any nuclear material to be potentially found”.In its confidential report circulated to member states last Tuesday, the IAEA said that this new site contained “natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods with cladding”. The agency verified the material and confirmed “the presence of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal”.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/7-foot-python-found-hiding-in-car-s-engine-in-mumbai-rescue-video-goes-viral-1788800825739">7-foot python found hiding in car’s engine in Mumbai; rescue video goes viral | Watch</a>&nbsp;Grossi said that when the inspectors visited the site in August, they had to “tear down walls” and go through “very difficult and narrow passages” to reach the nuclear material that had been hidden. The site had boxes scattered all over the place, he said.&nbsp;<h2>Syrian govt to decide whether to retain nuclear mterial</h2>&nbsp;“The important thing is that this material now is under safeguards” of the IAEA, Grossi said, adding that agency inspectors had managed to install cameras at the location.Asked if the nuclear material would remain in Syria or be removed, Grossi said this was “a matter that the Syrian government will have to decide”.&nbsp;“We are not requesting them to do this or to do that. For us what’s important is that we know all the time where this [material] is until the last gram,” he added.&nbsp;Also Read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/energy-and-food-security-biggest-combined-population-and-gdp-and-the-two-big-challenges-for-brics-1788809454367">Energy and food security: Biggest combined population and GDP, and the two big challenges for BRICS</a>&nbsp;Logan Mintz, a director for nuclear materials security at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, said once deemed safe to move, the material could be “transported in certified containers” to a third country that could “safely and securely disposition it into a more chemically stable and more widely used form” for possible use in nuclear power plants.

During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor”. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country.

A nuclear reactor built secretly during the rule of the toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in Syria would have been able to produce the needed fissile material for possible use in nuclear weapons, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog has revealed. Last month, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited two sites, one in Deir ez-Zor and a second in an undisclosed location identified to them by Syrian authorities. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday it was “obvious that the previous government was pursuing a number of clandestine” activities. “They didn’t want the world to know what they were doing,” Grossi told reporters after opening the Vienna-based agency’s quarterly board of governors meeting. “Given the configuration, the technical features of that type of reactor, this is a reactor that is very efficient in the production of fissile material that could be used directly for the fabrication of nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that building the reactor was a “very important step”. Also Read: Pa(c)k of lies: Pakistan’s AI ‘victory’ video claims hits on 32 IAF bases, 8 aircraft, 2 S-400s and Indian Parliament Syria was running an undeclared nuclear programme under Assad The revelation proves that Syria was running an extensive undeclared nuclear programme under Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in the eastern Deir ez-Zor province. After Assad was ousted in December 2024, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites. During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor”. Also Read: Man kills wife, stores her severed head and chopped fingers in fridge; arrested Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country. ‘IAEA finds 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal at site’ In 2018, Israel admitted carrying out a top-secret air raid on the site 11 years earlier. Much earlier, in 2008, less than a year after the Israeli strike, US officials had accused Syria of having sought to build a secret nuclear reactor and acknowledged that Israel had destroyed it in the raid. Syria notified the agency of the site’s existence in a 17 July letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and of any nuclear material to be potentially found”. In its confidential report circulated to member states last Tuesday, the IAEA said that this new site contained “natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods with cladding”. The agency verified the material and confirmed “the presence of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal”. Also Read: 7-foot python found hiding in car’s engine in Mumbai; rescue video goes viral | Watch Grossi said that when the inspectors visited the site in August, they had to “tear down walls” and go through “very difficult and narrow passages” to reach the nuclear material that had been hidden. The site had boxes scattered all over the place, he said. Syrian govt to decide whether to retain nuclear mterial “The important thing is that this material now is under safeguards” of the IAEA, Grossi said, adding that agency inspectors had managed to install cameras at the location. Asked if the nuclear material would remain in Syria or be removed, Grossi said this was “a matter that the Syrian government will have to decide”. “We are not requesting them to do this or to do that. For us what’s important is that we know all the time where this [material] is until the last gram,” he added. Also Read: Energy and food security: Biggest combined population and GDP, and the two big challenges for BRICS Logan Mintz, a director for nuclear materials security at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, said once deemed safe to move, the material could be “transported in certified containers” to a third country that could “safely and securely disposition it into a more chemically stable and more widely used form” for possible use in nuclear power plants.

During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor”. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country.

‘Secret reactor in Syria could have been used for nuclear weapons,’ says IAEA after finding 73 tonnes of natural uranium

The growth of BRICS as a promising and impactful grouping reflects one of the biggest recent transformations in the global order. With its expanded membership, BRICS now represents a substantial share of the world’s population, economic output, natural resources and agricultural capacity. However, this enormous scale also exposes BRICS to two interconnected challenges that could shape its future: energy security and food security.&nbsp;Energy is the foundational requirement of modern economic development, and several BRICS nations are among the world’s largest producers of oil, natural gas, coal and other energy resources, while others are major energy consumers and rapidly growing economies.The group possesses enormous energy resources, but these resources are unevenly distributed. Countries that import energy are exposed to price fluctuations and supply disruptions and are affected by geopolitical tensions and instability in global markets.&nbsp;The energy crisis is therefore more about creating a more secure, affordable and diversified energy system. The BRICS member countries thus have an opportunity to strengthen long-term energy security through greater cooperation in oil and gas, electricity, nuclear power, renewable energy, critical minerals, and energy infrastructure.In this situation, expanding renewable energy and improving energy efficiency could reduce dependence on volatile fossil-fuel markets while supporting industrial growth.&nbsp;Food security also presents an equally serious challenge. BRICS has some of the world’s most important agricultural producers as well as nations with large and rapidly growing populations. Climate and climate change, water shortage, extreme weather, soil degradation, fertiliser costs and disruptions to supply chains can threaten food production and raise prices.&nbsp;However, collaboration and cooperation in agricultural technology, fertilisers, irrigation, grain reserves, logistics and trade mechanisms could make member countries more resilient to global shocks.&nbsp;As climate pressures intensify, sharing technologies for drought-resistant crops, precision agriculture and efficient water use become increasingly important.&nbsp;Besides, energy and food security are deeply connected. Modern agriculture requires energy for irrigation, machinery, refrigeration, transportation and processing, and hence, energy prices influence the cost of producing and transporting food.&nbsp;Due to the close linking and interdependence, any disruption in one system can therefore quickly spread into the other.&nbsp;In today’s world, no country can completely eliminate its exposure to global markets and so stronger intra-BRICS trade, diversified supply chains, strategic reserves, investment and greater use of local currencies can help reduce vulnerability to external shocks.&nbsp;The world's largest emerging economies have the population, resources and economic weight to make a difference. Therefore, if BRICS member nations use their combined strengths effectively, then energy security and food security could become pillars of a more stable multipolar economy. Any lack of this cooperation and collaboration could become major constraints on growth and social stability, thereby enfeebling the BRICS grouping, instead of continuing its growth momentum.

Cooperation in agricultural technology, fertilisers, irrigation, grain reserves, logistics and trade mechanisms could make member countries more resilient to global shocks. As climate pressures intensify, sharing technologies for drought-resistant crops and efficient water use becomes vital.

The growth of BRICS as a promising and impactful grouping reflects one of the biggest recent transformations in the global order. With its expanded membership, BRICS now represents a substantial share of the world’s population, economic output, natural resources and agricultural capacity. However, this enormous scale also exposes BRICS to two interconnected challenges that could shape its future: energy security and food security. Energy is the foundational requirement of modern economic development, and several BRICS nations are among the world’s largest producers of oil, natural gas, coal and other energy resources, while others are major energy consumers and rapidly growing economies. The group possesses enormous energy resources, but these resources are unevenly distributed. Countries that import energy are exposed to price fluctuations and supply disruptions and are affected by geopolitical tensions and instability in global markets. The energy crisis is therefore more about creating a more secure, affordable and diversified energy system. The BRICS member countries thus have an opportunity to strengthen long-term energy security through greater cooperation in oil and gas, electricity, nuclear power, renewable energy, critical minerals, and energy infrastructure. In this situation, expanding renewable energy and improving energy efficiency could reduce dependence on volatile fossil-fuel markets while supporting industrial growth. Food security also presents an equally serious challenge. BRICS has some of the world’s most important agricultural producers as well as nations with large and rapidly growing populations. Climate and climate change, water shortage, extreme weather, soil degradation, fertiliser costs and disruptions to supply chains can threaten food production and raise prices. However, collaboration and cooperation in agricultural technology, fertilisers, irrigation, grain reserves, logistics and trade mechanisms could make member countries more resilient to global shocks. As climate pressures intensify, sharing technologies for drought-resistant crops, precision agriculture and efficient water use become increasingly important. Besides, energy and food security are deeply connected. Modern agriculture requires energy for irrigation, machinery, refrigeration, transportation and processing, and hence, energy prices influence the cost of producing and transporting food. Due to the close linking and interdependence, any disruption in one system can therefore quickly spread into the other. In today’s world, no country can completely eliminate its exposure to global markets and so stronger intra-BRICS trade, diversified supply chains, strategic reserves, investment and greater use of local currencies can help reduce vulnerability to external shocks. The world's largest emerging economies have the population, resources and economic weight to make a difference. Therefore, if BRICS member nations use their combined strengths effectively, then energy security and food security could become pillars of a more stable multipolar economy. Any lack of this cooperation and collaboration could become major constraints on growth and social stability, thereby enfeebling the BRICS grouping, instead of continuing its growth momentum.

Cooperation in agricultural technology, fertilisers, irrigation, grain reserves, logistics and trade mechanisms could make member countries more resilient to global shocks. As climate pressures intensify, sharing technologies for drought-resistant crops and efficient water use becomes vital.

Energy and food security: Biggest combined population and GDP, and the two big challenges for BRICS

Before the emergence of BRICS on June 16, 2009, there was RIC, which stands for Russia, India, and China. This trilateral strategic grouping served as the foundational precursor and core building block for BRICS. The trio, formulated in the late 1990s by Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov, was aimed at promoting a multipolar world order and countering unipolar global dominance. Brazil joined the group in 2004, transforming the concept into the BRIC framework, which later added South Africa to become BRICS. This trilateral bloc has held over twenty ministerial-level meetings since the early 1990s. While talk of reviving it has intensified through 2025 and 2026, the three powers remain far from acting as a unified bloc capable of standing up to the West. Although there are few instances where Russia and China have pushed to revive the block but outcome still remains far from reality. On January 20, 2026, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Moscow is striving to revive the activities of the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/most-severe-election-defeat-german-chancellor-merz-shocked-after-cdu-s-worst-lost-in-decades-warns-of-consequence-1788803389383">'Most severe election defeat': German Chancellor Merz shocked after CDU's worst lost in decades, warns of ‘consequence’</a> Reports suggest that, according to Russia, the RIC’s revival has become vital as Beijing is rapidly wanting to consolidate absolute dominance. It also indicated that Russia could mobilise the bloc to coordinate the technical mechanisms of sanctions evasion, focusing on the integration of payment systems (SPFS/CIPS/UPI) and the use of national currencies for energy trade. Similarly, China has also echoed this enthusiasm for backing Russia's push to revive the long-dormant format. This has framed it as important for regional and global stability, though the mechanism has remained largely inactive since the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 India-China border clashes in Ladakh.<h3>India's caution to join RIC</h3>Reports indicated that India has stayed notably reserved in expressing any opinion on joining RIC. In July 2025, India neither rejected nor explicitly endorsed reviving RIC, suggesting a cautious openness rather than enthusiasm. New Delhi's hesitation is directly linked to its unresolved border tensions with China, as India has continuously emphasised that its relations with Beijing depend on progress at the border first.<h3>Will RIC emerge?</h3>The answer to this question is unclear, as we think Russia and China have clear incentives to formalise the RIC, since it boosts their standing and signals resistance to Western isolation. However, India has structural reasons to keep the mechanism informal due to its border tensions with China, its strategic balancing between Washington and Moscow, and its reluctance to be considered anti-West. These developments indicate that all work against a tightly coordinated trio, which is very hard to push further for its emergence. Meanwhile, the India-Russia-China triangle shouldn't allow other nations to dominate or hurt the others' interests. But China's closeness with the US will threaten Russia's wants of a multipolar world. Therefore, Russia will attempt to keep India engaged regionally. India, too, benefits from staying involved, ensuring coordination among these major powers.&nbsp;

The trio came into existence in the late 1990s by Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov, aiming to promote a multipolar world order and counter unipolar global dominance.

Before the emergence of BRICS on June 16, 2009, there was RIC, which stands for Russia, India, and China. This trilateral strategic grouping served as the foundational precursor and core building block for BRICS. The trio, formulated in the late 1990s by Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov, was aimed at promoting a multipolar world order and countering unipolar global dominance. Brazil joined the group in 2004, transforming the concept into the BRIC framework, which later added South Africa to become BRICS. This trilateral bloc has held over twenty ministerial-level meetings since the early 1990s. While talk of reviving it has intensified through 2025 and 2026, the three powers remain far from acting as a unified bloc capable of standing up to the West. Although there are few instances where Russia and China have pushed to revive the block but outcome still remains far from reality. On January 20, 2026, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Moscow is striving to revive the activities of the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral. Also read: 'Most severe election defeat': German Chancellor Merz shocked after CDU's worst lost in decades, warns of ‘consequence’ Reports suggest that, according to Russia, the RIC’s revival has become vital as Beijing is rapidly wanting to consolidate absolute dominance. It also indicated that Russia could mobilise the bloc to coordinate the technical mechanisms of sanctions evasion, focusing on the integration of payment systems (SPFS/CIPS/UPI) and the use of national currencies for energy trade. Similarly, China has also echoed this enthusiasm for backing Russia's push to revive the long-dormant format. This has framed it as important for regional and global stability, though the mechanism has remained largely inactive since the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 India-China border clashes in Ladakh. India's caution to join RIC Reports indicated that India has stayed notably reserved in expressing any opinion on joining RIC. In July 2025, India neither rejected nor explicitly endorsed reviving RIC, suggesting a cautious openness rather than enthusiasm. New Delhi's hesitation is directly linked to its unresolved border tensions with China, as India has continuously emphasised that its relations with Beijing depend on progress at the border first. Will RIC emerge? The answer to this question is unclear, as we think Russia and China have clear incentives to formalise the RIC, since it boosts their standing and signals resistance to Western isolation. However, India has structural reasons to keep the mechanism informal due to its border tensions with China, its strategic balancing between Washington and Moscow, and its reluctance to be considered anti-West. These developments indicate that all work against a tightly coordinated trio, which is very hard to push further for its emergence. Meanwhile, the India-Russia-China triangle shouldn't allow other nations to dominate or hurt the others' interests. But China's closeness with the US will threaten Russia's wants of a multipolar world. Therefore, Russia will attempt to keep India engaged regionally. India, too, benefits from staying involved, ensuring coordination among these major powers.

The trio came into existence in the late 1990s by Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov, aiming to promote a multipolar world order and counter unipolar global dominance.

Will RIC emerge from BRICS? The question of a power trio that hesitates to unite

The Russia-Ukraine War has seen drones become extremely important weapons on the battlefield.... for both sides. A new report has now thrown light on how Beijing is helping Moscow sustain its large-scale aerial warfare...&nbsp;Meanwhile, Russia has expressed willingness for restarting Ukraine talks after US President Donald Trump's envoys visited Kyiv and Moscow in a new push for peace talks.&nbsp;In the latest from the battlefield, Ukraine reported a Russian drone strike at a shopping mall in Zaporizhia.&nbsp;Visuals showed firefighters trying to extinguish a large blaze in the aftermath of the attack, which did not result in any casualties.&nbsp;On the other hand, Russia claimed that one person was killed whereas four others were injured in an Ukrainian drone attack on a residential building in the country's Perm region.&nbsp;According to a joint investigation by the Telegraph and Politico, a Chinese state-owned firm named Jilin Chemical Fibre Group supplied at least 46 tonnes of carbon-fibre chemical to a Russian firm this year.&nbsp;This firm, which is a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned company, used it to produce military-grade carbon fibre which is used for the mass production of Kamikaze drones.&nbsp;These explosive-laden drones are designed to destroy a specific target in a single, self-sacrificial strike.&nbsp;This report also claimed that the shipments were disguised as synthetic chemical fibres to avert sanctions.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/china-secretly-powers-putin-s-killer-drone-war-in-ukraine-1788804297858/embed">https://www.wionews.com/videos/china-secretly-powers-putin-s-killer-drone-war-in-ukraine-1788804297858/embed</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;At present, the Chinese firm in question is not facing any Western sanctions.&nbsp;Experts caution that the material sent by China might be enough for Russia to build at least thirteen hundred Kamikaze drones.&nbsp;According to the report, both the US House Select Committee on China and the Ukrainian government have reviewed the documents and determined they are legitimate.&nbsp;This is crucial, as the US had stated last year that it can impose sanctions to disrupt networks through which Russia procures technology and equipment from abroad to support its war effort.&nbsp;It is worth noting that US sanctioned two Chinese companies in October 2024 for their involvement in making Russia's long-range Garpiya drone.&nbsp;As of March this year, Ukraine claimed that Russia has fired over 57,000 Shahed-type drones on its territory.&nbsp;After the country innovated by producing indigenous interceptor drones designed to shoot down these drones, Russia then turned to jet power.&nbsp;According to the Ukrainian air force spokesperson, Russian forces fired over twenty-eight hundred jet-powered drones in August itself.&nbsp;After initially using Iran's Shahed drones, Russia began mass-producing its own versions called Gerans.&nbsp;Now, its most advanced version- Geran-5 is creating quite a flutter in Ukraine.&nbsp;It flies more like a low-cost cruise missile.&nbsp;According to the country's ministry of defence, its speed can touch 600 kilometres per hour, and it can strike targets close to 950 kilometres away, which is much more than its previous variants.&nbsp;Thus, Ukraine's existing air defence measures are relatively ineffective in intercepting this drone.&nbsp;While Ukrainian officials say four companies have developed interceptors to shoot down jet-powered drones, they are still in the testing phase.&nbsp;Earlier in August, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a general to head the country's unmanned systems forces, which is its newly established military branch responsible for drone warfare.&nbsp;Now, the report comes just a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping met Putin on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Bishkek.&nbsp;While Xi stated that the prospects of China-Russia ties will be even more brighter, Putin hailed the comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between the two countries.&nbsp;Although China has denied providing lethal weapons to any party in the Russia-Ukraine War, the report raises uncomfortable questions for the West, with Xi set to meet Trump in Washington later this month...&nbsp;Although China may not have troops fighting alongside Russia, its technology and supply chain can still help power Putin's war machine....

A Chinese state-owned firm named Jilin Chemical Fibre Group supplied at least 46 tonnes of carbon-fibre chemical to a Russian firm this year. This firm, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned company, used it to produce military-grade carbon fibre used for mass production of Kamikaze drones.

The Russia-Ukraine War has seen drones become extremely important weapons on the battlefield.... for both sides. A new report has now thrown light on how Beijing is helping Moscow sustain its large-scale aerial warfare... Meanwhile, Russia has expressed willingness for restarting Ukraine talks after US President Donald Trump's envoys visited Kyiv and Moscow in a new push for peace talks. In the latest from the battlefield, Ukraine reported a Russian drone strike at a shopping mall in Zaporizhia. Visuals showed firefighters trying to extinguish a large blaze in the aftermath of the attack, which did not result in any casualties. On the other hand, Russia claimed that one person was killed whereas four others were injured in an Ukrainian drone attack on a residential building in the country's Perm region. According to a joint investigation by the Telegraph and Politico, a Chinese state-owned firm named Jilin Chemical Fibre Group supplied at least 46 tonnes of carbon-fibre chemical to a Russian firm this year. This firm, which is a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned company, used it to produce military-grade carbon fibre which is used for the mass production of Kamikaze drones. These explosive-laden drones are designed to destroy a specific target in a single, self-sacrificial strike. This report also claimed that the shipments were disguised as synthetic chemical fibres to avert sanctions. https://www.wionews.com/videos/china-secretly-powers-putin-s-killer-drone-war-in-ukraine-1788804297858/embed At present, the Chinese firm in question is not facing any Western sanctions. Experts caution that the material sent by China might be enough for Russia to build at least thirteen hundred Kamikaze drones. According to the report, both the US House Select Committee on China and the Ukrainian government have reviewed the documents and determined they are legitimate. This is crucial, as the US had stated last year that it can impose sanctions to disrupt networks through which Russia procures technology and equipment from abroad to support its war effort. It is worth noting that US sanctioned two Chinese companies in October 2024 for their involvement in making Russia's long-range Garpiya drone. As of March this year, Ukraine claimed that Russia has fired over 57,000 Shahed-type drones on its territory. After the country innovated by producing indigenous interceptor drones designed to shoot down these drones, Russia then turned to jet power. According to the Ukrainian air force spokesperson, Russian forces fired over twenty-eight hundred jet-powered drones in August itself. After initially using Iran's Shahed drones, Russia began mass-producing its own versions called Gerans. Now, its most advanced version- Geran-5 is creating quite a flutter in Ukraine. It flies more like a low-cost cruise missile. According to the country's ministry of defence, its speed can touch 600 kilometres per hour, and it can strike targets close to 950 kilometres away, which is much more than its previous variants. Thus, Ukraine's existing air defence measures are relatively ineffective in intercepting this drone. While Ukrainian officials say four companies have developed interceptors to shoot down jet-powered drones, they are still in the testing phase. Earlier in August, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a general to head the country's unmanned systems forces, which is its newly established military branch responsible for drone warfare. Now, the report comes just a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping met Putin on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Bishkek. While Xi stated that the prospects of China-Russia ties will be even more brighter, Putin hailed the comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between the two countries. Although China has denied providing lethal weapons to any party in the Russia-Ukraine War, the report raises uncomfortable questions for the West, with Xi set to meet Trump in Washington later this month... Although China may not have troops fighting alongside Russia, its technology and supply chain can still help power Putin's war machine....

A Chinese state-owned firm named Jilin Chemical Fibre Group supplied at least 46 tonnes of carbon-fibre chemical to a Russian firm this year. This firm, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned company, used it to produce military-grade carbon fibre used for mass production of Kamikaze drones.

China secretly powers Putin's killer drone war in Ukraine | Gravitas

After the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered a massive setback in Saxony-Anhalt, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday (September 7) considered it the “most severe election defeat” in years or decades. Merz said, "We are all deeply shocked. We did not expect it to turn out this way." He added that the election result will have significant repercussions. Pointing to the international attention surrounding the outcome, Merz also said appreciation for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) indicates “the level of international attention this result has garnered.” The ruling coalition of Germany, the CDU, has secured just 17 per cent of the vote, compared with almost 44 per cent for the anti-immigration and Russia-friendly AfD.<h3>CDU's most severe election defeat</h3>Over the inevitable outcome of the election, Merz said, “when nearly 60% of voters … cast their ballots for political parties that fundamentally call into question our country’s democratic institutions … it is an election result we cannot simply move past as if nothing happened.” He conceded that this was “the most severe election defeat the CDU has suffered in years, indeed in decades.” Sven Schulze, the CDU's defeated candidate for premier in Saxony-Anhalt, admitted that the AfD had earned the right to try forming a governing majority, even though it fell just short of the seats needed to govern on its own. “We are the opposition -– the mandate to govern now lies with the AfD,” Schulze said alongside Merz.&nbsp;Read More: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/israel-katz-threatens-full-scale-war-palestinian-authority-1788790189353">Israel Katz threatens 'full-scale war' against Palestinian Authority after Israeli settler stabbed in West Bank</a> Merz also conceded that his own weak approval ratings, along with criticism that his government had been slow to roll out reforms, had played a part in the CDU's poor showing. “I know that I personally was a constant topic in this election campaign. We know that the reforms were a constant topic in this election campaign,” AFP quoted him as saying. “We must try - I myself included - to reach people more effectively, including in the full range of their emotions,” he added.&nbsp;Despite this setback, the 70-year-old chancellor pledged to press ahead with his government's policy overhaul in areas such as the economy, pensions and healthcare, saying his resolve to continue on the reform path remained unshaken. “But I know that we must do more than just justify these reforms, mathematically, economically. We have to explain them better,” he said. “This is about nothing more and nothing less than the future of our country, and the opportunities of our children and grandchildren,” Merz further added.

The ruling coalition of Germany, the CDU, has secured just 17 per cent of the vote, compared with almost 44 per cent for the anti-immigration and Russia-friendly AfD.

After the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered a massive setback in Saxony-Anhalt, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday (September 7) considered it the “most severe election defeat” in years or decades. Merz said, "We are all deeply shocked. We did not expect it to turn out this way." He added that the election result will have significant repercussions. Pointing to the international attention surrounding the outcome, Merz also said appreciation for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) indicates “the level of international attention this result has garnered.” The ruling coalition of Germany, the CDU, has secured just 17 per cent of the vote, compared with almost 44 per cent for the anti-immigration and Russia-friendly AfD. CDU's most severe election defeat Over the inevitable outcome of the election, Merz said, “when nearly 60% of voters … cast their ballots for political parties that fundamentally call into question our country’s democratic institutions … it is an election result we cannot simply move past as if nothing happened.” He conceded that this was “the most severe election defeat the CDU has suffered in years, indeed in decades.” Sven Schulze, the CDU's defeated candidate for premier in Saxony-Anhalt, admitted that the AfD had earned the right to try forming a governing majority, even though it fell just short of the seats needed to govern on its own. “We are the opposition -– the mandate to govern now lies with the AfD,” Schulze said alongside Merz. Read More: Israel Katz threatens 'full-scale war' against Palestinian Authority after Israeli settler stabbed in West Bank Merz also conceded that his own weak approval ratings, along with criticism that his government had been slow to roll out reforms, had played a part in the CDU's poor showing. “I know that I personally was a constant topic in this election campaign. We know that the reforms were a constant topic in this election campaign,” AFP quoted him as saying. “We must try - I myself included - to reach people more effectively, including in the full range of their emotions,” he added. Despite this setback, the 70-year-old chancellor pledged to press ahead with his government's policy overhaul in areas such as the economy, pensions and healthcare, saying his resolve to continue on the reform path remained unshaken. “But I know that we must do more than just justify these reforms, mathematically, economically. We have to explain them better,” he said. “This is about nothing more and nothing less than the future of our country, and the opportunities of our children and grandchildren,” Merz further added.

The ruling coalition of Germany, the CDU, has secured just 17 per cent of the vote, compared with almost 44 per cent for the anti-immigration and Russia-friendly AfD.

'Most severe election defeat': German Chancellor Merz shocked after CDU's worst lost in decades, warns of 'consequence'

As Tehran continues to resist US pressure, Pentagon has come in for fresh criticism. It has now been accused of trying to deny benefits to families of US soldiers who have died in the Iran war.This came to light after Libby Klinner, the widow of Major Alex Klinner, voiced her frustration on social media.&nbsp;She was reportedly told by a military officer that she was ineligible for certain combat-related benefits, citing that US is technically not at war.Major Klinner was one of the six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq in March.&nbsp;After her social media post went viral, US Air Force officials contacted her to initiate a review of her husband’s pay. Subsequently, they clarified that she would be receiving the full pay and benefits her husband was owed, including hazard pay as well as combat-related tax breaks.&nbsp;In wake of this, Libby Klinner urged everyone to ensure that every martyr's family should get clarity on the benefits from the outset.&nbsp;18 US military personnel have been killed and 780 others have been wounded since the beginning of the Iran war.&nbsp;Also, multiple bases across West Asia have suffered damage running into billions of dollars due to Iranian retaliatory strikes.&nbsp;The American leadership has been trying to downplay the Iran war ahead of November's midterm elections.&nbsp;For instance, US Vice President JD Vance rejected using the word 'war' to characterise US operations in Iran, saying that there was no active shooting.&nbsp;US President Donald Trump also backed Vance's stance, adding that the operation against Iran is 'small potatoes' for America.&nbsp;Now, after CENTCOM forces struck three Iranian crude oil carriers over the weekend in response to IRGC's ballistic missile attack on US warships, Tehran issued a stern warning.&nbsp;Iran's parliament speaker and key negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf emphasised that every violation of his country's security and assets will be met with a faster, heavier and more painful response...&nbsp;This is not all.&nbsp;Iran wants to further strengthen its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz.&nbsp;In an interview, Iran's supreme national security council head, Mohsen Rezai, announced that Tehran will soon announce a restricted zone outside Hormuz.&nbsp;Any vessel entering this zone will be placed on Iran's sanctions list.&nbsp;Amid this, Iran also revealed that its negotiations with Oman regarding designating a safe route for passage of ships through Hormuz have reached the final stage...&nbsp;While there has been a temporary lull in attacks between US and Iran, Israel has intensified its attacks on Lebanon. Plumes of smoke were seen after a barrage of artillery fire by Israel.&nbsp;In overnight air strikes by IDF on a village in southern Lebanon, at least eleven people, including two children, were killed. Visuals showed a spate of destruction.&nbsp;Rescuers were seen desperately trying to search for survivors amid the rubble...&nbsp;Now, as depleting weapon stockpiles haunt US and West Asia continues to bear the brunt of Iran's retaliatory strikes, is there a growing rethink on America's role in the region?&nbsp;Qatar, for instance, advocated a focus on self-sufficiency.&nbsp;As US struggles to break the stalemate, former Pentagon chief Leon Panetta issued a warning.&nbsp;He opined that the Iran war risks becoming another 'forever war' in West Asia and is likely to continue for six more months without being resolved...

As many as 18 US military personnel have been killed and 780 others have been wounded since the beginning of the Iran war. Also, multiple bases across West Asia have suffered damage running into billions of dollars due to Iranian retaliatory strikes.

As Tehran continues to resist US pressure, Pentagon has come in for fresh criticism. It has now been accused of trying to deny benefits to families of US soldiers who have died in the Iran war. This came to light after Libby Klinner, the widow of Major Alex Klinner, voiced her frustration on social media. She was reportedly told by a military officer that she was ineligible for certain combat-related benefits, citing that US is technically not at war. Major Klinner was one of the six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq in March. After her social media post went viral, US Air Force officials contacted her to initiate a review of her husband’s pay. Subsequently, they clarified that she would be receiving the full pay and benefits her husband was owed, including hazard pay as well as combat-related tax breaks. In wake of this, Libby Klinner urged everyone to ensure that every martyr's family should get clarity on the benefits from the outset. 18 US military personnel have been killed and 780 others have been wounded since the beginning of the Iran war. Also, multiple bases across West Asia have suffered damage running into billions of dollars due to Iranian retaliatory strikes. The American leadership has been trying to downplay the Iran war ahead of November's midterm elections. For instance, US Vice President JD Vance rejected using the word 'war' to characterise US operations in Iran, saying that there was no active shooting. US President Donald Trump also backed Vance's stance, adding that the operation against Iran is 'small potatoes' for America. Now, after CENTCOM forces struck three Iranian crude oil carriers over the weekend in response to IRGC's ballistic missile attack on US warships, Tehran issued a stern warning. Iran's parliament speaker and key negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf emphasised that every violation of his country's security and assets will be met with a faster, heavier and more painful response... This is not all. Iran wants to further strengthen its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz. In an interview, Iran's supreme national security council head, Mohsen Rezai, announced that Tehran will soon announce a restricted zone outside Hormuz. Any vessel entering this zone will be placed on Iran's sanctions list. Amid this, Iran also revealed that its negotiations with Oman regarding designating a safe route for passage of ships through Hormuz have reached the final stage... While there has been a temporary lull in attacks between US and Iran, Israel has intensified its attacks on Lebanon. Plumes of smoke were seen after a barrage of artillery fire by Israel. In overnight air strikes by IDF on a village in southern Lebanon, at least eleven people, including two children, were killed. Visuals showed a spate of destruction. Rescuers were seen desperately trying to search for survivors amid the rubble... Now, as depleting weapon stockpiles haunt US and West Asia continues to bear the brunt of Iran's retaliatory strikes, is there a growing rethink on America's role in the region? Qatar, for instance, advocated a focus on self-sufficiency. As US struggles to break the stalemate, former Pentagon chief Leon Panetta issued a warning. He opined that the Iran war risks becoming another 'forever war' in West Asia and is likely to continue for six more months without being resolved...

As many as 18 US military personnel have been killed and 780 others have been wounded since the beginning of the Iran war. Also, multiple bases across West Asia have suffered damage running into billions of dollars due to Iranian retaliatory strikes.

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