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The blockade costs Cuba an estimated USD 5 billion annually and seriously restricts the country’s ability to purchase vital items such as fuel, food, medicine and medical equipment, spare parts for machines, and other goods necessary for the maintenance of daily life and production.

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A Russian rocket carrying a payload of satellites into orbit – including two from Iran – blasted off successfully, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said, in a move seen as reflecting the growing cooperation between Moscow and Tehran.

The Soyuz-2.1 spacecraft lifted off as scheduled from the Vostochny Cosmodrome launchpad in far eastern Russia and put its payload into a designated orbit nine minutes after the launch on Tuesday.

Among the 53 small satellites, the two Iranian satellites were identified as the Kowsar, a high-resolution imaging satellite, and Hodhod, a small communications satellite. A Russian-Chinese student satellite, Druzhba ATURK, was also placed into orbit.

The Iranian satellites are the first launched on behalf of the country’s private sector, with the Kowsar manufactured by the Omidfaza company, which began designing the satellite in 2019, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.

The latest satellite launch comes as Russia and Iran expand ties in various spheres, and amid mounting criticism from Ukraine and the West that Tehran has provided Moscow with drones for use in attacks on Ukrainian targets.

Moscow and Tehran are also planning to further bolster their ties with a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, set to be signed during Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s planned visit to Russia, the date for which has yet to be confirmed.

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Retired Jewish professor Haim Bresheeth, a child of Holocaust survivors and founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine, was arrested under a UK anti-terrorism law after speaking at a recent pro-Palestinian protest in London.

Indonesia and Russia have begun their first joint naval exercises, as Jakarta’s new leader Prabowo Subianto seeks a bigger role for the south-east Asian country on the global stage.

The exercises off the eastern coast of Java island, come just two weeks after Prabowo, a former general and defence minister, took over Indonesia’s presidency.

Prabowo has vowed to maintain Indonesia’s long-standing neutral foreign policy, but he is also seeking a more influential role for the world’s fourth-most populous country, whose natural resources have put it at the centre of global clean energy supply chains.

The five-day joint exercise will be conducted in Surabaya, a port in the east of Java, and its surrounding waters, the Indonesian navy said on Monday. Russia has brought four warships, one helicopter and one tug salvage ship for the exercise, it added.

Indonesia has held joint exercises with Russia in the past as part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but this week’s drills are the first bilateral effort between the two countries. Jakarta also holds annual joint exercises with the US and its allies.

As president-elect, Prabowo travelled to more than a dozen countries and met leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Last week, his administration announced its intention of joining the Brics grouping of major emerging economies that includes China and Russia.

“We consider Russia as a great friend,” Prabowo said in a statement after meeting Putin in July, calling to deepen ties with Moscow.

But Julia Lau, senior fellow and co-co-ordinator of the Indonesia studies programme at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, warned against interpreting the naval drills and overtures to the Brics bloc of emerging economies as evidence of a tilt towards China and Russia. As president-elect, Prabowo also met Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

Prabowo “is trying a balancing act vis-à-vis the US, China and Russia,” she said. The military drills with Russia are “part of the new administration’s strategy to show that they are not aligned with any great power”.

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The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in war-torn Sudan have unleashed yet another depopulation campaign in the towns and villages of Gezira state, killing hundreds, looting, raping, and burning crops in the country’s breadbasket amid a famine that has engulfed over half the population.

“Never in modern history have so many people faced starvation and famine as in Sudan today,” according to UN experts. “Severe levels of hunger” affect more than 25 million people, including 97% of the over 11 million internally displaced people (IDPs). Along with the over three million others who have fled to neighboring countries, 30% of Sudan’s population has been displaced.

Adding to the largest displacement crisis in the world, the wave of attacks since October 20 has forced another 135,000 people to flee from the eastern region of the state, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on November 1.

The RSF, a paramilitary organization that has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for over a year and a half, invaded Gezira in December 2023. Attacking more than 2,000 villages this February, it had brought agriculture to a near halt in this state whose Nile-watered fields were producing over half of all Sudan’s wheat.

Most of these villages in the western vicinity of the Hasahisa, one of the main towns in the central part of Gezira, remain deserted, said Jamal (name changed) spokesperson of Hasahisa’s Resistance Committee (RC).

A network of RCs across Sudan was spearheading the mass protests against the military junta jointly led by the SAF and the RSF, before the allies turned on each other, hurling the country rocked by revolutionary turmoil into a civil war in April 2023. Since then, the RCs have been organizing and coordinating relief and rescue efforts for civilians caught in the war which has claimed well over 62,000 lives, according to a conservative estimate.

Gezira was a safe haven for those fleeing the fighting in the capital region of Khartoum, until the RSF’s invasion late last year. Following the attacks in February, the eastern area was the only safe region, Jamal said. Its market towns of Rufaa and Tamboul were “serving as the main suppliers of food for the entire state.”

The areas under attack in Gezira are expanding. On October 31, the RSF invaded homes, seized vehicles, looted gold and money, and gave residents a 24-hour ultimatum to desert the village of Mustafa Al-Qureshi in Al-Halawin.

The UN’s Secretary-General “is appalled by reports of large numbers of civilians being killed, detained and displaced, acts of sexual violence against women and girls, the looting of homes and markets and the burning of farms,” his spokesperson said on November 1.

That day, RSF depopulated another village in Al-Halawin, before launching attacks on other localities including Al-Kamlin and Hasahisa to the west and northwest of Tambul. Across Gezira, a total of 120 villages have been affected by RSF attacks since October 20, according to a joint statement by the RCs of Hasahisa and Rufaa on November 1.

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At least six people died after Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki in eastern Indonesia erupted late on Sunday, spewing explosive plumes of lava and forcing authorities to evacuate several nearby villages, officials said on Monday.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, located on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara province, erupted on Sunday at 11.57pm local time, belching a fiery-red column of lava, volcanic ash and incandescent rocks, Hadi Wijaya, a spokesman for The Centre of Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, said on Monday.

“After the eruption, there was power outage and then it was raining and big lightning which caused panic among residents,” he said, adding that the authority had raised the status of the volcano to level IV or the highest.

The agency has recommended a 7km (4.35 miles) radius must be cleared.

The Disaster Management Agency lowered the known death toll from an earlier report of nine, saying it had received updated information from local authorities. Heronimus Lamawuran, a local official at East Flores area, said the eruption had affected seven villages.

The authorities are still gathering data on the number of evacuees and damaged buildings.

Indonesia sits on the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates.

This eruption follows a series of eruptions of different volcanoes in Indonesia. In May, a volcano on the remote island of Halmahera, Mount Ibu, caused the evacuation of people from seven villages.

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The air quality index exceeded 1,000 on Saturday, above the 300 considered ‘dangerous’, according to data from IQAir.

Pakistan’s second city of Lahore will close primary schools for a week over record pollution, government authorities said on Sunday, to avoid exposing millions of children to smog several times above levels deemed dangerous.

For days, the city of 14 million people has been enveloped by smog, a mix of fog and pollutants caused by low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal agricultural burning and winter cooling.

“Weather forecast for the next six days shows that wind patterns will remain the same. Therefore we are closing all government and private primary schools in Lahore for a week,” said Jahangir Anwar, a senior environmental protection official in Lahore.

“This smog is very harmful for children. Masks should be mandatory in schools. We are keeping an eye on the health of children in senior classes,” Punjab senior minister Marriyum Aurangzeb told a news conference on Sunday.

Smog counters have been established in hospitals, she added.

Breathing the toxic air has catastrophic health consequences, with the WHO saying strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases can be triggered by prolonged exposure.

On Saturday, the concentration of deadly PM2.5 pollutants – fine particulate matter in the air that causes most damage to health – was more than 40 times the level deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization. PM2.5 levels on Sunday morning exceeded that before decreasing slightly.

Last week, the provincial environmental protection agency announced new restrictions in four “hotspots” in the city.

Tuk-tuks equipped with polluting two-stroke engines are banned, as are restaurants that barbecue without filters.

Children are particularly vulnerable because they have less developed lungs and breathe more rapidly, taking in more air relative to their size than adults.

Pollution in excess of levels deemed safe by the WHO shortens the life expectancy of Lahore residents by an average of 7.5 years, according to the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.

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“For France”, occupied Western Sahara’s “present and future fall under Morocco’s sovereignty”, declared French President Emmanuel Macron, drawing a standing ovation from the lawmakers he was addressing in the parliament of its former colony Morocco earlier on October 29.

“The sole and exclusive sovereign over Western Sahara is the Sahrawi people. [Neither] Macron, nor anyone else, has the right to decide on their behalf,” retorted the government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), as Western Sahara is officially known.

This government, led by the Polisario Front (PF) which is recognized by the UN as the sole representative of the Sahrawi people, is in control of the Free Zone – or the Liberated Territory – amounting to a fifth of Western Sahara. With the military and financial support of the US and France and the complicity of Western Sahara’s former colonizer France, the Moroccan army annexed the remaining 80%, including the whole of its coastline, in 1975 and continues occupation to date.

Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara is not recognized by the African Union (AU), of which the SADR is a member-state. The UN includes it in the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories where decolonization is yet to be completed. Its General Assembly regards Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an illegal occupation. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) maintains there is no “tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco.”

Macron’s decision to grant French recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara also contravenes the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). In a ruling earlier that month on October 4, CJEU reiterated that the fisheries and trade agreements between the European Union (EU) and Morocco involving natural resources extracted from Western Sahara were illegal because Morocco has no sovereignty over this territory.

The judgment requires these illegal agreements to cease within a year. In less than a month, Macron entered France into fresh deals worth USD 10.8 billion, pledging “investments” he claimed would “benefit local populations” in Western Sahara.

“Past international investments in Western Sahara’s resources, such as in the [extraction of] phosphates and fisheries,” have yielded little benefit to the Sahrawi people, Kamal Fadel, Western Sahara’s Representative to Australia and the Pacific, told Peoples Dispatch. “The influx of foreign capital only tends to further entrench the occupation by supporting Morocco’s infrastructure and military presence in the region.”

Most of the jobs created in the process are handed to Moroccan settlers to incentivize them to stay put in the occupied territory. The remaining jobs are doled out to a few in exchange for their “loyalty and obedience”, while the Sahrawi masses are condemned to live under “poverty, oppression and abuse”, added Babouzeid Lebbihi, President of Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA).

Leaders of this organization, along with other Sahrawi activists, suffer constant harassment at the hands of the occupation authorities, whose security forces regularly besiege homes, confiscate properties, and take political prisoners, several of whom have been subjected to torture and rape.

In December 2020, Trump announced the US recognition of “Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory,” in exchange for Morocco’s normalization of ties with Israel, legitimizing the apartheid settler colonial state’s occupation of Palestine.

Taking office a month later in January 2021, the current US President Joe Biden reiterated the endorsement of Moroccan occupation. A year later, in March 2022, Western Sahara’s former colonizer Spain followed suit, before France crossed that bridge earlier this week. Earlier this year, the AU also decided to suspend the members of representatives of SADR from meetings with international partners.

These developments undermining the prospects of a sovereign SADR “fuel discontent among Sahrawis and escalate regional unrest,” warned Fadel.

“Gaza has changed the whole equation,” said Babouzeid. “For more than three decades, the Sahrawi people under occupation have bet on political action and peace in order to avoid bloodshed, and today our land is being sold to the occupation by imperialist powers.” With major powers like France “adding fuel to the fire… I believe that the situation will explode in the region,” he added.

“Under the legitimate leadership of the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi people remain resolute in resisting Moroccan occupation, with all legitimate means, including armed struggle,” warns the Sahrawi government.

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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned Israel and the United States of “a crushing response” for actions against Iran and its allies, according to state media.

Khamenei, 85, made the remarks on Saturday while addressing students ahead of the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by hardline students – which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in the capital, Tehran, also referring to Iran-aligned armed groups that include Yemen’s Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of any attack, or the scope.

He had previously struck a more cautious approach, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed”, after the Israeli military launched strikes last week on military bases in Iran, hitting about 20 sites over several hours in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran.

Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students’ Day, which commemorates a November 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the rule of the shah at Tehran University.

The US military operates throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

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