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Swedish centre-left opposition widens lead to three seats with 95% of votes counted – Europe live

While the Social Democrats are understandably raring to take a crack at forming the next government, it’s easy to overlook that, despite coming out on top again, the party has actually lost ground since 2022 – recording its lowest vote share since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921. With 95% of votes counted, the party sits at 28.1%, down more than two percentage points from 2022 (30.3%) and below its previous low of 28.3% in 2018. Leader Magdalena Andersson was briefly asked about it last night, but waved these questions away, at least for now, as the focus is obviously elsewhere. Still, worth noting.

Weather tracker: Floods in eastern India and hurricane damage in California

Flooding around the city of Malda in the Indian state of West Bengal since Thursday has had a devastating effect. So far, three deaths have been recorded and many areas are still flooded, with numerous villages affected, along with the region of Bhutni. Erosion from the flooding, reported from Khaskol, led to a disruption in river flow which led to a more severe impact in Bhutni. More than 100 boats have been sent out for evacuation. At East Basudevpur, a 20ft (6-metre) embankment collapsed, reducing the channel from 550ft to under 150ft, which could lead to further flooding unless repaired. This flooding resulted after the Ganges River rose about 75cm above its “extreme danger” level owing to heavy rainfall. A swell caused by Hurricane Marie led to significant beach erosion across Orange county in California on 7 September. The erosion formed a cliff edge on some of the beaches, along with exposing old asphalt, pipes and even pieces of an old pier. The flooding caused by the swell damaged homes and vehicles, as well as flooding streets, leaving behind a layer of sand. The swell has been estimated to be between 8 and 10ft tall. Local people say it is not uncommon to see beach erosion, but this has been one of the most severe cases. After the hottest summer on record for the US, the above average temperatures are expected to continue this week as a heatwave grips many central states. A persistent area of high pressure and a very warm surface after recent heat will help to drive the daytime temperatures widely into the high 30s celsius or up to 40C across Oklahoma, Kansas and nearby states. Models keep the heat locked in through much of the remainder of the month, increasing the risk of wildfires, with other parts of the country already under red flag warnings.

Indonesian police investigate deaths of Australian man and two children in Bali as suspected murder-suicide

Indonesian police are investigating the deaths of three Australians who died in Bali over the weekend, with initial reports suggesting a father killed his two young children before taking his own life. The man, 57, and his two children, seven and four, who are also Indonesian citizens, were discovered deceased in a bungalow in Kuta on Sunday morning. According to Denpasar police, a witness, 51-year-old Nur Khamid, received a phone call from someone claiming to be the victim’s wife at about 8.30am on Sunday. She was in Jakarta, and asked Khamid to check on the condition of her husband and family, who she had been unable to reach. Khamid went to their bungalow and tried to look inside through a window, but “no activity or people were visible inside”, Denpasar police said in its statement. The witness then met the bungalow owner and both returned to perform a check before contacting the “neighbourhood head”, Kelian Lingkungan. Residents “knocked and pounded” on the door before it was forcibly opened, and the three bodies were located. “Police officers arriving at the scene conducted a crime scene investigation and preliminary examination alongside the Denpasar Police Identification Team,” the statement read. “From the initial external examination of the three victims, it is suspected that the two children died as a result of acts of violence, while [the father] is suspected to have died by hanging.” The bodies are at Prof Dr IGNG Ngoerah Central general hospital for further examination and handling. The Denpasar police chief, senior commissioner Leonardo D Simatupang, said Kuta police officers were investigating the incident. “Investigators are still conducting inquiries, including crime scene processing, examining CCTV footage at the scene, and questioning witnesses – including the victim’s wife – to determine the cause of death,” he said. Simatupang said Kuta police had taken a statement from the man’s wife and reviewed CCTV footage. They had also coordinated with the Australian consulate. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed it was providing consular assistance to the family of the three Australians. “We send our deepest condolences to the family at this difficult time. Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment,” they said in a statement. • In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 988 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org

Israel accused of trying to ‘eliminate’ living conditions for Palestinians in West Bank

Israel is working towards the systematic “elimination” of the conditions that sustain Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank, according to a major report published by the human rights group B’Tselem. The Israeli organisation’s hard-hitting report, shared with the Guardian in advance of publication, says Israel is “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank”, including “the ability to get to work, take children to school or university, receive medical treatment or municipal services, meet family and friends, cultivate land or go on vacation … routine activities that make up human life”. According to B’Tselem, the assault on Palestinians is “governed by a coherent organising logic” and comprises five “interwoven domains of action”: violence and intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. The publication of the Elimination Project, B’Tselem’s most comprehensive piece of work on the West Bank since its launch in 1989, comes less than a week after the British foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, accused settler terrorists, supported by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, of committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, in the UK’s starkest condemnation of Israel since the foundation of the state. 1,107 Number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the West Bank since October 2023 By looking more broadly at the conditions required for Palestinians’ collective existence, however, the B’Tselem report goes further still. It says various arms of the Israeli state – led by Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister with broad powers over civilian matters in the West Bank – are seeking to “create a reality in which millions of Palestinians live in constant fear of Israeli military and civilian violence”. “Palestinian communities are being pushed out in an accelerating process of ethnic cleansing, while an ever-expanding Israeli presence is being established in their place in the form of settlements, outposts, farms and Jewish-only civilian infrastructure,” the report says. “Elimination in this context means sustained harm to the conditions that enable Palestinians to exist as a people with land, institutions, language, culture, social ties, leadership, shared memory and history, and a social and political horizon. “It is an ongoing political project that seeks to re-organise space and the conditions of life so that Jewish presence becomes contiguous, institutionalised and permanent, while Palestinian existence becomes fragmented, vulnerable and dependent.” *** One of the most obvious aspects of this fragmentation is the closure of roads and villages to Palestinian passage, and the abandonment of Palestinian homes under relentless pressure. On a recent afternoon outside the village of Sair, Haytham Adnan Murad, 49, was returning from a hospital appointment in Hebron with his 12-year-old daughter, Balqis, who is unable to walk because of recent surgery. A gate to the road accessing his village, open in the morning, had been closed by the Israeli army, forcing Murad to get out of the taxi he was travelling in with his daughter and carry her around the roadblock. “When we left, the gate was open. Now it’s closed, but this is daily life,” he said. “In the morning, things are different from the afternoon. There’s no dignity in this.” The authors of the report link the acceleration of the Israeli assault on life in the West Bank to the period after the Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities on 7 October 2023. However, they argue that the underlying motivating ideology predates this period. In particular they point to a document known as the Decisive Plan, published by Smotrich in 2017, before he became a minister, which they describe as the “key document for understanding Israeli action in the West Bank.” 64 Number of entire communities forcibly displaced in the West Bank since October 2023 B’Tselem says the plan gave Palestinians three options: “Live under Jewish supremacy while relinquishing their national claims, leave the territory, or face violent suppression by the Israeli military if they resist”. It has been translated, the report adds, “into policy, budgets, powers and practices exercised by different arms of the state” with “unprecedented speed and openness”. As such, the report goes on, settler violence is no longer “operating only as private violence or a breach of public order” but as part of a “broader system of control”. “It is sometimes carried out alongside soldiers, with the backing of security forces, using weapons, equipment and infrastructure supplied by the state, and with almost complete impunity.” Beyond the already well-documented incidents of escalating settler violence, the report highlights other corrosive aspects of the tightening Israeli grip on the West Bank, including devastating economic restrictions, and impacts on education and culture. 31.3% Unemployment rate in the West Bank in 2024, up from 13.1% in 2022 Israel, it says, has enacted a systematic policy of “full economic strangulation” since 2023, which has denied livelihood opportunities, destroyed civilian and agricultural infrastructure, tightened control over resources and the banking system, and undermined the ability of public institutions to provide basic services. Smotrich said in September 2025 he would employ every means possible “to prevent the danger of a Palestinian state, including bringing about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority … through economic strangulation”. Mass work permit revocations have left workers and their families without a stable income. This is reflected in data from the West Bank cited in the report. The unemployment rate, for instance, rose from 13.1% in 2022 to 31.3% in 2024, and in 2025, nearly half of all young people were neither employed nor enrolled in education or vocational training. The UN has estimated that in 2024, 700,000 Palestinians in the West Bank needed assistance to buy food, a 17% increase from the previous year. *** Since October 2023, Israel has also intensified attacks on various Palestinian organisations and associations in the West Bank. Grassroots and community groups, as well as organisations that protect workers, people in need and children, have faced frequent raids on their offices, forced closure, systematic harassment and the arrest of employees, volunteers and activists without cause. Cogat, the Israeli military unit responsible for overseeing civilian policy in the West Bank and Gaza, has been approached for comment. 8 to 20% Proportion of West Bank schools closed in the 2023-24 academic year In an interview conducted to coincide with the report’s publication, Kareem Jubran, the head of B’Tselem’s field research on the West Bank, said: “What we uncovered is that these are not separate incidents. All the disparate elements have one character, one goal. When you look at the picture from above, it leads to one conclusion: that the main goal is to eliminate Palestinians as a collective.” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem, said: “What we are saying in the report is that this is ongoing. The project was there before, but now we are in a new phase. “It started at the end of 2022, with the change of the government [to a right-far right coalition], and we saw another marked escalation after October 2023. What we are talking about is an attack on Palestinian life in the West Bank that changed in scale. It’s as much a quantitative element that has changed, making the West Bank more and more unlivable for many Palestinians.” Novak described Smotrich’s plan from 2017 as the “blueprint”. “It shows the ideological and the operational way to get to what we are calling an elimination,” he said. “And he calls it victory by settlement. To win in a very final way so that nothing [such as a Palestinian state] can happen afterwards.” All data and figures provided by B’Tselem

Monday briefing: What do Reform’s record-setting donations mean for the party – and our politics?

Good morning. Nigel Farage has a confirmed talent for upending the laws of political gravity, and this weekend has been no exception, as he declared himself “humbled” by two donations of £36m each from cryptocurrency tycoons Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. I’d shoehorn a joke about buses in here but, honestly, this feels too consequential for that. The largest single donations in British political history were made after a dismal party conference, the substance of which was all but obscured by the financial scandals engulfing Reform. As the financial dubiety continues, and the numbers of millions tick upwards to seem almost meaningless, it might be tempting to roll your eyes and focus elsewhere – but this is not the time to look away. These are gamechanging donations, transformative if used effectively at this stage in the election cycle, just as Labour has regained its confidence and the Tories are contemplating a comeback. As a bill that could stop donations like this in their tracks returns to the Lords later today, I spoke to Jessica Elgot, the Guardian’s deputy political editor, about what these millions mean and why they matter. First, a wrap-up of this weekend’s headlines. Weekend roundup Economy | Former chancellor George Osborne said Britain’s economy had “fallen off a cliff” since Brexit – and that rejoining the European Union’s customs union would be the fastest route to recovery. Technology | Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “slow the pace” of AI development. Amodei had cautioned that an AI swarm could otherwise become capable of “taking over the entire internet” within a year. Sweden | With most of the votes counted, Sweden’s national election remained too close to call on Sunday night, with left-wing parties holding a lead of just a single seat according to a partial tally by the election authority. Ukraine | A train carrying Boris Johnson and the former CIA chief David Petraeus may have been the target of a Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian Railways. Travel | The air traffic control outage that caused thousands of flights to be grounded across the UK earlier in the week was caused by a military aircraft entering “spurious” flight data into the system, according to a report. In depth: More money, more problems? Let’s start with more detail on the donations, by businessmen who have amassed astronomical fortunes trading in cryptocurrency. Ben Delo, a previous Reform donor, has given £36m. Delo was convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his trillion-dollar cryptocurrency business BitMEX, before being pardoned by Donald Trump last year. (A brief note here on how that story came to light: the Sunday Times approached Reform and Farage after a confidential source told them that Delo had donated to the party. Soon after, the Telegraph published an opinion piece by Delo himself, announcing the donation and trouncing the Sunday Times scoop. As Sunday Times political editor Ben Riley-Smith noted on X: “A fundamental part of political reporting – approaching for comment before publishing – just totally breaks down if this is what happens. Bad for both sides: Will increase the chance of inaccuracies.” Reform has used the same tactic with the Guardian, as we talked about in a previous newsletter.) Less than 24 hours later, another crypto donor was troubling the Telegraph’s op-ed page: this time Christopher Harborne – whose previous £5m gift to Farage is the one currently subject to a parliamentary standards investigation – announcing he had likewise donated £36m, saying: “My competitive spirit inspired me to match [Delo].” Taken together, these donations are unprecedented in British political history: £72m is bigger than the total sum spent by the seven largest parties in the last general election (about £67.9m) and almost double the total donations to all political parties so far this year (about £41.8m). *** Are these donations legal? “There’s nothing wrong with these donations that we know of,” says Jessica, her final four words doing a lot of heavy lifting in present circumstances. The Metropolitan police is conducting an inquiry into Reform’s finances and Farage is facing a parliamentary standards investigation into that £5m Harborne gift, made before he was first elected an MP in 2024 and first revealed by the Guardian. Reform and Farage have denied any wrongdoing. It’s a legal requirement for every party to rigorously check the sources of donations, and, doing the media rounds yesterday, Reform’s economics spokesperson Robert Jenrick was sounding supremely confident that the donations were “entirely in line with the law as it is and, as far as we know, what it is going to be in the future”. Jenrick was referencing the representation of the people bill, going through parliament, which will bring in more stringent rules about foreign donations. Gifts to political parties from Britons living abroad or those who have returned to the country within the past 12 months will be capped at £100,000 a year, with the rules backdated to March. Delo has recently moved back to Britain from Hong Kong, while Harborne is a citizen of the UK and Thailand. I don’t have space to get into it here, but if you’re curious about the path to becoming a crypto billionaire and the people who get trampled along the way, I’d recommend the actor and crypto investigator Ben McKenzie’s excellent film Everybody Is Lying to You for Money. (Yes, he’s Ryan in The OC). *** How could Reform spend the money? Reform has already vastly scaled up its party infrastructure since the general election, moving to new offices in London’s Millbank Tower, once synonymous with New Labour election operations. Press officers, graphic designers, videographers and regional organisers have augmented staffing capacity, but their wider policy offering is still weak. An injection of cash will probably mean more hires to address this, and perhaps even drafting legislation to boost Farage’s projection of a party that’s ready for government. Reform is expected to install campaign managers and branch coordinators in hundreds of seats across the country – as their list of 60-plus job vacancies indicates. And if this newsletter gig doesn’t work out for me, I might throw my bunnet in for the senior writer role advertised here – the application requires a 500-word letter, written in the style of Zia Yusuf, “setting out how the political class broke Britain and how Reform UK will fix it”. The donations also promise a massive boost to Reform’s visibility – they can pay for the big “air war” expenses incurred in coming byelections and council elections next year, more locally targeted online advertising and billboards, as well as getting creative with its TV studios. Reform now has the money to focus on labour-intensive data gathering in target constituencies as well, says Jessica, who predicts it will be “transformative” for the party. “You’ve got enough money now to spend on the granular and expensive work of going around every single constituency in the country making sure your data about voters, and non-voters, is bang on. And if you’re a party that wants to show that you’re on the march, they’ve got the momentum, you can dominate the airwaves, dominate people’s social media feeds.” *** Will this prompt a rethink on a cap for all donations? Labour MPs’ WhatsApp chats have been popping off over the weekend, Jessica reports, with anger that the government did not act last week to restrict domestic donations in the elections bill. Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, pulled her amendment proposing an annual cap of £100,000 after Andy Burnham dropped his support for it, following intensive lobbying from the party’s trade union backers, who argued it would undermine their ability to donate to the party. But the bill has its second reading in the Lords later today and, yesterday, communities secretary Angela Rayner suggested that the government was still considering amendments and that “it’s not as simple as we’re saying we won’t put a cap”. As Sunday turned into Monday, some unions appeared to be shifting their opposition while Labour MPs and donors were urging the government to look again at party funding rules. But Reform argues that – as a relatively new political force – it needs this cash injection to level the playing field with other parties and their far longer-standing donor arrangements. *** What about an early election? As Jessica reminds me, Reform will be able to splash its cash in the coming months because many restrictions on party spending don’t kick in until a general election is called. “Other parties are not spending that money now because they don’t have it. And their donors are not giving money at this stage in the cycle. So they won’t have any competition for those eyeballs whatsoever.” There’s growing chatter in Westminster that – if economic growth continues to inch upwards and Reform remains static in the polls – Burnham may go for an early summer general election next year. (With a note of caution from Jessica that there will probably be a backlash from hundreds of Labour MPs on course to lose their seats.) A major consideration for the prime minister is, of course, Reform – which remains, in recent polls, a couple of points behind Labour and a similar amount ahead of the Tories. According to Jenrick on Sunday, these donations enable his party to be “battle ready”, whatever Burnham decides. Meanwhile, Labour sent out an “urgent” fundraising appeal over the weekend, warning that Reform could “simply drown Labour’s message out in elections to come”. Clearly, £72m in cash is good for Reform. “But whether it re-energises the party, and voters think, ‘People are willing to give this money millions of pounds because they offer a radical reset and I want that, too’ or whether it adds to that perception of a party being bought by billionaires, it’s hard to say.” Crucially, it keeps everybody talking about Reform’s finances. After a summer marred by scandal, internal divisions and a damp squib byelection, and at a point when Farage’s own popularity ratings have plummeted and support for the party has stalled, that is last place Reform wants to be. The week to come Monday | First ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will meet in Cardiff to discuss moves towards self-determination across the nations. Tuesday | The final report of the Thirwall Inquiry into events at the neonatal unit where Lucy Letby worked will be published. Letby was sentenced to 15 whole-life terms for murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others. Thursday | Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, will address the European parliament. What else we’ve been enjoying Much of the hand-wringing around the death of reading can seem uncircumstantial, but not this excellent column from John Harris on what it could mean for the future of our democracy in a time of “nonsense and poison”. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team Anyone who, like me, has returned to the place they grew up to see if mere proximity can transport them, in spirit, back to their youth will inhale this thoughtful and emotive collection of mini-essays by Deborah Levy, Julia Samuels and other novelists on revisiting their childhood homes. Here be ghosts. Craille Maguire Gillies, newsletters team Our This is how we do it series is a must-read, and this piece from a couple on making time for sex alongside their open relationship and raising three young kids is no exception (not least to understand how they possibly find the time). Charlie Sport Tennis | Alexander Zverev, the No 1 seed, beat Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2, the American’s hopes dashed in his first grand slam final. Golf | The captain Anna Nordqvist led Europe to a 15-13 victory in the Solheim Cup a month after retiring from competitive golf. Football | Sonia Bompastor’s Chelsea dominated in a 5-0 away victory against Eva Olid’s Manchester United, while Pro Ref admitted Erling Haaland’s winner in Sunday’s Manchester derby should not have counted after the VAR ruled Enzo Fernández was not interfering with play in the buildup. The front pages “Revealed: true scale of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade”, is the Guardian’s splash today. The Telegraph leads with “Hospitality chiefs urge PM to cut VAT” and the Express says “Labour tourist tax will hammer seaside B&Bs”. The i Paper’s headline is “Reform’s £72m crypto bonanza sparks Labour donations row”, Metro says “Labour threat to Reform’s £72m windfall”, while the Mirror’s take is “Bitcon?”. The FT’s splash is “Trump rejects industry calls for brake on AI over fears of losing race to China”. The Sun has “Boris flees Vlad drone blitz”, the Mail asks “Did Putin drone target Boris and top security officials?” Today in Focus AI isn’t going to end humanity … right? Ten per cent. That’s the risk, more or less, claimed a high-profile AI developer last week, that the technology wipes humanity out in the next decade. “I think it’s a crossover moment for the AI safety story because this has been for a long time talked about inside the AI world”, says our UK technology editor, Robert Booth, “but now, the general public and the political class have become increasingly concerned about it.” So how worried, asks Annie Kelly, should we be? Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad “In bistros and cafes, people don’t just eat and drink, they catch up with each other, meet new people, debate, laugh, read, write and sometimes fall in love,” said Alain Fontaine of Paris’s Le Mesturet bistro. Yet where once there were an estimated 500,000 cafe-bistros dotted throughout France, there are now only about 30,000 to 40,000. But one group of local campaigners in the northern Burgundy community of Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne has saved one such establishment, and in the process, make their village livable again. After a successful community-led campaign to reopen it, Au Bon Acceuil cafe-bistro has been brought back to life – and every table is taken. As the village mayor, Hervé Chapuis, put it: “Our aim is to keep this kind of business open to support the social fabric. It’s part of village life and people missed it. Now, village life has returned to its proper rhythm.” 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

Satellite images show extent of damage to major Saudi pipeline, amid global oil supply fears

Saudi Arabia will run out of oil ⁠stocks for export if it ⁠doesn’t restart a drone-damaged major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to the loss of up to 4% of global supply, Saudi oil buyers and traders said. Satellite photos released on Sunday night appeared to show a pumping station on the key 1,200km (745-mile) Saudi east-west pipeline charred and badly damaged, after drone attacks on Friday. A further decline in oil flow from Saudi Arabia, the world largest oil exporter, will worsen the ⁠global supply crunch, which has already pushed global fuel prices to record highs and spurred inflation around the world. The news comes as Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi forces have launched attacks on targets in Saudi Arabia and captured the strategic island of Perim in the Bab al-Mandab strait, expanding their control of the narrow waterway. On Sunday, the international oil benchmark, Brent crude, rose more than 3.4% to $108 per barrel, a level not seen since May. Since the drone attacks forced the shutdown of the pipeline, Riyadh has yet to provide full details about the extent of the damage or how long the route will stay offline. The Saudis blamed the attack on drones launched by militants in Iraq. Sources that spoke to Reuters gave varying estimates, ‌with one saying the damage could take ‌up to six weeks to repair, while another said it could be fixed sooner and could resume pumping partially while ‌repairs are ongoing. Saudi Arabia’s government media office and energy ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. For the past six months, the pipeline running through the desert across the Arabian Peninsula has spared Saudi Arabia from the brunt of the impact of the wartime shutdown of the strait of Hormuz that has crippled exports from its neighbours. The world’s biggest exporter has used the pipeline to reroute around 4m barrels per day – about 4% of global supply – to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. But with the ‌pipeline out of service, Yanbu now has stocks to maintain exports for just five to seven days, according to three industry sources familiar with Saudi exports. Saudi Arabia also has stocks to supply customers for several days from Egypt’s ports of Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea and Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean, a fourth source said. Stocks are not full and will ultimately run out without the east-west pipeline resuming operations, the four sources said. As the price of oil price of climbed, hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough in the near term faded when Oman’s foreign minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, posted late Sunday that a regional meeting scheduled for Monday had been postponed “in the interests of consensus”. Iranian officials had said they would attend that gathering with Gulf Arab states to present ⁠an agreement with Oman on governing shipping routes through the strait of Hormuz. The strait was free to transit before the war, but Iran now requires vessels to obtain permission and is considering a mechanism to impose service fees. The disruptions to crude has driven up prices across refined derivatives such as petrol and diesel. Diesel prices in the US hit a record on Friday, soaring past $6 a gallon on average. The Houthis are targeting Saudi oil infrastructure and shipping as part of a recently declared blockade. Recent advances by the Iran-aligned group puts them closer to a major US base in Djibouti. The spiralling conflict in the Middle East is now in its seventh month, after US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February and Donald Trump declared the war would finished in four to six weeks. With Reuters and Associated Press

Ukraine war briefing: Poland calls for ‘double’ support to Kyiv after Russian train attack

Poland and Ukraine have denounced Russian strikes close to the Polish border as an “escalation” in the war after a train was targeted while former British prime minister Boris Johnson and ex-CIA director David Petraeus were at a border station nearby. The escalation should lead to allies to “double” their support for Ukraine, Poland’s foreign minister said in Kyiv. “This was just a few hundred metres from the Polish border, this affects the safety of my countrymen,” Radoslaw Sikorski said. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk chaired an emergency meeting in Warsaw after the strikes, warning he expected Russia to escalate the war “in the coming weeks”. He added: “We cannot exclude that the escalation will also affect our territory … I hope not.” Poland and Ukraine said the Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train was struck just 2km from the Polish border, reporting no casualties. Shortly beforehand a diplomatic train was at Yagodyn station including Johnson and former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt as well as security advisers from several EU member states, while former CIA director David Petraeus was aboard another train at the station when the attack occurred, the Ukrzaliznytsia rail operator said. It did not say how far the officials were from the train struck. Zelenskyy said Moscow had “deliberately” struck the locomotive. “It is precisely to prevent these strikes from spreading further into Europe that Ukrainian men and women fight every day, give their lives, and do not allow the aggression to expand,” the Ukrainian president said. Ukrainian Railways said Johnson and Petraeus may have been the target, report Amy Hawkins and Charlotte Higgins. Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the attack was “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato”. Donald Trump has called on Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks were causing a global shortage. “Mr Zelenskyy has to do one thing – he has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters in Ireland after diesel prices in the US hit a record high on Friday. “We spoke to Mr Zelenskyy about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting the world.” Kyiv says Russia’s oil industry funds and fuels Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Trump sought to tie Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries to rising oil prices, saying it was these attacks and not America’s ongoing conflict with Iran that were responsible for price rises. “This isn’t done by the Middle East, this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine,” the US president said. According to a report published on Friday by the International Energy Agency, net exports of diesel and oil from the Gulf countries in August stood at “just over a quarter” of what they were before the war on Iran began in February. “Disruptions to Russia’s refining system and a near-halt to product exports following intensified Ukrainian attacks have compounded these losses,” the agency wrote. The Kremlin said negotiations with Ukraine and the US on the war could take place in October. “We do not rule out such a possibility – we are talking about the foreseeable future,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, cited by Russia’s Ria and Tass news agencies. Zelenskyy said separately he would be willing to meet Putin at the G20 summit in Miami in December, but Peskov said that was “impossible”, repeating Moscow’s demand that a meeting could only take place in the Russian capital. Putin has repeatedly rejected offers for face-to-face talks with the Ukrainian president. Zelenskyy has imposed sanctions on a former press secretary, ⁠accusing her and nine others of spreading Russian propaganda and of supporting Russia’s aggressive policy ⁠towards Ukraine. Yuliia Mendel, who ⁠worked with Zelenskyy from 2019 to 2021, before Russia’s invasion – responded with a message on Facebook saying it ⁠was unconstitutional to impose sanctions on Ukrainian citizens. She did not comment on the specific accusations.

Centre-left bloc leads Swedish elections – as it happened

Swedish opposition left-leaning parties held a lead of just a single seat on Monday morning, with 91% votes counted (1:43), as the result remained too close to call the election (1:04). Opposition leader Magdalena Andersson said Sweden would get a new government if the projected result gets confirmed when all votes are counted, as projections suggest a one-mandate win for the left-leaning opposition bloc over Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right bloc (00:04, 00:11). But Kristersson urged patience until all votes are counted and suggested exploring an alternative majority, while casting doubt over the ability of the opposition parties to agree on a common programme (00:42). Projections by the Swedish election authority and Swedens’s public broadcaster SVT suggest the opposition bloc will have 175 seats in the new parliament, one more than the governing centre-right bloc at 174 (21:48, 23:25). Key party leaders conceded that the margin between the two parties is too small to determine the result of the election tonight, with all ballots not expected to be counted before Wednesday (23:47, 23:53, 00:04, 00:18, 00:28). The far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats appeared to lose support comparing to 2022, with Kristersson’s Moderates expected to take over as the second largest party in the country (20:15, 22:05, 22:11, 00:28). Given the results so far, the government formation process could take weeks if not months. Thank you for joining me on Europe Live tonight. If you have any comments, suggestions, or tips, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.