TAMRAH NEWS

Ukrainian drones struck the St Petersburg Oil Terminal and a data centre belonging to VK, Russia’s biggest homegrown social network, early on Sunday, according to the Kyiv Independent. The terminal’s operator said staff were evacuated, no one was injured and a fire broke out. Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the Leningrad region, said 145 Ukrainian drones were shot down over his territory, with falling debris damaging cars and starting several fires. The governor of St Petersburg also reported fires in the city.
The raid on Mr Putin’s birthplace lands in the middle of an argument about oil. Donald Trump announced last weekend that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop targeting each other’s energy facilities, a deal that surprised Volodymyr Zelensky. On Sunday the American president accused Mr Zelensky of using Russian diesel refineries as targets and of pushing up fuel prices around the world, farmers and ranchers in the United States included.
Kyiv has shown no sign of regarding energy sites as off limits, and the strike suggests the truce has not restrained its drones. For Moscow, a fire at a terminal in the city that Mr Putin once ran his political career from is a reminder that distance from the front line no longer guarantees safety. For Washington, it is another complication in a week when the diesel market has become a bargaining chip.

A fire that began during a training exercise at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, one of the country’s busiest military bases, about 210km east of Edmonton, has killed four service members and wounded dozens, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Sunday. Major-General Wade Rutland, commander of the 1st Canadian Division, said a grass fire broke out on the range and spread quickly. CBC reported that military officials ruled out a natural-gas explosion.
Fierce winds carried the flames beyond the base and into surrounding farmland. By 11pm on Saturday, local autho rities said the fire was being held and that property and critical infrastructure had been protected. At least 19 of the injured were in critical condition, according to CBC. Global News and CBC had earlier cited sources who put the death toll at seven, a gap officials have not explained; the four confirmed deaths are the figure the government is using.
Defence Minister David McGuinty said he could not recall an incident like it in recent memory, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are assisting the investigation. Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, called it a significant and tragic fire. The questions that follow are practical. Why a grass fire on a range, in a dry and windy autumn, killed trained soldiers; what firebreaks and evacuation procedures were in place; and whether the toll will rise. Canada has not lost this many troops in a single domestic accident for a long time, and the inquiry will be watched closely.

More than half a million people joined protests across France on Saturday, the interior ministry said, putting turnout at 550,000 at 110 demonstrations, 110,000 of them in Paris. The CGT union claimed 800,000. By Sunday morning Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said about 1,800 people had been arrested and about 500 police, firefighters and paramedics hurt. Paris police recorded 855 detentions, a record for the capital, and Lyon 160.
Shops were looted and buildings set alight in several cities, and the 19th-century town hall in Limoges burned. A retail trade group estimated that about 1,500 businesses were damaged, with losses in the hundreds of millions of euros.
The unrest began in sixth-form colleges in mid-September, over class sizes, funding and staffing, and spread to wider anger about fuel prices, the cost of living and a draft budget that freezes benefits and public-sector pay. Veterans of the 2018 yellow-vest movement called Saturday’s day of action. The government has offered 3,000 more substitute teachers, a say for students in school decisions and the dropping of a planned rise in some university registration fees. Mr Nuñez has signalled that concessions have limits and blamed the far left and looters for the violence.
The disorder has also been noticed abroad. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman accused Emmanuel Macron of hypocrisy, pointing to the French president’s January remarks on protests in Iran. Mr Macron now has to choose between buying calm with money the budget does not have and restoring order without inflaming a movement that has already shown it can fill the streets.

Israelis go to the polls on 27 October for the first time since the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 and the war in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a seventh term, and his main challenger is a former chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot.
Four recent polls compiled by the Jerusalem Post give Mr Eisenkot’s Yashar party an average of 21.5 seats, ahead of Likud on 19 and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad on 12.5. Channel 13 puts the prime minister’s bloc at 51 seats, down from 55, and Maariv has Likud at 18, with Arab parties on a combined 14. A tracker of every published poll puts the outgoing coalition on about 51, ten short of a majority. The outlier is i24NEWS, whose polling by Direct Polls gives Likud 25 and the coalition 57, still short.
The parties that lead each bloc are small by historical standards, and the result is likely to turn on turnout, the undecided vote and which small parties clear the electoral threshold. A poll for a Hebrew daily found most Israelis would prefer a unity government to another election if the vote produces no winner. The last polls may be published on Friday 23 October. Exit polls arrive when voting ends at 22:00 on election night, and official results are due on 4 November. Mr Trump’s endorsement of Mr Netanyahu on Sunday adds a foreign voice to a contest that many Israelis already regard as the most consequential in their country’s history.

Haaretz reported, citing one unnamed diplomatic source, that Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to win Saudi consent via Washington for Israeli forces to join the campaign against Yemen’s Houthis, and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman opposes it, fearing a backlash among Saudis. Hurriyet Daily News said there was no immediate Saudi comment. Israeli reports say the aim would be to build ties and move towards normalisation, while a Saudi official told Kan News that Israeli help would not soften Riyadh’s conditions, which are tied to a path to a Palestinian state.
The context is a surge in Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports and energy sites, following a Saudi-led offensive earlier this month, as covered in stories 5 and 6. President Trump said on 10 October that Washington was weighing whether to join Saudi strikes. Houthi political bureau member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti warned of a “swift and painful” response if the US intervenes and said the group would back any internal movement against the crown prince.
Israeli and Saudi officials are already sharing intelligence on the Houthis through CENTCOM, i24NEWS reported, and Haaretz previously said the Israeli military advised against putting Israel at the forefront. Because the Haaretz story rests on a single anonymous source, readers should treat it as unconfirmed.

The joint statement recognised the UK’s attribution of the incident at RAF Fairford on 27 September to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which London says shows its willingness to project hostile activity abroad through covert networks and proxies. Fairford hosts US long-range bombers, including B-1 and B-52 aircraft. The Jerusalem Post described the incident as an attempted bomb plot; the statement itself uses the word incident, and details remain limited.
The ministers tied it to a wave of attacks across Europe on Jewish communities, Iranian journalists and US interests, claimed by a group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI). Britain summoned Iran’s ambassador and sanctioned Ruhollah Bazghandi, the IRGC’s head of counterespionage operations, and Shahram Ali Reza Tamarzadeh Jakki, linked to the Zindashti criminal network, with asset freezes and travel bans. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham told MPs the incident was almost certainly directed by Iran and that further sanctions would follow.
The episode widens the war beyond the Gulf: while shooting is mostly confined to ships and proxies, Western governments now describe a covert campaign on their own soil. Iran has not been reported to accept responsibility, and attribution rests on the UK government’s own assessment.

SpaceX announced an agreement to acquire up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band, which carries over long distances and penetrates buildings. Elon Musk called it a very big deal, and the company said that with its Gen2 satellites Starlink Mobile could become the first operator to deploy both satellite and terrestrial spectrum.
Telecom shares fell on 9 October. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US dropped between roughly 5.5% and 7.4% in premarket trading, Deutsche Telekom fell between 6.5% and 8%, Vodafone around 4%, Orange and Telefónica by a few per cent, and Europe’s telecom index hit a multi-month low. SpaceX shares rose about 4%, and tower operators bucked the sell-off. Morgan Stanley said any threat would emerge gradually, beginning in rural areas, and some analysts called the sell-off overdone.
The deal also draws political attention. Sharecast reported that an ethics filing showed President Trump bought $5m of SpaceX bonds about a month earlier; the White House says his portfolio is independently managed. The same company’s Starlink and Starshield services are at the centre of the dispute over Ukraine in story 8.

The ECB lifted its key deposit rate from 2.25% to 2.50% on 10 September, citing energy-driven inflation. Eurozone inflation had climbed above 3%, well beyond the 2% target. Updated projections put average inflation at 3.0% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027 and 2.1% in 2028. President Christine Lagarde said the bank had not committed to a rate path and would decide meeting by meeting, and markets priced further rises by April 2027, with a December move seen as highly likely.
The backdrop is the Iran war. Before it began in late February, euro-zone inflation had fallen to 1.9%. Lagarde has said the bank would respond forcefully if inflation deviated significantly and persistently from target, and in the most severe scenario cited by the bank, further destruction of Gulf energy infrastructure could push inflation above 6% early next year. Investinglive reported that French inflation rose sharply in September, deepening the dilemma.
The ECB and Fed are therefore tightening together (story 16), a combination that raises borrowing costs for governments already carrying record debt (story 17). This story reflects the 10 September decision and subsequent commentary; check the date of the October policy meeting before publication.