Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
Gaza cease-fire talks are set to start in Egypt How a missile strike unlocked a deal for peace in Gaza WSJ Editorial: ‘All hostages first’ Is the key in Gaza WaPo Editorial: Groundhog day in Gaza How China secretly pays Iran for oil and avoids U.S. sanctions Iranian parliament approves currency redenomination Iran signals push to address nuclear standoff despite sanctions Ukraine’s new strategy for keeping the lights on through a winter of war Putin says Tomahawk supply to Ukraine would destroy U.S. relations Japan’s ruling party, following global trend, veers right Macron’s latest prime minister resigns after a month in office U.S. strikes boat off Venezuela amid questions over action against drug gangsIn The News
Israel
Delegations from the U.S., Israel, Hamas and Middle Eastern countries are set to meet in Egypt on Monday for highly anticipated talks that could pave the way for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages. But ending the nearly two-year-old war remains a more distant goal. – Wall Street Journal
It is hazardous to generalize about public sentiment in Gaza. There are no reliable opinion surveys. But half a dozen people in the Palestinian enclave reached by The Wall Street Journal all had a consistent message: Hamas should accept the U.S.-brokered deal, despite what they see as its shortcomings. – Wall Street Journal
U.S. and Arab mediators had worked fruitlessly for months to craft a deal to at least pause the fighting in Gaza and free more of the Israeli hostages held there. In the end, it was an act of war that set the stage for an ambitious plan to end the conflict once and for all. – Wall Street Journal
Hamas said Friday it was ready to release the remaining hostages in Gaza as long as certain conditions of a broader peace agreement were met, offering no clear position on other elements of President Trump’s 20-point peace plan. – Wall Street Journal
Two years into Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza, returning soldiers are confronting post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in numbers unprecedented for Israel, mental health professionals say. Since the start of the war, the longest in the country’s history, more than 11,000 soldiers have been admitted to the Defense Ministry’s psychological rehabilitation program for those who are war-wounded, according to a ministry statement. – Washington Post
Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday greeted Hamas’s conditional acceptance of President Donald Trump’s deal to end the two-year Israel-Gaza war with a mix of cautious optimism and weary skepticism that the leaders of the two sides would finally agree to stop fighting. – Washington Post
Two words stood out in conversation among Israelis who protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday night in support of a deal to release the hostages and end the war in Gaza: “hope” and “fear.” – New York Times
A rift within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is emerging as a flashpoint in efforts to end the war in Gaza, threatening to derail a U.S. push to reshape the political landscape of the Middle East. – Reuters
Israel has deported a further 29 activists detained by the navy last week for taking part in a flotilla that sought to deliver aid to blockaded Gaza, the foreign ministry said on Sunday. – Reuters
President Donald Trump told CNN Hamas faces “complete obliteration” if the group refuses to cede power and control of Gaza, amid ongoing efforts to push forward his proposed ceasefire plan. – CNN
I am going to meet the saddest man in the world, or so I think. On October 7 2023, Eli Sharabi lost his wife and two daughters as Hamas terrorists rampaged through their kibbutz near Israel’s southern border, burning, beheading, gleefully slaughtering. – The Telegraph
Authorities in Eilat installed bomb shelters on beaches and in other public spaces Sunday, as the Red Sea resort city faces a wave of drone attacks from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Hours later, another incoming drone was shot down. – Times of Israel
Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, has spoken publicly in a prerecorded interview that aired on Sunday morning on Al-Araby for the first time since a failed assassination attempt in Qatar nearly a month ago. – Jerusalem Post
Two years after the October 7 massacre, Israelis are moving into kibbutzim in numbers not seen for years, part of a deliberate effort to repopulate and rehabilitate communities devastated in the Hamas-led attack. – Jerusalem Post
A Spanish national detained after travelling on a vessel as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla was accused by Israel Police of biting a female medical staff member at Ketziot Prison on Sunday. – Jerusalem Post
Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) vowed his full commitment to providing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a political safety net to go forward with US President Donald Trump’s peace plan during opening remarks at a Yesh Atid faction meeting on Sunday. – Jerusalem Post
The IDF revealed on Saturday a tunnel shaft leading to an underground workshop used for manufacturing weapons that was found adjacent to the Jordanian Hospital in southern Gaza City. – Jerusalem Post
Hamas terrorists attempted to carry out an attack on the al-Mujaida clan, one of the largest families in Gaza’s South, according to Hamas statements, social media footage and Palestinian reports on Friday. The terror group claimed it was carrying out arrests of parties alleged to be working with Israel. – Jerusalem Post
Editorial: It crumbles, however, if Hamas is allowed to keep hostages in reserve. In prior negotiations Hamas demanded a full Israeli withdrawal in exchange for at most half of the hostages up front, keeping the other half until the end of the deal to secure the future of Gaza it wants. Hamas would parlay even a single remaining captive into concessions that help it retain power and keep millions of people trapped in its forever war on Israel. The claim that it can’t locate hostages proved hollow in the past and shouldn’t be credited today. Hamas said yes to releasing all hostages. Mr. Trump is right to hold the terrorists to that, and to threaten “Complete Obliteration” if they renege. No “buts.” – Wall Street Journal
Editorial: The balancing act for the U.S. delegation heading to Egypt is figuring out how to finish the fighting to Israel’s satisfaction without alienating Arab leaders. If a decent outcome is within reach, Netanyahu needs to find a way to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Two years after the Oct. 7 attacks, its reservists yearn for a return to normalcy. Fresh polling shows 72 percent of Israelis support Trump’s plan. The time has come to take the win. While there’s cause for guarded optimism in the coming days, the clock will keep striking 6 a.m. in Gaza until someone decisively changes the script. – Washington Post
Editorial: October 7 was a national trauma, but also a reckoning. It stripped away illusions and forced the country to confront truths it had tried to avoid. […] The worst outcome would be to forget – to allow comfort once again to dull awareness and for habit to replace vigilance. The most fitting memorial to the victims of that day is not only remembrance, but resolve: never again to let security rest on flimsy assumptions, or survival depend on wishful thinking. – Jerusalem Post
Ofir Berman and Sarah Wildman write: Sometimes she finds most connection by traveling down to the shell of their ruined house in Nir Oz, which was burned on the day of the Hamas attacks. The last time Sharon was there, she wrote a note to David on the wall. “I had to come here, to our home. I’m already shattered, desperate and broken,” she wrote. “I will never give up, just as I promised you in Gaza. My heart is yours forever.” – New York Times
Marc Champion writes: Can it be done? Yes. Unlike the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump has proved ready at last to apply real pressure on a stronger party unwilling to make the concessions needed for peace. And though tragically late, the new US plan is a good start. The decision to start negotiations Monday, rather than insist on Trump’s Sunday ultimatum is also promising. Will it be done? Success would take time and depend both on Trump’s staying power and the quality of his team. We’ll see. – Bloomberg
David M. Weinberg writes: We know that the set of rules by which the bad actors in the Middle East operate is ideological, attritional, and genocidal – not accommodational or transactional – and therefore a long struggle is ahead. But for the moment, in the greater scheme of things, the pause in warfare imagined by Trump – if it truly brings about freedom for all the hostages and pushes Hamas out of Gaza – is a worthy path forward. – Jerusalem Post
Iran
U.S. sanctions make it nearly impossible to pay Iran for its oil. China has figured out how to do it anyway, in an arrangement that has largely been secret. The hidden funding conduit has deepened economic ties between the two U.S. rivals in defiance of Washington’s efforts to isolate Iran. – Wall Street Journal
Iran has gained parliamentary approval for a monetary overhaul to remove four zeros from its national currency over the next few years to simplify transactions after years of inflation. – Reuters
Iran executed six people it accused of carrying out deadly attacks in the country’s south with support from Israel, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported. – Bloomberg
Iran’s foreign minister said the country is ready to resume efforts to resolve its nuclear standoff but called cooperation with the UN atomic watchdog “insufficient.” – Bloomberg
US President Donald Trump warned that if Iran attempts to restart its nuclear program, then the US will “deal with that too” during a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia on Sunday. – Jerusalem Post
Menahem Merhavy writes: Even inside Iran, where many citizens were weary of conflict, a temporary sense of cosmic mission was rekindled. The war with Israel retroactively confirmed what regime ideologues had long suggested: that the 1979 Islamic Revolution was not merely a political upheaval but a divine event disguised as one. On the battlefield, results were mixed at best. Yet ideologically, the regime succeeded in channeling religious tension to serve a dual purpose: to rally the nation against an external foe, and to preserve internal cohesion despite mounting public discontent over economic hardship and the lack of personal freedoms. – Jerusalem Post
David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, Spencer Faragasso write: Satellite imagery taken over the last months show that Iran is continuing construction activities at the Natanz “Pickaxe” mountain, or Mt Kolang Gaz-La, in line with activity at the site prior to the June war. As of September 2025, Iran’s visible activities point towards late stages of construction, including improving security, but represent neither an expansion of the site nor an acceleration of activity. They do not indicate an ability to quickly rebuild destroyed parts of its nuclear program. Rather, Iran appears to have two main choices for the site: Cobble together remaining assets into this closely watched facility, exposing high value targets for follow-on strikes, such as highly enriched uranium stocks, during recovery from rubble and transport, or slowly build and accumulate new capabilities, where anything imported from abroad or produced by Iranian companies outside the military industry would have to be closely scrutinized for quality and potential sabotage. – Institute for Science and International Security
Russia and Ukraine
Ukraine’s power grid has weathered three winters of Russian bombardment during which engineers patched up substations under missile and drone fire and civilians spent days in the cold and dark as Moscow attempted to sap their resolve. – Wall Street Journal
President Trump on Sunday praised a Kremlin proposal to continue the limits on long-range nuclear weapons for one more year, which would preserve a main element of the last major arms-control agreement between the U.S. and Russia. – Wall Street Journal
Russia launched dozens of missiles and around 500 attack drones across Ukraine early Sunday, damaging energy infrastructure across the country and killing at least five people, officials said. – Washington Post
At first glance, Vladivostok, Russia’s maritime stronghold and main trading hub on the Pacific, seems hardly Russian at all. A staple food is sea scallops. Streets climb steep hills that open onto sweeping views of curved blue bays, dotted by ships and lighthouses, rather than Orthodox churches. – New York Times
Russian drones struck two passenger trains in northern Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least one person and injuring dozens of others in the region of Sumy, Ukrainian officials said. – New York Times
Yuliia Svyrydenko’s debut trip to the United States as Ukraine’s prime minister began at a showcase of American capitalism. On a late-August morning, she joined a crowd of investors in the Nasdaq building in Times Square to celebrate the first ever American listing of a Ukrainian company, the telecom firm Kyivstar. – New York Times
China is providing intelligence to Russia to enable Moscow to better launch missile strikes inside Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official was quoted as saying on Saturday. – Reuters
Senior European Union officials who visited Ukraine have delivered a stern message to Kyiv that it has a lot more to do to secure membership, while they work on overcoming Hungary’s opposition to Ukrainian accession. – Reuters
Ukraine’s overnight shelling of the Russian region of Belgorod damaged power infrastructure, snapping electricity links to thousands of customers, the governor of the region bordering Ukraine said on Monday. – Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that if the United States supplied Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for long-range strikes deep into Russia then it would lead to the destruction of Moscow’s relationship with Washington. – Reuters
A Russian drone attack killed a French photojournalist on Friday in eastern Ukraine on the frontline of the 3-1/2-year-old war with Russia, the Ukrainian military said. – Reuters
Russian-linked vessels are continuing to leak oil off Europe’s shores — despite Western sanctions — underscoring the continent’s inability to rein in Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet. – Politico
Anna Husarska writes: Facts on the ground, or rather facts in the air, suggest that this is very much our war — all of ours. A war that Europe must confront, and a war that one day may come to the United States, if Putin’s imperial appetite is not opposed. I fear my newfound expertise in drone-recognition and tourniquet-handling will become a globally useful skill. – Washington Post
Turkey
Turkish prosecutors issued detention warrants for 23 suspects linked to the Istanbul Gold Refinery and related companies on a charge of obtaining state support through fraudulent means, state-owned Anadolu news agency said on Monday. – Reuters
British singer Robbie Williams said city authorities called off his upcoming Istanbul concert “in the interests of public safety” after Turkish NGOs and social media users campaigned for the event to be cancelled and protested against his appearance. – Reuters
President Tayyip Erdogan told U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in a phone call on Friday that Turkey welcomed efforts to reach peace in the region, but that Israel must stop its attacks for efforts to be successful, the Turkish presidency said. – Reuters
Turkish Airlines was considering asking Israeli authorities to restore service to and from Ben-Gurion Airport in the coming days, Israeli media reported Sunday night. The signal, if realized, would mark a potential thaw after nearly two years without scheduled flights on the Tel Aviv-Istanbul route. – Jerusalem Post
Liam Kerr writes: Turkey’s growing role in Africa positions it as a potential partner at a time when the United States and broader Western influence are facing challenges. While Turkey is far from a perfect partner, US officials can shape a positive working relationship by taking the initiative and pursuing opportunities for greater collaboration, particularly in aligned interest areas such as counterterrorism, energy, and infrastructure. – The National Interest
Middle East & North Africa
Whatever Riyadh’s goals, the gambit has benefited the Trump administration. More Saudi crude has helped lower gas prices at the pump, something Trump has repeatedly called for. He said in January he would press Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel to cut prices. – Wall Street Journal
Bridging the divide between their administration and the new government in Damascus is seen by the U.S. and European allies as vital to stabilizing the country as it emerges from a half-century of dictatorship under the Assad family’s regime. But the accord struck six months ago between Syria’s two most powerful political and military entities is already fraying amid clashes and mistrust. – Wall Street Journal
A Tunisian man has been sentenced to death on charges of insulting the president and assaulting state security through posts on social media, the head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights and his lawyer said on Friday. – Reuters
Demonstrations in more than a dozen cities have jolted Morocco for a week straight, with the young people behind them showing they can translate digital discontent into a real-world movement that authorities can’t ignore. – Associated Press
Tunisian unions and activists organized a large-scale march and protest in central Tunis on Saturday to denounce the Israeli navy’s detention of Global Sumud Flotilla activists, Tunisia’s official news agency TAP confirmed. – Jerusalem Post
The head of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said Saturday that Washington’s plan for a ceasefire in Gaza was “full of dangers,” accusing Israel of using the proposal to achieve what it “failed” to do during the war. – Times of Israel
Korean Peninsula
Vietnam’s Communist Party chief To Lam will travel to North Korea this week, the Vietnamese government and North Korean state media said on Monday, marking the first visit of a Vietnamese leader to the largely isolated nation in nearly 20 years. – Reuters
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the Choe Hyon naval destroyer at a military exhibition on Sunday, state media KCNA reported on Monday. Kim said the navy should be prepared to “thoroughly deter or counter and punish the enemy’s provocations,” KCNA said. – Reuters
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Pyongyang has allocated strategic assets to respond to the buildup of U.S. military forces in the south and vowed to develop additional military measures, the state media KCNA reported on Sunday. – Reuters
China
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi will visit Italy and Switzerland from Tuesday until October 12, China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. – Reuters
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Friday he will introduce legislation to deter aggression against Taiwan by identifying targets for economic measures that could be deployed rapidly if China acts against the island. – Reuters
Nearly 80 years after Mao Zedong called the United States a “paper tiger” to boost morale at home, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are exchanging barbs who is the paper tiger of today. – Associated Press
China is pushing the Trump administration to roll back national-security restrictions on Chinese deals in the US, dangling the prospect of a massive investment package as part of a proposal that would upend a decade of policy. – Bloomberg
Kurt M. Campbell writes: The United States and China, after all, have not experienced serious military tensions since the latter years of the Korean War. And it may take such tensions before Chinese leaders change their minds, just as it took the 1962 Cuban missile crisis before Moscow and Washington set up clear military-to-military ties. But the United States should keep pushing to create robust channels of crisis communications before an emergency occurs. Its efforts may ultimately fall short. Yet with enormous military firepower potentially arrayed against one another, the two great powers of the twenty-first century must have the foresight to create such channels without first subjecting the world to a Cuban missile–type crisis in the Indo-Pacific. – Foreign Affairs
South Asia
For Mursal, the nightmares began in late January. That’s when the 28-year-old Afghan woman learned that President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts back in office, had suspended all refugee arrivals to the United States. – Washington Post
Raj’s story is not unique. Three other Indian students who applied for American visas after the recent policy change shared strikingly similar accounts with The Post, along with supporting documentation. All said they had made it through every other stage of the application process and were rejected after the social media review. All were told by U.S. authorities that they had failed to prove strong enough ties to India despite having spent their whole lives there. – Washington Post
In the rugged mountains of Pakistan, the resurgent Pakistani Taliban are waging a relentless and deadly guerrilla war against Pakistani security forces, in the biggest terrorism threat the South Asian nation has faced in a dozen years. – New York Times
The U.N. Security Council Committee has temporarily lifted a travel ban on the Afghan Taliban foreign minister, which would allow him to visit India between October 9 and 16, India’s foreign ministry said on Friday. – Reuters
The 20 points that U.S. President Donald Trump announced this week under his plan to end the war in Gaza were not in line with a draft presented to him by a group of Muslim-majority countries, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Friday. – Reuters
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will make his first official visit to India on 8-9 October, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Saturday. – Reuters
Asia
The people of Taiwan carry out their lives under the threat of typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis and military invasion. So this June, when a Facebook post by U.S. officials urged the Taiwan public to “pack your Go Bag and be ready for anything,” the theme went viral. – Wall Street Journal
Sanae Takaichi’s victory in a leadership election in Japan represents another notable win for a resurgent global conservatism that is drawing strength from voter anger over issues such as immigration and stubborn inflation. – Wall Street Journal
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said on Sunday that protesters who sought to force entry to the presidential palace the previous evening had been trying to topple the government and accused the European Union of meddling in Georgia’s affairs. – Reuters
Australian police are set on Monday to interview a man accused of opening fire from a Sydney apartment window and critically injuring at least one person, as they seek to establish his motive, while ruling out links to terrorism. – Reuters
The New Zealand government said on Monday it would pay the Samoan government 10 million Samoa tala ($3.51 million) following the sinking of a Royal New Zealand Navy vessel off the coast of Samoa in 2024. – Reuters
Police in Maldives arrested eight people during an overnight protest Friday accusing the government of corruption and curtailment of basic freedoms. – Associated Press
Karishma Vaswani writes: Corruption and nepotism, long-entrenched in many Asian nations, will also need to be addressed. Young people repeatedly cite these as sources of their anger. Without tackling these issues, even new jobs risk being seen as unfairly allocated. Asia’s Gen-Z protests are the early signs of a generation that feels hopeless. The test for the region’s governments will be whether they can provide their young people with not just work, but a future worth believing in. – Bloomberg
Europe
France’s Sebastien Lecornu resigned as prime minister on Monday after less than a month in office, underscoring President Emmanuel Macron’s struggle to forge a stable government as the country’s fiscal woes deepen. – Wall Street Journal
One of those killed and one injured in Thursday’s terrorist attack in Manchester were hit by gunfire from police who were trying to stop the attacker from entering a crowded synagogue, police said. – Wall Street Journal
The government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Europe, is taking Italy’s culture wars to a new front: the classroom. – Washington Post
Sarah Mullally was named the new archbishop of Canterbury on Friday, becoming the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Church of England, and of the global Anglican community, in the church’s nearly 500-year history. – Washington Post
The British authorities said early Sunday that they were investigating a fire at a mosque on Britain’s southern coast as a suspected arson attack and treating it as a hate crime. – New York Times
A billionaire former Czech Republic prime minister, Andrej Babis, seized on voters’ economic frustrations in his bid to reclaim power Saturday in parliamentary elections that could water down the country’s steadfast support for Ukraine and challenge the European Union and NATO on Russia. – New York Times
A court in Finland dismissed a case on Friday against the crew of an oil tanker accused of cutting undersea cables in the Baltic Sea last year, saying that the country did not have jurisdiction to prosecute the sailors. – New York Times
British police will get powers to restrict repeat protests held in the same place, the government said on Sunday, a day after the latest pro-Palestinian demonstration went ahead despite requests to cancel it in the wake of a deadly attack at a synagogue. – Reuters
Eight people were arrested and 20 police officers injured in clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and police in Barcelona, police said on Sunday. – Reuters
Ireland is poised to curb planned sanctions on Israel, blunting a law central to its protest over the war in Gaza, after pressure from business groups concerned about the impact on investment, four people with knowledge of the matter said. – Reuters
France’s new prime minister named a government Sunday, bringing back former finance minister Bruno Le Maire to serve at the defense ministry, where he’ll help oversee French military support for Ukraine and address threats to European security posed by Russia. – Associated Press
As the European Union pushes to fully sever its reliance on Russian energy and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump urges NATO members to abandon Russian oil, one country’s populist government stands firm. – Associated Press
The Netherlands said Friday it would maintain its ban on exporting parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel despite a Supreme Court order giving it the option to change its policy. – Agence France-Presse
Adam Langleben writes: This does not mean banning protests. It does mean redrawing the boundaries of the behavior we allow in our public spaces. It means recognizing that speech and assembly, even if technically lawful, can corrode the sense of safety that communities should be able to have. And it means governments and police forces enforcing that principle consistently across the board. Above all, it requires people to police their own speech — and especially leaders. Words have consequences and sometimes they can be deadly. – Politico
Nick Cohen writes: Don’t confuse Israeli people and Jews around the world with the Israeli government, it says. Don’t glorify violence, and don’t use ‘Zionist’ as a substitute for ‘Jew’. As anti-Semitic murderers stalk British Jewry, it is both terrifying and disgraceful that there are leftists who cannot echo these sentiments and prefer to whine and equivocate instead. – The Spector
Africa
Decades-old U.S. trade legislation granting duty-free access to the U.S. market for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which is credited with creating thousands of jobs and bolstering economic growth, expired this week despite long-awaited signals from the White House that President Donald Trump was open to an extension of the program for at least another year. – Washington Post
Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu will go on trial on Monday for treason, weeks before the East African country holds an election that his party has been barred from contesting. – Reuters
Malawi’s Peter Mutharika vowed to root out government corruption and rebuild an ailing economy after he was sworn in on Saturday for a second term as president of the southern African nation. – Reuters
Somali government forces were fighting on Saturday to repel al Shabaab militants who stormed a high-security underground prison in the capital Mogadishu, a witness and the government said. – Reuters
Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina said on Friday he was ready to listen to find solutions to problems facing the poor island nation, but ignored calls for his resignation by a nationwide youth-led protest movement. – Reuters
Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda will not sign an economic framework this week as expected, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday, in another stumbling block for the Trump administration’s efforts to implement a peace deal and spur Western investment in the region. – Reuters
The U.N. food agency announced on Friday that it is cutting food assistance for hundreds of thousands of people in Somalia, where millions are facing devastating effects of climate change and acute levels of hunger. – Associated Press
While South Africa decades ago broke formal ties with Taipei in favor of relations with Beijing, now the country wanted to dilute things further, a sign of how the chip hub is increasingly being squeezed on the global stage. In April last year, a formal notice arrived to move Liao’s office from the seat of government to the financial hub of Johannesburg, ending five decades of representation in South Africa’s capital. – Bloomberg
The Americas
President Trump ordered another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean early Friday, signaling the administration is undeterred by mounting legal questions about the campaign. – Wall Street Journal
Ecuador’s government has revoked the environmental license granted to Canadian mining company DPM Metals for the development of Loma Larga, a gold project in an environmentally sensitive area, the government said on Saturday. – Reuters
Russia on Sunday condemned a U.S. strike on a vessel allegedly carrying illegal drugs off the coast of Venezuela and cautioned about the dangers of potential U.S. escalation in the entire Caribbean region. – Reuters
Protesters both for and against Ecuador ’s President Daniel Noboa rallied in the capital Quito on Sunday after a state of emergency took effect in 10 provinces. – Associated Press
North America
Fire WE025 started small. But in late May, hot and dry conditions and gusty winds whipped it into an out-of-control inferno. Over 116 days, it swept across northwestern Manitoba, chewing up 447,000 acres of Canada’s boreal forest — an area larger than Houston — one of many massive conflagrations in one of the country’s worst wildfire seasons on record. – Washington Post
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada will meet with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday amid suggestions by Canadian officials that the United States may ease some of the tariffs it has applied on its neighbor. – New York Times
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Sunday she is confident her government will reach a favorable agreement with the United States and other nations regarding trade, and will in parallel present developments in a plan to boost local tech. – Reuters
President Donald Trump’s administration is mobilizing U.S. diplomats to lobby against a U.N. resolution calling on Washington to lift its decades-long embargo on Cuba, in part by sharing details of Cuba’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters. – Reuters
Hundreds of Haitians attended a collective funeral Saturday for eight people killed in a drone attack last month in a gang-controlled slum in the capital Port-au-Prince. – Associated Press
One year on from her inauguration as Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum still commands the sort of popular support many leaders can only wish for. – CNN
United States
A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the deployment of any National Guard under the Trump administration’s control inside Oregon in an emergency hearing Sunday night. – Wall Street Journal
When a judge told him “Welcome to the United States,” Claudio David Balcane González began to sob. His petition for asylum had been approved, and his fight seemed to be over. – Washington Post
The Supreme Court said Friday the Trump administration can for now strip temporary protections from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants, pausing a federal judge’s order saying officials had acted improperly on the issue. – Washington Post
The Trump administration plans to slash refugee admissions to a record low level in the upcoming year, reserving a bulk of the limited slots for white Afrikaners from South Africa and others facing “unjust discrimination,” according to people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The New York Times. – New York Times
The United States accused Colombia’s president on Friday of undermining progress to lasting peace and urged its government to make combating violence and drug trafficking by “narco-terrorist groups” a priority. – Associated Press
Michael Solon writes: The Republican Congress slowed but never reversed the post-pandemic spending surge and must resist Democrats’ latest demand for new deficit spending. Failing that, they must insist on full offsets such as the Clinton welfare standard of 35 hours a week to replace the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s 20 hours on both Medicaid and food stamps, while also applying the work requirement to housing subsidies. To slow America’s pace on the road to bankruptcy, Republicans must stop Mr. Schumer’s plan. Acquiescing to his shutdown demands would mean not one dime of the post-pandemic’s massive spending surge that generated high inflation and keeps interest rates high is ever recalled. – Wall Street Journal
Eugene Kontorovich writes: Mr. Trump can still avoid this while implementing his policies, but he needs a much more aggressive approach to the ICC. The administration should demand that regional allies like El Salvador and Guatemala quit the court, joining pro-American countries like Hungary, which recently became the first European Union member state to do so. The president should also expand sanctions to target the entire institution and all its employees, whether they work in the office of the prosecutor or the IT desk. The administration is reportedly considering such measures. Mr. Trump’s adversaries caught him by surprise with their lawfare campaign during and after his first term. With the ICC, he has a chance to strike pre-emptively. – Wall Street Journal
Austin Albanese writes: These histories are not nostalgia. They are urgent reminders. Synagogues across America began as civic milestones, where neighbors came together across faiths. Today’s rise in antisemitism shows how quickly welcome can give way to violence. The lesson is sobering: Pluralism is not guaranteed, nor is it inherited. It must be chosen, defended and renewed in every generation. – Washington Post
Cybersecurity
For Elon Musk, ground zero of the artificial intelligence arms race is a 114-acre tract of grass and swamp on the state line of Tennessee and Mississippi. This once-sleepy plot of land, filled with groves of water-rooted tupelo trees at its western edge, is now part of a growing empire Musk is accumulating in the Deep South, just a few miles from Elvis Presley’s homestead at Graceland. – Wall Street Journal
Indonesia revoked a suspension on TikTok’s local operating license after the Chinese-owned social media platform shared data requested by the government on its live streaming activity during recent deadly protests. – Associated Press
Artificial intelligence, the technology upending nearly every corner of society, is creeping into religion, serving up virtual Jesus and automated sermons — a change drawing mixed reviews from the faithful. – Agence France-Presse
A coordinated Israeli-backed network of social media accounts pushed anti-government propaganda — including deepfakes and other AI-generated content — to Iranians as real-world kinetic attacks were happening, with the goal of fomenting revolt among the country’s people, according to researchers at Citizen Lab. – CyberScoop
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a new edict this week to reduce the time personnel spend on cybersecurity training, among other reforms. – DefenseScoop
Richard Weitz writes: The Congress should play its part and avoid shutdowns and continuous resolutions while enacting regular budgets to provide a reliable defense demand signal so that firms can confidently invest in building new infrastructure, hire more skilled employees, and take other steps needed to construct a sufficiently robust national security industrial base. The United States must strengthen its domestic tech sector, secure supply chains, and international partnerships to ensure our future independence, prosperity, and liberties. – The National Interest
Defense
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he has every authorization needed for U.S. military strikes on vessels just off the coast of Venezuela allegedly carrying illegal drugs. – Reuters
President Donald Trump did not let the government shutdown interfere with a stop in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday to salute the Navy as it celebrates its 250th anniversary — using his speech to praise both the Navy and himself. – Associated Press
Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth on Friday fired Navy chief of staff Jon Harrison, an unusually powerful top aide who had orchestrated a reshuffle of the service’s bureaucracy. – Politico
The Pentagon issued several memos this week that impose strict fitness and grooming standards, lessen education requirements and upend the Defense Department’s processes for reporting discrimination and fraud, waste and abuse. – Defense News
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is back in the Mediterranean Sea, marking the first time an aircraft has operated in the region since August. A ship spotter clocked the carrier off the coast of Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Friday. As of Monday, the carrier was transiting the English Channel, according to USNI News’ Fleet and Marine Tracker. – USNI News
The government shutdown is causing different strains on military service members and their families, in the form of temporarily suspended afterschool programs, to limited radio and television access to American Forces Network (AFN) broadcasting. – Military.com
Lawmakers and former service members warned that the Trump administration’s near-term vision for the Pentagon — including plans to gut long-standing oversight functions — could make America’s armed forces weaker and less safe in the wake of the unusual summit in Quantico this week, where the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed an auditorium filled with the nation’s most seasoned military officers. – DefenseScoop
Meaghan Mobbs writes: This week’s unprecedented gathering of senior military leaders at Quantico has been met with the predictable chorus of cynicism. Critics are calling it a waste of time and money, a political show without substance. They are wrong. There were no sweeping strategic announcements, no new doctrines unveiled, no grand reorganization plans revealed. That is precisely the point. This moment did not call for another “vision.” It called for a reckoning. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s 10-point plan reflects a deliberate return to basics: one standard of fitness for all combat arms, daily physical training, and regular performance assessments. There is no shame in this. In fact, it is the only responsible course. You cannot build the future if you have forgotten the foundations. – Washington Examiner