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Two container ships sink near strait of Hormuz amid surge in Iranian attacks

Two container ships near the strait of Hormuz have ⁠sunk after being struck by missiles, amid the sharpest rise in Iranian attacks on shipping since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran. The increase in attacks suggests Iran is trying to fully close the strategic waterway in an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s efforts to bring down fuel prices before the US midterm elections on 3 November. The Trump administration has been attempting to deflect attention from the economic impact of the war on Iran by blaming Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries for increased fuel prices. On Wednesday, UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported at least five incidents including drone strikes in the previous 48 hours targeting tankers and other commercial ships around the Hormuz area. “There is a tempo increase in strikes, which looks deliberate,” one maritime security source said. The Singapore-flagged container ‌ship GFS Pride sank on Wednesday after an attack the previous day. Hours later, the Antigua- and Barbuda-flagged Cape Dao sank close to the strait, having been hit by a projectile on 23 September, according to data from ‌the ‌International Maritime Organization. Apparently referring to the GFS Pride, Iran said a cargo ship had sunk after hitting a naval mine while making an unauthorised passage through the strait. State television quoted a statement from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that said the ship was travelling on an “illegal and dangerous route” when it hit the mine. The ship, which was shown tilted in the water and spewing a thick plume of smoke, was carrying 2,500 containers, the broadcast said. However, UKMTO suggested that both ships had been hit by unidentified projectiles, raising questions over Tehran’s account. Iran has repeatedly warned ships against trying to transit through the strait without its approval. The US military has been guiding ships through the waterway on a route nearer to Oman’s coast. Ships in the area were reporting an intense series of attacks in recent days, with six vessels attacked on Sunday alone, according to UKMTO’s monitoring. Analysis by the Financial Times said 24 ships were hit in the two weeks to 11 October. Of the vessels hit, three were refined energy product tankers and two others were crude oil tankers. The increased tempo of Iranian attacks appears to have caused a dramatic drop-off in oil shipments through the strait, as Tehran appears determined to demonstrate its ability to strike ships before the US midterms that will decide control of Congress. US fuel prices have surged by almost 70% since Trump launched his war on Iran, and the Republican party is bracing for punishment at the polls. According to two Iranian officials, Iran has recently begun using new tactics against vessels it considers to be in violation of its restrictions. The strategy included a change in the type as well as the pace of attacks, with one goal being ⁠to influence the outcome of the US vote, they said. “The aim is to frustrate efforts by the United States and its allies to bring down global oil prices,” one of the two officials told Reuters. The decision to adopt the new strategy had been taken at the highest levels of Iran’s leadership and was fully coordinated across the country’s ‌ruling system, the officials added. A US military official, ‌speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Tehran had changed tactics in one significant way. After the US destroyed much of Iran’s radar capabilities, the IRGC had started using unarmed spotters in small boats to ‌identify potential targets, including American naval vessels, the official said. Last week, in a previously unreported incident, the US military determined that Iranian spotters were operating from a dhow, calling in targets to the IRGC, the official said. US forces confronted the vessel, told its occupants to abandon ship and then destroyed it. There were no casualties, the US official said.

Pope Leo’s recovery from lung cancer surgery ‘progressing as planned’

Pope Leo’s recovery from a lung cancer operation is progressing as planned, his doctors have said, as the pontiff received good wishes from around the world, including from Britain’s King Charles. Leo, who had a cancerous mass removed from his right lung late on Tuesday, began walking in his hospital room after respiratory therapy on Wednesday. He was eating normally, his doctors Luigi Carbone and Stefano Margaritoria said in a statement issued by the Vatican. A blood test and chest X-ray showed “normal post-operative progress” and the results were “within the expected range for the type of procedure performed”, they said. The operation at Rome’s Gemelli hospital confirmed that Leo, 71, has the most common kind of lung cancer – adenocarcinoma. The Vatican has not yet disclosed the results of further tests to determine whether the cancer has spread and if more treatment will be needed. The cancer diagnosis for Leo, who was elected as the first US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church in May 2025, has come as a shock. In a rare moment of Vatican transparency, the pope announced during his angelus prayer on Sunday that doctors had found a small nodule on his lung during a checkup and that it was “well-contained” and had been detected early. Messages have been sent from around the world. King Charles, who is also being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer, would write to Leo privately, a source told Agence France-Presse. Charles and Queen Camilla met the pope when they travelled to the Vatican in October last year. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, wished Leo a full and swift recovery in a message posted on X and said the pontiff was “a source of hope and inspiration for billions around the world”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he and his wife, Jeanette, were praying for Leo. The couple met the pontiff at the Vatican in May. There has been no reaction yet from Donald Trump, who clashed with Leo earlier this year over the US-Israeli war in Iran, or from the US vice-president, JD Vance, a Catholic. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote on X that Leo’s serenity and strength were an inspiration for all. “We hope for his full and speedy recovery,” she wrote. Before the operation, all of Leo’s appointments until 20 October were cancelled. He went on a papal trip to France in September and is scheduled to go to South America in November for a 12-day trip covering 10 cities.

EU says ‘no indication’ intelligence sharing with Ukraine has stopped as Russian attacks leave 600,000 without power – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. The European Commission and Nato’s Mark Rutte have said there were no sign that US intelligence sharing with Ukraine stopped, despite growing concerns after Russia launched ballistic missiles at Ukraine without any advance warning from the US for a second night (11:45, 12:44). But it declined to comment on concerns about apparent restrictions on Ukraine’s Starlink terminals, which are critical for its military operations. Zelenskyy is in Britain this afternoon, with talks with UK prime minister Andy Burnham this afternoon (15:01, 15:28), before going to Brussels to meet EU leaders later this week (16:29). In other news, Germany’s embattled chancellor Friedrich Merz warned German lawmakers about “the time of upheaval,” as he assured of his support for Ukraine and spoke of his government’s priorities in the face of surging support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (14:31). A Ukrainian soldier led a team of divers that laid explosives on the bed of the Baltic Sea to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, possibly on the order of state authorities, a court has heard as the much-awaited trial related to the incident got under way in Hamburg (10:43, 14:16). Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte urged allies to “do more” in the face of “Russia’s aggression unrelenting,” as he insisted the alliance had “all the response options we need” to react to any Russian threat (11:42, 11:45) If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

France’s students are angry about more than crumbling classrooms and missing teachers

Say what you will about France’s high schools, they still produce world-class slogan writers. Here’s a brief selection spotted during three weeks of blockades and marches over chronic teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling buildings: “Pas d’avenir, pas de calme” (No future, no calm). “Diplômés aujourd’hui, précaires demain” (Graduates today, insecure tomorrow). “Vous détruisez notre futur, on bloque votre présent” (You destroy our future, we block your present). A couple more: “Nos lycées tombent en ruines, comme nos espoirs” (Our schools, like our hopes, are falling into ruin”). “On n’est pas mal éduqués, on n’est pas écoutés” (We’re not badly brought up, we’re just not being listened to). Spot the common theme? The protests, which continued this week with more than 160,000 on the streets on Tuesday, might be over very material problems – but beneath them there clearly lies an altogether more existential worry. This generation fears its future will be one of diminishing prospects, poorly paid, unstable jobs, unaffordable living costs and steadily decaying public infrastructure – the end, in short, of the basic socioeconomic security their parents, mostly, enjoyed. That was the central theme of a 30-second Instagram post I recorded last week with the Guardian’s social media team and that, at time of writing, had been watched almost 540,000 times – with young people in France the largest single group of viewers. The same core concerns underlie youth protests elsewhere – notably, ongoing mass housing demonstrations in Spain, where the twentysomethings of Madrid and Barcelona are in revolt at the monthly rental on a one-bed flat costing an entire monthly median salary. In France, teenagers in Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income area in the north of Paris, show reporters pictures of broken chairs and desks, holes in walls, leaking ceilings, mould, shattered toilets and defective audiovisual equipment. Some have gone months without key teachers. The consequence, here, is protest. As Kitty Sayers, who went to school in France, explained, France’s republic “was born of insurrection and has never forgotten it … The language of rights, citizenship and collective power is woven into French education.” This means that in French schools protest is “taught as a legally framed, fundamental right and a civic responsibility”. But the government’s response has also been arguably very French: riot police, teargas, baton charges and stun grenades. More than 250 pupils have been injured, along with about 100 school staff and 750 police. One teen has lost a hand from a stun grenade, another the sight in one eye, a third his teeth. More than 6,000 people – almost all minors – have been detained. After a public outcry, the interior minister last week suspended the use of stun grenades. But as Alexander Hurst observed, when pupils complain about the state of their schools “and the response is riot police, the government has lost the plot”. *** Wider public support If the government hoped public opinion would be on its side, it miscalculated. Teachers’ and other unions, parents and university students have marched with the pupils, and a poll this week showed 57% of the public approved of the protests, with 33% opposed. They come at a particularly delicate time for France’s political establishment. Presidential elections to replace Emmanuel Macron are due next spring, and without a parliamentary majority his government is caught in legislative deadlock. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and the radical-left La France Insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon are weaponising the protests, the former castigating an out-of-control youth, the latter an out-of-control police, and both blaming centrist incompetence. Above all, the government’s financial room for manoeuvre is all but nonexistent. As Philip Inman pointed out, with a debt-to-GDP ratio and a budget deficit both among the highest in the EU, France has no cash to spare – and the markets are watching. So while cost-cutting will only provoke more unrest, the absence of it could trigger a boycott of French bonds, or even a default and bailout (although as the economist Paul Krugman says, France “may have crossed from too big to fail to too big to save”). Ultimately, there seems little doubt France will have to make some of the same painful adjustments to bring its debt back under control that Italy, Spain and Greece made a decade or more ago – and to which French public reaction could be dramatic. We began with slogans; let’s end with some. The best-known French youth protest – a revolution, more or less – was, of course, May 1968. Comparing its iconic posters with those of today’s demonstrating school pupils is instructive. In 1968, there was “Sous les pavés, la plage” (Beneath the cobblestones, the beach); “L’imagination au pouvoir” (Put imagination in charge); “L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire” (Boredom is counter-revolutionary). Those, you can see, were slogans born out of infinite possibility: a generation that, in overthrowing the old social hierarchies, never doubted its material survival. May 68 was about blowing open the doors of a rigid, outmoded society to grasp a bright future. Today’s students are fighting to stop the doors slamming shut on them altogether. Guardian live-streamed event – Hacking Tech Big tech and AI pose immense challenges for our societies and democracies. The Guardian is partnering with French news investigative outlet Mediapart, on a live event called Hacking Tech in Paris at 1pm CEST on Saturday 17 October. Speakers include Naomi Klein, Emily M Bender, Paris Marx, Sönke Iwersen and the Guardian’s UK technology editor, Rob Booth. The event is free and open to the public but don’t worry if you can’t be there: the debates will be live-streamed without a paywall on Mediapart’s YouTube channel. Tune in! • To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

Excluding UK from ‘Made in Europe’ law will hurt entire EU car industry, Mercedes boss warns

Locking the UK out of the EU’s flagship industrial “Made in Europe” legislation would amount to a “deliberate choice” by EU leaders to “hurt” the car industry across the bloc, the head of Mercedes-Benz has said. Speaking in his capacity as president of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), Ola Källenius said such a move would “weaken the industry on both sides”. He was speaking just weeks before political leaders hope to reach agreement on the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), potentially keeping the UK car industry out of key contracts in the EU. The act, known as the Made in Europe law, aims to protect local industry by countering competition from outside the EU. It is mainly aimed at China, which is now enjoying a £1bn a day trade surplus with the EU, but could cause problems for the EU’s close allies including the UK, Norway, Turkey and Switzerland. “It does not make any sense … We would hurt our industry in the UK and the EU. That would be a deliberate choice to worsen the competitiveness of your own [EU] industry,” Källenius said at an annual briefing in Brussels on the state of the car industry. “We are talking about how we industrialise more in Europe, how we build local supply chains, that is what the IAA is all about,” he added. Andy Burnham has been lobbying hard to get the UK included in the Made in Europe legislation but is hitting resistance, particularly from France. The prime minister intends to raise it at the UK-EU summit on 20 November and is hoping it is not too late, even though EU leaders are aiming for political agreement on the current text by December. Last month, the EU urged the UK to follow the bloc and impose tariffs on imported Chinese vehicles, which it introduced in 2024. It argued this would help the UK’s case to be included in Made in Europe as it would align more closely with the EU on key trading sectors. But the UK business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said on a trip to India that this was not on the cards at the moment. The ACEA is also lobbying for an urgent suspension of plans to introduce 10% tariffs on UK electric vehicles (EVs) imported to the EU, and EU EVs exported to the UK. “We are getting very anxious about it. The deadline is in less than three months’ time. We have our feet to the fire in terms of the tariffs. All our manufacturers are worried,” said Jonathan O’Riordan, the ACEA’s international trade director. The tariff schedule is written into the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) as a way of incentivising the industry on both sides of the Channel to speed up the production of batteries, which can represent about 45% of the cost of a new car. Under the TCA, car exports on both sides are tariff-free if they are mainly made in Europe, but with the EU and the UK unable to produce sufficient electric batteries to compete with China, cars exported to each other’s market would be subject to a 10% tariff from next year. The tariff was originally due to come into force in 2024 but was suspended for three years to give the car industry more time. The car industry says it needs a further two- or three-year suspension urgently. Meanwhile, concern has intensified in the EU in the last three months over China’s trade surplus with the bloc, with a threat of trade barriers leading to an agreement on Friday between Beijing and Brussels to reduce sales of hybrid electric cars by half over four years. One official said the time to rebalance trade by increasing EU exports was gone. “No amount of champagne [exports] is going to revitalise the relationship [with China],” a senior EU official told a separate trade policy briefing in Brussels.

Guinea-Bissau denies it has approved controversial vaccine trial in newborns

Guinea-Bissau has not approved the controversial hepatitis B study in newborns that would be funded by the US government and private partners, the African country’s minister of health said on Tuesday. The study, which would not investigate the safety or effectiveness of vaccines but would instead track “nonspecific” health outcomes like overall mortality or neurodevelopmental conditions, has been championed by Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime anti-vaccine activist. Members of a Danish research ethics committee were informed that officials in Guinea-Bissau had approved an updated design of the study, which influenced some committee members’ votes to proceed with the trial last week. But the health ministry never agreed to or authorized the trial, said Quinhin Nantote in Portuguese at a press briefing, where he referred to the study as “tests”. “The ministry did not authorize the tests under the terms presented in the publications currently in circulation,” the health minister said. He said officials in Guinea-Bissau were “surprised” to see media reports that the country had given approval to the study. “Any scientific research initiative involving human beings, particularly children, ‌must ⁠strictly comply with applicable national legislation, international ethical principles, competent evaluation and approval mechanisms,” Nantote said. He spoke after convening an emergency meeting in Guinea-Bissau with the Bandim Health Project, the local ethics committee, the National Institute of Public Health (Inasa) and the Expanded Vaccination Program (PAV). The Bandim Health Project is run by the Danish researchers Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn, whose decades of research have been called into question in the past year. The claims made in nearly all of their papers are “highly misleading”, said Charlotte Strøm, a Danish researcher who has co-authored research showing that Aaby, Stabell Benn, and their co-authors had no significant findings in 24 out of 25 studies and that they’ve chosen not to publish research that may not support their viewpoints. “When researchers operate like this and abandon proper methodological rigor, they literally decide on the results themselves, and that is not science,” Strøm said, calling it “problematic, questionable [and] unethical”. She added: “I believe there is serious cause for concern.” Kennedy has repeatedly praised their work, which he says shows that after vaccination, “you can have mass injuries, and catastrophic injuries, and they’re hiding in plain sight”. Aaby, Stabell Benn and Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer did not respond by press time to the Guardian’s questions about why the Danish ethics committee members were told the trial had been approved by local authorities and why it could not be held in Denmark. In Denmark, infants born to hepatitis B-negative parents do not receive the shot, there is widespread testing for and low incidence of the virus, and the robust healthcare system can track health outcomes and provide timely and comprehensive medical care – making it an ideal location for such a study. “It’s completely unethical that this trial is even proposed,” because a safe and effective vaccine has been available for decades, said BK Titanji, a researcher at Emory University. It’s “reassuring” to see Guinea-Bissau pushing back on the trial, Titanji said, adding: “A study like this one needs the highest level of ethical scrutiny. You are going to be conducting a study on the most vulnerable population, which is newborn babies, in a country that is resource-constrained.” When Titanji recently applied for approval of a collaborative study in Cameroon, she had to include extensive documentation in her application – and it was a survey, not medical research on human subjects, she said. “I can’t come to Emory’s [institutional review board] and just be like: ‘I got permission from Cameroon.’ I have to provide the document.” The researchers should release these documents and an updated protocol showing how the study would be conducted, she said. Experts have decried the African experiment as “horribly unethical and cruel”, “neocolonialist” and “damaging”. “For the government of Guinea-Bissau to stand up against the United States and Denmark exploiting its children is no small statement,” said Colette Delawalla, a researcher and founder and CEO of the non-profit Stand Up for Science. “We absolutely must respect their sovereignty as a nation.” It would cost approximately $13,200 to buy enough vaccines through Unicef and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to immunize all newborns in Guinea-Bissau each year, Delawalla pointed out. Everyone involved should work together to ensure that every baby in Guinea-Bissau receives the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccination, she added. “This is not muddy water: we can use Black babies to further pseudoscience or we can save children’s lives with a 20-cent shot.” It is unclear whether the US plans to move forward with the study, even after reporting indicated that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has again set aside $1.6m for funding for the trial this year, to be matched by private funding from the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation. “The study has ⁠not been approved,” the HHS told Reuters in a statement. The agency has not responded to the Guardian’s questions about the trial. At least four members of the Danish committee resigned after approval for the trial was fast-tracked. The rules of the committee had to be changed because randomized controlled trials were outside of its purview. When committee members requested more information about the Guinea-Bissau approval, no further details were provided. The study would enroll 14,000 newborns in Guinea-Bissau, half of whom would be vaccinated at birth and half of whom would be denied the immunization for the first six weeks of life. Hepatitis B is widespread in the country, and infection in children can have serious lifelong effects. Guinea-Bissau, which currently has a transitional military government following a coup in November, requested in January a team of experts from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to help evaluate the study. In the meantime, Nantote said at the time, it was “canceled or suspended”. Other officials in Guinea-Bissau also pushed back on the research. “It’s not going to happen, period,” the foreign minister, João Bernardo Vieira, said in February. The World Health Organization (WHO) has offered support in rolling out the hepatitis B vaccine at birth to all newborns in Guinea-Bissau. “WHO stands ready to support Guinea‑Bissau as it considers its way forward and in accelerating the introduction of the birth dose and strengthening implementation,” the organization said in a February statement pushing back on the trial.

French minister accuses Elon Musk of ‘online harassment campaigns’ against European leaders

France’s foreign minister has accused Elon Musk of using his social media platform to orchestrate “massive online harassment campaigns” against European leaders as he took aim at foreign efforts to destabilise the country before next year’s presidential election. Speaking at an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development conference on Tuesday, Jean-Noël Barrot pointed to the role that social media had come to play in the global battle over democracy. “The forces seeking to undermine democracy now dominate the information landscape, where they employ tactics designed to polarise public debate,” he said. The result was that “political movements with authoritarian aims”, which “play right into the hands of democracy’s declared enemies”, had been gaining ground in Europe and North America, he said. “They exacerbate the polarisation of our societies,” he added. “Their ultimate goal is clear: to seize power and then create the conditions to never relinquish it.” Barrot cited the 2027 presidential election in France, where the far-right leader Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner in the polls. “The enemies of democracy are doing everything they can to destabilise us,” he said. “They exploit our divisions and use immigration, secularism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to stoke hatred and tensions.” He listed several other examples, from an unnamed Israeli company accused of creating fake French social media accounts to influence perceptions of the Israel-Gaza war, to accusations that Azerbaijan stirred up tensions amid deadly riots in the French Pacific territory New Caledonia. Barrot also singled out Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of the social media platform X. “There are massive online harassment campaigns launched by Elon Musk against European leaders in order to influence debates by exploiting the virality of his social media platform.” Musk did not reply to a request for comment. Barrot also cited the protests that have rocked France in recent weeks, as schoolchildren, students and trade unionists blockaded schools and marched through cities. The events, said Barrot, had been exploited by “hostile narratives” from Russia, China and Iran, as well as those associated with the Maga movement in the US. Last week Musk and the US president, Donald Trump, weighed in on the protests in France, seeking to recast them through a lens of mass migration and brushing aside protesters’ demands for better school conditions. Barrot said his government was working to respond to a reality in which paid or commissioned influencers sought to explore the viral reach of digital platforms. “The Kremlin’s goal is explicitly stated: to put an end to our liberal democracies in favour of a new authoritarianism. Other actors are converging on this goal, seeking to dictate to Europe which democracies are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ based on whether they align with their own interests,” he said. The French minister’s remarks come days after the British prime minister, Andy Burnham, said it was “clear” that Russia had interfered in the Brexit referendum. Barrot said his government would work to counter these efforts by foreign entities. “We are uncompromising, because it is clear to us that they undermine the nation’s fundamental interests,” he said. “We do not tolerate any foreign interference, from wherever it may come. It is a matter of sovereignty.”