YEMEN
The Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, has announced that it has launched a military offensive to recapture all areas under the control of the Houthis, who are supported by Iran. The armed forces will press on “until the country is freed from the grip of the terrorist militias”, said President Rashad al-Alimi in a televised address. A military spokesperson then called on the Houthis to lay down their arms. At the same time as the announcement, the Houthis claimed to have launched ballistic missiles and drones at several Saudi Aramco sites in Riyadh and the Khurais area, in Saudi Arabia.
INDONESIA
The Indonesian authorities have arrested 11 people believed to be linked to the terrorist networks of Daulah Islamiyah, an organisation affiliated with Islamic State. Local police have carried out a series of operations across six provinces since 2 October.
LAOS
A Laotian man who was expelled from the United States and deported to eSwatini has been released after a year in a high-security prison, despite having already served a sentence in the United States. Phone Chomsavanh had been deported in July 2025, during the initial implementation of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. According to his lawyer, Chomsavanh was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and had arrived in the United States at the age of seven with his family. eSwatini has received over $5 million to take in people deported from Washington.
INDIA
Apple has removed the Bitchat messaging app from the Indian App Store in response to a request from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The app has been used by students who have been protesting in recent days against the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The young protesters had used Bitchat to coordinate the protests even after the government’s decision to cut off internet connections. From Friday onwards, demonstrations in Delhi and Mumbai began calling for the resignation of the Election Commission chairman, Gyanesh Kumar, over the scandal involving names being removed from the electoral roll.
JAPAN
This morning, Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, announced a reduction in the consumption tax on food products from 8 per cent to 1 per cent without issuing new bonds, in an attempt to regain market confidence. At the opening of the extraordinary session of the Diet, which will conclude on 12 December, Takaichi also stated that her government would promote domestic investment by drawing up a five-year action plan by the end of the year.
RUSSIA
An outbreak of plague appears to have broken out in the Siberian region of Irkutsk, which has so far claimed the life of an employee at a Russian scientific institute. “Many details have not been confirmed. We encourage the Russian authorities to share accurate information swiftly and transparently,” said a US official on the matter. Alexei Tsydenov, governor of the Buryatia region, stated in a post on his Telegram channel on 3 October that a woman in the neighbouring Irkutsk region had “died, possibly of the plague”. According to media reports, the authorities in the Irkutsk region have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation.
KAZAKHSTAN
In September, the Kazakhstani border service published information on the illegal trafficking of goods: border guards foiled 1,598 cases of smuggling, with a total value of over 2.5 billion tenge. The seized goods included drugs, weapons and ammunition, fuel and lubricants, consumer goods and large sums of cash. In the Caspian Sea, 48 incidents of poaching were foiled, resulting in the seizure of over 41 kilometres of illegal sturgeon fishing equipment.
