The Electoral Commission head has said no revision of the electoral register will take place before the poll.

Four prominent opposition figures in the Ivory Coast have been excluded from the final electoral list, according to the Electoral Commission, leaving them ineligible to contest pivotal October presidential elections in a nation with not-too-distant memories of civil war and coup attempts.

“My elimination from the electoral list by the Independent Electoral Commission [CEI] is a sad but eloquent example of Ivory Coast’s drift towards a total absence of democracy,” Tidjane Thiam, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), said in a statement on Wednesday.

Thiam’s statement came two days after CEI head Ibrahime Kuibiert Coulibaly announced that no revision of the electoral register would take place before the vote.

Thiam, who was widely seen as the main challenger to President Alassane Ouattara, was struck from the voter roll in April after a court ruled that he was not eligible to run for president because of his dual Ivorian-French nationality. Thiam, who was born in Ivory Coast, received French nationality in 1987 but renounced it in March.

Other major Ivorian candidates excluded from the vote include former President Laurent Gbagbo and his close ally Charles Ble Goude, who was charged with crimes against humanity related to the civil war.

The former prime minister and rebel leader Guillaume Soro is also barred. He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for organising a coup.

None of the four will be able to run in the October 25 presidential race or vote.

Ouattara, who has been in power since 2011, is included on the electoral register but has yet to announce if he will seek a fourth term.

In 2015 and 2020, Ouattara won with more than 80 percent of the vote.

Thiam has appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, his party said.

His lawyer Mathias Chichportich said in a statement sent to the AFP news agency that depriving the opposition leader of “his political rights” was “a serious violation of Ivory Coast’s international commitments”.

Gbagbo’s African Peoples’ Party-Ivory Coast (PPA-CI) complained that the authorities “did not choose to listen to the advice, the calls for discussion, for reason”, its Secretary-General Jean-Gervais Tcheide told AFP.

“It’s a shame they chose to force their way through,” he said, adding: “We’re not going to let them do it.”

Other opposition figures who announced their plans to run for the presidency are featured on the final electoral list.

They include former First Lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, who, speaking on behalf of an opposition coalition, said that the conditions were not met for a “peaceful, calm election”.

During the 2020 presidential election, a revision of the electoral list took place in June ahead of the October polling day.

The final electoral register for this year’s ballot includes the names of 8.7 million voters, in a country with a high immigrant population and where nearly half of the 30 million inhabitants are under the age of 18.

Authorities deny any political interference in the electoral process, insisting that they respect decisions made by an independent judiciary.

Vladimir Putin has said he will have to respond to Ukraine’s major drone attack on Russian airbases, US President Donald Trump has warned.

Speaking after a phone call with the Russian president, Trump said: “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

Trump warned in a social media post that the phone call, which lasted more than an hour, would not “lead to immediate peace” between Russia and Ukraine.

The two leaders also discussed Iran, with Trump saying Putin suggested he could help with nuclear talks with the country.

The White House has been approached for comment.

Russia’s RIA Novosti, a state-owned news agency, said Putin told Trump that Ukraine has tried to “disrupt” the negotiations and that the government in Kyiv has “essentially turned into a terrorist organisation”.

The two also “exchanged views on the prospects for restoring cooperation between the countries, which has enormous potential,” it said.

The conversation between the two leaders marks the first since Ukraine launched a surprise attack using smuggled drones to strike Russian airbases on 1 June, targeting what it said were nuclear-capable long-range bombers.

The Kremlin said later on Wednesday that Trump told Putin the US was not warned in advance of the attack.

Last week, Trump appeared to set a two-week deadline for Putin, threatening to change how the US is responding to Russia if he believed Putin was still “tapping” him along on peace efforts in Ukraine.

The comment was one of a string of critical remarks by Trump, who earlier said Putin had gone “absolutely crazy” and was “playing with fire” when Russia intensified drone and missile attacks on targets in Ukraine.

Trump made no mention of a deadline or his previous remarks in Wednesday’s post on his Truth Social platform.

On Wednesday, a delegation of Ukrainian officials including Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and Presidential Office head Andriy Yermak were set to meet with US Senators in Washington to discuss arms purchases and efforts to stop the fighting.

In a social media post, Yermak said that the delegation planned to discuss “defense support and the situation on the battlefield”, sanctions against Russia and a previously signed reconstruction investment fund.

The post also comes just days after a second round of direct peace talks between the warring sides, held in Istanbul, ended without a major breakthrough, although the two sides agreed to swap more prisoners of war.

Ukrainian negotiators said Russia rejected an “unconditional ceasefire” – a key demand of Kyiv and its Western allies including the US.

The Russian team said they’d proposed multi-day ceasefires in “certain areas” of the frontline in Ukraine, although they gave no further details.

Trump has previously – and repeatedly – said he believes the two sides are making progress, despite ongoing fighting on the frontline and aerial attacks carried out in both Russia and Ukraine.

Additionally, Trump said that on the call he and Putin discussed Iran, and he believed the two “were in agreement” that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.

The US reportedly proposed Iran halt all production of enriched uranium – which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons – and instead rely on a regional consortium for supplies.

Iran has not yet responded to the plan presented at talks last Saturday.

According to Trump, Putin “suggested that he will participate in discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion”.

“It is my opinion that Iran has been slow walking their decision on this very important matter,” Trump wrote. “We will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has criticised the US proposal and said it will not stop enriching uranium.

Arguably the most incendiary issue Benedict faced upon becoming pope was the ongoing fallout from the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, as well as accusations of a cover-up effort on the part of church administration.

When Benedict became pope in 2005, the Catholic Church was in the midst of a very public reckoning with its history of sex abuse — a crisis about which he was very well informed. In 2001, John Paul II empowered the CDF to centralize all investigations into abuse allegations, removing that power from local dioceses after it became clear that they often failed to take action against predator priests. As the head of the CDF, then-cardinal Ratzinger worked to establish new procedures for reporting and punishing clergy accused of sexual abuse.

As pope, Benedict repeatedly spoke out against the church’s legacy of child sex abuse, apologized to victims, and defrocked hundreds of priests who had been found guilty. However, for many, his actions fell short, in part because he failed to make public the Vatican’s investigations into abuse accusations — a lack of transparency that enabled dioceses to keep these accusations secret from parishioners and law enforcement authorities.

“In the Church’s entire history, no one knew more but did less to protect kids than Benedict,” the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement in 2013, in response to the pope emeritus’s public claim that he did not engage in a ‘cover-up’ of clerical abuse. “As head of CDF, thousands of cases of predator priests crossed his desk. Did he choose to warn families or call police about even one of those dangerous clerics? No. That, by definition, is a cover up.”

Rumors of corruption and secret cabals in the Holy See also plagued Benedict’s tenure as pope, culminating in the “Vatileaks” scandal in 2012.

On Feb. 10, 2013, Benedict shocked the world by announcing his resignation from the papacy. “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” he said in his official statement.

His decision to retire was later dramatized in the 2019 film The Two Popes, in which Benedict was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

As pope emeritus, Benedict made a conscious effort to stay out of the public eye. He apparently disliked being known by such a lofty title following his resignation and asked others to call him simply “Father Benedict.” He did, however, make public appearances at events of theological significance, such as the Canonization Mass of Pope John XIII and Pope John Paul II on April 27, 2014.

On Sept. 4, 2020, at the age of 93 years, four months, and 19 days, Benedict became the longest-living pope in history.