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MIDDLE EAST WAR | Day 236.

• In an interview yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said economic pressure on Iran will continue until it stops attacking commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said yesterday that the Strait will remain closed until the U.S. accepts Iran's conditions for reopening it. [more]
• The Financial Times cites unnamed sources as saying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing to resume strikes on Iran after the Israeli military shelved a large-scale operation planned for earlier this month after U.S. President Donald Trump ruled out restarting the Middle East war before the November 3 U.S. midterm elections. [more]

UKRAINE | Today is day 1,698 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• A day after talks in Oslo, Norway, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of Norway and Finland, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg today, as U.S. President Donald Trump presses Ukraine to make a deal to end the war. [more]
• Following a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday that Ukraine is again receiving intelligence and early warnings of incoming Russian ballistic missiles, after at least a week in which he said such warnings had not been conveyed. [more]
• Russia today released Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher imprisoned since 2022 on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said he had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to free him. [more]

U.S. GOVERNMENT FRAUD | President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance yesterday announced a $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, under which the Justice Department will pay members of the public up to $30,000 for tips on fraud involving federal programs that lead to criminal charges. Trump said he would personally decide who receives a reward when more than one person claims credit for a tip. [press release] [more]

U.S. IMMIGRATION | The State Department said yesterday that the Trump administration has revoked more than 300,000 U.S. visas since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 – up from more than 175,000 as of August. [more]

U.S. AVIATION | The Federal Aviation Administration yesterday certified Boeing's 737 Max 10, the largest model in the company's 737 Max line, for passenger service, nearly a decade after the jet was unveiled. Boeing says it expects to begin deliveries of the jet in 2027. [more]

U.S. ELECTIONS | Citing a preliminary review of a sample of names, Los Angeles County election officials said in court filings yesterday that the Justice Department's list of 20,000 people it says are "likely" noncitizens registered to vote in California is "unreliable," noting that some on the list had reported being born in the United States. [more]

MORE U.S. ELECTIONS | With two weeks to go until the November 3 midterm elections, President Donald Trump said in a social media post yesterday that he will have spent more than $400 million on Republican campaign efforts by Election Day, while former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is reported to be giving about $80 million to help Democrats. [more]

U.S. HOUSING | According to National Association of Realtors data released yesterday, the number of pending home sales in the U.S. fell 7.3% from August to September to the measure's lowest level since 2001, amidst mortgage rates at their highest since November 2023. [full report] [more]

CALIFORNIA | Members of SEIU Local 1000, the largest union of California state government workers, are holding a one-day strike today over pay, healthcare costs, and Gov. Gavin Newsom's order requiring state employees to work in the office four days a week. It is the first strike by the union, which represents more than 100,000 state employees, since its founding in 2004. [more]

GLOBAL CLIMATE | In its annual Emissions Gap Report, released today, the U.N. Environment Programme says global warming will unavoidably exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius limit set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and that current policies put the world on track for about 2.8 degrees of warming. The report suggests the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement has worsened the climate outlook since last year. [full report] [more]

GLOBAL CYBERSECURITY | The developers of PHP, a programming language that powers a large share of the world's websites, including those that run on WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, are scheduled to release patches today for two critical security flaws, as European Union cybersecurity officials urge organizations that cannot apply the fixes to take affected websites offline. Web security company Cloudflare says early attacks exploiting the flaws have already been reported. [more]

MILITARY AI | Citing growing concerns over the risks posed by artificial intelligence, the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research says it will launch the first international forum on military uses of AI tomorrow, bringing together governments, defense companies, and other groups. The institute is also developing voluntary guidelines for companies that build AI-enabled military technology and launching an initiative on the misuse of AI by armed groups. [UNIDIR AI initiative website] [more]

EBOLA | Amidst the spread of the Ebola outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigerian health officials yesterday confirmed the country's first Ebola case in more than a decade. Officials in Kenya, which recorded its first case earlier this month, say confirmed cases there have risen to nine. [more]

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN | Officials in Abyei, a border region jointly administered by Sudan and South Sudan, say at least 153 people were killed on Monday when a drone strike they blame on Sudan's military hit a market and a nearby fuel depot. [more]

SUDAN | Army drone strikes in Sudan's West Kordofan state on Sunday killed 150 people, most of them aboard a truck carrying mourners to a funeral, according to the Sudan War Observatory, a group that monitors the country's civil war. [more]

U.K. ECONOMY | According to Office for National Statistics data released today, annual consumer price inflation in the U.K. rose a higher-than-expected 3.5% in September – up from 3.1% in August and the highest level since October 2025. The statistics office attributed the increase mainly to higher gasoline and diesel prices. [full report] [more]

FRANCE | Acknowledging failures in its response to last weekend's rioting, the French government said yesterday that soldiers will guard sensitive sites to free up police for a "massive" security operation ahead of new protests planned for Saturday. [more]

MALI | Militants affiliated with the Islamic State group killed 48 people, including children, in an attack late Sunday in Mali's eastern Ménaka region, according to a member of the country's transitional legislature. No claims of responsibility for the attack have yet been made. [more]

AI INDUSTRY | Amidst growing concerns over artificial intelligence systems acting on their own, OpenAI said in a report released yesterday that two of its AI agents disabled or weakened systems designed to monitor them for misbehavior during internal testing, with one of them falsely claiming it had not done so. [full report] [more]

TECH INDUSTRY | Elon Musk said yesterday that special committees at Tesla and SpaceX, which have a combined value of about $3.5 trillion, are examining a merger of the two companies – a move he called "a good idea." Musk said the committees have not agreed on terms and that any deal would need shareholder approval. [more]

COLLEGE BASKETBALL | South Carolina is No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25 women's college basketball poll, released yesterday, followed by UConn, Southern California, Duke, and Michigan. [full poll] [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 1805, a British fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet off the southwestern coast of Spain in the Battle of Trafalgar, the most decisive naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars. [more history]