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Tourists among at least 25 killed in Goa nightclub fire

At least 25 people have been killed in a fire at a nightclub in Goa, an Indian state popular for its nightlife and tourism. Several tourists were among the 25 dead in the fire, which broke out at about midnight at Birch by Romeo Lane, a popular restaurant, cocktail bar and club in Arpora, a district north Goa. “Today is a very painful day for all of us in Goa,” said the chief minister of Goa, Pramod Sawant. “I visited the incident site and have ordered an inquiry into this incident,. Those found responsible will face most stringent action under the law – any negligence will be dealt with firmly.” It appeared that the fire that started on the first floor and then engulfed the rest of the building. A preliminary inquiry by police suggested most of those who died were trapped in the basement area of the club and suffocated. Firefighters worked through the night to suppress the fire and rescue those trapped. Images from the scene showed vast flames ripping through the building as it was reduced to a blackened shell and investigators combed the wreckage on Sunday morning. Most of the dead were the club’s workers who had been in the basement at the time of the fire, said officials. Sawant told journalists at the scene that “three to four” tourists had died but the process of identifying the dead was ongoing. Speaking to the Indian Express, a Goa police official said that many of the guests had been gathered on the first floor for a DJ set when a fire started at about 11.45pm He said: “In the ensuing panic and chaos, many guests ran towards the exit and reached safety. The staff members working in the basement were effectively trapped because it lacked an exit and was engulfed in smoke. Some guests also seem to have rushed towards the basement and got trapped.” The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, described the fire as “deeply saddening”. Goa, a former Portuguese colony on the shores of the Arabian Sea, lures millions of both Indian and international tourists every year with its nightlife, sandy beaches and laidback coastal atmosphere. According to government data, about 5.5 million tourists visited Goa in the first half of this year, with 270,000 visiting from abroad. Goa politician Michael Lobo called for a fire safety audit of all the clubs. “Tourists have always considered Goa a very safe destination. The fire incident is quite disturbing, and such incidents should not happen in the future,” he said. Fires are common in India due to poor building practices, overcrowding and a lack of adherence to safety regulations. In May at least 17 people died after a fire ripped through a three-storey building in the Indian city of Hyderabad. A month before that a fierce blaze broke out in a hotel in Kolkata, killing at least 15 people. Some people clambered out of windows and on to the roof to escape. In 2024 at least 24 people died after a fire broke out at a packed amusement park arcade in the western state of Gujarat.

Ukraine war briefing: With no Miami breakthrough, Zelenskyy turns to European allies

Three days of talks between Ukrainian and US officials in Miami, Florida produced no evident breakthrough by the end of Saturday. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he joined his negotiators for a “very substantive and constructive” call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “Ukraine is committed to continuing to work honestly with the American side to bring about real peace,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram, adding that the parties agreed on the next steps and a format for talks. Zelenskyy will next turn to European allies when he visits London on Monday for an in-person meeting with leaders Keir Starmer of Britain, Emmanuel Macron of France and Friedrich Merz of Germany. Macron said the group would “take stock” of peace negotiations. The four leaders took part in a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing” about two weeks ago, where they discussed plans to put a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. Macron, the French president, slammed what he called Russia’s “escalatory path”, adding: “We will continue these efforts with the Americans to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, without which no robust and lasting peace will be possible. We must continue to exert pressure on Russia to compel it to choose peace.” Russian forces over Saturday night launched a combined air strike on infrastructure in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, causing power and water outages in some areas, said its mayor, Vitalii Maletskyi, on Sunday. Located on the Dnipro River, Kremenchuk is a major industrial hub and home to one of Ukraine’s biggest oil refineries. A 2022 strike on a crowded shopping mall in Kremenchuk killed at least 21 people. Maletskyi said city services were working to restore electricity, water and heating. A damage assessment would be carried out on Sunday. “We will restore everything.” Russia launched more than 700 drones and missiles at Ukraine over Friday night, targeting critical infrastructure, such as energy sites and railways, and triggering heating and water outages for thousands of households. “The main targets of these strikes, once again, were energy facilities,” Zelenskyy said. “Russia’s aim is to inflict suffering on millions of Ukrainians.” The protective shield over the Chornobyl disaster nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which was hit by a drone in February, can no longer perform its main function of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced. In February a drone strike blew a hole in the “new safe confinement”, which was painstakingly built at a cost of €1.5bn ($1.75bn) next to the destroyed reactor and then hauled into place on tracks, with the work completed in 2019 by a Europe-led initiative. The IAEA said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure found the drone impact had degraded the structure. Hungary’s rightwing, Putin-friendly prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has announced he is sending a business delegation to Russia in preparation for the end of the Ukraine war – claiming he was in discussion with both Washington and Moscow and could not “share every detail”. “If God helps us and the war ends without us being dragged into it, and if the American president succeeds in reintegrating Russia into the global economy and the sanctions are dismantled, we will find ourselves in a different economic landscape.” According to media in Hungary, its MOL oil and gas firm is considering acquiring refineries and petrol stations in Europe owned by Russian groups Lukoil and Gazprom, both of which are subject to US sanctions. Under Orbán’s leadership, Hungary has remained dependent on Russian oil and gas, flouting decisions of the European Union whose other countries have diversified their imports away from Russia since the February 2022 invasion. Bulgaria has denounced the towing of a crippled tanker, the Kairos, into its waters just over a week after the ship was hit in a drone attack claimed by Ukraine. A Turkish ship towed it there and returned to Turkey, said Rumen Nikolov, director general of Bulgarian maritime rescue and relief operations. “This is not normal,” Rumen said, adding that an explanation was sought “through diplomatic channels”. Ten crew members on board had requested evacuation but the weather was too bad at the moment, said the Bulgarian transport ministry. The Kairos and another Gambian-flagged tankers, the Virat, were attacked on 28 November in the Black Sea off the Turkish coast. Both are under western sanctions for belonging to the “shadow fleet” that illicitly and unsafely continues to export Russian oil. They had been heading for the Russian port of Novorossiysk. Ukraine confirmed at the time that it had targeted vessels “covertly transporting Russian oil”.

Gunmen kill at least 12 people including three-year-old in hostel in South Africa

Gunmen have stormed into a hostel in South Africa’s capital and killed at least 12 people, including a three-year-old child, and injured more than a dozen others. Police said they had launched a “manhunt” for three people and were investigating whether the killings were linked to a bar within the hostel that may have been selling alcohol illegally. The attack is the latest in a series of mass shootings in the country of 63 million people, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world. “I can confirm that a total of 25 people were shot,” said a police spokesperson, Athlenda Mathe, of the early morning attack in Saulsville township, 11 miles (18km) west of Pretoria. She said the armed men had shot indiscriminately. Ten had died at the scene while two died in hospital, she said. The twelfth victim succumbed to injuries on Saturday afternoon. The victims included a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. South African police have been grappling with violence linked to illegal bars, known as shebeens, which often sell home-brewed drinks. With high levels of gun ownership in the country, shootings linked to organised crime are common and police say they are often fuelled by alcohol. “These illegal shebeens are really giving us a problem as the police,” Mathe told the 24-hour eNCA news broadcaster. “Because a lot of murders are being reported at these illegal establishments.” Forensic and ballistic experts and investigators were at the scene. “So we are on a manhunt. For now, we are looking for three suspects,” Mathe said. Between April and September, more than 60 people were killed each day in South Africa, according to police data. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Zelenskyy to meet Starmer at Downing Street to discuss US draft peace deal

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Downing Street on Monday for an in-person meeting with Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz in a show of support for Ukraine. Starmer will use the meeting with the leaders from Ukraine, France and Germany to discuss the continuing talks between US and Ukrainian officials aimed at finding an agreement on guaranteeing Ukraine’s postwar security. The four leaders took part in a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing” about two weeks ago, where they discussed plans to provide a European peacekeeping force that could be deployed to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. In a statement about the meeting released by the European Council, the trio expressed full support for “President Trump’s comments that the current line of contact must be the starting point for any talks”. The draft peace deal, quietly brokered between US and Russian officials, has been criticised for leaving Ukraine in a weak and vulnerable position. The initial draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would have forced draconian measures on Ukraine that would have given Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty, conditions that were seen as a surrender by Kyiv. The peace plan was significantly amended by Ukraine last month, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands. Though for now, the conflict continues. On Friday night, Russia launched a drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s power and transport infrastructure. The Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 653 drones and 51 missiles on Ukraine overnight. Ukrainian forces downed 585 drones and 30 missiles, the military said. Zelensky has said Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was the main target for hundreds of Russian drones and about 50 missiles, with Ukrainian officials accusing Moscow of seeking to “weaponise” the cold by denying civilians access to heat and power. Meanwhile, US and Ukrainian officials will conduct a third day of talks in Florida as Trump’s administration pushes Kyiv to accept an American-backed peace plan. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has already rejected some parts of the plan, with Ukraine’s territorial integrity and measures to deter future Russian attacks proving big sticking points for Moscow. Starmer has repeatedly stressed that Ukraine must determine its own future, and said the coalition of the willing’s peacekeeping force would play a “vital role” in guaranteeing the country’s security. In its new national security strategy, published overnight on Saturday, the White House said it was committed to Ukraine’s survival as a “viable state”. But the strategy also prioritised improving relations with Moscow, stating that ending the war is a core US interest to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia”. On Saturday evening, Zelenskyy said he had held a “very substantive and constructive” call with the US envoys Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “Ukraine is committed to continuing to work honestly with the American side to bring about real peace,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “We agreed on the next steps and the format of the talks with America.” Zelenskyy, who was in Kyiv, joined the call with the senior Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov, and Andriy Gnatov, the chief of staff of Kyiv’s armed forces, both of whom were in Miami for the talks with the US side. The two Americans – Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law – had been in talks with Umerov and Gnatov since Thursday. Zelenskyy said the call with Witkoff and Kushner “focused on many aspects and quickly discussed key issues that could guarantee an end to the bloodshed and remove the threat of a third Russian invasion, as well as the threat of Russia failing to fulfil its promises, as has happened many times in the past”. He said he was waiting a “detailed report” from Umerov and Gnatov.

Syria interim president accuses Israel of fighting ‘ghosts’ and exporting crises

Syria’s interim president has accused Israel of fighting “ghosts” and exporting its crises to other countries after the war in Gaza. President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s comments come amid persistent airstrikes and incursions by the Israeli military into southern Syria. Sharaa told an international conference in Doha on Saturday that Syria had insisted on respecting a 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel that had “held for over 50 years – in one way or another it is a successful agreement”. Tampering with the deal “and seeking other agreements such as a demilitarised zone ... could lead us to a dangerous place with unknown consequences”. Israel’s forces pushed into a UN-patrolled buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights after the fall of Bashar al-Assad a year ago and conduct regular incursions deeper into Syria. The level of insecurity for Syrians in the region south of Damascus is increasing. Since he took power a year ago, Sharaa insisted he had been sending “positive messages to Israel regarding regional peace and stability”. He also said Israel “extrapolates” its conflict with Hamas militants and justifies aggression in the name of security. “Israel has become a country that is in a fight against ghosts,” he said. “They justify everything using their security concerns and they take 7 October and extrapolate it to everything that has happened around them.” Israel had become a country that exports crises, he added. Sharaa said: “Israel responded to Syria with extreme violence, launching more than 1,000 airstrikes and carrying out 400 incursions into its territory. The latest of these attacks was the massacre it committed in the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, which claimed dozens of lives.” He said that Syria was working with “influential” countries to pressure Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. “There are negotiations with Israel, and the US is involved with us in these negotiations, and all countries support our demand for its withdrawal to the pre-8 December borders.” Donald Trump issued a warning last week to Israel to co-operate with the Syrian president, suggesting he does not welcome the Israeli incursions inside Syria. Sharaa said the demand for a demilitarised zone raised many questions for Syria, chiefly, “who will protect this zone if there is no presence of the Syrian army?” Israel says it fears terrorist groups linked to Hamas or that Sharaa will invade Israel unless there is a firm buffer zone. Israel has seized the 400 sq km (155 sq miles) of demilitarised buffer zone in southern Syria. Sharaa, who has spent time in US jails inside Iraq, was given a rock-star welcome at the conference. He stressed that “any agreement must guarantee Syria’s interests, as it is Syria that is subjected to Israeli attacks”. Sharaa insisted: “Syria is a developed country”, pointing to the recent People’s Assembly elections. The polls have been criticised as biased in favour of the country’s interim leaders. Sharaa said the polls had been conducted “in a manner that is appropriate for the transitional phase”, adding, “the people choosing who governs them is a fundamental principle”. “We do not link the building of Syria to individuals but to institutions, and this is the biggest challenge in the transitional phase that we are going through.” He promised full elections in four years and said women had nothing to fear in Syria. It was the men that needed to worry, he said.

EU says US ‘still our biggest ally’ despite release of policy paper supporting Europe’s far-right – as it happened

Overnight Russian missile and drone strikes left parts of Ukraine without power on Saturday morning, Ukraine’s energy ministry said. The Russian defense ministry confirmed that Russian forces attacked energy facilities that supported the Ukrainian military and port infrastructure used by Ukrainian forces, saying that the strike was in response to what it called Ukrainian attacks on civilian targets. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all off-site power overnight, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday, marking the 11th time the facility temporarily lost power during the war. Ukraine peace plan talks continue between Trump advisers and Ukrainian officials, with the parties involved saying on Friday that they will meet for a third day of talks. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas responded to the US National Security Strategy, a policy paper released by the Trump administration on Friday that made explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s nationalist far-right parties. “US is still our biggest ally,” Kallas said Saturday.

Russia launches attacks across Ukraine as Miami peace talks continue

Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday as US and Ukrainian officials continued talks in Miami which the White House hopes will bring an end to the conflict. Russia used more than 650 drones and 51 missiles overnight, Ukraine’s armed forces said, with drones targeting locations across the country, including in western regions hundreds of miles from the frontline. Warning sirens also sounded in parts of eastern Poland, close to the Ukrainian border. At least three people were injured in the attacks in Kyiv region, while the national energy operator, Ukrenergo, said much of the overnight attack had targeted power stations and other energy infrastructure. Russia has been relentlessly attacking Ukraine’s energy capabilities in recent weeks, in the hope of cutting supplies of heat, light and water as the country prepares for a fourth winter of full-scale conflict. Russia’s defence ministry said it had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory, while there were unconfirmed reports on Telegram that Ukraine had hit an oil refinery in the city of Ryazan. The regional governor said a residential building had been damaged and drone debris had fallen on an “industrial facility”. Donald Trump is keen to put an end to the war, but there has so far been little sign the two sides are anywhere close to finding a common position. Talks between US and Ukrainian negotiators are due to continue for a third day in Miami on Saturday, after a meeting between Vladimir Putin, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow earlier in the week. Washington’s plans involve Ukraine surrendering land in return for vague security guarantees and would be hard for Kyiv to accept in the current moment. There is also no indication that Russia is ready to sign a deal on Trump’s suggested terms. “The Russia-Ukraine thing has been a source of perennial frustration, I think, for the entire White House,” the US vice-president, JD Vance, said in an interview with NBC on Friday, reiterating that the administration had been surprised that the conflict was not easy to solve. European nations have been blindsided by some of the US efforts and have been scrambling to stay part of the process. On Saturday, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, tried to downplay the significance of the Trump administration’s new national security strategy, published a day earlier, which said Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” due to immigration and suggested the US should back rightwing forces on the continent. “The US is still our biggest ally,” said Kallas, speaking at a diplomatic conference in Qatar. “I think we haven’t always seen eye to eye on different topics, but I think the overall principle is still there. We are the biggest allies and we should stick together.”

Maduro says the real reason for Trump’s Venezuela fixation is oil – is he right?

Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, says the real motive behind the massive US military buildup in the Caribbean is oil: his country has the largest proven reserves in the world. The US state department denies this, insisting that the airstrikes on boats that have killed more than 80 people and the vast military deployment off South America are part of a campaign against drug trafficking. Either way, Donald Trump seems bent on regime change in Venezuela – a country whose main allies are China, Russia and Iran, and one that has endured a deep economic collapse that triggered the region’s largest migration crisis. However, Trump has proved happy to reach an understanding with authoritarian leaders elsewhere, and airstrikes on small boats in the Caribbean are unlikely to have much impact on the flow of drugs – most of which enter the country through Mexico – leading critics of the US president to conclude that there must be another motive at work. Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro – who is himself in an increasingly bitter feud with Trump – has described the three-month campaign against Caracas as “a negotiation about oil”, arguing that Trump “is not thinking about democratising Venezuela, much less about drug trafficking”. But analysts familiar with how Venezuela’s oil sector operates say it is not that simple. “I think oil may be one of the motivations [of the military buildup], but not the main one. It’s just part of the picture,” said Francisco J Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, in Houston. First of all, “Venezuela is a very small player at this point,” he said. The country has almost a fifth of all known global reserves – but it accounts for less than 1% of world production. Most of Venezuela’s reserves are “heavy sour” crude, which is more difficult and expensive to extract. Meanwhile, its oil sector has been hamstrung by decades of corruption, mismanagement and underinvestment. Monaldi estimates that current output of just under 1m barrels a day could rise to 4m or even 5m a day – but doing so would require about $100bn in investment and would take at least 10 years. After a strike by oil workers in the early 2000s, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez, dismissed large numbers of workers at the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anónima (PDVSA) and consolidated government control of the company. His government later decreed that PDVSA must hold at least 51% ownership and operational control of all exploration fields, driving away multinationals that had long operated in the country, such as ConocoPhillips and Exxon-Mobil. Production then went into a steep decline, especially after the US, during Trump’s first term, imposed sanctions banning imports of Venezuelan oil. Joe Biden eased those restrictions in the hope that Maduro would allow a democratic transition, but after last year’s elections – widely believed to have been stolen by Maduro – Trump reinstated the sanctions Even during sanctions, however, the US-based oil giant Chevron never fully suspended its operations in Venezuela, maintaining them albeit at drastically reduced levels. Trump revoked Chevron’s licence, but reversed course in July, ordering that instead of being transferred to Maduro’s regime royalties should be used to cover operational costs and pay down a longstanding Venezuelan government debt to the US company. Although the Maduro regime’s lack of transparency is reflected in the oil sector, analysts estimate that PDVSA currently holds 50% of operations; Chevron, 25%; 10% is in joint ventures led by China; 10% by Russia; and 5% by European companies. Since Trump’s recent easing of restrictions, Chevron has been importing between 150,000 and 160,000 barrels a day to the US. “I believe the main beneficiary of a political change in Venezuela would be Chevron,” said José Ignacio Hernández, a legal scholar and researcher of Venezuela’s oil industry who works with the consultancy Aurora Macro Strategies. But Hernández, who was a member of Juan Guaidó’s team, when the opposition figurehead declared himself interim president in 2019, also rejects the idea that oil is the main focus of the US campaign. “The oil sector in Venezuela is destroyed … It’s not an attractive market in the short term, especially for a country like the US, which already has the world’s largest production,” he added. Hernández pointed to recent reports that during talks with US envoys, Maduro offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to US companies. “If Trump wanted to strike a monopoly deal over Venezuela’s oil, he would have accepted Maduro’s offer,” said Hernández. Monaldi said that even if there were a change of regime and a US-backed candidate took office, the final decision on whether to invest in Venezuela’s oil would ultimately lie with the companies, which would weigh political and economic stability above all. “Venezuela has massive resources, a lot of infrastructure and fields that are already developed; one would not go there and explore from scratch … But, at the same time, there are tons of potential obstacles: the political risks, the country’s history, the fact that the oil is less valuable,” he said. “So the obstacles are mostly above ground.”