Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s president on Friday, at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons for Moscow’s war in Ukraine and concerns are growing over escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its militant allies.
- “We have many opportunities now, and we must help each other in our relationships. Our principles, our positions in the international arena are similar to yours,” Pezeshkian said at the start of his meeting with Putin.
- Pezeshkian said that Israel’s “savage attacks,” on Lebanon are “beyond description.”
- Both countries were accused this week by Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, of carrying out a “staggering” rise in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil.
- McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the U.K. if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
- Speaking Friday as the forum opened, Putin said he wants to create a “new world order” of Moscow’s allies to counter the West, according to video provided by the Kremlin`
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Important Takeaways:
- Hezbollah is preparing for a long war of attrition in south Lebanon, after Israel wiped out its top leadership, with a new military command directing rocket fire and the ground conflict, two sources familiar with its operations said.
- Hezbollah has been diminished by three weeks of devastating Israeli blows – most notably the killing of its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
- Friends and foes alike are now watching how effectively it resists Israeli troops that have crossed into Lebanon with the stated aim of driving it away from the border.
- The Iran-backed group still has a considerable stockpile of weapons, including its most powerful precision missiles which it has yet to use, four sources familiar with its operations said, despite waves of airstrikes that Israel says has severely depleted its arsenal.
- “The fact that the chain of command has been damaged does not take away the ability to shoot Israeli communities or try to hit” Israeli forces, Levine told Reuters, describing Hezbollah as “the same powerful terror army we all know.”
- A statement this week signed by the “operations room of the Islamic Resistance” said fighters were resisting incursions and “watching and listening” to Israeli troops where they least expect it – an apparent reference to concealed Hezbollah positions.
- Israel says it aims to secure the return of tens of thousands of people who evacuated northern Israel after Hezbollah began firing rockets a year ago in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
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Important Takeaways:
- The rapid spending — which is likely to accelerate as aid flows to states pulverized by Hurricanes Helene and Milton — soon will force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to restrict spending unless Congress approves additional funding.
- Under the spending restrictions, FEMA would cut off funding for disaster-related rebuilding projects nationwide and reserve its money for life-saving operations during disasters.
- The cutoff often halts major repairs to roads, sewer plants and water-treatment facilities.
- FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell disclosed that as of Tuesday, FEMA had spent $9 billion of the $20 billion that Congress put in FEMA’s disaster fund Oct. 1 for the fiscal year that runs through Sept. 30, 2025.
- It was the first time FEMA has publicly stated how much money it has since Hurricane Helene hit the Southeast two weeks ago.
- Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman said that money to operate the program will run out “before the end of October.”
- If the agency’s funding lapses, it will continue accepting applications but will not process them until program funding is replenished.
- FEMA has frequently struggled to pay disaster costs and has imposed spending restrictions on 10 occasions since 2003, most recently in early August.
- Part of the reason FEMA has spent so much money this fiscal year is that it lifted the spending restriction on Oct. 1, when Congress replenished the disaster fund.
- Criswell stopped short of saying Wednesday that FEMA might have to stop performing life-saving operations such as search-and-rescue missions.
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Important Takeaways:
- Across the state, the storm has been tied to at least 16 deaths.
- As of Friday morning, 2.2 million utility customers remained without power
- Some communities remained inundated with floodwater on Friday as residents salvaged belongings from damaged homes.
- Throughout east central Florida, 42 warnings were issued and weather service officials have yet to determine the exact number of twisters that formed across the region.
- Milton spawned a deadly tornado outbreak that killed at least six in St. Lucie County on Florida’s east coast.
- In portions of St. Petersburg, the storm dumped over 18 inches of rain, and at one point, 8.50 inches fell in just 3 hours, according to the weather service.
- In Milton’s wake, gasoline remains scarce in some areas
- First responders in Hillsborough County conducted water rescues Friday morning as the Alafia River rose above its flood stage and houses were submerged in several feet of water.
- Tampa International Airport resumed flights beginning at 8 a.m. Friday following a three-day suspension.
- IRS has extended that deadline for many impacted by hurricanes and other natural disasters
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Important Takeaways:
- Hurricane Milton tore a coast-to-coast path of destruction across the state of Florida, whipping up a spate of deadly tornadoes that left at least four people dead and millions without power Thursday.
- Sustained hurricane-force winds smashed inland through communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, before roaring off Florida’s east coast into the Atlantic.
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the storm triggered deadly tornadoes and left more than three million people were without power.
- In a statement on its website, St. Lucie County on the east coast confirmed “four fatalities as a result of these tornadoes.”
- Wind uprooted large trees and ripped apart the roof at the Tampa Bay Rays’ Tropicana Field baseball stadium in St. Petersburg, and sent a construction crane falling onto a downtown building nearby.
- As the eye of the storm exited the peninsula, communities were still contending with strong winds, heavy rainfall, and the risk of flash floods.
- By Thursday morning, Milton weakened to a Category 1 storm but was still registering powerful winds of up to 85 mph (140 kph) , according to the National Hurricane Center.
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Important Takeaways:
- United Nations investigators have accused Israel of deliberately targeting Gaza’s health facilities and killing medical personnel during its war on the besieged enclave
- A statement by ex-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay released on Thursday in advance of a full report accused Israel of “committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities” in its assault on Gaza
- “Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” said Pillay, whose report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30.
- The Israeli government has routinely said that its attacks on hospitals and schools in Gaza are to target members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.
- Hamas has denied it uses the locations as command centers.
- The COI said the “institutional mistreatment” of Palestinians was under direct order from far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
- Israel did not cooperate with the inquiry after arguing it had an “anti-Israel” bias.
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Important Takeaways:
- Before the Russian invasion in early 2022, Ukraine was exporting about 6.5 million tonnes of grain overseas every month, according to figures from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, bringing in revenues of $27.8bn for the year 2021. It was the world’s seventh-largest exporter of wheat and fourth-biggest exporter of barley, according to the Foreign Agriculture Service of the US Department of Agriculture.
- Grain exports had fallen to just over 2 million tonnes per month in mid-2023, just over a year into the war.
- The reasoning behind Moscow’s targeting of grain-exporting ships was not yet clear.
- Russia may be emboldened by its recent gains in Donbas, or it may be seeking retaliation for Ukraine’s surprise attack across the border in the region of Kursk
- It may also simply be looking for new ways to weaken Ukraine. “If you can weaken Ukraine economically, that reduces its ability to resist,” Gorenburg said.
- Rather than targeting ports, the “intimidation of commercial shippers is a much better way to do that”.
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Important Takeaways:
- The university’s highest governing body, the Corporation of Brown University, says divesting “would signal that there are ‘approved’ points of views to which members of the community are expected to conform,” which would be “wholly inconsistent with the principles of academic freedom and free inquiry and would undermine our mission.”
- “Brown’s mission doesn’t encompass resolving or adjudicating global conflict.”
- Supporters of divestment ended their encampment last spring, in exchange for a promise that their call for divestment would get a vote from the Board this fall.
- Students on both sides of the issue had made their case last month to the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management, which on Sept. 30 voted 8-2, with 1 abstention, to recommend that the board not divest.
- The Brown decision has been watched closely around the nation, as it would have been the first Ivy League school to divest from businesses with ties to Israel.
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Important Takeaways:
- Nearly 3 million Americans have cast early ballots either in person or by mail with under four weeks to go until Election Day, an election tracking site shows.
- Of that figure, nearly 504,000 people had voted early in person, and more than 2.37 million had voted by mail, the tracking site found.
- About 47.5 million mail-in ballots have been requested so far. In comparison, more than 92 million mail-in ballots were requested through the 2020 election, according to the university.
- In the states reporting how people voted by party, 56.3 percent of people who had returned early ballots were Democrats, representing about 732,378 people.
- Another 27.4 percent were Republican, representing 356,797 voters, and 16.2 percent, or 210,980, were independent or members of a third party, according to the website.
- Early in-person voting has been underway in some states for several weeks now. It begins next week in four more swing states: Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Nevada.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hezbollah is still without a new leader, nearly two weeks after its long-serving chief was killed in an Israeli strike and with its deputy head apparently unwilling to step into the role.
- Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem—currently considered the organization’s top official—said in a video address streamed by Iranian news outlet Press TV on Tuesday that a new leader would be elected, suggesting he would not take up the mantle
- Dahiyeh is described by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as Hezbollah’s nerve center and de-facto base, and has come under heavy Israeli bombardment in recent weeks.
- Hezbollah has many branches and commanders at varying levels, many of whom Israel has said it has killed.
- Israel had reportedly targeted Safieddine late last week, but there had been no confirmation whether he had been killed.
- As well as Nasrallah and Safieddine, other leading Hezbollah figures reported to have been killed include Ali Karaki, Ibrahim Aqeel and Fu’ad Shakar.
- On Tuesday, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon that Hezbollah “is an organization without a head,” adding that “Nasrallah was eliminated, his replacement was probably also eliminated.”
- On Tuesday, the IDF said it had killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, described by the Israeli military as the commander of Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut.
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