Moldova’s crucial referendum on joining the European Union is too close to call, partial results showed Monday, as President Maia Sandu condemned an “unprecedented assault” on the country’s democracy.

With just over 1.4% of ballots still to be counted, 50.2% had voted “yes” in the referendum, according to the country’s Central Election Commission. The tight margin would come as a blow to Sandu, who had been hoping for a clear endorsement of the pro-EU path she has charted during her first presidential term.

Sandu, who framed the vote as a choice for the former Soviet country between pursuing its nascent European future or remaining lodged within the Kremlin’s orbit, also failed to secure enough votes to win outright in the country’s presidential election, held on the same day. A second round will be held on November 3.

In an uncharacteristically forceful statement issued late Sunday night, Sandu accused foreign groups of attempting to undermine Moldova’s democratic process and “using the most disgraceful means to keep our nation trapped in uncertainty and instability.”

Sandu said Moldovan authorities had “clear evidence that these criminal groups aimed to buy 300,000 votes – a fraud of unprecedented scale.”

In a video posted to his Telegram account last month, Shor had said he would pay voters the equivalent of $28 for registering with his campaign and more if they voted against the referendum.

Partial results also put Sandu first in the presidential race with 42.1% of the vote, ahead of her closest challenger Alexandr Stoianoglo – a former prosecutor general running for the pro-Russian Party of Socialists – with 26.3%.

The two will now face off in the second round. If other pro-Russian parties and voters throw their support behind Stoianoglo, the November 3 run-off could be extremely tight.

A 3-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by air-dropped aid in the southern city of Khan Younis on Saturday, according to his relatives, as the humanitarian crisis spawned by the Israeli offensive compounds severe hunger across the Gaza Strip.

“I was sitting here with the boy, and the moment I left him … the package fell on him,” Ayyad said. “There was only a second between me and him. I carried him and started running.

“We have no hospitals. I ran like crazy, but the boy died instantly. I couldn’t save him. Blood started coming out of his nose and mouth,” he added.

A number of countries have air-dropped aid into Gaza, including the United States, United Kingdom, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

“We don’t want aid. We want dignity,” said Ayyad. “Enough with the humiliation and insult that we are receiving from the Arabs, not just the Israelis. Those who have no mercy on us — look at our children, our women, our elderly.”

“We are human beings, not animals to drop food (to) from the sky,” he added.

The United Arab Emirates airdropped 81 food packages into Khan Younis on Saturday, according to the Israeli agency which controls the flow of aid into Gaza. More than 10,000 packages have been airdropped in recent months, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, added.

Israel’s sustained restrictions on aid entering the strip have sapped critical supplies, condemning the entire population of more than 2.2 million people to the risk of famine, according to a UN-backed report. About 1.84 million Palestinians are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, according to a report published Thursday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which assesses global food insecurity and malnutrition.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza has leveled neighborhoods, erased entire families and spawned a crisis of severe hunger, displacement and disease. At least 42,603 Palestinians have been killed and another 99,795 injured since Israel launched its war in Gaza on October 7, the Ministry of Health there said on Monday.

Israel launched its military offensive on October 7 after the militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, attacked southern Israel. At least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others abducted, according to Israeli authorities.

Sami and his loved ones had been staying in Khan Younis after they were displaced by the Israeli military campaign at least six times, according to his father, Mahmoud.

“There was an airstrike on people here, and he survived,” he added. “But his fate was to die from a parachute.”

When scientists heard reports that a large, mysterious fish had been caught in Cambodia in 2020, excitement stirred. Could this be the “Mekong Ghost,” they asked – an elusive fish that hadn’t been seen since 2005 and was feared extinct?

Photos of the fish and its telltale identifiers – an odd-shaped mouth and a protruding knob at its jaw – seemed to confirm it.

But the fish, which can grow as large as 66 pounds, was sold before scientists could get a closer look. It didn’t “feel like definitive proof,” said Zeb Hogan, a research biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, and head of the US government-funded Wonders of the Mekong project, an initiative to study and conserve one of the most biodiverse rivers in the world.

Three years later, they struck gold.

Cambodian fishermen caught two fish in the Mekong River, measuring between 11 and 13 pounds and two to three feet long. This time researchers were able to purchase and examine the fish for themselves.

“As soon as anyone who was part of this search for this fish saw the photos, we knew what it was.”

The researchers published their findings on Tuesday in a study in the Biological Conservation journal.

It was a moment of celebration for the team, which works to protect the Mekong, one of the world’s longest rivers and a lifeline to tens of millions of people.

Meaning “Mother of Rivers” in Thai and Lao languages, the Mekong winds through multiple Southeast Asian countries and is extremely rich in biodiversity. But it also faces various challenges including hydropower development, overfishing and habitat degradation.

These challenges are why scientists have long worried that the “Mekong Ghost,” a critically endangered giant salmon carp that can measure up to four feet long, could have been quietly wiped out as years passed without a sighting.

Shrouded in mystery

The fish, native to the Mekong, has been shrouded in mystery since it was formally named in 1991. Since then, fewer than 30 individuals have been recorded, making it a highly rare species, according to a press release from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Hogan’s team of researchers – who also study other species and parts of the Mekong’s environment – have kept an eye out for the giant salmon carp, perusing fish markets and doing outreach programs with local fishermen. Hogan himself, who has dedicated much of his career to studying fish in the Mekong River Basin, has only seen it once in the early 2000s.

“I’ve been looking for it since then, kind of fascinated by it because it’s a very unusual giant fish,” Hogan said. “I thought it was probably extinct, and so to hear that it had been found again – I’ve been waiting 20 years for that news.”

“It’s a sign of hope,” he added. “It means that it’s not too late.”

The study’s lead author, Bunyeth Chan from Cambodia’s Svay Rieng University, echoed this sentiment, saying in a press release: “The rediscovery of the giant salmon carp is a reason for hope, not just for this species but for the entire Mekong ecosystem.”

There’s a lot researchers still don’t know, like how many giant salmon carp actually exist or where those populations reside.

The three fish that were found between 2020 and 2023 were found outside their normal range – which could either mean there are more fish living in areas previously unknown or that they migrated there from neighboring Laos and Thailand.

And though it’s unusual to find three individual fish in quick succession after the species disappeared for nearly two decades, Hogan credits this to the work they’ve been doing on the ground – building good relationships with local communities who know to contact them if they spot anything out of the ordinary.

But researchers say more needs to be done as the Mekong fights off threats from various fronts, including climate change, with the region facing more severe flooding and drought each year as a result.

Human projects such as hydropower dams and sand mining have further degraded marine habitats and disrupted life for the Mekong’s more than 1,100 fish species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

Nearly a fifth of the Mekong’s fish are threatened with extinction, according to a report released in March this year, a collaboration between 25 organizations including the World Wildlife Fund and Wonders of the Mekong.

Cambodia is also not an easy place to be an environmental activist. Many have been jailed or killed over the years as they seek to raise awareness about corruption and business projects that have impacted the environment in a nation where little political opposition is tolerated.

Earlier this year, 10 young activists from the group Mother Nature Cambodia were sentenced to up to six years in prison, each on charges of conspiring against the state, a conviction that was condemned by opposition politicians in exile and prominent youth environmentalist Greta Thunberg.

Researchers behind the latest report hope the giant salmon carp’s rediscovery can build momentum for more study and conservation action – including creating an international team across Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to further study the “Mekong Ghost.”

“This fish is an indicator of river health because it’s a large fish, it’s vulnerable,” said Hogan.

“But it’s also emblematic of all of these other fish that occur in the area that are key fishery species and that are very important for people’s livelihoods, and very important for people’s nutrition and food.”

Polio is once again spreading in Pakistan, where officials say more than 1 million children missed their vaccination doses last month, underscoring the challenges they face in eradicating one of the world’s most intractable diseases.

Pakistani officials reported more than a dozen new polio cases in October, bringing the total number of infections this year to 39, compared to just six last year when the South Asian country appeared to be on the verge of eliminating the virus.

Ayesha Raza, the Focal Person to the Pakistani Prime Minister on Polio Eradication, blamed the recent uptick in cases on low vaccine uptake. She said about 1 million children missed their polio vaccinations in September, compounding a pre-existing immunity gap that has been growing since Covid-19 disrupted immunization efforts.

Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that mainly affects children under age 5. It attacks the nervous system and can cause paralysis, respiratory issues and even death.

It spreads mainly through contaminated water or food and there is no cure. But it can be prevented with a vaccine: polio cases worldwide have been reduced by more than 99% since the 1980s thanks to immunization campaigns.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), though the United Nations health agency has also recently warned of a resurgence of the deadly disease in Gaza following more than a year of Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian enclave.

Vaccination programs in Pakistan, home to more than 240 million people, have struggled in part due to a historical distrust of foreign health care providers. Allegations that US intelligence officials used a fake immunization program in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad as part of efforts to capture Osama bin Laden in 2011 inflamed those concerns.

Religious beliefs and a lack of awareness about the dangers of polio have also hindered public health efforts. International NGOs and Pakistani authorities have worked aggressively to dispel rumors and vaccinate children in recent years, but misinformation continues to spread.

Most of the recent cases in Pakistan are clustered in southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan, where local officials say parents are reluctant to vaccinate their children due to widespread misinformation and distrust of health care providers.

Most of the children recently infected with the disease had been partially vaccinated but did not complete all four required doses, said Raza, the official.

Reported cases will also likely rise further as Pakistan steps up its surveillance efforts, Raza said.

“A lot of work is being done to fill the gaps that we’ve missed in the past,” she said.

The uptick in polio cases in Pakistan also comes as violent attacks against vaccination clinics have ramped up, targeting police and security officials.

Militants have targeted anti-polio campaigns in Pakistan for decades, with some claiming vaccines are a Western conspiracy used to sterilize children.

In September, armed militants killed a police officer protecting a polio vaccination site in the northwest city of Bannu, prompting protests. A police officer and a polio worker were killed in another shooting that month in the northwest city of Bajaur.

Aftab Kakar, a representative for the Emergency Operation Center in Balochistan, said protests, insecurity and community boycotts had disrupted vaccine campaigns, “leaving a cohort of missed children who could sustain virus transmission.”

Health workers put a mark on a child’s finger to indicate if they’ve received the vaccine. But in some cases, children have been incorrectly marked as having been vaccinated when they haven’t, Kakar said.

Despite the recent surge in cases, Pakistani authorities are optimistic they can stop the spread of the disease. The country is launching a new nationwide polio vaccination campaign on October 28 with the aim of inoculating 45 million children under age 5.

“Polio eradication is Pakistan’s top priority,” Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme posted on social media.

“A unified plan with provinces aims to stop polio transmission by 2025.”

Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw Moscow condemned by countries globally, leader Vladimir Putin is staging a summit with more than a dozen world leaders – in a pointed signal from the autocrat that far from being alone, an emerging coalition of countries stands behind him.

The three-day BRICS summit, starting Tuesday in the southwestern Russian city of Kazan, is the first meeting of the group of major emerging economies Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa since it expanded earlier this year to include Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Iran.

Leaders expected to attend include China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa as well as those from outside the club, like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was expected to join but canceled his trip after suffering an injury at home.

Set to be by far the largest international gathering the Russian president has hosted since the start of the war in February 2022, the gathering of BRICS and other countries this week spotlights a growing convergence of nations who hope to see a shift in the global balance of power and – in the case of some, like Moscow, Beijing and Tehran – directly counter the United States-led West.

It’s this latter message that Putin – and close partner and most powerful BRICS country leader Xi – will project in the coming days: it’s the West that stands isolated in the world with its sanctions and alliances, while a “global majority” of countries support their bid to challenge American global leadership.

In remarks to reporters Friday, Putin hailed the growing economic and political clout of BRICS countries as an “undeniable fact” and said that if BRICS and interested countries work together, they “will be a substantial element of the new world order” – though he denied the group was an “anti-Western alliance.”

Putin’s messaging this week will be all the more poignant as the meeting comes just days ahead of the US elections, where a potential victory for former President Donald Trump could see the US shift its staunch support of Ukraine and strain Washington’s ties with its traditional allies more broadly.

“This BRICS summit is really a gift (for Putin),” said Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “The message will be: how can you talk about Russia’s global isolation when (all these) leaders … are coming to Kazan.”

Russia wants to portray BRICS “as the spearhead, the new organization that leads us all as a global community to a more just order,” Gabuev said.

But despite Russia’s sweeping rhetoric, the leaders meeting in Kazan have a wide range of viewpoints and interests – a reality of BRICS that observers say limits their ability to send a unified message – especially the kind Putin may desire.

Global crises

The Russian-hosted gathering poses a sharp contrast to last year’s BRICS summit in Johannesburg, when Putin participated from the other side of a video screen – unable to attend in person due to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes over Ukraine.

This year, the Russian president is at the helm of the first summit since the organization nearly doubled in size – and the gathering is playing out before a very different global landscape.

While BRICS is primarily geared toward economic collaboration, its meeting last year took place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine. Now, even as that war rages on, the expanding conflict in the Middle East, where Israel is fighting Iran’s proxies, is also likely to dominate leaders’ conversations.

Putin last week confirmed that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas would join the event. The Russian leader and his officials will likely use the conflict – and the anger across the Global South toward the US and its support for Israel – to press his argument for a new world order without the US at the helm, observers say.

China and Russia have both called for a ceasefire in the spiraling conflict and criticized Israel’s actions, while the US has endorsed Israel’s right to retaliate against militant groups Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Many attending the summit see the conflict in the Middle East “as a prime example of why this particular grouping of countries should have more influence,” said Jonathan Fulton, an Abu Dhabi-based senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. However, he said, countries are “using it mostly as a rhetorical point to criticize things they don’t like,” rather than showing interest in leading its resolution.

Observers will also be watching whether China and Brazil use the gathering as a platform to play up their joint six-point peace proposal on the war in Ukraine, as they did at last month’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Then, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the effort, saying such plans would help Moscow, while warning Beijing and Brasilia: “you will not boost your power at Ukraine’s expense.”

Zelensky’s own challenges presenting his “victory plan” to end the war and the impending US elections mean China now has “a tremendous opportunity to beat the drum of its own format (on Ukraine) without sparing too much leverage,” according to Gabuev in Berlin.

The gathering in Kazan also gives Putin ample opportunity for one-on-one facetime with his fellow BRICS leaders and other friendly dignitaries in attendance.

Identity crisis

Leaders over the next few days are expected to discuss how to advance on-going efforts to settle payments outside the US dollar-denominated system using BRICS currencies and banking networks, a system that could have economic benefits, but also helps member countries like Russia circumnavigate Western sanctions. The countries are also likely to look for ways to boost economic, technological and financial cooperation across a range of areas from energy to sharing satellite data.

At the same time, however, they’ll be grappling with the divisions and differing agendas between countries within the group, which observers say limit how much BRICS can achieve.

That’s nothing new for the group, which held its first summit of Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2009 as a convergence of key emerging markets before expanding the following year to include South Africa. In 2015, BRICS launched its New Development Bank, seen as an alternative or supplement to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Loosely united by a shared interest in reforming the international system to ensure their voices were better represented, BRICS from its start has incorporated countries with deep differences in political and economic systems – as well as other frictions.

India and China, for example, have a long-simmering border conflict, but make up two key pillars of the club. Their divisions have become even more prominent in recent years as China-US have become increasingly fraught, while India and the US have become closer partners.

Today, even as BRICS has again expanded – and the Kremlin says more than 30 additional countries are interested in joining or cooperating with it – deepening geopolitical fault lines further complicate BRICS’ identity and direction, observers say.

“(China and Russia have) essentially tried to shift the group from the sense of (BRICS) being emerging economies to potentially being some sort of an expression of angst with regard to Western dominance,” said Manoj Kewalramani, who heads Indo-Pacific studies at the Takshashila Institution research center in the Indian city of Bangalore.

And new or aspiring members may not be wanting to choose between this vision or the West. Instead, they are looking to grow their economies and “engage non-ideologically and pragmatically,” he said.

Vietnam elected Luong Cuong, a military general, as its new president on Monday, the fourth official to fill the largely ceremonial role in 18 months.

Cuong, 67, was elected by the National Assembly to replace To Lam, who remained president even after he was formally appointed as the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party in August.

The role of the general secretary is the most powerful position in Vietnam while the presidency is mostly ceremonial and involves meeting foreign dignitaries.

Cuong in a speech vowed to conduct foreign policies that sought independence and peace and to promote Vietnam “as a friend, a trusted partner, an active and responsible member of the international community.”

Cuong, who has served in the Vietnamese army for over four decades, has been a Politburo member since 2021.

His appointment took place after months of uncharacteristic tumult in Vietnam’s politics and the death of former party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who had dominated the country’s leadership since 2011.

Trong was an ideologue who viewed corruption as the single gravest threat in maintaining the party’s legitimacy and launched a sweeping anti-graft campaign known as the “blazing furnace.” It singled both business and political elites, including former presidents Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Vo Van Thuong and the former head of parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue.

As Vietnam’s top security official at the time, Lam had led the campaign until May. When he became the new general secretary, he promised to maintain the anti-corruption fight.

The campaign, albeit popular with many Vietnamese citizens, had spooked investors and made the bureaucracy more cautious, slowing down decision-making in the country.

The appointment of Cuong as the new president was a “move to stabilize the system” after the period of turbulence, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

“Luong Cuong’s appointment represents a deliberate attempt to restore balance between Vietnam’s military and security factions, particularly ahead of the 2026 Party Congress,” he said.

“By ceding the presidency, To Lam shows his commitment to the collective leadership principle, while still retaining the decisive power in the system,” he said.

Vietnam’s leaders are next due to convene a Communist Party Congress in early 2026.

Critics said that Cuong’s appointment would expand repression in Vietnam.

Ben Swanton of The 88 Project, a group that advocates for freedom of expression in Vietnam, said that Cuong would be a “reliable deputy” to Lam.

“The installation of Luong Cuong as president is yet another example of the expansion of Vietnam’s police state,” he said.