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 President Joe Biden has “no plans” to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at a November G20 summit in Indonesia, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Sunday.

Biden “has no plans to meet with the crown prince at the G20 summit,” Sullivan told CNN, speaking as already stormy US-Saudi relations have been
further strained by Riyadh’s support for oil production cuts.

The planned cuts have infuriated Washington, with Biden warning on Tuesday of unspecified “consequences.”

The move last week by OPEC+ — composed of the Riyadh-led OPEC cartel and an additional group of 10 exporters headed by Russia — would reduce global output by up to two million barrels per day from November.

It could send energy prices soaring amid an energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, and as inflation-weary American voters prepare to cast
ballots in midterm elections.

The White House has charged that OPEC+ was “aligning with Russia,” saying the cuts would boost Moscow’s revenue and undermine sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.

Saudi officials have defended the move as motivated purely by economics, not politics.

 Eleven children were killed Tuesday in a school fire outbreak in the central Ugandan district of Mukono, police said.

A police statement issued here said the tragic incident occurred at Salama School of the Blind at about 1 a.m. local time.

“The cause of the fire is currently unknown but so far 11 deaths as a result of the fire have been confirmed while six are in critical conditions and admitted at Herona Hospital in Kisoga,” the statement said.

School fires are common in Ugandan schools. The last fire was in January when four children died in a fire outbreak in a school in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. In 2018, at least nine students were killed in a fire that broke out at a high school in central Uganda.

Before the 2018 incident, another fatal school fire happened in 2008, killing 19 pupils at Budo Junior School in the Wakiso district in the central region

Rishi Sunak will on Tuesday be installed as Britain’s third prime minister this year, replacing the humiliated Liz Truss after just seven weeks and inheriting a daunting array of problems.

Sunak became the ruling Conservatives’ new leader on Monday after rival contender Penny Mordaunt failed to secure enough nominations from Tory MPs, and Boris Johnson dramatically aborted a comeback bid.

The 42-year-old Hindu will be Britain’s first prime minister of colour and the youngest in more than two centuries.

Sunak will take power in a morning audience with King Charles III, who is anointing his first prime minister since ascending the throne just two days after his late mother Queen Elizabeth II appointed Truss.

The ceremony on September 6 was the last major public act of her record-breaking reign.

Truss will hold a final cabinet meeting before making a departing statement in Downing Street at around 10:15 am (0915 GMT), with Sunak expected to speak just over an hour later.

She leaves office as the shortest-serving premier in history, after a calamitous tax-slashing budget sparked economic and political turmoil.

The 47-year-old announced her resignation last Thursday, admitting she could not deliver her “mandate” from Conservative members — who had chosen her over Sunak in the summer.

He has now staged a stunning turnaround in political fortunes, and vows to do the same for Britain as it confronts decades-high inflation, surging borrowing costs and imminent recession.

Addressing the public on Monday, Sunak promised “stability and unity” as well as bringing “our party and our country together”.

– ‘Choices’ –

After delivering the now all-too-familiar new leader’s speech from the steps of Number 10 at around 11:35 am, Britain’s fifth prime minister in six years will start appointing his top team before facing his first session of “Prime Minister’s Questions” in parliament on Wednesday.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt, appointed by Truss just 11 days ago in an ultimately futile bid to salvage her premiership, could remain in the role after stabilising the markets.

He endorsed Sunak on Sunday, writing in the Telegraph that he was a leader “willing to make the choices necessary for our long-term prosperity”.

After reversing almost all of Truss’s various tax cuts, Hunt has warned “difficult decisions” loom over public spending.

Whoever heads the Treasury is set to unveil the government’s much-anticipated medium-term fiscal plans on October 31, Halloween, alongside independent assessments.

Sunak must also decide whether to appoint to his cabinet senior MPs who did not support him, such as Mordaunt, in a bid to unify his fractured party.

One so-called big beast unlikely to get a seat around the table is his former boss Johnson, who was driven out in July partly thanks to Sunak’s resignation.

The pair met late Saturday, when Johnson reportedly urged him to form a power-sharing partnership.

The ex-leader had only secured the public backing of a few dozen Tory MPs, compared to well over 100 for Sunak, and the offer was rebuffed.

A day later, Johnson bowed to political reality and announced he would not move forward with his audacious comeback.

“You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament,” he acknowledged.

– ‘No mandate’ –

Sunak, a wealthy descendant of immigrants from India and East Africa, is also facing calls for a general election after becoming the latest UK leader who lacks a direct mandate from the electorate.

Pollster Ipsos said Monday that 62 percent of voters want a vote by the end of the year.

“He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas,” Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner tweeted.

Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon, whose nationalist government wants to hold an independence referendum next year, echoed the comments — while recognising the significance of Britain getting its first leader of colour.

The next election is not due until January 2025 at the latest and opposition parties have no way to force one, unless dozens of Conservative MPs acquiesce.

That appears unlikely as a flurry of polls show Labour with its largest lead in decades.

YouGov modelling Monday showed Sunak faces an uphill battle to restore confidence in both the Tories and himself.

Weekend responses from 12,000 people found that Labour leader Keir Starmer was seen as the “best prime minister” in 389 constituencies, compared with Sunak’s 127

Australia has arrested a former US Marine Corps fighter pilot following a request from Washington, officials in Canberra said Tuesday, as Western governments scrambled to investigate reports that China has been poaching retired military personnel.

Daniel Edmund Duggan appeared in court in New South Wales on Friday, judicial records show.

“An individual was arrested on 21 October 2022 pursuant to a request from the United States of America for their provisional arrest,” the Australian attorney general’s department said in a statement.

“As the matter is before the courts, it would not be appropriate to comment further.”

Duggan is scheduled to appear in court again in November.

Under a treaty with Australia, the United States has 60 days following the arrest to apply for Duggan’s extradition.

Duggan ran a business called Top Gun Australia, which billed itself as the country’s “premier adventure flight company”.

On the company’s web page, Duggan described himself as a “former US Marine Corps officer of over 12 years”.

“As a highly trained fighter pilot, he flew harrier jump jets off of aircraft carriers tactically around the globe,” the website read.

Duggan has also worked in China.

Australia launched an investigation last week into what its defence minister called disturbing reports that China has been hiring retired Western air force pilots to train its military.

The British government has said it will take “decisive steps” to stop Beijing from headhunting former pilots after local media reported more than 30 had accepted offers worth upwards of o240,000 ($273,750) to train China’s air force.

Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae pounded the Philippines on Saturday after unleashing flash floods and landslides that officials said left at least 45 people dead.

Nalgae churned across the archipelago nation’s main island of Luzon with winds of up to 95 kilometres (59 miles) an hour after making landfall on the sparsely populated eastern island of Catanduanes before dawn.

It has sparked heavy rains across the country, with areas far from the path of the storm inundated including the southern island of Mindanao, which has seen flooding and deadly landslides over the past two days.

A sharply revised official toll on Saturday put the number of deaths on Mindanao at 40, with five others killed elsewhere in the country.

At least 17 people were missing, while nearly 20,000 had been evacuated.

In the Mindanao village of Kusiong, home to around 100 people, bulldozers and backhoes attempted to remove a thick layer of limestone rock and mud after parts of a nearby mountain collapsed on Friday.

Fourteen people have so far been pulled from the debris and more are still missing in the community.

“Had she died of illness it would have been less painful,” villager Mercedes Mocadef told AFP as she stood by three bodies, one of which turned out to be the daughter of her cousin.

The dead girl’s mother was also lost in the disaster.

Landslides and flash floods originating from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by typhoons in the Philippines in recent years.

“It could be more than a hundred,” Lester Sinsuat, mayor in the nearby town of Datu Odin Sinsuat, told AFP when asked how many were feared dead.

Regional civil defence chief Naguib Sinarimbo said “this is already a retrieval operation because the village (Kusiong) has been buried under rock and mud for more than a day”.

– ‘Why did we fail?’ –

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr rebuked local civil defence officials in Mindanao over their preparations for the storm during a televised meeting Saturday.

“It will be important for us to look back and see why this happened. Why did we fail to evacuate them? Why do we have such a high casualty (figure)?” he said.

Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year, but storms that do reach the region tend to be deadlier than in Luzon and central parts of the country.

The state weather service said the eye of Nalgae was expected to pass south of the capital Manila, a sprawling metropolis of more than 13 million people, in the early evening Saturday.

Photos released by the Philippine coastguard showed rescuers using an old refrigerator as a boat to pull children from a flooded community on the
central island of Leyte.

The storm struck at the beginning of a long weekend in the Philippines when millions return to their hometowns to visit the graves of dead
relatives.

“If it’s not necessary or important, we should avoid going out today because it is dangerous,” said national civil defence director Rafaelito Alejandro, adding that 5,000 rescue teams were on standby.

The coastguard has suspended ferry services throughout most of the country due to rough seas, stranding thousands of passengers at ports.

The civil aviation office meanwhile said it has shelved more than 100 flights.

Storms kill hundreds of people in the Philippines yearly and keep vast regions in perpetual poverty, with residents also having to grapple with frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and in some areas armed insurgencies.

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

Qatari authorities have evicted hundreds of migrant workers from buildings in central Doha, casting a new shadow over the countdown to the World Cup, residents and workers said Saturday.

Municipal workers and security guards moved into about 12 buildings late on Wednesday to clear and lock them, according to local residents, ahead of the tournament that kicks off on November 20.

The government said the buildings were “uninhabitable”, proper notice was given, and that alternative “safe and appropriate accommodation” had been found for all evictees.

The affected area, largely around Al-Mansoura, has been massively redeveloped in recent years and some World Cup fans will stay in apartments in the district, where dozens of mechanical diggers are parked in the streets.

In the early hours of Saturday, Yunus, a Bangladeshi driver, slept on the back of his flat-bed truck on a street in Al Mansoura, three nights after being forced out of one block.

“The first night it was chaos and there was not enough room for everyone to go to other places,” he said.

In any case, “this truck is my life and I will not leave it until I have somewhere where I can park it” near the new accommodation, he added.

Yunus said it was the third time he had been forced to move in three years.

Migrants — dominated by an influx from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, the Philippines and African nations including Kenya and Uganda — make up more than 80 percent of Qatar’s 2.8 million population.

Qatar has faced intense scrutiny over the treatment of foreign labourers who built most of the shiny new stadiums and transport infrastructure for the World Cup.

The energy-rich state has been criticised over deaths, injuries and unpaid wages.

International unions say there has been a drastic improvement in conditions in recent years and Qatar has highlighted its reforms, but rights groups say more must be done.

– ‘Timing all wrong’ –

The South Asian manager of a 24-hour store in Al Mansoura, who told AFP he saw evictions from two buildings, said most of the workers paid no rent and had no leases.

“They are basically squatters,” he said, on condition of anonymity. “They stay a few months in one building and then are forced to find another.

“They were good clients. I had brought in extra rice because they buy so much, now I am left with it,” the manager added.

“In this case, it is the timing so close to the World Cup that is all wrong.”

Qatar’s World Cup organisers, who have reserved some apartment buildings, referred queries to the government.

Qatar’s government said authorities acted under a 2010 law against “informal and unplanned housing arrangements”.

“Residents found to be living in uninhabitable accommodations with no formal contracts are given the opportunity to move elsewhere in a reasonable timeframe,” a Qatari government official told AFP.

“Officials always ensure individuals are rehoused in safe and appropriate accommodation.”

Residents said most of the evicted men would move to Doha’s huge industrial zone or towns further from the capital.

Most of those evicted do not work for the major companies that provide accommodation and food for labourers.

Many work for a daily rate or for small companies. “They live in these blocks to avoid paying rent. The wages are low so every cent counts,” said one migrant living next to a building that was emptied.