What moved
Ethiopian federal forces take Mekelle, the capital of Tigray
The last two issues followed the return of war between Ethiopia's federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the party that runs the northern region of Tigray. On Saturday 3 October, by the accounts set out below, the party's fighters and leaders left the regional capital, Mekelle, and a militia allied to the government went in, followed by federal troops. Ethiopia has 132.1 million people (World Bank, 2024). Al Jazeera's bureau chief in the country puts Tigray's population at between six and seven million (Al Jazeera).
The order of events, as our sources give it. The city's airport was one of three in the region that Tigrayan forces seized when the fighting began on 23 September. It was retaken first: RFI reports that Tigrayan troops allied to the government took it on Friday, and three sources told Reuters on Saturday that the army held it, which Reuters said it could not immediately verify (RFI; Nation Africa). Someone close to the Tigray Peace Forces, a militia on the government's side, told Reuters its fighters reached the centre of Mekelle on Saturday afternoon and the army came in behind them (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). A humanitarian source told AFP that no fighting had been reported for the moment (RFI). The party said the regional government would be "temporarily moved out of Mekelle" (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). On Sunday federal troops were patrolling the city and manning its main institutions, a local journalist told AFP (France 24).
How much of this is confirmed is limited, and the sources say so. Communications were restored on Sunday for the first time in more than a week (France 24). The party and the militia have each made statements. From the federal side there is less. AFP said neither the army's spokesperson nor the prime minister's had answered its requests for comment (France 24). On Sunday the Ethiopian news agency ENA carried an interview with Abraham Belay, whom it describes as a former president of the interim administration in Tigray. He said the federal government was preparing a new interim administration for the region, with regional elections within a few months, and that the army was clearing what he called illegal armed forces (ENA). The accounts of the city itself rest on residents, humanitarian sources, local journalists and people close to the two sides, most of them unnamed. The BBC spoke to two people in Mekelle who said the city is in the hands of pro-government forces (BBC).
One resident told AFP there were no police: "Last night, we had to organise ourselves and take care of security" (France 24). A source told RFI of looting in shops and in some regional offices (RFI). Accounts of ordinary life in the city differ. AFP reported businesses and shops still closed on Sunday, their owners having moved stock away for fear of looting (France 24). An American doctor with a network of health workers for Tigray told the BBC that the city had been calm since the withdrawal, apart from gunfire and looting soon after it, and that restaurants and markets were busy once phones and mobile banking came back (BBC).
No analyst or news agency in what we read treats this as the end of the war. The party's chairman, Debretsion Gebremichael, called the withdrawal deliberate: "We will attack the enemy where we choose, not where he chooses for us" (BBC). There is a precedent. In the war of 2020 to 2022 federal forces captured Mekelle within the first month, and the party took it back seven months later. Reuters called the loss of the city a major setback for the party's alliance, and said analysts think it unlikely to end the conflict (Nation Africa; The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). That alliance was formed in September, when the party joined six other armed movements, among them the Fano militia of the Amhara region and the Oromo Liberation Army, with the stated aim of removing the government of the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed (BBC).
The two sides do not agree on who started the fighting. The party says it was responding to a federal offensive that included drone strikes; the government says Tigrayan forces attacked first, after seizing the airports (BBC). Our sources divide as well. Both wire agencies write that the party's side moved first: Reuters that its alliance launched a big offensive on 23 September, AFP that the party launched attacks into neighbouring regions (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters; France 24). France 24's report of Sunday and Al Jazeera say only that fighting began, or broke out, on that date (France 24; Al Jazeera).
What it has cost is known only in part. Amnesty International says it has received "credible reports" of the destruction of civilian objects by shelling and air strikes and of intensified forced conscription (Al Jazeera). A researcher, who was not named, told RFI that the urgent question now is humanitarian, with the region in a serious drought. RFI adds that 922,000 people in Tigray received food aid in July, according to FEWS NET, a famine early-warning network (RFI).
The neighbours met the day after the city changed hands. On Sunday the presidents of Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia and the head of Sudan's army gathered at El-Alamein, on Egypt's coast (France 24). All four have strained relations with Ethiopia, which accuses Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan of backing the Tigrayan side; all three deny it (BBC). They called for disputes to be settled by "peaceful means", according to a statement from Egypt's presidency (France 24). Their joint declaration rejected "unilateral measures" that could harm countries downstream on the Nile, which the BBC reads as an apparent reference to Ethiopia's dam, and said the governance of the Red Sea belongs to the states on its shores alone (BBC; Daily News Egypt). Ethiopia has no coast, and Abiy has been pressing for ownership of the Eritrean port of Assab and has hinted at taking it by force (BBC). Egypt's foreign minister told Reuters: "we are not party to the domestic crisis facing Ethiopia now" (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). Debretsion, in a video message on Thursday, called the conflict regional and "a war to control the Red Sea" (France 24).
Iran says the Strait of Hormuz stays closed until its conditions are met
About a fifth of the world's oil and gas moved through the Strait of Hormuz before the United States and Israel went to war with Iran on 28 February (BBC; Al Jazeera). Al Jazeera describes it as largely blocked and disrupted for more than seven months. Each side claims to control it: Trump told Time magazine "We took it over", and a deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said it had remained under Iranian control (Dawn; The Express Tribune). On Sunday the speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is also Iran's chief negotiator, was quoted by Nournews, an Iranian news agency linked to the state, as saying that would not change: "the Strait of Hormuz will not open until our seven conditions based on the Islamabad memorandum are met" (Al Jazeera).
Our sources explain that sentence in two ways. The Hindu's report says the seven conditions were set out in an interim agreement with the United States in June (The Hindu). CNBC says that agreement, the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, was signed by the two presidents and brought a brief pause in the fighting, and that Iran's conditions for letting ships pass include a halt to US "acts of aggression", an end to the naval blockade of its ports and the release of Iranian assets (CNBC). Al Jazeera presents the statement as a demand that Washington accept Iran's seven-day plan to reopen the waterway (Al Jazeera). An earlier Al Jazeera report describes a seven-day roadmap, passed on through Qatar, under which Iran would reopen the strait and return to nuclear talks in exchange for an end to the blockade, relief from sanctions and a ceasefire covering Lebanon and Yemen (Al Jazeera); we take the two to be the same plan. A TASS headline in our pool reads "Iran to reopen Strait of Hormuz within seven days if US accepts proposal". We could not read the article behind it and do not know which statement it reports.
Washington's answer so far is no. President Donald Trump told Time magazine that Iran's offer was "simply not enough", and said strikes on Iran could resume after the US midterm elections in November (Dawn). Ghalibaf was quoted as saying the United States had recently made "some proposals through a mediator" (Al Jazeera). Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the latest US proposal was almost identical to earlier ones and concentrated on the nuclear question, where Iran wants to talk about the strait (The Express Tribune).
On the water, ships were reported hit on each of the window's three days. A British maritime agency said a tanker leaving the Gulf on Friday was struck by an "unknown projectile", which started a small fire; no casualties were reported (The Straits Times, carrying AFP). The UK Maritime Trade Operations centre said it had received a report of a crude oil tanker hit four nautical miles east of Oman on Saturday, and of another struck in the strait on Sunday with damage to its engine room (CNBC). India said on Saturday that five of its citizens had been brought ashore safely from a Kuwait-flagged tanker, the MT Kazimah III, hit by a projectile in the strait; our sources do not say whether that is one of the ships in the reports above (The Express Tribune). None of these reports says who fired. Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority said on Thursday that three tankers struck in recent days, owned or chartered by the United Arab Emirates, were on its "non-compliance list" of ships that it says do not meet its requirements for authorised passage (Tehran Times). AFP's description of the standing position is that Iran blocks commercial shipping and fires on vessels it accuses of crossing without authorisation, and that the United States has answered with a blockade of Iranian ports (The Straits Times, carrying AFP).
More US forces are on the way. A US official told Al Jazeera that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt has left San Diego for the region, followed by ships carrying more than 2,000 Marines, and that three carriers and two amphibious groups would be around Iran by the end of November (Al Jazeera). Euronews adds a caution: according to USNI News, which it cites, the Roosevelt is scheduled to relieve the George Washington, one of the two carriers that were in the Arabian Sea at the start of the week, so whether this is a lasting increase or an overlap during a rotation "remains unclear" (Euronews). The Express Tribune reports that the second of those two, the George HW Bush, arrived off Thailand on Sunday for a rest after months in the region; our sources do not say how that squares with a count of three carriers by the end of November (The Express Tribune). The Associated Press, citing US officials, estimates the deployment at 9,000 to 10,000 additional troops; Euronews, which reports that estimate, puts the number already in the region at more than 50,000 (Euronews).
The cost reaches anyone who buys fuel. Brent crude, the benchmark oil price, closed on Friday at $102.25 a barrel (CNBC), against about $72 before the war (The Guardian). On Friday the leaders of the G7 countries agreed, by the French president's account, to release up to 100 million barrels from their emergency stocks, half of it diesel under proposals he is reported to have drawn up, after Trump threatened to ban exports of US diesel unless European governments drew on their reserves. An analyst at Macquarie Group, quoted by The Guardian from CNBC, said the only real remedy was "more oil through the strait of Hormuz and out of the Middle East" (The Guardian).
Three days of protest in India against the head of the election commission
From Friday 2 October to Sunday, protesters in Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities demanded the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the chief election commissioner. India has 1.45 billion people (World Bank, 2024).
The cause is a revision of the voter rolls that the Election Commission has been carrying out since June 2025, called the Special Intensive Revision (Scroll.in). How many voters it has removed is itself in dispute. Al Jazeera reports that more than 130 million names have been struck off (Al Jazeera). The Guardian says tens of millions have been deleted and that large numbers of people are challenging their removal (The Guardian). The Congress party, which leads the opposition, puts the number deleted at 13 crore; a crore is an Indian unit of ten million, so that is the same 130 million. The governing Bharatiya Janata Party answered it on Sunday in a post on X, reported by the news agency PTI and carried by The Hindu: "Thirteen crore names were not deleted. They were flagged in the draft under categories such as dead, absent, shifted or duplicate" (The Hindu). The party says final action follows claims, objections and appeals. The commission says the exercise is meant to remove duplicate, deceased or ineligible entries. Critics say it has fallen hardest on poorer people and minorities (Al Jazeera). They also say it favours the governing party, which the commission and the party both deny (Al Jazeera).
What turned a long-running complaint into street protest was a report in The Indian Express on 23 September. As Scroll.in summarises it, the commission's two other members, whom it names as Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, lodged 14 formal objections in 10 months against decisions connected with the revision, and said some had been taken without their knowledge (Scroll.in). We have not read the Indian Express report itself. By the South China Morning Post's account the commission's reply is that all three commissioners approved the changes and that differing views are a normal part of its deliberations (South China Morning Post). Al Jazeera says the commission has not refuted the report (Al Jazeera).
The protests bring together the Cockroach Janta Party, a youth movement that began as online satire, opposition parties and student organisations (The Guardian; Al Jazeera). The party called Friday's protest in Mumbai; the Hindustan Times says the one in Delhi was called by an opposition party and by student and youth organisations (Scroll.in; Hindustan Times). The movement took its name in May. By the South China Morning Post's account the chief justice referred to people with fake degrees as "cockroaches", which was widely read as aimed at young Indians, and later said he had not meant them; Al Jazeera says he equated unemployed young people with cockroaches (Al Jazeera). Its protests over a leaked medical entrance examination ended with the resignation of the education minister on 25 July (South China Morning Post).
The two cities went differently. In Delhi the police sealed the usual protest site at Jantar Mantar; 12 nearby metro stations were closed, according to the metro operator; and orders barring gatherings of five or more people without written permission were in force (Hindustan Times). Telecom companies were ordered to suspend internet services around the site for 12 hours, according to the same newspaper, which says it has not seen the order (Hindustan Times). Counts of the people detained in Delhi on Friday rose through the day and do not agree. Al Jazeera gives more than 500 by mid-afternoon, a figure also in The Hindu's report (Al Jazeera; The Hindu). The police put it at around 700, according to the news agency PTI, and The Guardian says at least 700 (Hindustan Times; The Guardian). The Hindustan Times says around 1,000 across the city, and quotes a senior police officer, not named, as giving nearly 750 near the site and another 400 elsewhere, which add up to more than that (Hindustan Times). In Mumbai the police had refused permission, more than 10,000 people gathered around Shivaji Park by Scroll.in's count, and nobody was detained; the next day, Scroll.in reports from the Hindustan Times, the police registered a case against the movement's leaders and more than 400 unidentified people (Scroll.in, on the two protests; Scroll.in, on the police case).
Detentions in Delhi continued on Saturday and Sunday (South China Morning Post). Three women journalists said they were sexually harassed by police officers while covering Saturday's protest, and the Delhi Police said it had passed their complaints to its Crime Branch for inquiry (The Hindu). Kumar has not responded in public to the protests or to the calls for him to go. On Friday the commission told its officials to register eligible voters who had been left off the rolls by mistake (Al Jazeera).
Three dates follow closely. The Supreme Court was due on Monday 5 October to hear petitions seeking Kumar's suspension (The Hindu). The opposition alliance plans a march to the commission's office, on Monday in the South China Morning Post's report and on Tuesday in Al Jazeera's (South China Morning Post; Al Jazeera). And the movement has called supporters to Delhi on 10 October if he has not resigned (The Hindu). Asim Ali, a political analyst quoted by Al Jazeera, does not expect the government to give way: a resignation "would be seen as a fatal admission of guilt" (Al Jazeera). A report carried by Dawn describes this year's youth-led protests as pressure on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, "unprecedented in his 12 years in power" (Dawn).
Brazil's presidential election goes to a run-off, with Flávio Bolsonaro ahead
Brazil voted on Sunday 4 October and no candidate for president won outright. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, of the right-wing Liberal Party, came first with 47.03% of the valid votes. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, of the left-wing Workers' Party, took 45.16%. Those are the electoral court's figures with the count complete, as BBC Mundo reports them, and it puts the gap at about two million votes (BBC; BBC Mundo). The Associated Press, with 99.8% of the vote reported, gives the court's count as just over 56 million votes to 53.7 million, which is a little more than that (Associated Press). The two meet again on 25 October. Brazil has 212.0 million people (World Bank, 2024), and almost 160 million were eligible to vote (BBC).
The order was the surprise. Most polls in the final days had Lula slightly in front; one, by CNT/MDA, gave him 47.3% to 43.1% (Al Jazeera). "I admit I was convinced I would win in the first round," Lula said afterwards (BBC). Analysts told Reuters, while the count was still under way, that they believed Bolsonaro was collecting "protest votes" from people voting against Lula, votes that had been expected to reach him only in a second round (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo notes that since the country's return to democracy no candidate who finished the first round in second place has gone on to win the presidency (Folha de S.Paulo). Augusto Cury, the writer who came third with 3.4 million votes, said he would endorse neither man (Associated Press).
The challenger is the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president whom Lula defeated in 2022 by 1.8 percentage points. The father is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after that defeat, is barred from office, and is under house arrest because of his health (BBC). The son has pledged an amnesty for him and for the supporters responsible for the riots of 8 January 2023 (BBC).
Reuters lists what voters were weighing as the cost of living, household debt, crime and corruption; the BBC adds sovereignty (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters; BBC). On corruption, both camps were touched by one scandal. Daniel Vorcaro, who ran a bank that no longer exists, is accused of a fraud running to billions of dollars. Flávio Bolsonaro has confirmed raising money from him for a film about his father, is under investigation by the federal police for money laundering in connection with the case, and denies wrongdoing. The banker's reported links to Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice who presided over Jair Bolsonaro's trial and is widely seen as an ally of Lula, made fresh trouble for the president a month before the vote. Moraes says the allegations about his own dealings with the banker are politically motivated, because of his part in convicting the elder Bolsonaro (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters; BBC).
The United States figured in the campaign. Lula campaigned on sovereignty and at times accused Washington of trying to influence the vote, which Washington denies; the head of the electoral court, Kassio Nunes Marques, said on Sunday afternoon, while voting was still going on, that the court's monitoring teams had found no sign of interference from outside the country (BBC; The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). Trump has not formally endorsed a candidate, though he received Flávio Bolsonaro at the White House in May (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters; South China Morning Post). The senator has promised the United States access to Brazil's rare earths, which the South China Morning Post describes as the second-largest reserves in the world after China's; China has been Brazil's largest trading partner since 2009 (South China Morning Post). Brian Winter, the editor in chief of Americas Quarterly, told NPR that of the last 16 elections in Latin America, 13 were won by candidates of the right or centre-right (NPR).
The vote was also for Congress: all 513 members of the lower house and 54 of the 81 senators (The Guardian; The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). The BBC reports that the Liberal Party had the most governors, senators and deputies elected in the results available (BBC).
Confidence. The first-round result is official. What it means for the second is opinion. Folha's analysis calls Lula's position dramatic, though not beyond recovery (Folha de S.Paulo). A political scientist told the Associated Press that it was a successful night for Bolsonaro and that nothing is won yet (Associated Press).
Russia strikes the bridges of Kyiv and tells diplomats to leave
Kyiv is divided by the Dnipro river and has about three million people (BBC). BBC Ukrainian, as Meduza reports it, says the strikes that began on Thursday 1 October were the first on the city's bridges across the river in the war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 (Meduza). On Thursday and Friday Russian drones struck the Southern Bridge repeatedly, four times in two days by the BBC's count, closing it to cars and to the metro (BBC). On Saturday morning a strike on the Northern Bridge injured two people and damaged the roadway and the overhead lines for trolleybuses, the mayor said (BBC). Ukraine has 37.9 million people (World Bank, 2024).
With traffic closed or restricted on further crossings (the accounts we read differ on how far), the city seized up on Friday (Meduza). "I've been travelling for three hours … to get to work," a seamstress whose bus was stuck told AFP (Al Jazeera). The mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said Russia was "tearing Kyiv apart", and that "It's no longer possible to pretend that we can live now as we lived in peacetime" (Al Jazeera).
Our sources do not agree on how many bridges there are to lose. The Hindu's report says the attacks closed, fully or partly, three of the city's six road bridges; Euronews counts eight bridges; Meduza counts nine, including those for trains and pedestrians (The Hindu; Euronews; Meduza). Experts cited by the BBC think drones are unlikely to bring a bridge down, but that repeated strikes will force closures and risk weakening the structures. The BBC adds that some of the bridges are reported to be in poor condition (BBC).
Russia's account is that the bridges carried Ukrainian troops and military cargo (BBC). President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia's attacks on economic targets answer Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil refineries and on its ships in the Black Sea: "But they started it." The BBC notes that it was Russia that first launched attacks on energy facilities. Ukraine says it strikes oil infrastructure because oil helps to pay for the war (BBC). Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says his country will answer attacks on its energy system with attacks on Russia's, and will not strike civilian sites as Russia does (Al Jazeera).
Then came the warning. On Saturday Russia's foreign ministry said, in AFP's translation, that the armed forces would "continue to deliver massive retaliatory strikes", and again urged diplomats and citizens of other countries to leave Kyiv and not to visit Ukraine (Channels TV). It said "responsibility for any potential negative consequences rests entirely with those who ignore this warning". AFP notes that Moscow gave a similar warning in May, and that leaders of countries backing Ukraine travelled to Kyiv regardless (The Straits Times, carrying AFP). Before this latest warning, The Guardian reported that Western diplomats say in public that they intend to stay, and that two senior diplomats said in private that contingency plans were being drawn up to move embassies to Lviv or to eastern Poland if Russia began to target diplomatic missions deliberately (The Guardian). On Sunday Russia's defence ministry said it would intensify its strikes, citing an interview in which Zelensky said Ukraine would answer attacks on its energy system by hitting Russian refineries (The Japan Times).
Zelensky's claim is that this is policy. He told Reuters that Ukrainian intelligence had reviewed documents showing a "new doctrine" of striking roads, schools, hospitals and other civilian sites, meant to push people out of the capital and other cities (Al Jazeera). That is his account; the Kremlin rejects the accusation that it has abandoned the rules of war (The Straits Times, carrying AFP).
Two things in our sources connect this to the rest of this issue. Kyiv is short of interceptors: The Hindu's report says the Patriot air defence systems that can stop ballistic missiles are in short supply because of the war with Iran, and AFP says air-defence stocks have been depleted since that war began (The Hindu; The Straits Times, carrying AFP). And there are offers on the table. Ukraine's foreign minister said Kyiv had received separate proposals for a partial truce from the United States, India, Turkey and Egypt, covering attacks on energy and on shipping in the Black Sea. He said Ukraine would accept a halt on both together, "but only in that combination", and repeated its offer of an unconditional ceasefire on the front line. Moscow has rejected a ceasefire, saying a full peace agreement must come first; the report does not give its answer to the partial proposals (The Hindu).
Still happening
Congo's Ebola outbreak passes 4,000 deaths
The previous issue gave the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a full account. This is what changed in the days since. Government figures now put the dead at 4,018 among 8,300 confirmed cases in seven provinces, with 2,162 people recovered (Euronews; The Straits Times, carrying Reuters). Congo has 109.3 million people (World Bank, 2024).
Whether the worst has passed is described differently by people close to the response. The health minister, Roger Kamba, told a press conference in Kinshasa on Friday that the peak is behind the country, and said 19 of 63 health zones had gone at least three weeks without a case (RFI). Wessam Mankoula, who leads a joint support team of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the World Health Organization, told reporters a day earlier: "We cannot confidently say the outbreak is under control at this stage." Almost 80% of new infections, he said, are being found in people who were not on any list of contacts (The Straits Times, carrying Bloomberg). Africa CDC says newly confirmed cases are falling, and that the fall could be down to insecurity and to difficulty getting communities to cooperate in some of the worst-hit places. The Hindu's report gives the weekly figures: around 850 cases and 470 deaths in mid-July, and an average of 490 cases and 230 deaths in September (The Hindu). More than half of the deaths still happen outside any medical facility (RFI).
The previous issue reported that a transit centre for patients had burned down at a camp for displaced people in Ituri province. The account now involves the army, and our sources word it differently. The Hindu's report has a senior UN official saying the camp was burned by soldiers who were searching for weapons, and that 19,000 people fled (The Hindu). Euronews, citing the UN, says the centre burned down on Tuesday after soldiers entered the site and the displaced people fled (Euronews).
The people doing the work are being lost to the disease and to other things. About 254 health workers have been infected and 50 have died, by Africa CDC's count (The Straits Times, carrying Bloomberg). In Bunia, health workers, among them the teams that trace patients' contacts, protested over unpaid wages with placards reading "No money, no data!" Médecins Sans Frontières said a member of its staff had been infected, and the worker was flown to the Netherlands for treatment (The Hindu). A contractor responsible for detecting cases was killed in an attack on a health facility in North Kivu, the Congolese authorities said (Euronews).
The disease is also back in territory the state does not hold. The AFC/M23 rebels, who control large parts of two eastern provinces, had declared their areas free of Ebola in late June. A case was confirmed there in early September, and that patient was discharged on Tuesday. On Friday the rebels reported six more, four of them found by testing people who had already died (The Straits Times, carrying Reuters).
The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. A trial of another kind of protection has enrolled more than 250 people who were exposed to the virus: an antiviral pill, obeldesivir, given soon after suspected contact to stop the disease developing. The trial aims to recruit nearly 1,000, half of whom will receive a placebo (PBS, carrying the Associated Press).
The slow story
El Niño: a NOAA index passes 2.0, a level its record shows in only three earlier episodes
Our watchlist reads a file from the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before every issue. The file holds the Oceanic Niño Index: how far the surface of a stretch of the equatorial Pacific is from its usual temperature for the time of year, averaged over three months. The watchlist flagged it because the newest value is higher than the one we read last time. For July to September it is 2.16°C above average, up from 1.80 for June to August (NOAA, index file). We then compared that value with the rest of the file. The comparisons below are ours; the numbers are NOAA's.
The file begins in 1950 and holds 920 overlapping three-month seasons. The index has stood at 2.0 or above in 15 of them, and those fall in four episodes: 1982 to 1983, 1997 to 1998, 2015 to 2016, and now.
| Episode | First season at 2.0 or above | Value then | Highest value of the episode |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 to 1983 | October to December 1982 | 2.03 | 2.14 |
| 1997 to 1998 | August to October 1997 | 2.04 | 2.37 |
| 2015 to 2016 | August to October 2015 | 2.02 | 2.59 |
| 2026, so far | July to September 2026 | 2.16 | not yet known |
Source: our reading of the NOAA index file, retrieved on 5 October 2026. Values are degrees Celsius above the average for the season. These are the values as we found them that day.
The line at 2.0 is ours, drawn because so few seasons pass it. The episode of 2023 to 2024 peaked at 1.99, so "three earlier episodes" rests on a margin of one hundredth of a degree.
Two things stand out. This episode crossed 2.0 one season earlier in the year than any of the other three, and its July to September value is the highest the file holds for that season; the next highest is 1.79, in 1997. And it got there fast. In February to April the index stood at 0.11. Five overlapping seasons later, which is five months, it is 2.05 higher, the largest rise over five seasons anywhere in the file; the largest before this year was 1.82, also in 1997.
NOAA's own forecasters said on 10 September that El Niño was strengthening, and put the chance of "a very strong event" in the coming northern autumn and winter at more than 90%. For October to December they gave "a 75% chance of a historic event", meaning one stronger than any El Niño since 1950 (NOAA, monthly statement).
Confidence. Three cautions. The forecast's threshold for a historic event, 2.5°C, is stated for a measure that NOAA's statement calls RONI, not for the index our watchlist reads, so it should not be set directly against the 2.59 in the table. The index measures ocean temperature in one region, not what an El Niño does to people; NOAA's statement says that with an event of that magnitude the chances of the usual effects "are larger, though not guaranteed". And the thread we opened two issues ago follows a projection of deaths from heat during this El Niño. Nothing here tests that projection. What the file shows is that the index has passed 2.0, one season earlier in the year than in any of the three earlier episodes.
Pattern watch
- Ethiopia and Tigray. From issue two. Federal forces hold Mekelle; the party that ran it says it will fight on from elsewhere; four neighbouring governments met in Egypt; see above.
- Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. From issue one. Read for the first time since issue two. Iran says the Strait of Hormuz stays closed until its conditions are met, and tankers were reported hit on each of the three days; see above. CNBC, citing Reuters, reports that Yemen's Houthis said they had targeted a Saudi Aramco facility in Riyadh with missiles and drones; the Saudi authorities had not commented (CNBC).
- Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From the previous issue. Past 4,000 deaths. The health minister says the peak has passed; the head of a joint Africa CDC and World Health Organization support team says it cannot be called under control; see above.
- The El Niño projection. From issue two. NOAA's index reached 2.16 for July to September; see the slow story. Nothing read for this issue tests the projection itself.
- India's voter rolls. Opened this issue. Three days of protest demanding the resignation of the head of the election commission, with a court hearing and two marches due within days of the window closing.
- Brazil's presidential run-off. Opened this issue. Flávio Bolsonaro led the first round; the second is on 25 October.
- Iraq after the coalition. From the previous issue. Seen in headlines only, not read: Iraq cleared Iranian airlines to resume some flights, and Russia welcomed the US withdrawal.
- The trade truce between the United States and China. From the previous issue. Nothing read for this issue.
- South Sudan's first election. From issue two. Seen in headlines only, not read: talks between the parties about the vote faltered when the opposition stayed away.
- Venezuela's transition. From issue two. Seen in headlines only, not read: protests over long power cuts in several states, and Trump not ruling out a US military base in the country.
- The Himalayan glacier risk. From issue two. Seen in headlines only, not read: a government plan to drain glacial lakes after deadly floods.
- Deaths in custody in Nigeria. From issue two. Nothing read for this issue. No finding from either inquiry appears in the window's headlines.
- Russia's political system after the war. From issue one. Nothing read for this issue.
- Arctic militarisation. From issue one. Nothing read for this issue.
- Displacement out of Yemen. From issue one. Not quiet. Seen in headlines only, not read: Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of striking a power station in one of its holy cities, which the Houthis denied, and air strikes were reported on Sanaa. This thread has now gone four issues without being written up, which is a fact about us, not about Yemen.
What this issue does not contain, and why
A failed execution in the US state of Tennessee was the most widely carried story in our pool: thirty-three newsrooms in our sources carried it. By its headlines, which are all we read of it, a prisoner, Christa Pike, survived an attempt to execute her and the state's prisons chief resigned. It was marked as high as Brazil's election and was not run. It concerns one person directly, and a story that is already heavily covered runs here only when we can add something the coverage lacked. Set beside it, the Ebola outbreak above, with more than 4,000 dead, was carried by seven newsrooms. Both counts are of our own sources.
A march on Pakistan's capital by supporters of the former prime minister Imran Khan, demanding his release, had only set out when the window closed, and was passed over for room. The finding by investigators in the United Arab Emirates that the attack in a Flydubai cockpit was a planned act of terrorism was passed over as the incident itself was in the previous issue: one aircraft, very widely reported, and nothing we could add. The arrest of a US Marine in Okinawa over the killing of a local woman, and Japan's protest to the US ambassador, was a single criminal case and was passed over for room. All of them are on the scorecard below with their marks.
The fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthis filled many headlines in our sources in this window and did not reach the pool of candidates at all. It is listed under Pattern watch as seen in headlines and not read.
This is an even-numbered issue. The section on attention gaps that is meant to alternate with the slow story is not yet built, and the slot holds a slow story because an indicator on our watchlist moved.
How this issue was made
Researched and written by an AI system working to a published rubric, with every source linked. The issue covers three days, Friday to Sunday, and was written on the Monday. The window is set by when our sources published, in universal time. Brazil's election sits on its edge: the projection of a run-off was published inside the window on Sunday evening, the electoral court made the result official at about the hour the window closed, and the final figures above were read on Monday from pages first published inside it. The window's 17,770 headlines were sorted into 11,591 clusters; 37 candidates were carried forward and merged to 28 stories, each marked by one AI and checked by a second that saw only the marks. Six were researched and written up, and the slow story was written from NOAA's data. Every candidate's marks are at the foot of this issue. Every figure above was fetched and read during this run; where sources disagree, we have said so and not chosen.
Three problems with how it was produced are visible in this issue, and the full list is on the how stories are chosen page. Our grouping software split two of the stories above into pieces. The Strait of Hormuz reached the pool as one statement by Iran's speaker, with the attacks on tankers, the release of fuel reserves and the US naval deployment grouped separately; the strikes on Kyiv reached it as Russia's warning to diplomats, apart from the strikes on the bridges. We read the pieces together, and the coverage counts on the scorecard are for the smaller groups. Headlines the software had attached to the wrong story were set aside by hand, and each is listed on the scorecard. The scorecard counts pages, not headlines: a live blog whose headline changed through the day counts once, and so do two copies of one review, which is why the second AI's lists are longer than the counts beside them. The second AI wrote its notes before those pages were set aside. Its note that every story received the top mark for how widely it was reported was true then; afterwards one story, a fault in a phone, fell to the mark below. Its other notes say that some newsrooms are placed in the region of the Google edition that surfaced them, not the region where they are based, and that a few are counted twice under two spellings of their name.