Gunmen kill seven at a church funeral in Jordan's Karak, officials say

Oil prices climbed to a six-month high on Friday after Iran threatened to strike energy installations, undersea cables, data centres and AI facilities across the Gulf if the United States and Israel launch another round of attacks.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose about 3.5 percent during the day and went above $117 a barrel, its highest level since April. It later gave back part of the gain and traded at just over $116, still 2.7 percent up on the day. Before the war began in late February, Brent was near $72 a barrel; it touched $126 at the end of April.

The conflict is now in its eighth month, and the Strait of Hormuz has become its centre. About a fifth of the world's oil passed through the narrow waterway before 28 February, when the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran. Tehran says ships need its permission to transit and has repeatedly attacked vessels using routes it calls unauthorised. The US Navy escorts merchant ships through the strait and rejects Iran's account of the attacks.

This week the two sides gave sharply different versions of what happened in the waterway. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Thursday that four tankers were hit while transferring oil overnight and that three more were disabled after striking mines, seven vessels in a single day and the largest one-day toll since the war began. Iranian state television carried the claim. It did not give the ships' names, flags or owners, reported no casualties, and the claim could not be independently verified.

Washington's account is different. President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Iran was "making up fake hits, mines, and everything else" to push oil prices higher before the US midterm elections on 3 November, and said more oil had moved through Hormuz in the past week than before the war. A US Central Command spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the mine claims were incorrect, that American forces had cleared the international shipping lanes and that Iran was using missiles and drones instead. The strait remained open, with 95 percent of vessels getting through, the spokesperson said.

Prices also moved on reports that Washington could resume strikes on Iran after the midterms, and on this week's Houthi attacks on targets in Saudi Arabia. The US State Department ordered some diplomats and the families of government employees to leave the kingdom. "For ships attempting to cross the strait of Hormuz, it's still a dangerous journey, with projectiles still being fired," Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at the broker Wealth Club, said. Richard Hunter of Interactive Investor noted that what many expected to be a short conflict is now in its eighth month.

The waterway matters directly to Bangladesh. Most of the country's crude oil and liquefied natural gas is bought from Middle Eastern producers that ship through Hormuz, and about 70 percent of the 1.7 to 1.8 million tonnes of LPG consumed each year comes from Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, nearly all of it by the same route. Bangladesh needs roughly 7.5 million tonnes of fuel a year, part of it refined products from Singapore, Indonesia, China, Malaysia and India that do not use the strait.

When Iran first closed the waterway in early March, global oil prices jumped about 10 percent within days. Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation said at the time that it held two and a half to three months of stocks and that contracts for refined fuel from outside the Middle East ran until June, while Petrobangla checked whether scheduled LNG cargoes could still get through. Economists and shipping agents warned then that a long disruption would raise freight, production and transport costs and feed into inflation.

Those warnings have not changed. The Bangladesh Shipping Agents' Association said an unstable oil market lifts cargo rates first, and the increase then spreads through factories, farms, buses and power stations. Garment exporters say higher oil prices raise the cost of synthetic fibres and fabrics, and that a prolonged war would also weaken buyers in Europe and the United States. The Gulf is also where a large part of Bangladesh's migrant workforce lives and works, so a wider war would reach jobs and remittances as well as fuel bills.

What remains unclear is how much of Iran's account is accurate. The seven ships have not been identified, no independent maritime authority has confirmed the mine strikes, and no casualties have been reported. It is also unknown whether Israel and the United States will carry out fresh strikes after 3 November, whether Iran would then act on its threat against Gulf infrastructure, and how far oil prices would rise if tankers stop sailing.

The next few weeks will be decided by those military and political choices rather than by anything Bangladesh controls. In Dhaka, the petroleum corporation and Petrobangla will be watching cargo schedules, insurance costs and the dollar price of each shipment. A Brent price that stays above $115 would make the country's fuel import bill larger at a time when the government is already trying to hold down inflation and protect reserves.

The Asian Football Confederation endorsed Gianni Infantino for another term as FIFA president on Friday, reversing a position it took only two months ago when it said he had committed a fundamental breach of trust.

The endorsement came at an extraordinary congress of the confederation in Tokyo. AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa embraced Infantino in front of the membership before telling delegates that the body would support his bid for a fourth term.

"We affirm our full commitment to supporting you and your leadership as you seek a new mandate as the FIFA president," Sheikh Salman said. "You've visited a lot of countries in Asia. I've spoken to a lot of members within this continent. I know your feeling, and I think your commitment is clear as well."

The AFC has 47 member associations, and its members hold a large block of votes in FIFA's 211-member congress. Sheikh Salman signalled that not every member would follow his lead, but said most would. "My feeling is, I'm sure, the feeling of most of my members," he said. "And I've said that to you."

The turn is a sharp one. In August the AFC joined UEFA and CONCACAF, the European and North and Central American confederations, in an open letter that accused Infantino of a "fundamental breach of trust" and called for "leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it". The dispute centred on a now-abandoned plan to raise $4.2 billion by selling a stake in FIFA competitions, including the World Cup, to private investors.

Infantino apologised last week in Zurich to FIFA's 37-member ruling council, which he chairs, for what he described as mistakes in putting that proposal together. The plan has since been scrapped.

Sheikh Salman acknowledged the earlier criticism in his remarks but did not dwell on it. "Gianni, I want to make it clear: yes, we had some issues we spoke about in the past," he said. "But let's not relate the two things together. I think the last few days we met in Zurich, you made it clear that there's a true understanding between us." He added that the past was part of the confederation's history and that lessons had been learned, and that what mattered now was how the two bodies moved forward together.

Infantino, who took the podium afterwards, kept his remarks light but did acknowledge errors. "When you do many things, you do, hopefully, as we did, many good things; you do some mistakes as well," he said. "The important, however, is, as you said, to learn, always from the experience, from the mistakes, to apologise, to move ahead, to come together, to unite."

The loudest applause in the hall, according to accounts of the closed meeting, came when Infantino talked about money flowing to national associations. He said each member federation used to receive $1 million every four years before he took office, and that from 1 January next year the figure would be $25 million.

The FIFA presidential election is due in March. Nominations close on 18 November, and so far no rival candidate has filed against Infantino, who is 56 and is seeking a fourth and final term running to 2031. Africa's confederation has already declared its support. European football's governing body, UEFA, remains opposed, and before the Tokyo meeting there were signs that Infantino was edging towards a simple majority of the 211 federations.

For Asia, the practical effect is that the region's 47 associations, including the Bangladesh Football Federation, are now formally associated with a campaign they had publicly criticised in August. Bangladesh is a member of the AFC and votes through it in FIFA's congress; how individual federations will actually cast their ballots is not public and is not bound by the confederation's position.

Sheikh Salman is also seeking a fourth term as AFC president next year, and Infantino used his own address to praise the Asian official's 13 years in charge and to offer FIFA's support for another term.

Several questions remain open. The first is whether AFC members will follow the endorsement in a secret ballot, since Sheikh Salman himself said he expected most but not all to do so. The second is whether a rival candidate emerges before the 18 November deadline, which would turn a coronation into a contest. The third is whether the governance concerns raised in August have been answered in substance, or only set aside; no published set of conditions or reforms has accompanied the endorsement.

What happens next is largely procedural but consequential. Candidate nominations close in less than four weeks, the FIFA congress votes in March, and the AFC holds its own leadership election next year. Between now and then, Infantino is expected to keep travelling to member associations, a schedule that FIFA's media office has promoted during the campaign and that Sheikh Salman joked on Friday would require a clone to complete.