Summary

Saudi Arabia has vowed to retaliate after Iran-backed Houthi forces from Yemen struck Saudi cities and energy sites, leaving over 70 people injured, including children. The Houthis claimed the attacks were in retaliation for more than 120 strikes launched by Saudi Arabia on Yemen over the last three days. The major escalation in fighting came after the U.S. said Saturday it had struck three Iranian oil tankers, disabling two of them and sinking a third. Tehran said it attacked three U.S.-affiliated vessels in response. The tit-for-tat strikes came a day after President Trump played down the U.S. war on Iran as “small potatoes.” On Monday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council announced that Tehran is planning a maritime “exclusion zone” outside the Strait of Hormuz where it intends to stop vessels attempting to transit the waterway without Iranian permission. Mohsen Rezaei: “We are making changes into the Strait of Hormuz. From now on, inshallah, in the coming days and weeks, we’re going to announce a restricted, prohibited zone outside the Strait of Hormuz, which begins from the blockade line of the U.S. Navy, including the Strait of Hormuz, and extends to the Persian Gulf from the other side.” Meanwhile, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted in an interview on Sunday that there “may not” be an agreement that would prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Martha Raddatz: “There is also no sign of a nuclear agreement. You talk about that. President Trump talks about that. But where’s the sign that they’re going to have a nuclear agreement?” Energy Secretary Chris Wright: “There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran. We simply don’t know that.” U.S. government investigators administered polygraph exams to about 50 people on the military’s Joint Staff in August amid press reports about shrinking supplies of key weapons such as long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors. That’s according to multiple news outlets, which report that both uniformed officers and civilian staff were interrogated over whether they’d discussed munitions stockpiles with journalists or passed along classified material. This comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has held no briefings with the Pentagon press corps on the U.S. war in Iran since May 5 and has moved to restrict reporters’ access at the Pentagon. In southern Lebanon, Israeli strikes on Monday killed 11 people, including two children. They follow Israeli attacks one day earlier that killed seven people. Just days earlier, Israel’s military announced it had captured a strategic ridge overlooking the city of Nabatieh. Despite a ceasefire, Israel claims its troops will continue occupying southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed. This is Mustafa Hawi, who was injured in Israeli strikes. Mustafa Hawi: “My son, here he is injured. We just came back from the clinic. They did a scanner imaging for him. He had a shrapnel — glass, pebble or shrapnel — in his kidney, so thank God. The same for me, I was hurt in my hands, legs and head, too. They did a scanner imaging because I had a concussion in my head.” Israel continues to carry out deadly strikes on the Gaza Strip despite the U.S.-brokered so-called ceasefire. On Sunday, an Israeli strike hit a vehicle in western Gaza City, killing Youssef Akila and his 8-year-old daughter, Wafaa. Six others were wounded. Separately, Israeli strikes killed at least one person near a telecommunication site east of Gaza City, and an Israeli tank fired on a school housing displaced families, killing 3-year-old Saadi Ghalia. This is the boy’s grandmother. Farida Ghalia: “They were asleep at night. The shell came at them from that area, by the children’s heads. Saadi was martyred. Joud, Malak and Tasneem were wounded. Their father fainted, and their mother could not process, as she was sitting in the corner, and the shell was spinning and spinning around them.” On Sunday, Palestinians held funerals for about 100 people whose bodies were recently recovered from the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Victims included 55 members of the Malaka family, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023. In the occupied West Bank, a 19-year-old Palestinian was shot dead, and three others were wounded, after armed Israeli settlers and soldiers converged on the northern village of Hajja on Monday. Residents said both settlers and soldiers opened fire with bullets, tear gas and stun grenades. According to the U.N., Israeli armed forces and settlers have killed at least 79 Palestinians across the West Bank since the start of the year, including 19 children. The latest attacks came after U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a rare condemnation of Israeli settler violence, calling their actions “acts of terrorism.” Huckabee’s comments came during a rare meeting with Palestinian Americans in the Palestinian town of Turmus Ayya on Saturday including relatives of U.S. citizens killed by settlers. However, Huckabee did not criticize Israel’s government for encouraging settler violence. In Ukraine, at least two people were killed and 10 others injured overnight as Russia’s military fired drones and missiles at Kyiv. Authorities report civilian infrastructure was hit in at least 16 sites around the capital region. Ukraine countered with drone attacks on Russian territory that officials said killed one person and injured several others, and an attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula that reportedly killed a civilian. The violence followed a three-day pause on attacks on Moscow and Kyiv that coincided with visits by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Witkoff said after three-hour talks with Putin in Moscow on Saturday that he hopes to revive three-way negotiations to end the war. However, President Zelensky said the talks produced no breakthrough, and warned Ukraine’s war with Russia is likely to continue into the winter. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s prosecutor general resigned from his post today, days after anti-corruption agents raided his office. His office is accused of operating a criminal ring that accepted bribes to protect fraudulent call centers, while laundering millions of dollars. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is refusing to step down after his center-right Christian Democratic Union suffered a major defeat to a far-right party in a weekend regional election. The AfD, or Alternative for Germany party, won 43.8% of the vote in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It was the strongest showing by a far-right party in a German election since the Nazi era. Germany’s mainstream parties have pledged not to enter into a governing coalition with the AfD. Rights groups warn the party’s rise has stoked fear in immigrant communities. This is Undra Dressler, director of the State Network of Migrant Organizations in Saxony-Anhalt. Undra Dressler: “For years, people with a migration background in Saxony-Anhalt have experienced discrimination and racism on a daily basis. They face structural disadvantages in accessing work, education, healthcare and also dealing with government agencies. And all of this is our reality. This isn’t anything new for us. The question is: How will this develop further?” The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution encouraging members to adopt maps that more accurately portray the size of continents. The resolution to switch to an “Equal Earth” projection was proposed by Togo, which notes that the more commonly used Mercator projection distorts northern land masses to appear much larger than they really are, with Greenland and Africa appearing roughly the same size even though Africa is 14 times larger. This is Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey. Robert Dussey: “This adoption comes as the historic moment for Africa and for the world. It affirms the need for a more accurate, more balanced and more geographically faithful representation of our planet.” The vote to switch to more accurate maps was 164 to 1, with the United States the sole objector. The Trump administration dismissed the vote as a “radical ideological project.” The Trump administration has deleted critical references to a Confederate memorial that previously stood at Arlington National Cemetery. The bronze Confederate memorial depicts an enslaved woman carrying an infant child of a white officer, as well as an enslaved man following his owner to war. The memorial came down in 2023 under a congressional mandate requiring military property to be cleared of names and imagery honoring the Confederacy and its leaders. The marker in the cemetery has been replaced by a new sign that omits wording critical of slavery and the Confederacy. According to a new marker in Arlington National Cemetery at the memorial’s former site, the statue is set to be redisplayed next year. The Trump administration has renewed its appeal to the Supreme Court to allow new restrictions on mail ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections. The request followed a U.S. district judge’s decision to extend an order barring the Postal Service from carrying out President Trump’s executive order ahead of Election Day. This comes as states have already begun mailing ballots. Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement, “This administration is racing to the Supreme Court to demand the right to enforce a rule that has no purpose other than to create chaos, undermine election integrity, and rob eligible voters of their essential right to make their voices heard in our democracy.” Newly released records from the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center show New York City health officials were still detecting asbestos up to half a mile from the site 10 months later. That’s despite official assurances after 9/11 that the air near the collapsed towers was safe. Over 170,000 pages of air quality reports, contamination data and internal city correspondence sat in boxes in a city office for more than two decades, and city officials say they were only found last year. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ordered the material posted to a public online portal. This comes as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former New York Governor George Pataki said that Mayor Mamdani should skip the upcoming 9/11 memorial commemorating its 25th anniversary. Giuliani went on an Islamophobic tirade on Newsmax, claiming that Mamdani is a supporter of a supposed Muslim plot aimed at “taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe.”