Russia says its diesel exports may exceed volumes announced by Trump
Russia, which has seen diesel exports collapse due to Ukrainian attacks on oil refineries and self-imposed overseas sales restrictions, will be able to return them near former levels and above amounts US President Donald Trump has outlined, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Oct 12.
Trump announced on Oct 9 that Russia had agreed to supply diesel to global markets, and his administration temporarily lifted US sanctions on Russian fuel designed to deprive Moscow of revenue for its war on Ukraine.
“We will see how the situation develops further, but Russia has the capacity to increase diesel fuel exports,” Novak, President Vladimir Putin’s pointman on oil, said on Rossiya-24 state TV channel.
“By the end of the year, exports could reach 3.0-3.5 million metric tonnes per month, returning to the levels seen before the crisis,” he said.
Saudi capital’s airport to remain shut this week as airlines cancel services
PHOTO: AFP
The authorities have extended the closure of Riyadh’s international airport until Oct 17 and airlines scrapped flights after continuing attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis emptied the skies over Saudi Arabia’s capital.
Operations at King Khalid International Airport, Saudi Arabia’s second-busiest airport after Jeddah, were suspended to “allow for the completion of procedures to ensure the safety and operational readiness of the airport’s facilities”, the Saudi civil aviation authority said in a statement.
Late on Oct 12, the Houthis said they had attacked the airport with a ballistic missile, shortly after Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired by the group towards Riyadh.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards likely behind Fairford airbase incident: Burnham
PHOTO: REUTERS
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Oct 12 that a suspected plot targeting the RAF Fairford air base in Britain was “highly likely” to have been coordinated in Iran, and almost certainly directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The RAF Fairfordbase in south-west England, which had been used by US bombers to carry out strikes on Iran, became the focal point for a major security response after five British men were arrested nearby in the early hours of Sept 27 on suspected terrorism and explosive offences.
US officials have told Reuters that there had been a suspected plot involving Iran to launch a drone attack, and last week US President Donald Trump said a threat linked to Iran had prompted a decision to withdraw the bombers from the base.
Inside Elon Musk’s US$276 million midterm rescue mission for Republicans
PHOTO: REUTERS
Elon Musk has quietly funnelled more than US$276 million (S$353 million) into Republican groups and his super political action committee since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.
The staggering amount of money makes Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Oct 8.
In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, Musk gave a total of US$158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team.
Meta says its new AI models on par with OpenAI, Anthropic
PHOTO: GABRIELA BHASKAR/NYTIMES
Meta on Oct 12 unveiled two new “frontier” artificial intelligence (AI) models called Wonder and Wonder Full, which the company claims perform at a level comparable to that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
“Muse Spark was our first family of models, and now Muse Wonder is a much larger and more advanced class of models that brings us to the frontier,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on X.
Zuckerberg has pushed Meta to compete with leading AI labs, particularly OpenAI and Anthropic, over the past year or so amid a race to win over customers and diversify beyond advertising, from which it has historically derived most of its revenue.