Important Takeaways:
- Supreme leader defends Iran’s attack on Israel as ‘legitimate’, and calls on Muslim countries to unite.
- “The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei said, calling Iran’s attack on Israel “legal and legitimate”.
- “The operations were … in return for the heinous crimes committed by this bloodthirsty criminal entity,” he said.
- He said Iran would fulfill its “duty” to allies in a considered manner.
- It was the supreme leader’s first such sermon in more than four years, coming just before the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel
- Iran’s proxies in its “axis of resistance” – Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq – have carried out attacks in the region in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza war.
- Addressing massive crowds, Khamenei issued a rallying call to Muslim nations – “from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Iran to Gaza and Lebanon” – saying they should unite against common “enemy” Israel, which he claimed had deployed “psychological”, “economic” and “military” warfare against them.
- Early on Friday, Israel hit Beirut with a barrage of attacks reportedly targeting senior Hezbollah figure Hashem Safieddine, a putative successor to Nasrallah.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel carried out a series of massive airstrikes overnight, hitting suburbs of Beirut and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing Israeli bombardment.
- Israel’s military said that Hezbollah had launched about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, as fighting continued between Israel and the militant group.
- The Israeli military also said Friday that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah’s communications division. The military said in a statement that Skafi was “a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000” and was “closely affiliated” with high-up Hezbollah officials.
- Israel said it had targeted the crossing because it was being used by Hezbollah to transport military equipment across the border. It said fighter jets had struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into Lebanon.
- Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weaponry from Iran via Syria.
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived Friday in Beirut for meetings with Lebanese officials. He warned that if Israeli carries out an attack on Iran, Tehran would retaliate in a harsh way.
- Israel’s military said Friday that militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time Israel has seen rocket fire from Gaza in about a month.
- The number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel has slowed considerably since the start of the war.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp snatched the win from the Biden administration in response to a request from six Republican state attorneys general who have challenged the White House’s effort.
- The Republican-led states assert the Department of Education has overstepped its authority by proposing a regulation to cancel student loan debt without an act of Congress.
- The White House counters that the president has used his authority under existing law to ensure borrowers who meet certain qualifications can experience relief from debt accrued in pursuit of higher education.
- Two previous efforts by Biden to fulfill a campaign promise to assist student loan borrowers were defeated in court. His third proposal would hand out $73 billion in student loan debt held by an estimated 27.6 million borrowers.
- In addition to Georgia and Missouri, Republican attorneys general in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, North Dakota and Ohio are party to the lawsuit challenging the policy.
- Missouri state Attorney General Andrew Bailey celebrated Schelp’s decision on X, calling it a “huge win for transparency, the rule of law, and for every American who won’t have to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Communities are stranded, over 200 people have died with more expected, and more than 700,000 are without power
- Rescue crews in parts of the south-eastern US were still searching on Friday for those missing as they entered the eighth day since Hurricane Helene roared ashore in Florida and became the deadliest mainland hurricane in the US since Katrina in 2005.
- The death toll could grow higher, having surpassed 200 on Thursday, while the sheer scale of the devastation from wind and floods has slowed efforts to find many people’s loved ones and also get supplies to stranded communities and restore power to more than 700,000 people.
- Officials have reported at least 215 deaths across six states as a result of Helene and warned that more will be found dead in the coming days and weeks
- In hardest-hit North Carolina, thousands of residents were issued boil water advisories and said that 27 water plants were closed and not producing water.
- On Friday, the number of power outages in the south-eastern region fell below a million for the first time since the storm. Still, more than 250,000 people in South Carolina had no power as of Friday morning, according to poweroutage.us, as well as over 230,000 people in North Carolina, just over 200,000 in Georgia, 13,000 in Virginia and 10,000 in Florida.
- Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, has warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does not have enough funding to make it through the rest of this hurricane season, which typically runs until late November.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israeli military on Thursday warned people to evacuate a city and other communities in southern Lebanon that are north of a U.N.-declared buffer zone, signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against the Hezbollah militant group.
- Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the U.N. Security Council after the two sides fought a war in 2006.
- Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.
- The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters.
- So far, ground clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been confined to a narrow strip along the border.
- President Joe Biden said he did not expect Israel to retaliate against Iran on Thursday and rejected the suggestion that the U.S. would grant permission for such an attack.
- “First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel,” Biden said. “And nothing’s going to happen today.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) met on Wednesday following Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel, but overshadowing the meeting was Israel’s announcement that it had banned the U.N. secretary-general due to his failure to condemn Iran.
- “Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said about the decision to declare U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as persona non grata.
- “This is an anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists, rapists and murderers,” Katz argued. “Guterres will be remembered as a stain on the history of the U.N. for generations to come.”
- Guterres on Tuesday issued a brief statement following Iran’s attack, calling it the “latest attacks in the Middle East” and broadly condemned the conflict as “escalation after escalation.”
- He also slammed Israel for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank, claiming that Israel has “conducted in Gaza the most deadly and destructive military campaign in my years.”
- “The suffering endured by the Palestinian people in Gaza is beyond imagination,” Guterres said. “At the same time, the situation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continues to deteriorate, with Israeli military operations.”
- “This is a secretary-general who has yet to denounce the massacre and sexual atrocities committed by Hamas murderers on Oct. 7 and has not led any resolutions to declare them a terrorist organization,” Katz continued.
- “Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without António Guterres.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s military told residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately on Thursday as it pressed on with cross-border incursions and struck Hezbollah targets in a suburb of Beirut.
- Hezbollah also carried out new strikes, targeting what it called Israel’s “Sakhnin base” for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.
- Israel says the aim of its operations in Lebanon is to allow tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from northern Israel by Hezbollah bombardments during the Gaza war to return home safely
- In Beirut’s southern suburb known as Dahiye, a dense neighborhood where Hezbollah holds sway, several explosions were heard on Thursday and several large plumes of smoke were rising after heavy Israeli strikes.
- Hezbollah said it detonated a bomb against Israeli forces infiltrating a southern Lebanese village and attacked Israeli forces near the border.
- Overnight, Israel bombed central Beirut in an attack the Lebanese health ministry said killed nine people.
- The United States has said Iran will face “severe consequences” and that it would work with Israel, while warning Iran not to act against U.S. forces in the region.
- A growing number of countries were evacuating citizens from Beirut as governments worldwide urged their citizens to get out.
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Important Takeaways:
- The confirmed death toll for Hurricane Helene rose to at least 189 people as of Wednesday evening, The Associated Press reported, making it the deadliest hurricane since Katrina to hit the mainland U.S.
- The storm surge, wind damage and inland flooding from Hurricane Helene have been catastrophic, flooding neighborhoods, stranding residents and destroying homes in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.
- Helene, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region Thursday night as a massive Category 4 hurricane, was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Big Bend on record.
- As recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic force continue, 1.2 million customers are still without power in some southern states.
- The hardest-hit states are South Carolina with over 484,410 customers without power, North Carolina with over 343,632 customers without power and Georgia with over 354,418 customers without power.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Aug. 8, 2023, fire claimed at least 102 lives and destroyed over 2,000 structures in the historic town of Lahaina — making it one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history.
- The blaze, fueled by high winds and dry vegetation, rapidly spread as chaos overtook the town, sending some residents fleeing into the ocean and trapping others in their vehicles.
- In a nearly 300-page report released Wednesday from the County of Maui Department of Fire and Public Safety (MFD) and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), officials said the devastation was caused by a single fire that was believed to be extinguished but later reignited.
- “In sum, the origin and cause of the Lahaina fire is clear: the re-energization of broken power lines caused sparks that ignited unmaintained vegetation in the area,” MFD Chief Brad Ventura said during a news conference Wednesday.
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Important Takeaways:
- President Joe Biden has said he will not intervene to force striking ILA union workers back on the job at East and Gulf coast ports, a political calculation that balances the power of unions ahead of a tight election with concerns about the economy, the No. 1 issue for many voters.
- Biden and top administration officials including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su have focused more attention on the ocean carriers and “price gouging” since the strike began.
- If the union prevails in its battle for a large wage increase, there is the risk of a resumption of wage inflation that could upset the Fed’s so-far successful efforts to tame inflation, though recent Fed concern has focused more on a potential labor slowdown than boom conditions.
- President Biden said on Tuesday that his administration will be “monitoring for any price gouging activity” that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board. He also said “foreign ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic, when Longshoremen put themselves at risk to keep ports open.”
- For months, logistics and business trade groups representing major industries from retail to manufacturing and agriculture have sent numerous letters to Biden and his administration urging intervention. Now, with the president sticking to his position that collective bargaining is the only means for a “fair deal” for the ILA, executives across the economy are beginning to weigh the potential pricing impacts for their business models.
- Steve Lamar, CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, said “Allowing the status quo to persist increases the likelihood that this port crisis will hurt our industry and the overall U.S. economy through job losses, higher prices, and goods shortages”
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