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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
The Israeli military yesterday said that it had carried out a strike on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital that killed 20 people in order to destroy an observation camera that was placed in the area by Hamas militants. The military did not provide evidence for its claim about the camera’s presence or that six of those killed were Palestinian militants, and did not explain why the first strike was followed by a second strike minutes later. The location targeted by Israel’s attack was regularly used by news outlets for livestreaming. Isabel Kershner and Aric Toler report for the New York Times; Max Saltman, Dana Karni, Oren Liebermann, Tal Shalev, and Helen Regan report for CNN.
Egypt has started providing security training to hundreds of Palestinians to be part of a force that would provide security for postwar Gaza, Arab officials said. Most of the Palestinians in the force would come from the Palestinian Authority’s security services in the occupied West Bank, the officials added. Summer Said and Benoit Faucon report for the Wall Street Journal.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR — U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
In a letter to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday argued that France’s call for the creation of an independent Palestinian state did not promote antisemitism and is an “essential” path to security for Israel. Commenting on accusations that he had not done enough to protect French Jews, Macron also called antisemitic attacks an “abomination,” combating which has been his “absolute priority” since “day one.” Catherine Porter reports for the New York Times.
President Trump will today chair a meeting on Gaza at the White House, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said yesterday, adding that the United States expects the Israel-Hamas war to be settled by the end of the year. Separately, the U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar today. Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward report for Reuters.
Israel’s investigations into deaths in Gaza “need to yield results,” a U.N. human rights office spokesperson said yesterday, adding that “we haven’t seen results or accountability measures yet.” André Rhoden-Paul reports for BBC News.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which investigates cases of violence by Israeli settlers and the transfer of arms to Israel for use in Gaza, cannot complete its work due to financial constraints, according to a letter from the inquiry’s head seen by Reuters. Emma Farge reports.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR — U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff yesterday said that he would meet with Ukrainian envoys in New York this week, adding that “we talk to the Russians every day.” Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward report for Reuters.
Trump yesterday said that he was open to “using a very strong tariff system that’s very costly to Russia or Ukraine” to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Reuters reports.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
Russia has entered the key region of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian forces have acknowledged in conversation with BBC News, while asserting that Moscow’s advance had been stopped. Russia has claimed throughout the summer that it has entered the area. Paul Kirby reports.
ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH CEASEFIRE
Lebanon’s government will this week present its plan on how to persuade Hezbollah to disarm, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Türkiye and Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said yesterday. Barrack’s remarks on the plan were overshadowed by his comment asking Lebanese journalists to “act civilized” and not be “animalistic,” which drew sharp condemnation from Lebanese commentators. Euan Ward reports for the New York Times.
IRAN
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, has been receiving round-the-clock protection for weeks after the Austrian intelligence agency received information about a specific threat from Iran-linked individuals, sources say. The IAEA is based in Vienna, Austria. Laurence Norman and Bojan Pancevski report for the Wall Street Journal.
Representatives from Germany, the United Kingdom, and France yesterday failed to agree with their Iranian counterpart on the measures Iran should take to avoid the reimposition of U.N. sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program under the “snapback” mechanism, according to diplomatic sources. In a social media post, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said that Tehran “remains committed to diplomacy.” Stephanie Liechtenstein and Farnoush Amiri report for AP News.
SYRIA
Israeli drone strikes killed six Syrian soldiers in the Damascus countryside, Syria’s state-run El Ekhbariya TV reported early today. Reuters reports.
U.S. FOREIGN DEVELOPMENTS
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen today said he summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country for talks after Denmark’s main national broadcaster DR reported that at least three people connected to Trump have been conducting covert influence operations in Greenland. Citing unnamed government and security sources in Greenland and the United States, DR reported that the people tried to nurture contacts with Greenlandic politicians, businesspeople, and locals, and that one of the people allegedly compiled a list of U.S.-friendly Greenlanders and collected names of people opposed to Trump. Paul Kirby reports for BBC News; AP News reports.
A senior Exxon Mobil executive this year discussed the U.S. oil company returning to the massive oil-and-gas Sakhalin project off Russia’s far-east coast in secret talks with Russia’s Rosneft, sources say. Exxon Mobil’s resumption of business in Russia would be premised on the green light being given by the Russian and U.S. governments as part of the Ukraine peace process, the sources added. Joe Wallace, Costas Paris, Alex Leary, and Collin Eaton report for the Wall Street Journal.
U.S. and Western officials are concerned that a Vietnamese tungsten mine and refinery, one of the largest outside China, may come under China’s control, sources say. According to the sources, two Chinese companies have expressed interest in having proxy firms bid for a stake in the business after the conglomerate that owns the mine has flagged it wants to sell the asset. Francesco Guarascio and Phuong Nguyen report for Reuters.
50% U.S. tariffs on a range of Indian products came into force today. The Indian government estimates the new measures will impact $48.2 billion worth of exports. Rajesh Roy reports for AP News.
TECH DEVELOPMENTS
Meta is preparing to launch a super-PAC that would back candidates with a light-touch approach to tech regulation, in particular candidates for California state offices who favor AI innovation over stringent regulation, according to POLITICO. Tyler Katzenberger and Christine Mui report.
SpaceX yesterday for the first time carried out a successful test flight of its newest generation rocket, Starship, following a string of failed launches earlier this year. NASA plans to use the rocket to send humans to the Moon for its Artemis programme in 2027. Georgina Rannard reports for BBC News.
FEDERALIZATION OF D.C. POLICING
Trump yesterday declared his administration would seek the death penalty for all murder cases in Washington, D.C., in the latest escalation of his crime crackdown rhetoric. Trump did not specify how he would carry out the idea. The Supreme Court ruled mandatory death sentences unconstitutional nearly half a century ago. Chris Cameron reports for the New York Times.
Diplomatic Security Service agents, who specialize in tasks involving global diplomacy such as protecting diplomats or helping secure missions overseas, are part of the federal law enforcement presence in Washington, D.C., according to the State Department and court documents. Edward Wong reports for the New York Times.
A man has been charged with felony assault for allegedly spitting on two South Carolina Army National Guard troops in Washington, according to a statement of facts submitted to court by an FBI agent. Kaanita Iyer reports for CNN.
U.S. IMMIGRATION DEVELOPMENTS
The Trump administration yesterday said it will reintroduce “neighbourhood checks” for some citizenship applicants, restoring a practice of interviewing neighbors and colleagues of immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship that was last enforced over 30 years ago. Eric Bazail-Eimil reports for POLITICO.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS
Trump has told his advisers that he wants to quickly announce a nominee to replace Gov. Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, sources say. Cook’s lawyers yesterday said that she plans to challenge the dismissal in court, while the Fed indicated it would abide by any court decision related to Cook’s ability to continue serving. The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board described Trump’s attempt to fire Cook as reflective of his “short-term tactics” and pursuit of “personal political advantage,” opining that “Cook deserves more due process than a presidential declaration of guilt on Truth Social.” Brian Schwartz reports for the Wall Street Journal; Tony Romm reports for the New York Times.
Top Defense Department officials are “thinking about” whether the federal government should purchase equity stakes in top defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said yesterday. Lutnick suggested any such purchases could resemble the federal government’s recent purchase of a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel. Kevin Breuninger reports for CNBC.
The Justice Department is investigating whether FBI officials tried to hide or covertly destroy documents that could cast doubt on the inquiry into Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election during and after the Biden administration, sources say. According to one of the sources, the investigation appeared to be focusing on a claim made in an article published by Fox News that alleged that thousands of pages of classified documents related to the Russia investigation had been found in burn bags at the FBI. Devlin Barrett and Michael S. Schmidt report for the New York Times.
Senior Trump adviser Dan Scavino will be the new White House Presidential Personnel Office Director, Axios reports, citing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Scavino, who has worked as Trump’s aide since 2015, will succeed Sergio Gor as the administration’s head of hiring. Trump has nominated Gor to be the U.S. ambassador to India. Alex Isenstadt reports.
Pennsylvania conservative election researcher and activist Heather Honey, whose distorted findings on voter data Trump cited while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, has been appointed the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, according to a DHS organizational chart. Honey has led a variety of research groups whose flawed analyses of election data have fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures. Ali Swenson reports for AP News.
FEMA leadership yesterday put on leave more than a dozen FEMA employees who signed an open letter protesting the agency’s direction, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Washington Post. A FEMA spokesperson said that “it is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform.” Brianna Sacks reports.
DOGE members uploaded “a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight,” Social Security Administration’s chief data officer Charles Borges said in a whistleblower complaint released yesterday. According to Borges, DOGE copied a database containing more than 450 million records containing all of the data submitted as part of a Social Security application to a DOGE-run and Amazon-hosted cloud server that apparently did not have independent security controls that would allow the host to see who was accessing the data and how they were using it. Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch.
The Health and Human Services Department yesterday said that it would terminate more than $81 million in funding for 46 state and territorial programs aimed at preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections unless they remove all mentions of “gender ideology” in Personal Responsibility Education Program education materials within the next 60 days. Adriel Bettelheim reports for Axios.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION
A federal judge yesterday dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit against all 15 federal district judges in Maryland, ruling that “a lawsuit by the executive branch of government against the judicial branch for the exercise of judicial power” is not the proper way to challenge a judge’s decision and that allowing the government’s legal challenge to continue would ensnare “an entire judicial body … and its principal officers in novel and potentially calamitous litigation.” The Trump administration brought the challenge in a bid to void a standing order issued by Maryland’s Chief Judge George Russell that imposes a temporary stay of two business days for deportations challenged by the deportees in court. The DOJ said that it would appeal the decision. Lawrence Hurley reports for NBC News; Salvador Rizzo reports for the Washington Post.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan cannot invoke judicial immunity to seek dismissal of federal charges filed against her by federal prosecutors, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Prosecutors charged Dugan with knowingly concealing a person sought for immigration arrest and obstructing DHS deportation proceedings. The judge held that “there is no basis for granting immunity simply because some of the allegations in the indictment describe conduct that could be considered ‘part of a judge’s job’.” Ely Brown and James Hill report for ABC News.
The Justice Department yesterday filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to allow the Trump administration to withhold billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds before the end of fiscal year next month. Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney report for POLITICO.
The nonpartisan Democracy Defenders Fund group yesterday filed a lawsuit challenging the DOJ’s refusal to respond to the group’s Freedom of Information Act requests asking for documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation that mention Trump or his Mar-a-Lago estate. Josephine Walker reports for Axios.
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