The Rest of the World Report | September 30, 2026 — Evening Edition

Weekday morning and evening editions. Saturdays once. Good news on Sundays. All sources labeled. *I will never put the news behind a paywall. If you want to support keeping it free for everyone else, there’s a paid option. That’s all it is.* FLIGHT FZ1073 FlyDubai flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv at 03:05 UTC on Wednesday. Just past 05:20, air traffic controllers watched its altitude swing wildly, a drop of more than 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds, then a climb. At 05:28 the crew transmitted code 7700, a general emergency. Seven minutes later the code changed to 7500: unlawful interference. The aircraft turned toward Saudi Arabia and landed at Tabuk’s Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport at 06:45 UTC. What happened in the cockpit during those 80 minutes is only partly confirmed. Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was stabbed by his co-pilot. Wounded, Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door, letting passengers and crew overpower his attacker. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him “a true hero.” The co-pilot’s identity is less settled. An unnamed Israeli official described him as an Omani national, a detail that has not been independently confirmed. Israel’s Defense Minister Yisrael Katz went further, calling the incident “an attempted jihadist terror attack.” There has been no independent confirmation of a hijacking attempt. Passengers restrained the co-pilot once he was overpowered. He was arrested on landing. All 174 people aboard survived. FlyDubai itself declined to characterize the incident. The reasons and motives behind it “are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation,” the airline said, asking all parties to refrain from speculating. Netanyahu met arriving passengers personally at Tel Aviv’s airport. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called the reception “cheap politics,” a reference to Israel’s approaching election. 🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Israel’s government assigned the incident an ideological motive within hours, before an investigation in Saudi custody had produced findings. The airline itself refused to. Al Jazeera’s coverage draws that contrast plainly. The “hero pilot” framing alone doesn’t carry the gap between an official characterization and one that remains unconfirmed. 🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A flight full of dozens of Israeli citizens nearly went down over the Gulf today. The pilot who stopped it is being celebrated correctly. But the identity and motive of the man accused of trying to crash it are not established facts. They are claims from one Israeli official, repeated by Israeli political leaders in the language of terrorism. Saudi investigators, who have custody of the case, have said nothing publicly. Those are two different categories of fact, and American coverage built entirely on the hero narrative risks collapsing them into one. Sources: Al Jazeera (Machchhar named and confirmed as Indian national, Netanyahu and Lapid quotes); Al Jazeera (174 aboard, Israeli-official-only attribution for co-pilot’s nationality, “no independent confirmation” line, FlyDubai statement); Al Jazeera (flight timeline, transponder codes, Katz quote) IRAQ AFTER AMERICA The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is complete, ending a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion. The last troops left an air base in the Kurdish north. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called it a “transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort.” Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi framed the departure as the start of a “new phase” built on Iraqi sovereignty. He committed to continuing operations against ISIS remnants and to disarming armed groups outside state control by mid-2027. Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful of those groups, celebrated the exit as “the beginning of full sovereignty.” It warned al-Zaidi’s government against pursuing what it called American policies. As of early September, five militia factions had refused to disarm at all, according to Rudaw. Some had added their own demands: removing Turkish forces from Iraqi soil, and dissolving the Kurdish Peshmerga. It is not confirmed whether that standoff has changed in the three weeks since. Kurdistan’s regional government is the most exposed party in the handoff. Its Peshmerga Ministry says the region absorbed more than 1,000 drone and ballistic-missile attacks during the recent US-Iran conflict. The US Patriot batteries that helped defend it have been relocated to Jordan; British air defenses have moved to Cyprus. Nothing is replacing them at Erbil’s airport. What the 23 years actually cost, and built, is measurable on its own terms. The documented civilian death toll from violence since the 2003 invasion stands at 200,065 to 226,628. Nearly 4,500 American service members died over the same period. For comparison: the death toll of the Anfal campaign alone, Saddam Hussein’s 1988 assault on the Kurdish north, is put at 50,000 to 100,000. Kurdish officials have cited figures as high as 182,000, a number Ali Hassan al-Majid himself disputed under oath. Iraq’s GDP per capita, in constant 2010 dollars, was $2,250 in 2003. It was $4,005 in 2025. Electricity generation has grown five-fold in absolute terms. Daily output was roughly 4,000 megawatts in 2002. Available capacity is about 21 gigawatts today. But demand has outgrown supply just as fast. Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity projects peak demand above 55 gigawatts, a shortfall of more than 34 gigawatts. The sector posted losses of 13.2 trillion dinars in 2024 alone. 🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The Pentagon’s own language, a successfully “defeated” ISIS and an orderly handoff, is close to the only framing most American coverage offers. Rudaw, reporting for the Kurdistan region, frames the withdrawal differently. Its coverage centers on what protection is being removed, not what sovereignty is being restored: Patriot batteries and UK air defenses leaving Erbil exposed, with nothing replacing them. That is not the framing the Pentagon is using for the same handoff. 🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The war that started in 2003 formally ended today by the only measure Washington controls: the last soldier left. Whether Iraqis are better off than if it had never happened is not a question with a settled answer. This report can’t settle it either. The casualty figures are large and disputed depending on whose count you use. The economy is bigger than it was. The electricity grid is bigger than it was and still can’t keep the lights on. Iran-backed militias that fought American troops for years are now the ones deciding whether Iraq’s government can actually govern. Those are the facts. What they add up to depends on what you’re measuring. Sources: Al Jazeera (Pentagon confirmation, Parnell quote, Trump characterization); PBS NewsHour (al-Zaidi quote, Kurdish air-defense concern, Peshmerga Ministry attack count); KOMO News (Kataib Hezbollah quote via Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, disarmament deadline); Rudaw (Patriot/UK air-defense relocation, Erbil airport exposure, al-Araji quote, five-faction disarmament refusal reported September 6 and carried as background); Iraq Body Count (200,065-226,628 documented civilian deaths); FRED/Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, sourcing World Bank data (GDP per capita, 2025 figure); GlobalSecurity.org (pre-2003 electricity capacity and 2002 output); Dhia Jafar Center for Energy and Natural Resources, American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (2026 generation capacity, demand projection, sector losses); Human Rights Watch via PBS Frontline World (Anfal campaign death toll range) 188 DRONES OVER KYIV Russia launched one of its largest bombardments of Ukraine in months overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. It fired roughly 188 Shahed-type strike drones toward Kyiv and beyond, 86 of them jet-powered. Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles came with them, along with Zircon and Onyx cruise missiles. Five people were killed across Ukraine, including a child. Two women died in Kyiv. At least 14 people were injured nationwide. Ukrainian air defenses shot down or neutralized 160 of the incoming targets, including five ballistic missiles and 155 drones, but not all of them. Strikes hit residential buildings, a grocery store, warehouses, and grounds near an embassy in Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, along with targets in Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa. “It was a difficult barrage,” Zelenskyy said, citing nearly 190 attack drones and ballistic missiles aimed at the capital’s energy infrastructure. 🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: This is a larger, more coordinated strike than the drone attacks on Kyiv’s National Academy of Sciences and a medical center reported earlier this week. Energy infrastructure, hit deliberately as winter approaches, is the target that matters most for how many Ukrainians get through the cold months with heat and power. Sources: Kyiv Post (casualty figures, weapons mix, targets, Zelenskyy quote, air-defense interception count) TENNESSEE’S ONLY WOMAN Christa Gail Pike was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Wednesday. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed her execution roughly an hour before it was set to happen, in a 2-1 ruling. Judge Jane Stranch wrote that the case required “a short stay of execution” to allow the court to properly weigh her claims. Judge Richard Griffin dissented. Neither Tennessee Governor Bill Lee nor the US Supreme Court had intervened before the appeals court acted on its own. The state has since asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay; Pike’s legal team has responded. Pike is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. She tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student, in January 1995, when Pike was 18. She was convicted in 1996. Her boyfriend at the time was 17, too young to face the death penalty. Another woman testified against her. Neither was sentenced to death. Pike’s lawyers argue her original trial counsel failed to present the full extent of her childhood trauma. She was sexually abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend from ages two to five. A neighbor raped her at 11. She was assaulted again at 17, in North Carolina. Citing that history, Pike asked to be executed by firing squad with an all-female execution team rather than by lethal injection. She feared the injection procedure would trigger flashbacks. Her lawyers later proposed hanging as an alternative. They also argue she has small veins that would make an IV difficult to place. Had it gone forward, the execution would have made Pike the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. It would also have made her the only person executed in the modern era for a crime committed at 18. Women have made up just over 1 percent of executions in the US since 1976. UN human rights experts have called for her sentence to be commuted, citing her remorse and her age at the time of the crime. 🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: This is a stay, not a reprieve. The underlying claims about her trial counsel still have to be litigated, and nothing has been said yet about Tennessee seeking further review. The five methods of execution in use in the US today all have documented records of failure. Courts have also shifted the burden onto condemned prisoners. It’s the prisoner, not the state, who has to identify a less painful alternative. That’s the procedural reality behind one woman’s request for a firing squad. Sources: UPI (Sixth Circuit ruling, Stranch quote, trauma-history detail, co-defendant outcomes); WVLT (2-1 vote breakdown, Griffin dissent, state’s Supreme Court appeal); Al Jazeera (firing squad/hanging request, small-veins claim, 1 percent execution-rate figure, UN experts’ commutation call, five-methods context) NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION 🇮🇷 Iran: 3,684 killed 🇱🇧 Lebanon: 8,953 killed, 30,643 wounded 🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded 🇺🇸 US military: 23 killed, 861 wounded 🇵🇸 Gaza: 74,105+ killed (total war), 4,916 wounded (since ceasefire) 🇵🇸 West Bank: 322 killed (incl. 74 children), 5,927 wounded (incl. 946 children) since January 2025 🛢️Brent crude: $97.93/barrel — OilPrice.com | ⛽️U.S. average gas price: $4.43/gallon — AAA Sourcing note: HRANA (Iran); Lebanon MOPH; INSS (Israel); DCAS (US); OCHA (West Bank); gazacasualties.org (Gaza total); Al Jazeera (Gaza since ceasefire). Brent and gas updated this evening via OilPrice.com and AAA. “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789 Get full access to The Rest of the World Report at www.restoftheworldreport.com/subscribe