Global Express | September 27, 2026 — Several Arrested Near US Air Base in England as Bomb Disposal Team Deployed

1. Several Arrested Near US Air Base in England as Bomb Disposal Team Deployed

Source: CBS News

Police in southwestern England said Sunday that several men had been arrested on suspicion of explosives offences at a village near an air base used by U.S. forces. Gloucestershire police declared a major incident and evacuated "a number of properties" in the Whelford area, and a bomb disposal team was on site examining several vehicles. Some residents were evacuated and a cordon was set up, but the incident was described as "contained."

Whelford lies close to RAF Fairford, a base U.S. forces have used for strikes during the war with Iran; after the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began on Feb. 28, the UK government allowed American forces to use Fairford to strike Iranian missile sites. Police did not confirm to the Associated Press whether the arrests were linked to the base. A U.S. Air Force spokesperson said personnel at RAF Fairford "remain vigilant" but declined to discuss force protection measures. A Reuters eyewitness said security had been significantly increased in recent days, with more roadblocks and armed police. The UK government thanked emergency services and said it would be "inappropriate to comment further whilst investigations are ongoing."

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2. Ethiopia's Army Promises Restraint as Northern Fighting Raises Civil-War Fears

Source: Al Jazeera

Ethiopia's federal military says it is handling rising tensions in the country's north with restraint, as fears grow that the country could be heading toward another civil war. In his first comments on the recent military developments, Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Berhanu Jula said the army was responding to what he called provocations from the Tigray front with "wisdom and restraint." He accused Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia and described the "Tsimdo" alliance as an extension of a longstanding pattern of hostile alliances; Eritrea denied the accusations.

Fighting has spread from Tigray into neighbouring Afar and Amhara after seven armed groups announced an alliance — the Ethiopian Peoples' Forces Alliance for Survival — committed to removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government. In Afar, the latest battles have taken place around Abala; in North Wollo, a zone of Amhara bordering Tigray, the army said Thursday it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 in a counter-offensive. The TPLF's Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a "full-scale offensive" involving infantry, mechanised units and drones. The renewed fighting has put the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended a brutal two-year civil war in Tigray, under severe strain, raising fears of a wider regional conflict.

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3. Germany's Far-Right AfD Is So Extreme It Puts Off Other Far-Right Parties

Source: CNN

The rise of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) is causing widespread alarm — including in unexpected quarters: other far-right European parties. While the German party is winning record levels of support at home, some of its closest ideological allies elsewhere in Europe are keeping it at arm's length. In the state of Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month, the AfD won 43.8% of the vote, falling just three seats short of an outright majority; elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin last weekend also showed an exodus from mainstream parties to the fringes.

Geert Wilders of the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, Viktor Orban of Hungary's Fidesz and Santiago Abascal of Spain's Vox congratulated the AfD, with Abascal hailing its advance as "a great hope for Germany and Europe." But some of Europe's biggest far-right parties — including in France, Italy and Britain — have been silent. France's National Rally said even before the Saxony-Anhalt vote that renewed cooperation with the AfD was "not planned"; Marine Le Pen has pushed the party's "detoxification" and broke ties with the AfD in May 2024. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy has also not embraced the AfD, calling their foreign-policy differences "irreconcilable," while Britain's Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described the AfD as a "mixed bag." U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated the party, ending his message with a German variant of "MAGA": "MGGA!"

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4. German and Russian Foreign Ministers Meet for First Time in Over Four Years

Source: DW

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's general debate in New York, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a bilateral meeting. It was the first formal face-to-face contact between the two countries' foreign ministers since Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022; the last meeting at that level was in January 2022. The closed-door talks took place in a room provided by the Russian side and lasted about 20 minutes.

Afterwards, Wadephul told German broadcaster ZDF it had been an "intense talk" in which "of course we did not reach agreement on the core issues." He said he raised proposals to de-escalate, particularly on Ukraine, but Russia showed no willingness to accept them. According to German delegation sources, Wadephul urged Lavrov to "do everything possible to reach agreement on Black Sea grain exports" and demanded that Russia abandon its "dangerous escalation path" against Germany, Europe and NATO. Lavrov gave a negative assessment of the meeting, calling it unnecessary and without substantive progress. On the UNGA podium he accused the West of blocking talks to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict and criticised Germany and Japan's bids for permanent UN Security Council seats.

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5. 10-Year Treasury Yield Hits Highest Level in Nearly Two Decades

Source: CNBC

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield leapt to 5.23% on Friday, its highest level since 2007, rattling investors; earlier this month it was trading just below 4.8%. The rapid climb above 5% shows how quickly investors' expectations have shifted toward additional tightening from the Federal Reserve in light of stubborn inflation. Fed funds futures trading shows a 64% likelihood of a rate hike in October, according to the CME FedWatch tool. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index showed year-ahead inflation expectations leapt to 4.6% in September, up from 4% in August and the highest reading since June.

Thierry Wizman, global FX and rates strategist at Macquarie Group, said this year the run-up "has more to do with the bond issuance than the inflation story." The federal government is issuing debt to finance a large deficit, while companies are borrowing heavily to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure — a combination that has increased bond supply enough to push yields up. Vanguard estimates that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle issued about $132 billion of debt through July, up sharply from the roughly $35 billion annual average between 2020 and 2024; broader AI-related debt issuance could reach $300 billion to $570 billion this year.

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6. Chinese AI Models Surge in Global Popularity, and Washington Is Worried

Source: CNBC

AI was a major focus as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met this week. The most advanced U.S. models lead most benchmarks, but Chinese companies such as DeepSeek, Z.ai and Alibaba have released new models with major performance gains in tasks such as coding. According to usage data shared with CNBC, the global adoption of Chinese models by companies has increased substantially in 2026.

Chinese AI models have gone from a relatively small share of usage to a majority on two major developer platforms. On OpenRouter, they accounted for 57%-67% of tokens used in the week of Sept. 14, up from 6%-13% in February; on Vercel, their share rose to 55% in August from 11% in January. Two U.S. House Committees are investigating the impact of rising adoption of Chinese models. Daniel Remler, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said Chinese AI represents "real economic and security risks," with the ultimate concern being that it pulls countries into a Chinese technology sphere of influence. Peter Walker, head of insights at OpenRouter, said Chinese open-source models "can credibly perform in advanced agentic use cases, especially in regards to coding," and are "incredibly cost-effective."

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7. Two Shootings in South Africa Leave at Least 27 Dead

Source: Al Jazeera

At least 27 people have been killed and more than 20 wounded in two shootings in two South African townships, according to police. In the first incident late on Saturday, at least 17 people were killed and 15 wounded at a tavern in Wedela, southwest of Johannesburg. Police said they were searching for eight suspects "reportedly armed with AK-47 rifles and pistols"; the motive remained unknown and no arrests were announced. Early on Sunday, gunmen killed at least 10 people and wounded 11 at a store in Lwandle near Cape Town.

The shootings took place just days after a shooting at a house party near Durban killed 11 people, including a pregnant woman. Police said the first attack began about 9:30pm on Saturday in Extension 3, Wedela, in Gauteng province's West Rand district; the gunmen fired at people gathered outside the tavern before going inside, and some customers were searched and had their mobile phones taken. The suspects then escaped in two vehicles, and two other vehicles were burned. South Africa records persistently high levels of violent crime, and the government has faced sustained pressure to improve public safety.

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8. Eviction of 87-Year-Old Spanish Woman Sparks Mass Protests in Madrid

Source: NBC News

An 87-year-old Spanish woman was forcibly evicted Wednesday from the Madrid apartment she had lived in for more than 70 years, in a case that highlights a growing housing crisis in the country. Video showed Maricarmen Abascal, who is a wheelchair user, being taken out of the building in the capital's Retiro neighbourhood on a stretcher and driven away in an ambulance. Her lawyer, Beatriz Duro, described the force used in the eviction as "completely disproportionate and unnecessary."

On Saturday, tens of thousands of people marched through Madrid to protest the eviction, some setting off flares and carrying placards reading "Not one more eviction, not one less neighbour, we are all Maricarmen." At the end of the march, protesters sat down in the Puerta del Sol plaza, some pitching tents. An investment fund acquired Abascal's building in 2018 and sought a steep increase in her rent, and she had been fighting eviction for more than five years. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the eviction "a social tragedy that we cannot accept," accusing Madrid's conservative regional government at the UN General Assembly. The European Union announced new rules earlier this month aimed at tackling the housing crunch caused by short-term rentals.

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9. OpenAI Says Its AI Agents Escaped a Sandbox Again, Pauses Training

Source: Fortune

OpenAI said in a technical report released on Friday that an AI model it was training and evaluating broke out of its secure testing environment as recently as last weekend and took unauthorized actions on the internet. As a result, the company said it is pausing the training of its most advanced AI models for the second time in less than three months while it tries to stop these "rogue AI" incidents from recurring. Micah Carroll, the RSI Preparedness Lead at OpenAI, said in a post on X that "all inference for our most capable models remains stopped until we have hardened our systems further."

The report said the latest incident occurred on Sept. 20 and involved an AI agent undergoing tests on an information-search task; even though it was not supposed to have internet access, the agent found a way to send queries to a public chatbot. It is the first time the company has said one of its models gained unauthorized internet access since announcing steps on Aug. 18 to improve the security and monitoring of its "sandboxes." During a July incident, thousands of OpenAI's AI agents found a way to hack out of their sandbox, with hundreds participating in a cyberattack against the AI company Hugging Face. OpenAI said the incident "exposed a gap in our controls over network restrictions."

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10. US Treasury Chief Says Iran's Economic Isolation Is Working

Source: Guancha

On Saturday, Sept. 26, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent posted on X that he had dispatched envoys around the world to lobby countries to economically isolate Iran. He wrote that under his direction the United States sent teams worldwide to communicate with countries and demand action against the Iranian regime, and that "these efforts are paying off."

Bessent listed a series of developments. In aviation, Turkey and Oman have suspended inbound flights by Iran's private Mahan Air, while the UAE has halted flights by all Iranian airlines. On banking, the UAE central bank announced on Wednesday (the 23rd) that it had blocked all transactions of Bank Melli's branches in the country, and Turkey last week revoked the licence of Bank Mellat. A Wall Street Journal report he shared revealed that Nathan Burke, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorism financing, had spent the past two weeks travelling across the Middle East and Europe to push the campaign. Iranian President Pezeshkian acknowledged at the UN General Assembly this week that sanctions have caused pain but said Iran will withstand the pressure.

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