UKMTO said a tanker reported being struck by multiple projectiles at about 1900 UTC on Wednesday, roughly 51 nautical miles north of Madinat ash Shamal, inside Qatar's exclusive economic zone. Casualties were reported and authorities are investigating. The British agency said it had verified the report. Qatar has not commented. It is the latest in a run of attacks on merchant shipping in the Gulf.

Axios reported that the Pentagon instructed US Central Command several days ago to complete preparations for resuming major combat operations against Iran, without fixing a date. US and Israeli officials said renewed operations could come before the 3 November American midterms and possibly ahead of an Israeli vote a week earlier. Any new campaign is expected to target Iranian energy, infrastructure and nuclear sites.

The 57th GST Council meeting, chaired by Nirmala Sitharaman, opened deliberations on a package billed as GST 2.0: scrapping officers' arrest powers, removing criminal liability for nine offences and softening provisions for 24 more. The prosecution threshold would rise to Rs 5 crore, no notice would issue for demands below Rs 10,000, and a mandatory intimation would precede any formal demand.

The actor and filmmaker, born Vishwanath Patekar, was found unconscious at his Dona Paula apartment near Panaji and taken to hospital, where doctors tried to revive him for about 45 minutes before declaring him dead at 5.20 am. He was 76. A medico-legal case has been registered and a post-mortem is expected. His career spanned Hindi and Marathi cinema.

Samsung Electronics guided to an operating profit of 107.4 trillion won, about $80.17 billion, for July-September, a near nine-fold jump and the first time any technology company has crossed 100 trillion won in a quarter. It is a fourth straight record, driven by AI memory demand. Samsung and Micron expect the shortage to persist into 2028. Shares slipped 0.2%.

Seven commodity vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, the fewest since 23 July, Kpler data showed, after tanker attacks in the waterway hit a wartime high last week. Crude crossing the strait fell 27% to at least 10.1 million barrels a day, back to the September average but 74% of pre-war levels. Gulf of Oman and Red Sea exports rose to 6.7 million.

Four migrant workers from Murshidabad, held for over a month at a Bilaspur holding centre on suspicion of being Bangladeshi, were released on Wednesday night. The Calcutta High Court had on Monday asked the Foreigners Registration Officer why their citizenship was being determined while their appeals against deletion from the electoral roll in the Special Intensive Revision were still pending before the appellate tribunal.

Justice Sushil Kumar Gupta's 112-page report on the 22 deaths from contaminated water in Indore's Bhagirathpura last December was submitted to the Madhya Pradesh High Court's Indore bench on 18 August. It finds three layers of failure between 1990 and 2026 and holds at least eight municipal corporation officials responsible for ignoring complaints and delaying tenders. The court had framed the case under Article 21.

A Reuters survey of 41 economists puts September consumer inflation at 5.40%, up from 4.82% and near the top of the Reserve Bank's 2-6% band. A deficient monsoon and Brent above $100 a barrel pushed prices higher; food and beverages are about 40% of the basket. The RBI raised the repo rate 25 basis points to 5.50% on Wednesday, its first hike in nearly four years.

The World Meteorological Organization's seasonal update gives a near-100% chance that El Nino persists through February 2027. The Nino 3.4 anomaly in the central-eastern equatorial Pacific rose from +1.6C above normal in June to +2.5C in August and is forecast to peak near +3.7C around December, the highest since records began. Secretary-General Celeste Saulo described it as firmly established and strengthening rapidly.