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Monday briefing: Inside Trump’s deportation machine – ‘Your fate is out of your control’

Good morning. If you want to grasp the true cost of what it means to “secure our borders,” skip the panicked headlines about “mega-dinghies” arriving on British shores and the pictures of Patriot Platform’s black-clad enthusiasts, and look across the Atlantic. Since 2025, the Trump administration has deported about 5,000 people on flights to “third countries” where they have no family ties or history, sometimes as far as Ghana and Sierra Leone. A Guardian investigation published today exposes the staggering cruelty of this sinister policy. It seems deliberately designed to stoke fear, and shows how far-right ideas that once belonged on the fringes of politics have become so mainstream that they’re now barely opposed. These deportations often happen very quickly, with people given little notice of what is going to happen to them. That creates huge challenges for lawyers trying to defend people who are shackled on flights, and for journalists trying to tell their stories. For this morning’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian’s investigations correspondent Louisa Loveluck about the lives of the people caught up in this policy, and how the Trump administration has created a deportation machine. That’s after the headlines. Weekend roundup Russia | European intelligence officials have raised the possibility of an imminent Russian test of Nato, with one saying a potential attack could come in a matter of “months, not years”. Domestic violence | About 20,000 disclosures of domestic abuse are estimated to be made to maternity services in England every year, analysis has found. Ed Sheeran | Ed Sheeran has opened a solo concert in Philadelphia with comments about Gaza, saying what is happening is “catastrophic and unjustifiable”, in his first show since his tour was plunged into turmoil. Spycops scandal | Victims of intrusive police surveillance have accused the government of seeking to cut short the spycops public inquiry that has been examining widespread misconduct committed by undercover officers. Royal family | Earl Spencer has said the relationship between the press and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “echoes” the way the media treated his sister Diana, Princess of Wales. In an interview with the BBC aired on Sunday evening, Spencer described the press’s coverage of Harry and Meghan as having a “cancerous influence”. In depth: The people caught in Trump’s deportation machine The second Trump administration has struck 35 deals with nations such as Eswatini and Central African Republic, allowing it to deport migrants and asylum seekers to nations where they have no connections. Federal officers can deport immigrants with as little as six hours notice, even if they have no assurances that people will be safe from persecution or torture (a US court judgment recently challenged the short timeframe, and the government is expected to appeal it). In many cases, these countries then deport people onwards to the places they fled – something that is technically illegal under US law. Since 2025, more than 5,000 people have been put on planes to countries other than their own, including those in Latin America, Africa, central Asia and the Caribbean. Louisa has been investigating these deportations with journalists from 22 other newsrooms in conjunction with Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based network of investigative journalists. One of the people they interviewed was Rabbiatu Kuyateh, a 58-year-old nurse who had been living in the US for 30 years. During the pandemic, Kuyateh said she had spent much of the pandemic working in a US hospital caring for patients in a Covid isolation ward. Since then, she has worked as a carer for the disabled son of an American family. She was detained during a routine check-in with ICE in July 2025, spent four months in ICE custody, and was then flown to Ghana. Days later, a group of officials dragged her by her hair into a van, which transported her to Sierra Leone, the country she had originally fled with her parents. “The disabled man who Kuyateh was paid to care for was waiting for her on the day she was picked up by ICE,” Louisa says. “And when she could finally speak to her family after she was detained, one of the things she said was: please tell them I’m not coming to work tomorrow.” *** Who is behind this? The policy has been driven by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, who is often described as Trump’s “shadow president”. During Trump’s first term, Miller was behind the administration’s most extreme positions, such as the Muslim travel ban. In November 2024, before returning to the White House, he said on a conservative radio show that the coming crackdown on immigrants would be so prolific, “you’ll set your alarm clock two hours earlier every morning just to get two more hours of daylight to watch the deportation flights happen.” Since then, he’s been in overdrive. Miller has demanded that ICE agents arrest 3,000 people per day on America’s streets, and has strategised with officials from the Department of Homeland Security about how the government can reach its goal of deporting one million people in a year. He hosts daily calls with a small circle of conservative diplomats to press them on third country deportation agreements, and has been trying to accelerate the removal of undocumented immigrant children from the US. His influence is part of a broader strategy to subordinate the federal government’s other priorities to the singular aim of deporting migrants. The Trump administration has disbanded USAID, and repurposed funding previously dedicated to humanitarian assistance towards deportations. It has purged immigration judges deemed insufficiently loyal to this agenda, and has gutted the oversight system that investigates civil rights abuses in immigration detention. “All of these institutions that on some level could have protected refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are being turned inside out to do the opposite,” Louisa says. *** Why the Trump administration doesn’t want you to know the details Trump has made no secret of his gigantic deportation programme (it will be a “bloody story,” he said in 2024). His government has transformed immigration raids into reality entertainment, staged photo ops at migrant detention jails with names such as Deportation Depot and Alligator Alcatraz, and in 2025 arrested two firefighters while they were putting out an active wildfire in Washington State, later deporting one of them to Mexico. But it has been comparatively guarded about its third-party deportation deals. Details of the deals remain opaque, and the government doesn’t publicise most of the deportation flights. Secrecy makes it harder for lawyers to oppose deportations, since they often don’t know when flights are scheduled – or who is on them. It also contributes to a climate of fear and uncertainty for immigrants. “The message is: you are out of control of your own fate,” Louisa tells me. The countries that have struck these deals with the US may not want them to be public knowledge, and by keeping them out of the public eye, the Trump administration can also limit scrutiny of how much they cost. So far, it has pledged at least $410m (£307m) to secure these agreements. The cost of deporting a single person can run as high as $1m. “The administration seems willing to pay whatever it takes to get this done,” Louisa says. (When approached for comment, a state department spokesperson said the administration would use “all legal means” to remove those “with no right to remain in our country”.) *** From far-right conspiracy to government policy The policy is being run from the newly created Office of Remigration, which has borrowed a term used by the far-right to describe the forcible expulsion of immigrants, turning an idea once associated with the political fringes into official government policy. The idea that people who have been living in a country legally for years could be deported in the space of a few hours might sound like dystopian fiction. But as my colleague Jonathan Liew wrote in an opinion piece last year, the remigration discourse has already gone mainstream. In 2022, the UK’s then Conservative government attempted its own version of the third country deportation policy by pushing through plans to send migrants to Rwanda (the first flight was cancelled after a flurry of legal challenges). Reform has now proposed that, if it were to form a government, people who have already secured indefinite leave to remain could be suddenly deported if they don’t meet a new set of rules. And, as we reported yesterday, Nigel Farage has said he would like to “hijack” Trump’s key ICE adviser to secure the UK’s borders. “This is not just an American policy,” Louisa tells me. “This is the language of our political debate right now. And if America is doing this so flagrantly, it makes it easier for others to do the same.” We want to hear from you What do you want to know about the US midterms, and how the Guardian plans to report them? Libby will be putting your questions to our Washington bureau in the coming weeks, so send them in by hitting reply or emailing first.edition@theguardian.com. The week to come Monday | G7’s foreign ministers are set to meet in New York. Wednesday | The disgraced film tycoon Harvey Weinstein is set to face his fourth and possibly final sentencing in New York for sexually assaulting a former assistant. Thursday | US president Donald Trump is set to host Xi Jinping, China’s president, at the White House. What else we’ve been enjoying I loved this interview with Ms Rachel, the toddler whisperer extraordinaire, about being a campaigner on humanitarian issues, politics, and her new album “I’m So Happy”. Sundus Abdi, newsletters team I appreciated this analysis by David Smith on Trump’s battle to rename the Kennedy Centre after himself. On the US president’s motivations, lawyer Norm Eisen said: “You would need an authority in abnormal psychology to get the answer to that question.” Micha Frazer-Carroll, newsletters team What comforted Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe while she was imprisoned in an Iranian jail? Pizza dough, Zumba and sewing, she tells reporter Helena Horton. Sundus Sport Football | Matheus Cunha’s late equaliser gave Manchester United a 1-1 draw at Fulham, who had led through Lisandro Martínez’s farcical own goal. Cycling | Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel won the men’s time trial title for the fourth time in a row, while the Swiss rider Marlen Reusser defended her women’s crown. Darts | Luke Littler has threatened to boycott tournaments in the Netherlands after being booed and whistled at during the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam. The front pages “European spy chiefs brace for Russia to test Nato pact”, is the Guardian’s front page today. The Telegraph has “Labour eyes £14bn tax raid to help the poorest”, the Times says “Half Labour MPs at risk of Pip cuts backlash”, and the Express writes “Stop your tax raid on nation’s high streets”. The Mail runs with “Kemi: I’ll ditch tourist tax to boost Britain” and the i Paper has “We women are all at risk from men, warns minister amid Piddington asylum camp row”. The FT says “BigTech banks of guarantees to keep $300bn AI exposure off balance sheet”. The Mirror’s splash is “Ed: I feel so alone” and Metro writes “I back Team Harry AND Wills” Today in Focus Being trans in Britain in 2026 Transgender people in Britain are navigating a new reality. In August, new guidance – in the form of a document nearly 350 pages long – was published to help institutions interpret last year’s supreme court ruling on trans rights. It means, as Amelia outlines to Helen Pidd, that every time she goes to a pub or restaurant, she is terrified about going to the bathroom. Helen heads to parliament to hear from those protesting over the new guidance, and from senior political correspondent Peter Walker on whether there is any appetite in government to change the law. Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad For decades, hopeful entrants to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Britain in Bloom competition have nurtured vibrant flowerbeds and beautiful hanging baskets across the UK’s towns. This year, the charity has launched a new award that has zhooshed up many of our train platforms. Five of the best were shortlisted for the RHS Railway Stations in Bloom competition – featuring boat-planters, pollination-friendly wildflowers and gravel gardens. The winner, the Cardross Community Organic Garden in Scotland, involved a wide range of local communities in gardening activities, from Brownies to volunteering groups. Jane Connolly, who heads the station’s gardening group, said: “Every time we are down there, somebody will come along and peruse it and say how grateful they are with what we have done … People come to our station just to see our gardens.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

‘The physical toll is visceral’: How Indonesia’s fire haze affects millions - visual guide

For months, parts of Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have been ablaze. The fires are sometimes lit illegally as a cheap way to clear land for plantations of oil palm, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer. So prevalent is the technique that it even has a special term: slash and burn. Many of the fires begin as small-scale blazes. But in hot, dry conditions, can easily spiral out of control, sending toxic smoke across borders and affecting the air quality of millions in Indonesia and beyond. This year a “super” El Niño could inflame the problem. David Gaveau, a landscape ecologist who runs Nusantara Atlas, which tracks fires and deforestation in Asia, says the worst fires occur on drained and dried out peatland. This type of fire is extremely difficult to extinguish, and can burn for weeks underground. “They go underground, they resurface somewhere else. And then the more water you give it, the more smoke there is,” he says, “These fires are really the legacy of 50 years of forest degradation, deforestation, and particularly on peatland.” If there was an “apex predator” among fires, tropical peatland fires would be a top contender, says Nasa. Fires occur annually in Indonesia, but data from this year indicates it is already looking like a bad year, with the worst hit areas in Sumatra, Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, and Papua. Since January at least 895,657 hectares have been burned Indonesia-wide, 34% worse than 2019, according to data from Nusantara Atlas. “It’s trending far higher than 2019 or even 2023,” says Gaveau, “What that means is that this is a terrible year.” In recent weeks, photos from Kalimantan have shown a thick, sepia-toned haze shrouding streets and obscuring cities, schoolchildren wearing masks at their desks, and even rescuers giving oxygen to smoke-affected orangutans. “Ever since the haze hit, we haven’t opened our doors or windows in a long time. The wind carries smoke from the fires all the way to our porch. Ash and smoke seep directly into the house, and the conditions worsen at night,” Ely Marlina, a 46-year-old schoolteacher and volunteer firefighter told the Guardian. “While we sleep, the whole family is just breathing in the smoke,” she says. “The physical toll is visceral; eyes are left stinging and weeping daily … It feels like if we keep breathing in this smog, the dizziness will take over and our bodies will just give out.” As the fires rage, schools have closed, and emergency rooms have been inundated with patients. The numbers of people suffering wildfire-related respiratory illnesses in those provinces had more than doubled to 113,336 by 9 September, from 50,891 on 1 September. Fire emissions from Indonesia in the first week of September reached 19.7m metric tons, accounting for more than a third of the global total, according to Fire Emissions Watch, a portal developed by the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring service. The air quality index in Indonesia and its neighbours shows just how much the fires have become a public health issue. According to air quality index ratings, a healthy level of air, signified by green, is ranked between 0 and 50. Anything above 300 is considered hazardous. Every day this September, the air quality in Sampit, central Kalimantan, has been classified as hazardous, going beyond the red and into the worst rating of maroon, according to the Swiss air monitor IQAir. On 10 September, the rating hit 1142. In Kuching, the biggest city on Malaysian Borneo, this month, AQI levels have fluctuated between unhealthy and hazardous. One resident in Kalimantan recently told the Guardian that taking a breath feels like “smoking a cigarette”. When the smoke from these fires crosses borders, it’s called “transboundary haze”. This year, the haze has again plagued Indonesia’s neighbours, blanketting parts of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and even the Philippines. Carried by monsoonal winds the smoke travelled as far as Manila, with residents urged to stay indoors as much as possible, and to wear mask outdoors. Among the countries hardest-hit, Malaysia has urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to review an agreement on transboundary haze from 2003. Indonesia’s environment ministry is investigating 19 companies allegedly linked to the fires, while police have arrested 113 people on suspicion of lighting them. But enforcement has proven a challenge for the country. The government has vowed to crackdown on bad actors; it has also deployed planes, helicopters, drones and the military to fight the fires; and it has bolstered mitigation efforts. Malaysia has offered three helicopters, ⁠an aircraft and 52 personnel to assist, while Japan has also sent in helicopters and a fire-fighting force. Residents are also doing their bit. A team of female firefighters called the Power of Mama, conduct daily surveillance activities, fire monitoring and community outreach, including encouraging people not to burn and warning them of the risks. In West Kalimantan, volunteers are going door-to-door to hand out cylinders of oxygen to residents and firefighters ‌struggling to breathe, in a campaign called “Rumah Oksigen”, or Oxygen House. But the next few weeks will be crucial. With this year’s super El Niño, experts say the fires could peak this September, and continue until November, when the rainy season is expected to start, but the phenomenon is not the only factor. “El Niño is an enabler. Of course the more powerful it is, the longer and the more intense the drought, and that’s not good news,” says Gaveau, “But you need a match. And we know what that is; it’s people.” Indonesia’s forestry minister Raja Juli Antoni has also warned that the country is entering a critical phase. “We have not yet escaped the threat of El Niño,” he said. “We are not safe from forest and land fires during this El Niño period. September is our month of struggle, our field of struggle.” Additional reporting by Garry Lotulung

‘People had naive expectations’: How MeToo has changed in China

When Jasmine, a once active member of China’s MeToo movement, organises feminist activities in Beijing, she often does so under the guise of an art or cultural event. She avoids publicising them on social media, instead sharing details privately in her personal circle. It’s very difficult to imagine what happened during the MeToo period, she says, “when one survivor could speak publicly about her experience and trigger a broader discussion about sexual harassment.” On Friday Sophia Huang Xueqin the imprisoned journalist who helped to ignite China’s MeToo movement, was released from prison, five years after her arrest. She will return to see a feminist movement that has dramatically changed in the years she has been detained. In China feminism has become an increasingly private affair. Activists speak of a generational rupture. A movement once inspired by the global hashtag campaign against sexual abuse and harassment has retreated to a less public space. Across Chinese social media survivors post about sexual harassment and successful court cases online. But activists say hashtag campaigns like MeToo and its Chinese language equivalents have largely been scrubbed from the Chinese internet. “A lot of younger, digital-native feminists today don’t know much about those earlier feminist struggles not too long ago, thanks to the state’s intentional annihilation of them,” says Eva Liu, a researcher on Chinese feminism and digital media at Ohio University. Today, Chinese feminists employ creative ways to avoid censorship. They use new expressions to avoid posts being blocked. “It’s really a cat-and-mouse game,” says Liu. She describes an “encyclopaedia” of feminist words banned by Chinese censors. “There are staff specifically tasked with tracking new terms coined by feminists online and adding them to the keyword lists used for automated censorship,” she says. “Even some terms that are not yet popular among feminist users are already part of this automatic censorship list.” Li Sipan, a Chinese investigative journalist and feminist scholar, says: “The Chinese Communist party regards all mobilisation of the public and movements demanding changes from the government as threats. The feminist movement clearly has these characteristics.” Jasmine in Beijing says: “If you want to organise a public event, anything explicitly related to feminism or LGBT issues is basically not possible, at least in Beijing. If you advertise it that way, there’s a risk the event will be shut down. “So usually we frame the event in a more neutral way, without directly presenting it as being about gender or social issues. But once the event is taking place, we may still discuss those topics.” ‘The online environment now is very different’ Huang’s reporting of survivors’ stories helped to propel the MeToo movement into public consciousness in China. She was arrested in 2021 in the city of Guangzhou a day before she was set to leave China to study a masters degree at Sussex University on a UK government-funded scholarship. In 2024 she was convicted alongside labour activist Wang Jianbing of “inciting subversion of state power”. Huang’s friends say they received little information about her from the authorities while she was in detention, amid reports of dramatic weight loss and intense interrogation, resulting in little sleep. Information travelled slowly out of the prison. They sometimes waited months for updates, relying on messages from other inmates who had been released. At the time of her conviction, Huang was also sentenced to four years “deprivation of political rights”. Human right groups say it could prevent her from continuing to work as a journalist or travelling abroad. In a statement released on Saturday, activists pushing for Huang’s release said “though she is released from prison, none of us [her friends] were able to reach her or receive any information from her. “Her whereabouts is also unknown. We are nervous and worried about her current conditions due to the potential severe surveillance she faces.” The Chinese government says the country has made “historic” progress in women’s rights. In a speech last year, president Xi Jinping listed improvements in health, employment and economic participation. China says it will further strengthen gender equality and protect against sexual harassment and sexual violence. Despite the shrinking space for debate, activists say the movement has had a lasting impact on Chinese society. Metoo made sexual harassment a mainstream topic. It led to policy change in universities, although activists say progress stopped at the courts. “I believe the achievements of China’s MeToo are things that many other authoritarian or even democratic countries failed to achieve,” says Lu Pin, a Chinese feminist activist, based in New York. “Under very harsh conditions, MeToo greatly raised women’s awareness of their rights, especially among young women.” In Beijing, Jasmine hopes to meet Huang one day but is unsure if it will be possible. She says she is still in contact with survivors of sexual harassment and believes it’s possible to support them with publicity and legal support. She believes there are other individuals and groups offering similar help, but they must choose carefully how to effect change. “The online environment now is very different from when MeToo first emerged,” she says. Lu Pin agrees. “People used to have naive imaginations and expectations about the internet, but later realised it wasn’t like that, especially for women and feminism.”

Ukraine war briefing: Russia to ‘intensify’ attacks on Kyiv after Moscow hit with mass drone strikes

Russia has vowed to “intensify” its strikes on Kyiv while accusing Ukraine of attempting to “disrupt” Russian elections after Ukraine fired waves of drones at the Moscow region on the final day of voting, killing at least two people. “In response to the Kyiv regime’s attacks on civilian targets within Russia, the Russian army will continue and intensify its high-accuracy strikes against military targets in Kyiv,” the Russian defence ministry said. The attack was the largest on Moscow since the Kremlin launched its Ukraine offensive in 2022 and involved about 1,600 drones, 450 of which were aimed directly at the capital, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Images showed a gaping hole in a multi-storey apartment building on the outskirts of Moscow. Another showed black smoke pouring from what appeared to be an oil refinery. Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Ukraine’s attacks, saying: “Our long-range responses had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night.” The Ukrainian presidient said that among the weapons used in the attack was the Pelican, initially thought to be a short-range ballistic missile, but which sources said later was a winged drone. Zelenskyy said also Ukraine had used its domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles to strike Moscow. The long-range weapon has previously been used against targets deep inside Russia. Preliminary results from Russia’s election, released by the country’s election commission early Monday, showed the main Kremlin party dominating the vote. The tightly controlled balloting was virtually devoid of opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s policies and all but certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance. With about 58% of the precincts counted, United Russia had nearly 58% of the vote for the 225 deputies apportioned by party lists, according to the Central Election Commission. The balloting included residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began, but still doesn’t fully control, as well as those in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, in what Kyiv denounced as illegal and the European Union described as a “blatant violation of international law”. Zelenskyy ⁠said on Sunday he had spoken with US President Donald Trump and ⁠the two ⁠agreed to meet in New York for talks that “could change a lot” ⁠in terms of finding a resolution to the war with Russia. The two ⁠leaders will be in New York this week ‌for the UN ‌General Assembly. “There are ideas for de-escalation steps and for addressing fundamental security issues – energy security, food security, and the protection of human ⁠life,” Zelenskyy posted on X. European intelligence officials have raised the possibility of an imminent Russian test of Nato, Sean Walker writes, with one saying a potential attack could come in a matter of “months, not years”. The warnings come after Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, told parliament that intelligence assessments suggested Russia might launch an attack with drones or missiles on Nato territory in the coming months, as part of efforts to prove that “article 5 is more theoretical than practical”. Egypt, one of the world’s largest importers of wheat, is diversifying its source of wheat imports towards France ⁠and other European suppliers, moving away from Ukraine and Russia where supplies have been ⁠disrupted, supply minister ⁠Sherif Farouk was quoted as saying on Sunday. The minister’s remarks were quoted by television ⁠host Ahmed Moussa and later confirmed by a ministry spokesperson. An overnight Russian attack on the Kyiv region ⁠killed four people, including three children, Kyiv regional authorities said on Sunday. Drone attacks persisted in Kyiv and the surrounding ⁠region throughout the day. Drone fragments fell in various districts in the capital. Outside the capital, a mother and ⁠her two 3-year-old children were killed in Kyiv region when a Russian drone strike hit a private home, the emergency service ⁠said. Kyiv region governor Tymur Tkachenko said a girl died in hospital after a separate drone strike in another district. Tkachenko ‌said the region endured ‌more than a day of hostile attacks over several areas.

The black robin, once down to just a single breeding pair, wins NZ bird of the year

The black robin, once the world’s rarest bird before an extraordinary conservation project brought it back from brink of extinction, has been crowned New Zealand’s bird of the year, after record voter turnout. The tiny bird is found only in the Chatham Islands, 800km east of mainland New Zealand. Called kakaruia in Māori and karure in Morirori – the language indigenous to the Chathams – the birds are also fondly known as the “goth” of New Zealand’s bird world, for its striking black plumage, black eyes and a little pointy black beak. Habitat loss and introduced pests devastated its population, and by the 1970s there were five birds left. Just one breeding pair remained: Old Blue, the matriarch, and Old Yellow. A breeding programme that pioneered using other species to foster parent the robins’ eggs proved a success, and its numbers have steadily climbed to 350 adult birds, although it is still classed as “threatened”. “They are really cute,” said Jess Mackenzie, spokesperson for the Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust, adding that the black robin has been in the top five birds for the past few years but never clinched a win. “It’s a bird that New Zealanders definitely love and know,” she said. Despite the name, the black robin is not in the same family as overseas robins and are a distinct species. In the Chathams, they live in lowland coastal forest on two restricted, pest-free nature reserves. While a conservation success story, the black robin is not “saved yet”, Mackenzie said. Habitat on their islands is nearly at capacity, and a third pest-free island is needed. The bird of the year competition – run by conservation group Forest and Bird – was launched 20 years ago to raise awareness about the plight of New Zealand’s native birds, many of which are threatened, on the brink of extinction or already extinct due to the introduction of pests, human activity and declining habitats. The 2026 competition attracted a record 105,000 votes. About 88% of the votes were cast from New Zealand. The world’s heaviest parrot, the kākāpō, came second and the 2025 winner, the country’s only falcon, the kārearea, finished third. Over the years, the contest has been subject to scandal, from crowning a bat the winner in 2021, to accusations of Russian interference in 2019, and claims Australians attempted to rig the contest in favour of the shag in 2018. In 2023, British-American comedian and talkshow host John Oliver ran a global campaign for the threatened pūteketeke, which was then crowned the winner that year.

Middle East braces for more violence as Iran claims US is planning to renew bombing campaign

Governments across the Middle East are bracing for an escalation of violence after Iran claimed it had received intelligence that the US was preparing for a renewed bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic. In a potential sign of growing tensions before the UN general assembly in New York this week, Donald Trump cut short a weekend visit to the Camp David presidential retreat on Sunday with no official explanation, and a new security alert was issued by the state department to all US citizens in the Middle East. Keeping his options open, Trump reportedly told a Fox News reporter “very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future” and that the options he was considering were “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal”. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that if an attack does take place, “all US bases and interests in the region will become targets of continuous, effective and painful attacks without any limitations or considerations”. Iran’s leaders also pledged some of the reprisals could extend as far as US naval forces in the Indian Ocean, and accused some Gulf leaders of “double-dealing” by allegedly giving a green light to the US attacks. The outburst of sabre-rattling appears to have been prompted by attacks on the Saudi capital, Riyadh, by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The barrage on Saturday marked the first time the capital’s Aramco oil facilities had been subject to such a sustained attack since the Saudi-Houthi ceasefire broke down in June. Riyadh insisted it had intercepted the missiles, but local photographs show smoke pouring from the Aramco facility. The port of Yanbu, vital for Saudi oil exports, was also targeted. The US largely regards the Houthis as a proxy Iranian force and argues that the group’s attacks on Riyadh would not happen without Tehran’s approval, a claim Iran denies. Trump last week provoked profound questions about the level of US commitment to its Middle East allies when he spurned a call by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, asking the US to come to Saudi’s direct military help. The Saudis wanted US aid after the Houthis suddenly captured strategic ports along Yemen’s west coast overlooking the Red Sea, giving the Houthis control of the Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrow waterway that takes commercial shipping through the Red Sea towards Asia. On the other side of the Arabian peninsular, the strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman is already effectively closed to western traffic and the pressure on European energy supplies is growing by the day, leading states such as France to take emergency measures to prevent fuel shortages. In an attempt to keep the US out of its war with Saudi Arabia, the Houthis had given commitments to US officials that they would only target Saudi-related shipping in the Red Sea, a commitment that Trump appeared to regard as sufficient to ensure essential US interests would be protected and that the US need not become involved militarily. Pressure on the Pentagon budget and dwindling munitions supplies due to the Iran conflict have also made the US reluctant to broaden the theatre of war. Successive bombing campaigns have not dislodged the Houthis, whose lighting advance to the Red Sea coast took the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces by surprise. Trump appeared to disregard the wider security threat by telling Fox News: “The US is in constant contact with the Houthis and they have agreed not to go to war with the US.” The Houthi government said 318 ships passed through the strait from 10-18 September. France will summon Iran’s ambassador ⁠after Iranian ⁠authorities closed a French-language centre affiliated with its ‌embassy ‌in Tehran, the ‌foreign ministry said on Sunday. The Iranian judiciary accused the centre of conducting “illegal acts that violated diplomatic conventions”. The French foreign ministry said: “This new attack on the French cultural presence in Iran … is unjustifiable and unacceptable.” Trump is due to meet the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council when he attends the UN general assembly in New York, in a meeting that is likely to cover Iran, Yemen, Gaza and the future of the US security guarantee. Trump said he was also open to a meeting with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in New York, an encounter that would probably be rejected by the Iranians, who refuse to negotiate directly with the US, operating instead largely through mediators. Pezeshkian is one of many world leaders due to address a general assembly that is likely to be dominated, on the sidelines at least, by Trump’s Middle East crisis. In the first sign of a potential change of White House thinking about renewing US military action, the state department issued a security alert on Saturday to US citizens across the region warning that “the security environment remains complex with potential for unforeseen escalation. American citizens in the Middle East should exercise heightened vigilance.” Hizam al-Assad, a member of the Houthi political bureau, said the attacks on Riyadh are a response to “hundreds of airstrikes that Riyadh had carried out against the people of Yemen”. In a lengthy statement to parliament on Sunday, Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, insisted that Iran was not interested in waging a forever war with the US. But the new secretary of the supreme national security council, Mohsen Rezaei, a hardliner, told Al Jazeera that Iran’s seven preconditions for peace – which include the US lifting its blockade of Iran oil ports, the restoration of its frozen assets and the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil exports – remained. Rezaei also expressed his anger with the Gulf states, saying they had been invited to a meeting in Salahah in Oman last week to approve the agreed Oman-Iran plan for a new authorised shipping route through the strait of Hormuz, but Saudi Arabia rejected attendance. He said: “We invited them to the Salahah meeting and they reciprocated with a secret meeting in Germany with US Central Command and Israel.” Despite the Houthi victories last week, forces allied to the UN-recognised government of Yemen claimed to be pushing back against the Houthis across the country with 75 Houthi soldiers killed on Saturday alone.

Friedrich Merz vows to stay in office after CDU ‘disaster’ in German state elections

Germany’s embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to stay in office and fight for future-proofing economic changes despite heavy losses for his conservatives in two state elections, one to the far right and the other to a leftwing party. Preliminary results indicated Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) tallied just 4.9%, below ⁠the 5% threshold needed to enter the state parliament and indicating they may be excluded altogether. It would be the CDU’s worst-ever state score, which Merz called a “disaster”. The anti-immigration, Kremlin-friendly Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party extended a streak of strong showings by coming in first in the former communist region with 38.3%, more than doubling its previous score, according to projections on ARD public television. In the capital, Berlin, one of Germany’s 16 federal states, the far-left Die Linke looked on course to win with about 25% of the vote, ahead of the incumbent CDU by a five-point margin. The AfD made headway there too, with a clear double-digit result. The deeply unpopular Merz has been fighting for his political survival after a humiliating series of setbacks with voters this year. Speculation about his ability to hold on as chancellor reached fever pitch after Saxony-Anhalt state’s AfD chapter routed the CDU with a record 44% for the party in an election two weeks ago. The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania result marked the third time the AfD has emerged as the strongest party in a region, although the party seemed likely to remain shut out of power in the state because of a “firewall” of non-cooperation agreed by the other main parties. In a rare speech on a state election night, Merz admitted the CDU had been bitterly deprived of “tailwinds from Berlin” in both of Sunday’s races. But he said he would remain chancellor and party chair and continue a reform drive on fronts including taxes, healthcare, pensions and reducing bureaucracy. Merz said the German economy was facing “profound upheaval”, while public discourse had become “harsher and more irreconcilable”. “Trust in our country’s institutions is waning and is being actively undermined by radical parties on both the left and the right,” he said. But he added: “Germany is capable of reform. I would even go so far as to say that these reforms are the antidote to the poison of authoritarianism, which is penetrating ever deeper into our society as the fascination with authoritarianism grows.” A jubilant AfD co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, mocked Merz before his speech, saying voters had given his own party a “very clear result” and called on the chancellor to resign. About 2.5 million people were eligible to vote in Berlin and nearly 1.3 million in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The stinging blows from the latest elections had been expected to put pressure on Merz at a minimum to cede the CDU leadership, which would have in effect ruled out a run for re-election at the next national poll, due in 2029. Merz’s eroding support has created a sense of instability in Europe’s top economy, which is struggling with deindustrialisation, sluggish growth and soaring energy costs. If the AfD’s surge led Merz to abandon the chancellery prematurely, it would give the far right further momentum as France, Italy, Spain and Poland head into elections next year with nativist parties on the march. Germany has high constitutional hurdles to replacing a chancellor against their will and any appointed successor would need to demonstrate a ruling majority. A failure to do so could trigger a new election. The AfD is the biggest opposition force in parliament and is leading national opinion polls with about 30%. It has called for Germany to quit the euro, end support for Ukraine and carry out mass deportations of “irregular” migrants, while citing the “destruction” of the CDU as one of its central goals. The CDU’s debacle in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania – a small, relatively poor state – is particularly bitter for Merz as it was home to the constituency of his arch-rival, Angela Merkel. While she governed Germany for 16 years, Merz appears to be on the ropes after no more than 16 months. Merz took office in May 2025 at the helm of a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) promising to restore the German economy to strength and slash the AfD’s support. A failure to make decisive headway on either front has produced profound disappointment in his leadership, with only one in 10 Germans saying they are satisfied with his performance. An inability to connect with voters appears particularly marked in the former communist east, where the AfD is strongest. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Social Democratic party state premier, Manuela Schwesig, distanced herself during the campaign from a key pension change backed by her party in Merz’s coalition government. She was expected to hold on to power in a left-leaning coalition even if the AfD came out on top when all the votes were counted. Despite leading the polls for months, the far right failed to garner enough support to govern alone and the remaining parties have ruled out working with it. A confirmed win by Die Linke in Berlin, where the far-left party has called for expropriation of corporate landlords to fight rising housing costs, could see its candidate, Elif Eralp, become the capital’s first leader of Turkish origin.

Man, 82, dies after brawl with 76-year-old over sunlounger on Greek beach

Greek police are investigating the death of an 82-year-old man after a brawl over a sunlounger at a beach on the Athenian riviera. The man had arrived at the popular bathing spot of Vouliagmeni before 10am on Sunday hoping to secure a sunbed, but he soon began arguing with a fellow bather – described by authorities as a “76-year-old man unknown to him” – when it became clear loungers were in short supply. The row quickly degenerated into a scuffle as others reportedly joined in. The victim, who was with his wife, is believed to have suffered a cardiac arrest during the fight. “It seems that people who were with [the assailant] also participated,” ERT, the country’s state broadcaster, reported. “The 82-year-old was seriously injured, and needed to be transferred by ambulance to Asklepieion hospital in Voula. “Despite the efforts of doctors, at about 11am the elderly man succumbed to his wounds.” A postmortem was immediately ordered. Police arrested the 76-year-old and, initially, a 21-year-old woman who was with him. The beach resort’s manager was also detained for questioning. “The incident is under investigation,” said a source, describing the fight as unprecedented. “In Greece disagreement is expressed vocally, with a lot of screaming and shouting, not in fistfights like this – especially between two elderly men. I think that’s why it is so shocking.” Like other parts of Europe, Greece is undergoing a severe cost of living crisis that has heightened tensions and put strain on social relations. An increase in domestic violence and other disputes has been partly blamed on the pressures of everyday life. In recent years, there has been growing anger over private rental outfits hogging prime coastal areas with exorbitantly priced sunloungers in Greece, where the sea has an important place in national identity. Authorities said “all those” involved in the incident would appear before a magistrate.