For the first time since the fighting, a humanitarian group got medical help into Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, a southern town where more than half the infrastructure was destroyed or damaged. Residents returning to the rubble had gone months without a doctor.

• Order of Malta Lebanon became the first humanitarian organization to enter the Nabatieh District town on Sep⁠tember 30, working with the Lebanese Army's Civil-Military Cooperation Directorate and the municipality.
• The team delivered more than 400 medical and pharmaceutical services to over 150 families, including cardiology consultations, ECGs, echocardiograms, and prescribed medicines.
• One elderly woman with chronic illnesses had not seen a doctor in more than seven months.
• Social workers added psychosocial support, food parcels, hygiene kits, and educational kits for children. Germany and France helped fund it. Drones stayed overhead all day.

Why it matters: Zawtar is one of the Lebanese Army's "pilot" areas south of the Litani, so how well residents can return and get basic services there is an early test for the wider deployment.

Lebanon's army, which runs on roughly 80,000 personnel and heavy foreign aid, is training alongside British soldiers in an exercise called Pegasus Cedar 2026. It starts Tues⁠day and runs through Oct⁠ober.

• Soldiers from the 4th Battalion of The Royal Regiment of Scotland, based in Cyprus, joined the Lebanese Air Assault Regiment, the British embassy said Mon⁠day.
• The drills cover mortar systems, small-unit tactics, reconnaissance, raids, combat in built-up areas, and helicopter work.
• US and Italian personnel are taking part. France, Cyprus, Qatar, and Jordan are sending observers.
• The exercise builds on a Sep⁠tember 2023 training of the same kind, and the army still has to finish its deployment in the south under the Jun⁠e framework agreement with Israel.

Zooming out: Britain has long supplied equipment, training, and border-security help to the cash-strapped army, and this exercise lands while that army carries the Hezbollah disarmament file.

Tripoli's mayor has decided to reopen the city's landfill by force, because garbage has nowhere else to go. The Ministry of Environment has warned that doing so could bring legal action against council members.

• The crisis began about ten days ago, when the waste contractor stopped work after its contract expired and the ministry closed the approved dump for exceeding capacity, according to Lebanon 24.
• The municipal council voted to reopen the second dump, created in 2018. Specialists say it can take waste for about three more months.
• Alternatives stalled. Akkar refused to take the waste, Deir Ammar residents rejected a dump there, and Tripoli rejected a sea dump north of its port.
• Council member Bassam Assaf says sorting at home could cut daily waste from 400 tons to 200 tons.

What to watch: The mayor's deadline is Fri⁠day, and no replacement site has been agreed, so the three-month window is the real clock.

The PKK, the Kurdish militant group that fought Turkey for four decades, announced its dissolution in May⁠ 2025. Yet residents of hundreds of Kurdish villages in northern Iraq still can't go home, because Turkish military positions are growing, not shrinking.

• The Kurdistan Workers' Party dissolved in early May⁠ 2025 and pulled fighters toward the Iranian border. Clashes stopped. The Turkish footprint didn't.
• The monitoring group CPT counts 139 Turkish bases and positions in the Kurdistan Region, roughly double the ~70 at the end of 2024. Security sources say Turkey controls about 85% of the Iraqi side of the border.
• Only 32 villages have conditional daytime access permits, with no overnight stays.
• Farmers describe warning shots near military posts. On Jul⁠y 1, 2026, six young men gathering plants were detained and beaten, according to CPT.
• On Sep⁠tember 24, 2026, Baghdad and Ankara announced an agreement to close the Zelikan base in Nineveh.

The bigger picture: The Zelikan deal is a rare concrete withdrawal, while the border strip, where residents describe expansion, stays under Turkish control.

With Ukrainian drones hammering Russian refineries, Moscow is importing fuel, and some of it is sailing from South Korea. A Guardian analysis found seven tankers loading at South Korean ports for Russia's far east, three under UK and EU sanctions.

• In Jul⁠y and Aug⁠ust, over 176,000 tonnes, mostly diesel, was loaded on 14 voyages to Russia's far east, according to port records and ship-tracking data.
• One sanctioned tanker took on about 26,000 tonnes through a ship-to-ship transfer off Yeosu, a method that can obscure a cargo's origin.
• Russia imported 368,000 tonnes of oil products by sea in Aug⁠ust, its highest monthly total since the full-scale invasion. South Korea supplied 31%, second only to India.
• The trade doesn't appear to breach South Korean law, which targets mainly industrial and electronic goods.

What to watch: Seoul's foreign ministry didn't address the shipments, and the UK Foreign Office didn't say whether it has raised them, so any response will signal how Seoul weighs sanctions pressure against its Russia ties.

The Green Party of England and Wales, which has five MPs, became the first major UK party to adopt a policy treating Zionism as a form of racism, sparking criticism from its European counterparts. It also backs a single democratic Palestinian state instead of two states.

• The motion passed 1,022 to 813 at the Brighton conference, and backs one state with equal rights for all groups.
• Four of the party's five MPs opposed it. Voters were roughly 0.4% of the membership.
• The European Green Party said it supports two states and will demand clarity. German Greens co-leader Felix Banaszak called the policy "intolerable and unacceptable."
• An amendment shielding Jewish members of Zionist-identifying synagogues from discipline was rejected.

Why it matters: With turnout this low, the vote has revived debate inside the party over how policy gets made as membership grows.