FirstFT: Indonesia’s deadly football match

At least 125 people have been killed after a riot and stampede at a football match in Indonesia, government officials said, one of the deadliest disasters in the history of the sport.

The game in Surabaya in East Java province between rivals Arema and Persebaya descended into violence when thousands of fans stormed the pitch, police said on Sunday.

The chaos occurred when police fired tear gas at “anarchic” fans on the pitch, which triggered a stampede in which people were trampled and suffocated, East Java police chief Nico Afinta said.

Two police officers were among those killed. The crowd was made up entirely of fans of the home team Arema, who lost the match 3-2. Earlier reports that as many as 174 people had died were revised down to 125, officials said later on Sunday.

At least 180 people were also injured. The disaster prompted President Joko Widodo to halt top-tier matches in the country until a probe into the sport was completed.

Gianni Infantino, president of Fifa, world football’s governing body, called it a “dark day for all involved in football and a tragedy beyond comprehension. I extend my deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims who lost their lives following this tragic incident”.

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Five more stories in the news

1. Opec+ plans oil production cut to prop up prices The oil group is expected to discuss a production cut that could total more than 1mn barrels a day at the meeting this week, at a time much of the world is fighting to bring energy costs down. This is by far the largest since early in the pandemic and equivalent to more than 1 per cent of global supplies.

2. Moderna refused China request to reveal vaccine technology The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company turned down Beijing’s request to hand over the recipe for its messenger RNA vaccine because of commercial and safety concerns, said two people involved in negotiations that took place between 2020 and 2021. The vaccine maker says it is still “eager” to sell the product to China.

3. Nato chief warns Russia against using nuclear weapons Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has warned of “severe consequences for Russia” if Vladimir Putin were to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, amid escalating rhetoric from Moscow and its allies. Any use of nuclear weapons would “change the nature” of the Ukraine conflict”, he added. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

• The latest from Ukraine: Ukraine’s army is pushing further on from the strategically important town of Lyman that it retook from Russia over the weekend. The hard-fought victory came after nearly three weeks of battle.

4. Brazil votes in presidential election Brazilians have begun voting for a new president after a long and bitter campaign. Polls showed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with a more than 10 percentage point advantage over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, but Bolsonaro reportedly took the lead by Sunday evening in an initially tally of votes. If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of valid votes, the race will go to a runoff at the end of October. (FT, Reuters)

5. Sultan’s heirs expand efforts to seize Petronas assets The heirs of a late sultan have launched legal proceedings to seize as many as a dozen Netherlands businesses of Malaysian state oil company Petronas in a move set to further infuriate Kuala Lumpur after similar actions in Luxembourg in July.

The day ahead

National Day Golden Week continues Markets in China will be closed for this week for the Golden Week holiday.

UK Conservative party conference Although there have been reports of Tory MP no-shows, prime minister Liz Truss will definitely be joined by her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in Birmingham today, when he is expected to address the conference. (Telegraph, FT)

International Atomic Energy Agency meeting The board meets in Vienna today following last week’s general conference.

What else we’re reading

Hong Kong’s expat party continues — but for how long? As she prepares to leave Hong Kong for a move to San Francisco, FT’s Tabby Kinder reflects on the “dizzying contradictions” of her time in the city amid political upheaval and Covid. “I have, with deep conviction, recommended living here to friends,” she writes.

Indonesia on the hunt for investors to back its new capital As Jakarta sinks rapidly into swampland, moving the capital to Nusantara is the signature project of President Joko Widodo, who views the $32bn project as fundamental to his legacy. But Indonesia is struggling to attract foreign investors to fund the new capital city.

Japan’s ‘nuclear lost decade’ to add chill to European winter The shutdown of Japan’s entire reactor fleet after the Fukushima nuclear diaster in 2011 was matched by a near complete shutdown of serious public debate on restarting them. And now, a decade later, Japan faces what should have been an avertable crisis, writes Leo Lewis.

Prestigious Hong Kong flats stand empty Not one single new apartment was sold last week at a marquee 800-flat project in Hong Kong in a sign of the sagging real estate market that is forcing some of the city’s tycoons to do property fire sales. Analysts and insiders are expecting home prices to drop 10 per cent or more this year.

The business card is back, sort of Just because physical mingling has returned, do people really want to go back to swapping germ-laden bits of cardboard bearing data that took hours of tedious labour to type into a phone back home? As it turns out, at this conference they very much did, writes Pilita Clark.

Chess

US teenager Hans Niemann’s shock victory over world chess champion Magnus Carlsen might have been celebrated as the arrival of a new force in the ancient game of strategy. But wild rumours of dirty tricks have swirled.