Helpless refugees Freezing in cold-hit Greece

When the Taliban seized Afghanistan, tens of thousands of people fled the country. Among them were former members of the Afghan security forces. Fearing Taliban reprisals, they've fled to neighbouring Iran, which hosts the second-largest population of Afghan refugees in the world. Temporary camps have been set up, but Iranian authorities are already considering sending the Afghans back. Our correspondent Reza Sayah reports from Tehran.

The first of October means Britain is taking back control. As of this Friday, European travellers to post-Brexit Great Britain can no longer bring a simple ID card – they will have to show a passport. However, as petrol shortages continue, tempers are running short as lines get long. This Friday, around one quarter of British service stations ran dry, leading to scenes of shouting, fist fights and motorists hoarding fuel in water bottles.

More than 9,000 people are stranded at military bases in Ramstein and Kaiserslautern. Washington suspended flights when measles were detected among evacuees landing in the US.

The ceremony to light the Olympic flame was disrupted as Tibetan and Hong Kong activists held banners protesting human rights abuses in China.

Storms, floods and other extreme weather events are massively documented by ordinary people using their smartphones. Much of the material circulating online often includes false images that show similar natural catastrophes at another time in another place. We take a look at some examples from Hurricane Shaheen that struck Oman and Iran two weeks ago.

Huddled around cooking fires as winter looms in Bosnia, refugees are risking beatings and humiliation from Croatian police in the desperate hope of a new life in the European Union. Largely from Afghanistan, many of them have endured months or years of flight from war and poverty, only to be met by Croatian police clubs and pointed guns at the gates to EU territory. At a ramshackle camp near the northwest Bosnian border town of Velika Kladusa, a group of mostly Afghans is hoping to cross into the EU. Some have been on the road for years and others left as the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government in August.

Matthias Maurer is set to be the first German in space in three years, but he will have to wait for three more days to get there. The Crew-3 mission will be in orbit for six months.

Rights groups say hundreds of Afghans fled to neighboring Uzbekistan to escape the Taliban. But, without official refugee status in the Central Asian country, they are vulnerable and could face deportation.

In the far north of Cameroon, Nigerian refugees have been fighting desertification for the past four years. The desert advances by 12 percent every year in the region, which gets on average three times less rainfall than the rest of the country. But the UNHCR is hoping that its programme at the Minawao camp can help turn back the tide. More than 360,000 seedlings have already been grown in the nursery and planted over more than 100 hectares. Our correspondents report.

After the European Union imposed sanctions on Minsk last june over serious human rights violations, a new humanitarian crisis is developing at the borders of Belarus and the EU.European leaders accuse Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko’s government of retaliating by pushing thousands of Afghan and Syrian refugees into neighbouring eastern European countries, which in response have sealed their borders.

Greek officials claim Turkey is acting like a "pirate state in the Aegean Sea" in regards to migrants. Athens has called on the EU to put pressure on Ankara to meet its international obligations.

During a visit in October, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin described the new refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos as a "European model" for the reception of asylum seekers. The EU-funded Samos camp is closed and isolated – a far cry from overwhelmed reception centres such as the Moria camp on Lesbos, which was nicknamed the "camp of shame". But the asylum procedure remains lengthy and refugees are surrounded by barbed wire and video surveillance. Meanwhile, migrants trying to make the sea crossing to Europe still face a perilous journey. On October 27, three children drowned off the coast of Chios when their dinghy sank. Our correspondents report.