Sheikh Hasina, a fugitive former leader of Bangladesh, has warned that the country’s rifts would grow if her Awami League party were to be excluded from the upcoming elections, leading to a vote-buying boycott by millions of her supporters.
The 78-year-old, who is currently imprisoned in India after being toppled by a student-led uprising in August 2024, saw up to 1,400 people die in attacks on her as she clung to power.
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In response to anti-terrorist act amendments, Muhammad Yunus’ interim government has pledged to hold elections in February, but it has already banned the Awami League. The interim government has cited national security threats and war crimes investigations involving senior party leaders.
In emailed comments to the Reuters news agency on Wednesday, Hasina wrote that the Awami League’s ban is “unjust and self-defeating.”
“As things stand, millions of people do not vote,” according to the Awami League. If you want a functioning political system, you can’t disenfranchise millions of people.
Bangladesh, home to more than 126 million registered voters, has long had a strong political influence over the Awami League and its rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP boycotted the January 2024 elections because its top leaders were either imprisoned or in exile.
The Awami League’s ban has been criticized as “draconian” by Human Rights Watch. In its absence, the BNP is expected to win the next year’s election, while Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party, is gaining popularity.
Hasina informed Reuters about the upcoming elections, “We are not asking Awami League voters to support other parties.” We still hoped that the election will be decided by consensus and that we would be able to vote for ourselves.
The “nucleus” of all crimes
The domestic war crimes court for Bangladesh’s largest nation has adjourned the case against Hasina, and a verdict is anticipated on November 13.
Tajul Islam, the chief prosecutor, claimed that Hasina was “the nucleus around which all crimes were committed” during the uprising and demanded that her death sentence be sentenced.
She is accused of overseeing the disappearances and torture of opposition activists at shady detention facilities run by security forces, according to the prosecution.
Hasina has defied court orders to go back to the trial. According to her, the proceeding was “a politically motivated charade.”
“They’ve been tried by kangaroo courts, and the verdict is a foregone conclusion,” they say.
Hasina described the allegations that she had ordered security forces to fire on protesters as “bogus” in an AFP news agency email interview on Wednesday and said she mourned the “tragic days” of her crackdown.
The prosecution, which insisted her trial was fair, has released audiotapes that suggested Hasina had specifically ordered her security forces to “use lethal weapons” against protesters.
After Hurricane Melissa slammed across the Caribbean island as one of the strongest storms ever to pass, leaving behind a trail of destruction, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has labeled Jamaica a “disaster area.”
Most of the country’s 2.8 million people were without electricity as a result of the hurricane’s landfall as a Category 5 storm on Tuesday, which wiped out the roofs of homes, inundated the “bread basket,” and destroyed power lines and trees.
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Melissa had to pass through Jamaica before it was reduced to a Category 3 storm before it resumed its course on Wednesday, heading Cuba.
In a number of posts on X, Holness claimed that the storm had “ravaged” his nation and that the disaster declaration would give his government “tools to continue managing” its response.
He told CNN late on Tuesday that it was obvious that the hurricane’s eye would have a devastating impact. “Reports we have received so far include damage to hospitals, significant damage to residential property, housing and commercial property, and damage to our road infrastructure.”
Holness claimed that at this time there are no confirmed reports of fatalities. However, he continued, “We are anticipating some loss of life with a Category 5 hurricane.”
By Wednesday morning, the prime minister claimed his country was mobilizing quickly to begin relief and recovery efforts.
The hurricane caused seven fatalities before Melissa slammed into Jamaica, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti, and one in the Dominican Republic.
The storm had impacted almost every parish in Jamaica, according to Desmond McKenzie, the island’s local government minister, on Tuesday evening, and left the majority of the island without electricity.
He claimed that the parish of St. Elizabeth, the nation’s primary agricultural region, was “under water” as a result of the storm.
According to what we have seen, “St. Elizabeth has sustained a lot,” the minister continued, noting that “almost every parish experiences blocked roads, fallen trees, utility poles, and excessive flooding in many communities.”
He continued, “Work is currently on the way to restore our service, to prioritize the crucial facilities, such as hospitals and water and pumping stations.”
Health and Wellness Minister Christopher Tufton reported to the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper that at least four hospitals had been “significantly damaged” by the storm.
Due to Hurricane Melissa’s passing, a building at a section of the Savanna La Mar Public General Hospital had completely torn off. In Westmoreland, Jamaica, the system made landfall earlier today near the New Hope district. #GLNRToday #TrackingMelissa image twitter.com/zBnm9bu4Oq
“Monstrous Melissa”
The storm was the “worst we’ve ever experienced,” according to Robian Williams, a journalist for the Nationwide News Network radio broadcaster in Kingston.
From the capital, she said, “It’s truly heartbreaking and devastating.”
“We’re calling Hurricane Melissa “Monstrous Melissa” here in Jamaica because that’s how powerful she was. … The devastation is widespread, mostly being felt and still being felt in the western ends of the country at this point in time. So many homes, so many people have been displaced,” she said.
“We did prepare, but there wasn’t much else we could have done.”
Trout Hall Road, Clarendon, is the location of the CVMTV photo, “TrackingMelissa #HurricaneMelissa #Jamaica.” twitter.com/bTop93pOvp
Lisa Sangster, a 30-year-old communications specialist, claimed that the storm had destroyed her home in Kingston.
She told the AFP news agency, “My sister explained that some of our roof’s components were blown off, while others caved in, and the entire house was flooded.” “Outside structures like our outdoor kitchen, dog kennel, and farm animal pens were also gone, destroyed,” said one employee.
Mathue Tapper, 31, told AFP that the capital’s residents were “lucky,” but he worried about the residents of Jamaica’s more rural areas.
He expressed his condolences to the island’s western residents.
Melissa reshapes
On Tuesday night, the US National Hurricane Center received a warning that Melissa was regaining speed as it moved toward eastern Cuba.
At 11 p.m. CST on Tuesday (03:00 GMT on Wednesday), the center warned that “there is a very dangerous major hurricane there” as a potential major hurricane in the next few hours.
More than 700, 000 people have been evacuated from Cuba, according to Granma, the official newspaper, and forecasters predicted that Santiago de Cuba and other nearby areas will suffer severe damage as a result of the Category 4 storm.
On October 28, 2025, in Santiago de Cuba, people sought shelter from the rain. [EPA/Ernesto Mastrascusa]
Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas, and the southeast and central Bahamas were both subject to a hurricane warning. Bermuda was in the midst of a hurricane watch.
Up to 51cm (20 inches) of rain were forecast for parts of eastern Cuba as a result of the storm, which was expected to cause a storm surge of up to 3.6 meters (12 feet) in the area.
There will be a lot of work to be done, he declared. In a televised address, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said, “We know there will be a lot of damage, and no one is left behind, and no resources are spared to protect the lives of the population.”
He urged Cubans to not underestimate the strength of Hurricane Melissa, which he described as “the strongest ever to strike national territory.”
Changes in climate
Although hurricanes have been common in Cuba and Jamaica, climate change is making them more severe.
In a video that was shared on social media, British-Jamaican author and activist Mikaela Loach claimed Melissa “gained energy from the extraordinarily hot seas in the Caribbean.”
Loach claimed that these sea temperatures are not typical. They are “extremely hot” due to the gases produced by fossil fuel burning.
“Countries like Jamaica are also the nations whose wealth and resources have been taken from them through colonial bondage,” Loach continued. “These nations are the most vulnerable to climate disasters.
Holness urged wealthy nations to increase climate financing in order to aid developing nations like Jamaica in adjusting to the effects of a warming world during a speech at the UN General Assembly in September.
“Changes in climate is not a distant threat or an academic consideration. It is a daily reality for small island developing states like Jamaica,” he said.
Global warming is only caused by 0.02 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to World Resources Institute data.
In Sudan, amid reports of widespread atrocities and the murder of five Red Crescent volunteers, fears have grown that paramilitaries have taken control of the important city of El-Fasher.
Reports of widespread killings that recall Darfur’s darkest days have been followed by the capture of El-Fasher, the country’s historical center.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a branch of the Janjaweed militias that were accused of genocide two decades ago, are now in charge of the city after an 18-month siege that included starvation and bombardment.
The paramilitary group, which has been fighting fiercely with the Sudanese military since April 2023, has launched a final assault on the city in recent days, seizing the army’s last positions.
Five Sudanese Red Crescent volunteers were killed on Monday in Bara, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, and three others were missing after the RSF took control of the town on Saturday.
According to analysts, Sudan is now effectively divided along an east-west axis, with the RSF ruling Darfur while the army is based north, east, and center along the Nile and Red Sea.
El-Fasher’s fall is regarded as one of the worst genocides of the 21st century for many people because of its impact on memories of the 2000s, when the Janjaweed massacred villages and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Videos that allegedly show RSF fighters carrying out executions and abusing civilians have been shared online since the city’s fall on Sunday.
A committee will be established to verify the veracity of videos and allegations, according to a coalition led by RSF, which claims that the army has “fabricated” many of the videos.
The African Union criticized “escalating violence” and “alleged war crimes,” while the UN issued warnings about “ethnically motivated violations and atrocities.”
The army-allied Joint Forces accuse the RSF of killing at least 2, 000 civilians, according to pro-democracy groups, as “the worst violence and ethnic cleansing” since Sunday.
More than 26 000 people reportedly fled El-Fasher on foot in search of Tawila, which is 70 kilometers west, according to the UN.
The UN’s migration agency claims that 177, 000 civilians are still imprisoned in El-Fasher as a result of the RSF’s construction of a 56-kilometer (35-mile) earthen berm, which would block access to food, medicine, and escape routes.
The government has been brutally retaliating against dissention before the election, so polls have started in Tanzania for presidential and parliamentary elections that are taking place without the main opposition party.
More than 37 million registered voters will cast their ballots between 7 a.m. (local time (4:00 GMT) and 4 p.m. (13:00 GMT). Within three days of the election day, the election commission promises to release the results.
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After the two main opposition parties were prohibited from standing, Samia Suluhu Hassan, 65, is anticipated to win.
The opposition party’s Tundu Lissu, the leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party, is facing treason charges. He denies this. Chadema was disqualified in April for rejecting an electoral code of conduct.
After the attorney general’s objection, the commission also disqualified Luhaga Mpina, the candidate for ACT-Wazalendo, leaving only candidates from smaller parties competing against Hassan.
Voters will also elect the country’s 400-member parliament, president, and politicians from the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago.
Since its founding in 1977, Hassan’s ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), whose predecessor party led the fight for mainland Tanzania’s independence in the 1950s, has ruled the country’s politics.
After taking office in 2021, Hassan, one of only two female heads of state in Africa, won praise for easing the growing censorship and repression of political opponents under John Magufuli’s death.
Rights activists and candidates for the opposition have accused the government of unexplained abductions of its critics over the past two years.
She maintains that her country has a policy of respecting human rights and that it has ordered an investigation into reported abductions last year. No official findings have been made public.
On October 8, 2025, students in Arusha, Tanzania, pass a billboard for Chama Cha Mapinduzi party candidate Samia Suluhu Hassan, a candidate for president of Tanzania.
halting opposition
UN human rights experts have demanded that Hassan’s administration immediately put an end to the “additional disappearances of political opponents, human rights defenders, and journalists as a tool of repression in the electoral context.”
Since 2019, they claim more than 200 cases of forced disappearance have been found in Tanzania.
A recent Amnesty International report described a “wave of terror” that included “enforced disappearances and torture… and extrajudicial killings of opposition figures and activists.”
According to Human Rights Watch, “the authorities have suppressed the political opposition and opposition leaders, stifled the media, and failed to grant the electoral commission’s independence.”
The ruling CCM was reportedly trying to avoid the recent electoral pressures that counterparts in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe experienced. The US crisis-monitoring organization Armed Conflict Location &, Event Data (ACLED) claimed.
Ali Mohamed Kibao, a member of the opposition’s Chadema party’s secretariat, was abducted from a bus leaving Dar-es-Salaam to Tanga, a port city in the northeast of the country, in September 2024.
Even CCM members are feared to be targeted, according to some. After resigning and voicing his grievances with Hassan, Humphrey Polepole, a former CCM spokesman and ambassador to Cuba, vanished from his home this month. His home had blood stains, according to his family.
Since Hassan’s rule, the Tanganyika Law Society has reported 83 abductions, with 20 more reported in recent weeks, according to the organization.
The World Bank attributes this to Tanzania’s relatively healthy economy, which increased by 5.5 percent last year on the back of strong agriculture, tourism, and mining sectors.
In a high-stakes snap election in the Netherlands, which will test the far-right’s leadership, which is expanding across Europe, will be challenged.
On Wednesday, polls indicated that far-right Freedom Party (PVV) candidate Geert Wilders and his far-right opposition party are on track to take the majority of House of Representatives seats. The gap is being filled by three more moderate parties, but the majority of the electorate is still undecided.
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Parties must bargain over the composition of the next coalition government once the results are known, in a proportional representation system that requires no party to occupy the 76 seats needed to run the government alone.
The key question is whether other parties will support Wilders, who was referred to as the “Dutch Trump” and who sparked the election by removing the PVV from a contentious four-way coalition and putting an end to the previous government’s immigration repression.
All major political parties have rejected a partnership with him because they believe he is an untrustworthy coalition partner because of his views. The party’s leader, according to what sources, is most likely to become prime minister.
Step Vaessen, a journalist from The Hague, claimed that the election campaign had been “dominated by calls to limit immigration” and that there had also been “some violent protests against refugee centers.”
Wilders claimed that people were “fed up with mass immigration, the change of culture, and the influx of people who really do not not culturally belong here” in a pre-election interview with the news agency AFP.
He said, “Our nation’s future is in danger.”
Voters can “choose again tomorrow to listen to your grumpy hatred for another 20 years or choose with positive energy to simply get to work and tackle this problem and solve it,” according to Rob Jetten, the leader of the centre-left D66 party, which wants to restrain migration while also accommodating asylum seekers.
In the final debate leading up to the elections, former European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said he was “looking forward to the day – and that day is tomorrow” that we can end the Wilders era.
A significant campaign issue has been the housing crisis, which is particularly concerning for young people in the densely populated nation, in addition to immigration.
The House of Representatives candidate registration process includes 1,166 registered parties.
Because it lists all the parties and candidates, it means a large ballot paper.
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, says he anticipates a “great deal” with China at his high-stakes meeting with Xi Jinping.
Trump stated in a rambling and broad speech on Wednesday as he addressed the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, adding that the anticipated trade agreement would benefit both nations and be “something very exciting for everyone.”
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“That’s really a fantastic outcome,” Trump addressed a business luncheon on the sidelines of the APEC gathering in Gyeongju, saying, “It’s better than fighting and going through all kinds of problems.”
There is no justification for it.
In their first face-to-face meeting since the US president launched his second trade war with China on Thursday, Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet in the coastal city of Busan, which is located 85 kilometers south of Gyeongju.
Trump last met Xi in 2019 on the eve of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, after making stops in Malaysia and Japan.
Trump declined to disclose the details of the anticipated agreement.
Trump, however, stated earlier on Wednesday on Air Force One that he anticipated the agreement would “solve a lot of problems” and would include lower tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for Beijing to stop producing fentanyl.
Trump’s claim that Beijing is failing to halt the flow of chemicals used to produce the deadly opioid has led to the imposition of a 20% tariff on Chinese goods.
Prior to the signing of the deal, US officials have stated that Beijing has agreed to purchase more US agricultural products in addition to the deferral of China’s planned export controls on rare earth minerals and an additional 100 percent US tariff on Chinese goods.
Trump added that he would “very soon” conclude a trade deal with South Korea in his luncheon address.
Due to disagreements over the specifics of a $ 350 billion investment package Seoul has pledged in exchange for lower tariffs, South Korea and the US, who are close treaty allies, have been battling it out for months.
Trump also praised the Hanwha Philly Shipyard’s expansion, which was led by Korea.
Hanwha Ocean, a South Korean shipbuilder, announced in August that it would invest $70 million to expand the shipyard, which it purchased last year.
