Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
Jared Kushner meets Hamas on Mideast trip to push Gaza deal Hamas, Hezbollah coordinating attacks with Iran as IDF warns of rebuilt ‘axis of evil’ JPost Editorial: Israel cannot wait forever for peace as Iran rapidly rebuilds its missile program Iran’s secret plan to escalate the war Iran says pilots missing after a brazen bombing run are prisoners in Qatar Political Analyst Salem Alketbi: Why Iran’s threat keeps haunting the Middle East - and how to finally break the cycle Russia dismisses idea of Black Sea ceasefire Hezbollah chief says Lebanon-Israel deal humiliates the nation and its army Trump orders cuts to U.S.-South Korea military drills China is opening the first regular cargo route through the Arctic Taiwan passes annual budget after long delay, including drone spending NATO jets down suspected Russian drone over RomaniaIn The News
Israel
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, held a rare meeting with Palestinian militant group Hamas on Sunday in Egypt, in an effort to advance a fragile U.S.-backed peace deal for Gaza that was met with opposition from Israel. – Washington Post
Pope Leo called on Sunday for an end to violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, amid a surge of attacks by militant settlers and a siege in the territory’s village of Qusra. – Reuters
An IDF tank was struck by a Hamas explosive device in the southern Gaza Strip, the military said on Saturday, decrying the incident as a violation of the ceasefire in the enclave. – Agence France-Presse
The IDF announced Friday that a Hamas commander who invaded Israel on October 7 and held multiple Israelis hostage in Gaza was killed in a recent Israeli airstrike. – Times of Israel
A delegation of senior American officials intends to go to the West Bank village of Qusra in the next few days, where violent settlers have besieged Palestinians residents, to see for themselves what’s going on there, Israeli television reported Sunday. – Times of Israel
Hamas and Hezbollah have begun coordinating their increased activity with Iranian assistance in recent weeks, the IDF has assessed, as the military has identified increased friction between Israeli forces and terrorists on both the northern and southern fronts. – Jerusalem Post
The IDF has needed to cancel and postpone the arrest of Palestinians suspected of terrorism as forces are diverted to deal with rising settler extremism in the West Bank, Army Radio reported on Sunday morning. – Jerusalem Post
Israel’s Navy has implemented sweeping structural changes since the October 7 massacre, rebuilding its coastal defense system into a multi-layered “Iron Wall” along the Gaza Strip’s coastline. – Jerusalem Post
Israel and Honduras entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Honduras in a Sunday signing ceremony, the Defense Ministry announced in a statement. – Jerusalem Post
Editorial: But as the Post has stated before, Israel is directly in the firing line. The United States is not. If we need to take matters into our own hands, then that should be our prerogative, whatever our working relationship with the US. Two months have already been spent trying to turn a ceasefire into something more permanent. Iran has spent those same two months recovering. Washington and its allies must now put a limit on how long this process can continue without results. Israel cannot afford to give Iran any more time to rearm. – Jerusalem Post
Shay Gal writes: If either suffers armed aggression on its territory, every EU member is bound to aid and assist. Israel thus gains strategic depth through partners backed by an obligation Ankara cannot veto. French defense commitments, Egyptian maritime interests, and Indian-Emirati corridors carry the architecture beyond the Hellenic core. Ankara will search for a treaty to denounce and find a network it cannot veto. Success is the declining yield of Turkish coercion. – Jerusalem Post
Iran
Arab intelligence officials have picked up evidence—including communications between Iran and militia allies in countries such as Yemen and Iraq—of a strategic shift inside the country’s hard-line leadership to get their forces ready to widen the war and raise the costs for the U.S., officials familiar with the findings say. – Wall Street Journal
Iran accused Qatar of holding three of its air force pilots prisoner, deepening a mystery that dates back to the beginning of the war. – Wall Street Journal
Senior Trump administration officials have doubled down on economic pressure in the fight with Iran, making lower oil prices a top war aim and vowing unprecedented financial sanctions that would force Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. – Wall Street Journal
The quotation, attributed to Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, was part of a campaign that succeeded in misleading politicians and news organizations around the world, according to a review by The New York Times. The claim’s spread showed how easily viral disinformation can twist the public debate over matters as serious as war and peace. – New York Times
Iran executed a man convicted of deliberately driving his car into police officers during anti-government protests in the city of Karaj in January, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday. – Reuters
Iran’s parliament approved on Sunday the general principles of a bill that would criminalise interviews and other communications with media deemed hostile to the Islamic Republic, including U.S. or Israeli media and outlets financed by either country, Iran’s Shargh newspaper reported. – Reuters
Iran called on the U.S. to accept defeat on Saturday, while President Donald Trump blasted Tehran as “very evil” and told Americans to prepare for continued high fuel prices as a result of the war. – Reuters
The White House established a secret backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a Sunday report, which said that the United States has been informed that the IRGC stands behind the positions of the Iranian negotiators in their talks with Washington. – Times of Israel
Scott Kemp and Stephen Rademaker write: There is a fix: near real-time International Atomic Energy Agency surveillance by cameras and sensors that can send data to agency headquarters on a continuous basis. […] Will Iran agree to these requirements? Perhaps not, but the more Iran resists these reasonable measures, the more reason there is to insist upon them. All of Iran’s neighbors, including any that may be interested in nuclear weapons of their own, will be watching to see what the United States demands — and what we agree to with Iran will set a precedent for what pathways other states are allowed to retain. – The Hill
Salem Alketbi writes: No global requirement exists for a permanent Iranian adversary to justify alliances and defense budgets. Removing the regime with no plan for what follows promises an even more dangerous crisis. What is required instead is ending the threat’s ability to regenerate, through four parallel steps: capping offensive capabilities, advancing institutional reform that disperses power inside Iran, upholding regional deterrence to block coercion, and pursuing diplomacy that links economic and political integration to revised conduct. The world has repeatedly slowed Iran’s power project. It has never eliminated the country’s ability to rebuild it. The ruling system may fall one day, but its collapse would leave intact the building blocks of Iranian strength. – Jerusalem Post
Gabriel Collins and Morgan D. Bazilian write: Capital and construction capacity are already being mobilized to build energy bypass options around the Strait of Hormuz. Given water security’s existential importance, it is foreseeable that Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries will also add expansions of water pipeline networks, storage, and backup wellfields to their resilience capital investment ledgers. These measures will be expensive and likely require public-private partnerships to fund them, but are far cheaper than losing access to water […] it is in the American national interest to work closely with our allies to prevent Blackout Warfare against electricity grids, so too is it vital that we defend forward to prevent Desiccation Warfare against critical water supplies. – War on the Rocks
Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan write: The crisis has also exposed a new balance of power in energy politics. A disruption that a generation ago would have humbled Washington instead left the United States more insulated than any major economy, as costs overwhelmed the countries least able to bear them. Whereas energy shocks once disciplined the powerful, they now increasingly punish the vulnerable and spare the strong […] The next energy shock will not look exactly like the crisis of Hormuz. But that shock offers important lessons for how to prepare for the next battle. Now that the energy weapon is back, that moment may come sooner than we think. – Foreign Affairs
Russia and Ukraine
Nervous about being excluded by President Trump from any talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war, three European countries are working together to make sure Europe has a seat at the table, according to five European officials. – New York Times
Russia on Friday dismissed the idea of a ceasefire with Ukraine in the Black Sea, saying it saw no grounds for “half-measures” that would offer a respite to the other side. – Reuters
A Russian man has been convicted by a Moscow court of spying for Poland and sentenced to 23 years in a penal colony, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday. – Reuters
Russia believes the United States is deeply involved in Ukrainian attacks against it and has raised the issue with Washington, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments broadcast on Friday. – Reuters
Ukraine said on Saturday its long-range strikes had hit a Russian military airfield and a rocket centre that Kyiv says supports Russia’s nascent Starlink-style satellite internet network. – Reuters
Russia carried out a wave of airstrikes on Ukraine overnight, killing two people at a steel plant, and Kyiv launched a heavy drone attack on the Moscow region that killed one person and set ablaze a warehouse used by Russia’s leading e-commerce retailer. – Reuters
Binance last year handed Russian authorities details of cryptocurrency donations to Ukrainian fundraising campaigns that were used as evidence to bring terrorism financing charges against a Russian IT specialist, law enforcement documents show. – Reuters
The attacks began on a July weekend and have continued for a month, stretching from Moscow and St. Petersburg, to cities in the south, and eastward to the Ural Mountains. The targets weren’t oil refineries, maritime hubs or arms plants hit by other Ukrainian strikes, but warehouses that bring the convenience of online shopping across the breadth of Russia. – Associated Press
Ukraine said it attacked a production unit of the Roscosmos space agency as it continued strikes at military and related infrastructure deep within Russia. – Bloomberg
President Vladimir Putin is ready to meet US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Russia to discuss Ukraine, though it matters what proposals they bring, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. – Bloomberg
Syria
Syria’s Internal Security Forces said on Saturday that they had detained Mr. Abu Rukbah as part of “ongoing security operations to prosecute those involved in terrorism cases and take the necessary legal action against them.” The arrest came after reports that he had returned to his hometown, Nawa, in the southern province of Daraa. – New York Times
Syria and Iraq have agreed to form judicial committees to oversee the cases of ISIS prisoners who were transferred from Syrian detention facilities to Iraqi prisons this year. – The National
Or Horvitz writes: A comprehensive peace treaty isn’t currently realistic. But Israel’s strategy need not run only through the barrel of a gun. In Mr. al-Sharaa’s Syria, an opportunity is emerging for limited cooperation against the Shiite axis, which could lay the groundwork for broader arrangements, foremost a security agreement in southern Syria. Israel should pursue the opportunity cautiously, following Reagan’s approach to Gorbachev: Trust but verify. – Wall Street Journal
Lebanon
At least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said, some of the deadliest in the weeks since the country agreed to a U.S.-mediated peace framework with neighbouring Israel. – Reuters
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday accused Lebanese authorities of subjecting the country’s armed forces to undue pressure by implementing a framework deal agreed with Israel to end hostilities. – Agence France-Presse
The United States reaffirmed on Sunday its support for a security process aimed at strengthening stability along the Israel-Lebanon border following a recent escalation, stressing that the disarmament of Hezbollah is an essential component of the framework. – Jerusalem Post
Yemen
Yemen’s internationally recognised government said Iran-aligned Houthis fired six ballistic missiles at the Red Sea port of Mocha on Friday, killing at least four civilians. – Reuters
Yemen’s Mocha port has suspended commercial and maritime operations after being hit by more than 25 missiles in Houthi attacks over recent days, the port’s director said on Saturday. – Reuters
Yemen faces its greatest risk of renewed war since 2022 as fighting intensifies between the Iran-backed Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-supported army and attacks on Red Sea shipping threaten further regional escalation, UN envoy Hans Grundberg warned the Security Council. – Jerusalem Post
Middle East & North Africa
Moroccan police arrested at least 111 people on Saturday as they tried to enter Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta, amid tightened security on both sides of the border after social media posts called for another mass migrant crossing. – Reuters
Authorities in eastern Libya under military commander Khalifa Haftar helped secure the release of an American missionary held hostage held by an Islamic State affiliate in West Africa’s Sahel region, escorting him to freedom through Libya, five sources told Reuters on Friday. – Reuters
The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday Iran had attacked an Abu Dhabi National Oil Company vessel while it was transiting the Strait of Hormuz a day earlier, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported. – Reuters
US President Donald Trump on Sunday touted the defense pact inked earlier this month by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. – Times of Israel
Dov Zakheim writes: Moreover, should Saudi Arabia drop its current opposition to Egypt joining the agreement, the three states might also offer Cairo assistance in developing a nuclear bomb. And were these developments to materialize, the United Arab Emirates might revoke its own nuclear agreement with Washington and develop a bomb of its own. A potential nuclear arms race in the volatile Middle East should be a major concern for Washington. If America does not want to confront a region armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, it must look beyond the current conflict with Iran and commit to maintaining a credible Middle Eastern presence for years to come. – The Hill
Vas Shenory writes: The significance of the Mecca pact will depend less on the language of the agreement than on its implementation. Whether it becomes a genuine collective security architecture or primarily a vehicle for defense industrial cooperation and proxy engagement will determine whether it reshapes regional security or simply adds another layer to an already complex geopolitical landscape. The proof is in the pudding, and the alliance has its first challenge: Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure in Jizan this week. – Jerusalem Post
Mem Husedin writes: So the practical point is narrow. If Washington wants Kurdish allies, the language has to change first and the substance second: help convene a Kurdish national front with standing to represent the nation – in the letter and in the spirit. A degraded Kurdish political class is worth nothing to anyone who may one day need us, and the record of the last century suggests that day arrives more often than anyone plans for. – Jerusalem Post
Korean Peninsula
President Trump said Sunday he would “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, touting his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. – Wall Street Journal
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called on Saturday for talks with North Korea to pursue peaceful coexistence, saying Seoul would seek safeguards to prevent conflict and noting the need to replace the peninsula’s armistice with a “peace regime”. – Reuters
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Sunday that warning shots had been fired when North Korean soldiers violated the military demarcation line between the countries, prompting them to return. – Reuters
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reaffirmed the deepening of ties with Russia in a message to President Vladimir Putin as Pyongyang marked the anniversary of independence from Japan’s colonial rule, KCNA state news agency said on Sunday. – Reuters
North Korea has stepped up a campaign of rhetoric against Japan’s military buildup and its security ties with the United States and South Korea, saying they threaten regional stability. – Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Moscow and Pyongyang were cooperating across all areas and coordinating efforts to ensure regional security and stability, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. – Reuters
Editorial: Alas, that would mean acknowledging North Korea as a de facto nuclear state. This does not require formally accepting its weapons program or giving up on disarmament. It’s just a nod to reality. Forty years ago this October, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came tantalizingly close to agreeing to eliminate all nuclear weapons. That window has long closed. But incremental steps can wind back the Doomsday Clock. – Washington Post
China
Chinese leader Xi Jinping last year summoned dozens of leaders from the nation’s top private companies to a rare meeting, calling on them to help China navigate economic difficulties. – Wall Street Journal
A Chinese company on Saturday is starting the first regular cargo service to Europe through Arctic waters, seeking to reap the benefits of quicker travel time and less fuel use. – Wall Street Journal
There are growing doubts among Asian nations over what the United States would be willing to do to deter China, given the enormous distraction and resource drain of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. – New York Times
Top Chinese officials led by President Xi Jinping gathered in the Great Hall of the People on Monday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of late leader Jiang Zemin, who led China in a pivotal phase in its rise from a marginal economy to a global growth engine. – Reuters
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for improving the country’s ability to prevent, mitigate and respond to natural disasters, after a string of deadly floods and landslides this summer. – Reuters
Hong Kong reappointed Clement Cheung as chief executive officer of the Insurance Authority, extending his leadership as the financial hub braces for tighter mainland oversight on cross-border capital flows. – Bloomberg
Deng Yuwen writes: Jiang and Zhu presided over an era that now seems almost unimaginable—an era in which the ruling party repeatedly retreated from old economic boundaries, allowed market and social forces to expand rapidly, and believed that as long as China continued to open up and reform, most of its developmental problems could eventually be solved. That era produced enormous achievements but also enormous costs. It was not a golden age. Yet nostalgia sometimes depends less on how good a period was than on what came afterward. – Foreign Policy
South Asia
The Taliban marked five years in power on Saturday, seeking to portray their government as in control even as aid and rights groups warned of escalating crises. – Reuters
The United Nations appealed to donors on Friday not to cut funding for women’s programs in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, saying this would add to suffering in a country where conditions for women are already the worst in the world. – Reuters
Myanmar’s military-backed government has verified that nearly 309,000 displaced people in camps in Bangladesh are former residents of the troubled Rakhine State, but repatriation will proceed only after security in Rakhine improves, the foreign ministry said. – Reuters
The head of Myanmar’s military-backed government embarked on an official visit to Russia to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin aimed at strengthening bilateral ties and strategic cooperation, state media said. – Associated Press
Salaha Uddin Shoaib Coudhury writes: The case touches on the credibility of judicial verdicts in terrorism prosecutions, the integrity of international counterterrorism cooperation, and the confidence that allies place in one another’s commitment to combating violent extremism. For Washington, the issue is likely to be viewed not merely through the prism of Bangladesh’s internal legal processes but also as a measure of whether a key regional partner remains committed to the principles that have underpinned global counterterrorism efforts since the attacks of September 11, 2001. – Jerusalem Post
Mohun Kumar writes: And India must do it not just because the world wants it to, but because the people of this country deserve it as a matter of right. India is well positioned to become Viksit Bharat by 2047, but the country needs to be in mission mode, and a whole-of-government approach is required to make sure that no stone is left unturned in this national endeavor. By any reckoning, the next 20 years will be the most crucial period in India’s history. – Jerusalem Post
Rina Amiri writes: A durable political order can come only from the Afghan people themselves—it can be neither imposed by external actors nor negotiated with those who suppress the majority of the population. Afghan women are essential to this project. They had proved their resilience, creativity, and strategic thinking long ago, but their resistance to Taliban rule over the past five years has served as further confirmation. A pluralistic and peaceful Afghanistan is in the world’s interest. To support the struggle of Afghan women is to support those who are keeping the hope for that future alive. – Foreign Affairs
Asia
Rescuers in eastern Indonesia will comb through collapsed buildings on Monday to find anyone who might still be trapped under rubble after a deadly quake that killed at least 53 people, as the country marks its Independence Day reeling from the impact of fresh tremors. – Reuters
Australia’s New South Wales state will start a gun buyback in November, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday, part of the national response to a shooting spree that killed 15 at a Jewish festival in Sydney, the state capital. – Reuters
The Philippine central bank governor said on Monday that inflation is expected to ease gradually over the medium term even as risks to consumer prices remain on the upside. – Reuters
Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro rejected on Saturday China’s accusation that he has “consistently attacked and smeared” Beijing, branding the remarks as a “classic squid tactic” aimed at avoiding the issues at hand. – Reuters
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited a shrine to the nation’s war dead on Saturday, prompting rebukes from China and South Korea, which consider it a symbol of Tokyo’s wartime aggression. – Reuters
Taiwan’s opposition-controlled parliament approved this year’s government budget late on Friday after a record delay, including spending on a key drone programme to bolster the island’s defences, as the president called for a return to reason. – Reuters
Taiwan expects its tech-reliant economy to grow at the fastest pace in nearly four decades this year, the statistics agency said on Friday, upgrading its forecast due to strong AI demand. – Reuters
Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto said he plans to narrow the budget deficit and root out corruption while still pursuing projects to support the most vulnerable citizens, doubling down on his paternalistic style of leadership and vision for the country of nearly 300 million people. – Bloomberg
The Philippines won’t allow the US to launch attacks from its soil in case the conflict over Taiwan escalates, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Friday. – Bloomberg
This dynamic could be key as Brat gets to work in Canberra, where political leaders have been rattled by the Trump administration’s aggressive trade agenda resulting in the implementation of a 12.5 percent tariff on Australian goods. – Politico
Hal Brands writes: That region isn’t yet wracked by large-scale war. But amid dueling exercises, urgent buildups, and sometimes-violent confrontations, the Western Pacific isn’t really at peace. Next month’s summit in Washington may feature toasts and calls for productive US-China relations. But the real rhythms of the Sino-American contest will be revealed in the battlespace where the world’s defining geopolitical struggle is playing out. – Bloomberg
James Curran writes: The Australian government remains locked into U.S. assumptions about Asia, even as Trump shatters the very basis on which Australia has staked its strategic policy. The same kind of hawkish language heard in much of Washington on China populates the corridors of the Australian Department of Defense and the Australian Defense Force: the rhetoric of tough, unflinching, and unending strategic competition. For the time being, Australia remains something of an oddity among close U.S. allies, including Japan and South Korea: It is betting its entire strategic house on the belief that it can help an ailing Pax Americana prevail. – Foreign Policy
Europe
NATO warplanes on Sunday shot down a drone that entered Romanian airspace and appeared to be Russian in origin, the second downing of a drone in alliance airspace in three days. – Wall Street Journal
A team of builders struck gold—$10 million worth of it—during construction work at the site of an old Belgian brewery set to be used as a homeless shelter. – Wall Street Journal
Liechtenstein, a tiny nation of about 40,000 people wedged between Switzerland and Austria in the Alps, took one route: On Saturday, it announced that women would now be able to become the monarch and wield the broad political power of the throne. – New York Times
The EU intends to significantly expand sanctions against Russia in the coming months, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told a German newspaper. – Reuters
Hundreds of migrants who recently entered Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta staged a protest on a popular urban beach on Sunday, urging Spanish authorities to grant them asylum instead of sending them back to Morocco. – Reuters
Sicily’s Catania airport has restarted flights, it said on Saturday, after authorities downgraded to orange from red the aviation alert colour of Mount Etna’s recent volcanic activity. – Reuters
A wildfire engulfed homes in a picturesque Croatian resort overnight, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the EU warned that pockets of “very extreme” wildfire conditions stretched across the continent. – Reuters
The European Union deployed three helicopters and two water bomber aircraft to tackle Belgium’s biggest wildfire on record on Saturday, as local authorities told residents in some villages to leave their homes. – Reuters
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Saturday he was authorising £65 million ($88 million) of extra funding for farmers hit by a drought after the driest July on record in England and Wales. – Reuters
The UK Ministry of Defense is stepping-up scrutiny of its supply chain after discovering some of its naval drones transmitted signals to China. – Bloomberg
Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten implored farmers to keep their tractors off national highways after protests against environmental measures snarled traffic, causing accidents that claimed two lives. – Bloomberg
Editorial: High taxes and burdensome British regulations discourage entrepreneurship. Class-based envy and resentment are in the political saddle these days in the U.K., as they are in much of Europe and the U.S. The Adam Smith Institute says the top 1% of earners already pay 29.1% of British income taxes. A British government report released last month predicts “major sources of pressure on public finances over the next 50 years” as social spending consumes an ever-growing share of GDP. Squeeze the rich hard enough, and they’ll flee, leaving those far less affluent to pick up the tab. – Wall Street Journal
Thomas D. Zweifel writes: A state that closes its eyes to the networks hollowing out its foundations ultimately loses the ability to protect its citizens. Israel and its supporters must sound the alarm bell for the entire West. And Israel in particular must play a leading role in highlighting the threat for Western decision-makers and providing actionable intelligence to Western governments and security agencies. The Muslim Brotherhood siege on the West may be invisible, but the consequences of ignoring it will be all too real. – Jerusalem Post
Africa
The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 2,325 people, government data showed on Sunday, surpassing the toll from the 2018-2020 outbreak to become the deadliest in the country’s history. – Reuters
Zimbabwe’s national police service said in a post on X on Sunday that the death toll from a boat accident on Lake Kariba on August 11 had risen to 80 after eight more bodies were found. – Reuters
Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema was well ahead in counting for national elections on Sunday with nearly half the constituencies declared, the electoral commission said. – Reuters
An estimated $50 million ransom paid to free a hostage seized by al Qaeda-linked militants in Mali in late 2025 has helped to fund their advances across West Africa and the group’s global network, U.N. experts said. – Reuters
More than 650,000 refugees and asylum seekers in South Sudan risk losing food aid access within weeks due to a severe funding shortfall, potentially forcing some to return to war-torn Sudan in search of help, the U.N. warned on Friday. – Reuters
Chad’s presidency said in a statement that President Mahamat Idriss Deby has pardoned his main rival and opposition leader Succes Masra, who has been in jail for more than a year for inciting violence and complicity to murder. – Reuters
Somalia’s federal troops and armed opposition groups clashed in heavy fighting in Baidoa city centre on Monday, a local resident and an army officer told Reuters. – Reuters
A governor in Nigeria’s southwestern Osun state fended off a challenge from the ruling party to secure another four-year term, giving the fractured opposition a morale-boosting victory ahead of national elections in January.- Bloomberg
Nigeria’s capital-markets regulator ordered operators to freeze funds, assets and other economic resources belonging to six individuals and three entities designated as terrorism financiers by the country’s sanctions committee. – Bloomberg
A tanker ordered by Madagascar’s state power utility made way for a vessel contracted by a private group at a berth in the port of Toamasina, easing a dispute over oil-product imports. – Bloomberg
The Americas
With Jair Bolsonaro under house arrest, the future of the country’s conservative movement—and President Trump’s hopes for the right to win South America’s last major economy under leftist rule—now rests with his eldest son, Flávio Bolsonaro. – Wall Street Journal
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva continues to lead Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, although the right-wing challenger has narrowed the gap with the leftist incumbent ahead of October’s election, a Quaest poll showed on Friday. – Reuters
Brazil’s federal police on Friday carried out search warrants targeting former Rio de Janeiro Governor Claudio Castro, two sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters. – Reuters
Onshore, drug cartels have turned the small ports of Ecuador’s Manabi province into a cocaine-trafficking hub, extorting local fishermen who are prized for their navigation skills. – Reuters
Search teams worked through the rubble of collapsed buildings in western Colombia on Sunday, nearly a week after a powerful earthquake devastated cities and towns across the country’s west, killing hundreds and leaving many more missing, injured or homeless. – Reuters
The World Bank on Friday said it had disbursed $200 million to Colombia for its emergency response to a deadly August 10 earthquake that left hundreds dead. – Reuters
Devastating earthquakes weeks apart in Venezuela and Colombia have exposed sharply different government capacities to respond to disaster, according to witnesses in both countries, aid workers and a security firm. – Reuters
Venezuela’s government has given 131 detained prisoners “alternative liberty restriction measures”, it said in a statement on Friday, as human rights groups hailed releases of some people they say were being held unjustly or for political reasons. – Reuters
Hundreds of people have been killed in the year since the U.S. military began bombing boats it accused of ferrying drugs off Latin America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Now, the Trump administration says it is seeking to extend that lethal campaign to land, pursuing deals that would put U.S. forces on the ground in allied nations across the region. – Associated Press
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Friday his government has triggered an economic reciprocity law mechanism against U.S.-imposed tariffs, saying the move was intended to show his nation must be respected. – Associated Press
The US government has discussed new sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court judge as a diplomatic crisis threatens to drag relations between the two countries to the lowest point in decades. – Financial Times
North America
A son of a former Mexican president said that the U.S. had revoked his visa in what the country’s current leader said was a politically motivated attack on Mexico’s ruling party. – Wall Street Journal
The United States and Canada are inching closer to a deal to avert the imposition of punitive 50 percent tariffs on such Canadian products as hockey sticks, wine and cement, according to industry executives and trade specialists following the talks. – Washington Post
After boycotting American products and shunning vacations south of the border, Canadians in the thousands are pouring their incandescent anger at the United States into a new cause: ousting the American ambassador. – New York Times
The Trump administration’s Cuba strategy is increasingly focused on ramping up sanctions and economic pressure rather than deploying military force to break the island’s Communist leadership, people familiar with the matter said. – Bloomberg
Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes: In 2021 she tweeted: “It is one thing to make a debate public and quite another to make lists with implicit threats, characteristic of fascism. In the 4T there is freedom of expression.” Yet on Wednesday Luisa María Alcalde, legal adviser to the president, released a list of journalists, commentators, politicians and news outlets that the government says are guilty of politicized reporting. Perhaps it’s a miracle that after so many years of Morena in the presidency, fragments of Mexican freedom remain. For how long is anybody’s guess. – Wall Street Journal
Michael J. Bustamante writes: That leaves both sides locked in a pattern of tira y afloja, a push and pull, in which each looks for the other to make a truly consequential concession first. But time is not on the Cuban people’s side. They cannot indefinitely postpone meals, medical procedures or more consequential decisions about their personal and political futures. Governments can afford to keep playing the waiting game. Ordinary Cubans cannot. – New York Times
United States
President Donald Trump initially insisted that he needed to build a White House ballroom to entertain VIP guests. The president and his deputies have lately focused on a different argument: It’s crucial for national security. – Washington Post
Attorney General Todd Blanche rejected the idea of a Justice Department independent from the White House, saying he would take into account President Donald Trump’s views when directing federal law enforcement. – Washington Post
A 39-year-old man killed five people, and then himself, in a series of shootings across Missaukee County, Mich., on Friday, according to the Michigan State Police. A motive for the shootings was not immediately known. – New York Times
A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to strip nearly 1,100 Somalis of legal protections against deportation that have allowed them to live and work in the United States. – Reuters
A federal judge refused on Friday to block the Trump administration from taking steps to build 62 miles of international border wall along part of a Native American tribe’s reservation without its consent. – Associated Press
President Donald Trump sought US Supreme Court approval to keep building his massive new White House ballroom after two lower courts said he was flouting the law by proceeding without congressional authorization. – Bloomberg
Cybersecurity
Without Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, it would be far more difficult for the National Security Agency to find and patch vulnerabilities in the Pentagon’s own systems, senior N.S.A. officials argued. – New York Times
Under China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, Beijing has prioritized A.I. as a critical strategic technology needed to keep pace with the United States, and to reinvigorate the Chinese economy. To do that, Chinese labs will need increasingly sophisticated data. – New York Times
France’s highest court on Friday rejected the government’s move to ban people under 15 from using social media, a stinging setback to President Emmanuel Macron, who has made the measure a centerpiece of his legislative agenda in his final year in office. – New York Times
The U.S. is preparing to tell dozens of countries they must pick sides in the artificial intelligence race with China, warning they will be excluded from a U.S.-led AI coalition if they also sign up for Beijing’s competing framework, according to a U.S. official and an internal draft reviewed by Reuters. – Reuters
Australia in December became the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet’s, YouTube and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook. – Reuters
German and Brazilian authorities said there were multiple arrests this week related to a late 2023 hack that drained an estimated €30 million ($34.7 million) from German bank accounts. – The Record
Editorial: Some states in recent years have passed laws seeking to address problematic youth use of social media, including banning smartphone in schools and requiring parental consent for minors to create accounts. Such laws might do some good. But the legal attacks on Meta merely let politicians pretend to protect children while the trial lawyers reap giant paydays. Talk about exploiting children for political profit. – Wall Street Journal
Blake Hurst writes: New technologies bring dislocation, as changes in farming have to small towns where I live. But they also bring opportunity. If the opponents of the Nodaway County project are successful, the growth of AI and data centers won’t be stopped. It will simply occur in other places. Five hundred acres of soybeans will be saved, but opportunities for Nodaway citizens to have a career and make a good life in northwest Missouri will be lost. As will more than a billion dollars in tax revenue over the 35-year life of the project, according to projections. – Wall Street Journal
Nikita Shah writes: The second takeaway is that the real value of cyber operations is often in the secondary impact they cause, in this case, cognitive effect. Through opportunistically targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, Iran’s cyber actors are able to signal and project power far beyond their actual means. By jumping to label these attacks as escalation where they might not be is to play directly into Iran’s hands by letting fear take hold and doing its amplification work. This makes a hardened security posture—and strong cyber defenses—all the more critical against adversaries such as Iran. – Center for Strategic and International Studies
Bob Etris writes: The proactive work required to align the workforce feels expensive only until you price what an extended, inefficient transition window costs an agency. The program managers who succeed today aren’t those with the largest software budgets, but those who start the workforce transformation concurrently with technical design. The technology will inevitably land. The true measure of modernization leadership is whether your people are prepared to drive the mission forward when it does. – FedScoop
Defense
The U.S. admiral overseeing the war with Iran visited the USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday as the aircraft carrier prepares to return home following an extended wartime deployment, according to U.S. Central Command. – Wall Street Journal
The US wants to know how loyal each NATO ally is to Donald Trump’s policies before cutting military assets defending the alliance. – Bloomberg
The Pentagon signed two framework agreements Friday with Boeing and RTX to expand production of critical components for the Standard Missile-3, the Navy’s primary ship-launched interceptor against ballistic missiles. – Defense News
U.S. Central Command will stand up the inaugural task force focused on multi-domain, multinational attack drones. – Defense News
A top U.S. Northern Command general is once again warning of the American military’s inability to effectively counter drones stateside. – DefenseScoop
Brad Cooper writes: The Lincoln’s deployment stands alone in modern history as an achievement that should make every American proud. The men and women serving in this strike group are truly America’s latest greatest generation. To the sailors and Marines of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group: Job well done. Sail safe on your way home. And to their loved ones who continue to wait, pray, and hold down the home front: Thank you. Your strength makes their service possible, and your wait is coming to an end. Godspeed and enjoy the well-deserved reunion soon. – Wall Street Journal