At least 17 people have died and another 15 people are missing after a migrant boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos on Wednesday night. The Greek coastguard said the dinghy had left the Turkish coast carrying 40 people in very high winds. Elsewhere in Greece dozens of migrants were rescued when their boat hit rocks near the southern island of Kythira. Coastguard video showed a group of people trapped beneath a cliff as rescuers pulled them to safety. Both boats went down within hours of each other on Wednesday night and early on Thursday, hundreds of kilometres apart. Volunteers joined rescue officials at the top of the cliff face on Kythira, an island off the Peloponnese region of southern Greece. The migrant boat broke up close to the island’s eastern harbour at Diakofti in winds of up to 70km/h (45mph) and according to Greek reports one of those on board raised the alarm when it got into trouble.(BBC)…[+]

At least 10 people have been killed and many more are missing after an avalanche struck a team of mountaineers high in the Indian Himalayas. The 34 trainees and seven instructors were practising navigation when they were hit on their descent from a peak in the northern state of Uttarakhand. The party was swept into a crevasse. Police now say 14 people have been rescued, while nearly 20 are missing. The Indian Air Force is helping with the rescue efforts. The group was made up of trainees from the nearby Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. It said they had been returning from Mount Draupadi Danda-2 (5,670m; 18,602 feet) when the avalanche struck. Authorities were alerted at around 09:30 local time (04:00 GMT) on Tuesday, rescue workers said.(BBC)…[+]

A new video posted online appears to show schoolgirls heckling a member of Iran’s feared paramilitary Basij force, after anti-government protests sweeping the country spread to the classroom. The teenagers are seen waving their headscarves in the air and shouting “get lost, Basiji” at the man, who had reportedly been asked to speak to them. The Basij’s volunteers have helped authorities crack down on the protests. They erupted after the death of a woman detained for breaking the hijab law.(BBC)…[+]

The US’s decision to send more military aid to Ukraine “increases the danger of a direct military clash” between Russia and the West, Moscow has warned. Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said it was an “immediate threat” to Moscow, describing the US as “a participant of the conflict”. Earlier, the US announced another $625m (£547m) in military aid to Ukraine. Advanced US weaponry has been credited with helping Ukraine build momentum against occupying Russian forces.Ukrainian troops have made significant advances in the country’s north-east and south in recent weeks. The latest US hardware includes another four of the high-precision Himars multiple rocket systems.(BBC)…[+]

Iranian security forces stole the body of a 16-year-old protester, and buried her secretly in a village, sources close to the family told BBC Persian. The family had planned to bury Nika Shakarami on Monday, but her body was snatched and buried in a village about 40km (25 miles) away, the sources said. Nika went missing for 10 days after protesting in Tehran on 20 September. In her last message to a friend she said she was being chased by security forces, her aunt told BBC Persian. Nika’s family finally found her body in a morgue at a detention centre in the capital. “When we went to identify her, they didn’t allow us to see her body, only her face for a few seconds,” said Atash Shakarami, Nika’s aunt. Nika’s family transferred her body to her father’s hometown of Khorramabad in the west of the country on Sunday – on what would have been her 17th birthday. Under duress the family agreed not to hold a funeral but security forces “stole” Nika’s body from Khorramabad and buried it in the village of Veysian, one source said.(BBC)…[+]

Paris has become the latest French city to announce that it will not be setting up giant screens and fan zones for the approaching World Cup in Qatar. It cited human rights and environmental concerns in the host nation. Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Reims are also boycotting the competition on ethical grounds. Pierre Rabadan, in charge of sport at Paris City Hall, said the fact the event was taking place in winter was also a factor in the city’s decision. The movement began on Saturday after the Socialist mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, declared that the Qatar World Cup was a “nonsense in terms of human rights, the environment and sport”. Like other mayors – of both left and right – she blamed concerns over workers’ rights in Qatar; the alleged high number of deaths among foreign labourers; and the environmental impact of the stadiums, all equipped with outdoor air conditioning.(BBC)…[+]

The withdrawal of Russian troops from the strategically important town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine has prompted rare public criticism of the military’s top brass by prominent Russian figures and influential social media accounts. But it’s not opposition or anti-war voices who are leading this chorus of discontent, it’s pro-war voices who are unhappy with the way in which the defence ministry is conducting its war in Ukraine. One of the first to react to the loss of Lyman was Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Russia’s Chechnya Republic and a staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin. In a Telegram post on 1 October, he singled out General Alexander Lapin, commander of Russia’s Central Military District, and senior officers at the Russian General Staff for the loss. “Were it up to me, I would have demoted Lapin to private, stripped him of his awards, given him an assault rifle and sent him to the front to wash away his shame with blood,” he declared in his post, which has been viewed more than 7.6m times.(BBC)…[+]

At least 11 people have been killed by cattle rustlers during an ambush in northern Kenya, police said. Eight officers, two civilians and a local chief are said to be among the victims of the violence in Turkana County on Saturday. Members of the National Police Service were pursuing bandits who had earlier raided a village and stolen livestock.  Clashes over livestock and water are common in the area, which is also facing a worsening climate. The area has been one of the hardest hit in one of the harshest droughts East Africa has seen in four decades. A fourth season of failed rains has resulted in large numbers of livestock dying and crops failing to grow. People are desperate for food and water, and the UN’s World Food Programme said up to 20 million people in East Africa are at risk of severe hunger. Kenya’s police called the attack a “criminal and cowardly ambush” on “innocent members of the public and police”.(BBC)…[+]

A fourth man has been arrested following a reported plot to kidnap the Belgian justice minister. The suspect, a 21-year-old Dutch man, was detained by police in the Netherlands, according to the National Public Prosecutor’s Office. Three other Dutch men were also arrested in Holland on Friday night. It comes after a car containing firearms was found outside Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne’s home earlier this week. The minister has since been placed under tighter police surveillance after a “serious threat”, federal prosecutors said Saturday. They said they were “informed last week of a possible threat” to the politician’s safety, which had been taken very “seriously”, and launched an investigation. However, the exact details of the threat was remain unclear. It is widely reported it was an attempted kidnapping, with some Belgian media linking the plot to drug criminals. The prosecutor’s office has not confirmed these details.(BBC)…[+]

Planned concerts in Poland by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters have been cancelled amid outrage over the musician’s stance on the Ukraine war. The concert’s promoter, Live Nation Poland, confirmed the cancellation but gave no reason for it. The controversy was triggered by an open letter Waters wrote to Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska. In it, he said, “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine “have set your country on the path to this disastrous war”. He accused her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, of failing to fulfil his election campaign promises to bring peace to the Donbas region and and made no mention of Russia’s responsibility for the war. In response, Mrs Zelenska wrote on Twitter that it was Russia which invaded Ukraine and was now destroying its cities and killing civilians. “Roger Waters, you should ask for peace from the president of another country,” she wrote. Mr Water’s open letter led Łukasz Wantuch, a Krakow city councillor, to urge people to boycott the concerts. City councillors have drafted a resolution to declare Mr Waters persona non grata, due to be voted on at a session on September 28.(BBC)…[+]