Global Express | September 24, 2026 Ethiopia and Tigray Accuse Each Other of Offensives as Fears of New War Grow

1. Ethiopia and Tigray accuse each other of launching offensives

Source: BBC

Ethiopia's government and the party in control of the northern region of Tigray have accused each other of launching offensives, escalating fears of a return to full-scale conflict. Getachew Reda, a cabinet minister and adviser to the prime minister, said Tigrayan fighters had taken control of federally administered airports in Tigray and launched offensives in the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.

Earlier, the Tigrayan authorities said their forces had been forced into a "defensive war", following reports of drone strikes in Tigray. The two-year war in Tigray ended in 2022, but both sides have accused each other in recent months of violating the peace deal. The African Union's mediator estimated some 600,000 people died in the conflict, which drove the region to the brink of famine.

On Sunday, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) announced an alliance with six other armed groups to remove the government in Addis Ababa. After the airports were seized, Ethiopian Airlines cancelled all flights to Tigray. The chairperson of the African Union Commission, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, called for an "immediate de-escalation" and a resumption of talks.

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2. Polish FM confronts Lavrov at the UN

Source: Kyiv Post

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski confronted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the UN Security Council on Wednesday, rejecting the Kremlin's claims about Ukraine and warning Moscow against further escalation. After Lavrov referred to him by name, Sikorski asked for a few extra sentences to respond.

Sikorski rejected Lavrov's description of the 2014 events in Kyiv as a "bloody coup", saying then-President Viktor Yanukovych was voted out by a democratically elected parliament, including his own Party of Regions, because he carried out a massacre that killed 100 or more Ukrainian civilians. He also dismissed Lavrov's claim that the Russian language is totally banned in Ukraine, saying he had been in Kyiv 10 days earlier under Russian bombs and that Russian is widely spoken there.

Sikorski said Russia was escalating "because Russia's leadership is panicking", adding that Putin had achieved nothing after more than four years and that the war had killed or wounded 1.5 million Russians. He warned that Russia was bringing the same tactics into Europe, and closed by telling Lavrov: "Tell your boss: Enough is enough."

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3. Senior IRGC commander killed in southeastern Iran

Source: Gulf News

A senior commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed during an operation against armed men in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday. Brigadier General Hossein Zarifi, commander of the IRGC's Shahid Sajjad Operational Base in Saravan, died in clashes in the Saravan area, according to the IRGC Ground Force's Quds Base.

The IRGC said five members of an armed group were killed and others arrested, describing those targeted as members of a militant group without identifying the organisation. The claims and casualty figures could not be independently verified. Iran International, citing the Baloch rights group Haalvsh, reported that at least 13 members of the security forces were seriously wounded.

Saravan, close to Iran's border with Pakistan, has seen repeated clashes between security forces and armed groups. The IRGC said Zarifi had served for more than a decade in southern Sistan and Baluchestan, and his funeral is due to be held in Saravan on Friday.

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4. South Sudan president dissolves government

Source: BBC

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has dissolved the transitional government, three months before the country's first election since independence in 2011. Under an amended law signed on Monday, Kiir removed the country's five vice-presidents and dissolved parliament, as well as national and state governments.

Kiir will remain in office with full constitutional powers until an elected president is sworn in, and reappointed some ministers and governors in caretaker positions until the 22 December elections. The country has previously postponed elections twice and extended the transitional period several times. The main opposition leader, Riek Machar, was sacked as vice-president last year and charged with treason.

Ahead of Tuesday's announcement, a heavy security presence was reported in the capital, Juba, and UN agencies asked staff to work remotely. Machar's party, the SPLM-IO, said on Thursday it would not take part in the polls, warning in a letter to the African Union that the country had entered a "constitutional and legitimacy crisis".

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5. Global debt tops $365 trillion

Source: CNBC

Global debt rose by $10 trillion in the first half of the year to top $365 trillion, according to research published by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) on Wednesday. Economists warn that the ever-higher cost of servicing mounting debt loads poses a major risk to governments around the world.

State debts are rising as yields on medium- and long-term government bonds in several of the world's biggest economies — including the U.S., Japan, France and the U.K. — hit their highest levels in more than a decade. The IIF singled out those four economies as facing "persistently large deficits and rising interest expenses".

The IIF found that advanced economies paid more than $3.3 trillion in interest on internationally traded government bonds last year — more than global spending on AI ($2.6 trillion), defence ($3.1 trillion) or clean energy ($2.3 trillion). It warned that debt had become a political issue, creating a "vicious cycle between elections and short-term quick fixes". IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva told the BBC that shocks were "pushing debt levels up like a staircase not to heaven".

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6. US mortgage rates top 7%

Source: CBS News

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in the U.S. rose above 7% last week, reaching its highest level in more than two years. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the 30-year fixed rate climbed to 7.12% in the week ending Sept. 18, a level last seen in May 2024.

The higher rates add to buyers' borrowing costs at a time when housing prices remain near record highs. As fixed rates continued to climb, more buyers opted for riskier adjustable-rate mortgages, which offer a lower initial rate; rates for 5/1 ARMs were more than 1% lower than fixed-rate mortgages, the MBA's chief economist Mike Fratantoni said.

The 30-year fixed rate tends to follow the 10-year Treasury yield, which has spiked in recent weeks as investors fret over inflation, government debt and higher borrowing costs. The 10-year Treasury was hovering around 5% on Wednesday, up more than a percentage point since the war in Iran started in late February. Last week, the Federal Reserve announced a quarter-point rate hike.

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7. UN: Women in Gaza traded for food, forced to marry rapists

Source: New York Post

Two United Nations reports say women in Gaza are being traded for food and forced into marriages with their rapists. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) found a 123% increase in early and forced marriage incidents across Gaza in the first quarter of 2026, with women aged 18-59 suffering 68% of all gender-based violence there.

Researchers spoke to women who said young girls were married off to rapists, traded for food, or given up by guardians who did not want to care for them amid the humanitarian crisis. A second report highlighted some of the most distressing incidents inside refugee camps in Gaza City and Khan Younis, where 230 women shared their stories; one woman said weddings and celebrations appear at a school the day after rape cases are discovered.

The reports note that nearly 25% of households in Gaza are now headed by a woman, double the pre-war figure, with widows and single mothers at greater risk of abuse and exploitation. Meanwhile, President Trump's Board of Peace announced a multi-phase recovery plan for Gaza on Wednesday, with a first step costing $2.45 billion over six months and a final reconstruction cost estimated at $71 billion.

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8. Six killed in Siberian bear attacks

Source: CBS News

At least six people have been killed in bear attacks in Russia's Krasnoyarsk region in a month, prosecutors said on Wednesday, as an official in a neighbouring region reported that bears had put one town "under siege". Prosecutors opened a probe into criminal negligence, accusing local officials of failing to control bear numbers.

Russia's brown bear population has more than doubled since 1990, from around 130,000 to almost 308,000 in 2026, according to Russia's natural resources ministry. While the number of bear attacks across Russia has remained roughly constant at 20 to 30 a year, at least 14 people have been killed in bear attacks across the country since the start of the year, according to a tally by The Moscow Times.

Local media reported that the bodies of two pensioners were found mauled near the remote town of Podtyosovo this month, and that a 39-year-old logger guarding machinery was killed early Wednesday. Dmitry Buchenik, deputy head of the neighbouring Khakassia region, said the forest town of Abaza — home to around 10,000 people — was surrounded by bears "on all sides", describing an "alarming night".

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9. AI model Claude discovers CRISPR-like enzyme system

Source: Al Jazeera

Anthropic has announced the discovery of a new enzyme system in bacterial DNA that it says could "represent a new gene editing mechanism" similar to the groundbreaking CRISPR tool. The company said on Wednesday that its AI model, Claude, had "autonomously" discovered the system at the prompting of researchers at its biology research lab in San Francisco.

Anthropic said the system showed characteristics found in only a handful of other "programmable" structures and displayed a "pattern reminiscent of CRISPR". It said it has not determined the function of the system, and that Claude found it after spending 21 hours searching a large database of DNA sequences. CRISPR has been credited with advancing the treatment of diseases including sickle cell disease and cancer.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a post on X that the company suspects the "molecular machine" could "represent a new gene editing mechanism", adding that AI was only at the "very beginning" of discoveries that could lead to medical breakthroughs. Stanley Qi, an associate professor at Stanford University, called the finding "incredibly exciting", but microbiologist Kevin Blake of Washington University expressed scepticism, saying there was nothing to indicate it could become a rival to CRISPR technology.

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10. Hong Kong braces for National Day Golden Week

Source: Zijing

With the National Day Golden Week a week away, Hong Kong's government and tourism industry are preparing to welcome a large influx of mainland Chinese visitors. This year's mainland Golden Week runs for seven days, from October 1 to October 7. Data from Tongcheng Travel shows that searches for flights to Hong Kong have risen by more than 120% compared with the same period last year.

Data from WeChat shows demand building ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival and Golden Week, with searches related to Hong Kong travel and food rising in the second week of September and searches for Hong Kong SIM cards jumping 400% in the first week of September. A popular mainland food variety show has boosted interest in Hong Kong's food scene, with searches for dai pai dong rising 30%. Cheung Chau, Ocean Park, Lamma Island and the West Kowloon Cultural District saw the biggest increases.

Hong Kong's tourism sector is preparing actively for the arrivals. Choi Ting-bong, executive director of the Hong Kong Tourism Promotion Association, expects visitor numbers this Golden Week to rise from last year, noting that more than five million visits were recorded last month despite hot and rainy weather. Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law said government departments are coordinating preparations, and Chief Executive John Lee stressed a crackdown on forced shopping.

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