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Israel Is Accepted as a Pacific Islands Forum Partner, Prompting New Zealand’s Opposition to Demand Answers From Luxon: October 21, 2026

SUVA, Fiji — Israel has been accepted as a partner of the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s main political body, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, RNZ and Reuters reported.

The ministry said Forum Secretary General Baron Divavesi Waqa told Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar of the decision, which was made at the leaders’ meeting in Palau last month. Sa’ar posted the announcement on X:

Israel will take part in the Forum’s Sectoral Partnership Stream, working with the region on water management, desalination, agriculture and climate change adaptation, the ministry said. The Forum has more than two dozen outside dialogue partners, including the United States, China, Britain, France and the European Union. The Forum Secretariat had not issued its own statement, RNZ reported.

In New Zealand, which hosts the Forum next year, Labour foreign affairs spokesperson Vanushi Walters said Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has “serious questions to answer on how this situation has come about and what steps New Zealand took to object.” She noted that Luxon has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he came to New Zealand, after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants. Luxon said the decision was ultimately the Forum’s and that Israel’s status would be “lower tier.”

ACT leader David Seymour welcomed Israel, calling it “another democratic country in the Pacific Islands Forum.” Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Naoero have opened embassies in Jerusalem, and Samoa says it plans to do the same.

Sources: RNZ, RNZ, Reuters

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Libya’s Eastern Parliament Reverses Course and Approves Turkey’s 2019 Maritime Deal, Drawing a Sharp Rejection From Greece: October 21, 2026

BENGHAZI, Libya — Libya’s eastern-based House of Representatives voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a 2019 maritime agreement with Turkey that it had rejected six years ago, reviving a dispute with Greece, Egypt and Cyprus over rights in the eastern Mediterranean, Al Jazeera and AP reported.

The memorandum, signed in Istanbul in November 2019 by Turkey and Libya’s then-Government of National Accord in Tripoli, sets out the two countries’ continental shelf and exclusive economic zones. Parliament spokesman Abdullah Bliheg said lawmakers also repealed their 2020 decisions rejecting the deal and cutting political ties with Ankara, the state news agency LANA reported.

The parliament is aligned with military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces nearly encircled Tripoli in 2019 before Turkey sent military advisers and drones to stop them. Ankara has since built military ties with Haftar, including a deal in July to develop military facilities and surveillance systems, Al Jazeera reported.

“Some countries may be upset by this agreement, but what matters to us is our national interest,” lawmaker Tarek al-Jeroushi said, according to Al Jazeera.

Greece’s Foreign Ministry said the vote does not change the fact that the memorandum “remains illegal, null and void” and ignores the Greek islands’ rights to maritime zones. “Geography and international law of the sea cannot be altered by unilateral, legally unfounded parliamentary decisions,” it said, adding that Turkey and Libya do not have opposite or adjacent coasts. Athens said it had informed its partners and allies and would take “all appropriate action” to protect its sovereign rights. Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis discussed the deal by phone with his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, the ministry said.

Sources: Al Jazeera, LANA, Greek Foreign Ministry, AP

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Gambia to Pay Victims of Yahya Jammeh’s Rule With $2.5 Million From the Sale of His Seized U.S. Mansion: October 21, 2026

BANJUL, The Gambia — The Gambia will use money from the sale of former ruler Yahya Jammeh’s seized mansion in the United States to pay victims of his more than two decades in power, BBC News reported.

The country’s Reparations Commission said it had received $2,573,414.10 from the sale of the property in Maryland. The United States won the right to sell the house in 2022, on the grounds that it had been bought with “criminal proceeds and misappropriated Gambian public funds.”

The commission said it was committed to managing the money responsibly and transparently, “with due regard to the rights and needs of victims and survivors.”

Jammeh seized power in a 1994 coup. His rule was marked by accusations of forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, rape and torture, and a commission of inquiry found that abuses led to the deaths of “240-250 Gambians and non-Gambians at the hands of the state or its agents,” BBC News reported.

He lost the 2016 election to Adama Barrow, at first accepted defeat and then rejected the result. He stepped down in 2017 under heavy regional and international pressure, after troops from several West African countries, including Senegal, were deployed to The Gambia, and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea.

A national commission later found that Jammeh had 281 properties in The Gambia, as well as the one in the United States and another in Morocco, and controlled more than 100 bank accounts. It concluded he had misappropriated more than $300 million.

Sources: BBC News

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Rubio Says a U.S.-India Trade Deal Is ‘Weeks, Not Months’ Away as He Pushes Energy Sales on a Two-City India Visit: October 21, 2026

MUMBAI, India — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a long-negotiated trade deal with India is nearly done, as he met Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Mumbai and pressed India to buy more American energy, according to The Indian Express and the State Department.

“I think we’re incredibly close. The way I would say it is, we are weeks, not months, away from I think finalising it. I think 99% of the work is done,” Rubio told The Indian Express. He said the remaining issues are “language-related. It’s basically down to what certain words mean, what certain phrases mean.”

The State Department said Rubio and Jaishankar discussed regional and global issues, including the Middle East, and that Rubio stressed that more energy trade with the United States could help India diversify its supply chains. He also praised recent progress in defense and civil nuclear cooperation. Rubio posted about the meeting on X:

Rubio told the paper that Washington’s tariffs and tighter visa rules are not aimed at India. “None of these tariffs are meant to punish or harm India,” he said, describing them as part of a broader policy tied to the war between Russia and Ukraine. He said President Donald Trump did not impose sanctions on Russian oil partly because of the harm it would do to relations with India.

The visit, Rubio’s second to India this year, also took him to Reliance Industries’ facilities in Jamnagar. Rubio said India is one of the few places that can refine Venezuelan heavy crude and called the visit a chance “to identify opportunities to achieve our goal of diversifying energy resources.”

Sources: The Indian Express, U.S. State Department, AP

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Taiwan Indicts Five Accused of Plotting to Run Down a Comedian Who Joked About Xi Jinping, Allegedly for a Chinese Paymaster: October 21, 2026

NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan — Prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted five people accused of plotting to run down stand-up comedian Huang Yi-hao with a car after his shows made fun of the Chinese government, including President Xi Jinping, ABC News and Reuters reported.

According to the New Taipei Prosecutors Office, the Taiwanese defendants were hired by a Chinese person, began tracking Huang in July, and planned to break his arms and legs so he could not perform. Huang was hit by a car as he rode home on his scooter last month and was left with a bruised pelvis. Two of the defendants have admitted their part in the plan, prosecutors said.

Huang said he had criticized Xi for only two and a half minutes. “Yet I was subsequently targeted with both a faeces-throwing attack and a deliberate vehicular assault,” he wrote on Facebook. In May, two people were prosecuted for spreading faeces and paint at a Taipei comedy club hours before one of his shows.

“If people can already be subjected to this kind of treatment simply for criticising the Chinese Communist Party when it does not even govern Taiwan, how can we expect to retain our current freedom of speech if the CCP were ever to rule Taiwan?” he wrote. He thanked police and prosecutors and invited them to his upcoming shows.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said anyone who took orders from the Chinese Communist Party or its collaborators to carry out “transnational repression” would be “pursued to the end, with no leniency,” ABC News reported. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment. Beijing claims Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to use force to take it.

Sources: ABC News, Reuters

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Colombia’s Newly Passed $200 Billion Budget for 2027 May Collapse Over a Single Article the Two Chambers Approved Differently: October 21, 2026

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia’s 2027 budget, approved by Congress only on Tuesday, could collapse because of a procedural flaw, which would force the government to set spending by decree, lawmakers said, according to Reuters.

The spending bill totals 634.9 trillion pesos (about $200.7 billion), up from 555.8 trillion pesos this year, and projects a fiscal deficit of 9.4% of GDP. The Senate passed it Monday night 57–1, and the House of Representatives passed it early Tuesday 112–1.

The problem is Article 65. The House approved it with different wording than the Senate, and the two chambers never held the reconciliation that is required in that case. Senate Secretary General Diego Alejandro González said in a statement that the Senate approved the article without changes, but “we have received information” that the House approved it with an added proposal, Reuters reported in Spanish.

Business daily Portafolio reported that the budget had sunk over the error. Senator Juan Caicedo of the right-wing Democratic Center party said the government’s original bill, with the changes made in the first debate, would now apply. Other lawmakers argued that only Article 65 would be affected, Infobae reported.

The approved budget set aside 141 trillion pesos for debt payments, 93 trillion for education, 84.6 trillion for health and 74.9 trillion for defense. Reuters said President Abelardo De La Espriella’s government shifted money between sectors, cutting funding for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the missing-persons search unit created under the 2016 peace deal with the FARC. The Finance Ministry did not immediately comment.

Sources: Reuters (via El Nuevo Herald), Portafolio, Infobae

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Russia Frees American Stephen Hubbard, 74, Without a Swap as Putin Meets Trump Envoy Witkoff in St Petersburg: October 21, 2026

ST PETERSBURG, Russia — Russia has released Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American jailed on charges of fighting for Ukraine, as President Vladimir Putin met U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday, BBC News and The Guardian reported.

Putin said during the meeting that Hubbard had been taken to the city’s Pulkovo Airport. The former teacher from Michigan was captured by Russian forces in Izyum, Ukraine, shortly after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and was sentenced in 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony. The U.S. State Department had classified him as “wrongfully detained.”

President Donald Trump said Hubbard was “on his way back home” and that the release followed a request he “made directly” to Putin last week. “There was no ‘swap’ necessary for this release,” he wrote, according to The Guardian. Some earlier releases of Americans held in Russia came through prisoner exchanges. The White House announced the release on X:

CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. partner, reported that Hubbard had been in poor health and was expected to be flown to Texas for treatment.

Witkoff praised Putin at the start of the talks at the Constantine Palace. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian — you are a humanitarian also sir, and I salute that,” he said. Witkoff, who met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Oslo the day before, said he had brought “some ideas, some sort of peace deal between Russia and Ukraine,” The Guardian reported. It was his ninth visit to Russia since Trump tasked him with brokering an end to the war.

Witkoff also thanked Putin for this month’s deal to export Russian diesel to the United States. Putin said the first shipment would leave Russia “in two to three days,” according to the state news agency TASS, BBC News reported.

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy wrote that “much depends on whether the American side can hear something new from Russia today — about peace, and not about continuing the war.”

Sources: BBC News, The Guardian, AP

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More Than 100,000 Ukrainians and Sudanese Keep U.S. Deportation Protections for Now as DHS Holds Off on a Decision: October 20, 2026

MIAMI — More than 100,000 people from Ukraine and Sudan can stay in the United States without immediate risk of deportation, the Department of Homeland Security said, a temporary reprieve after their right to stay in the country was set to expire on Monday, the AP and The Guardian reported.

Temporary Protected Status was set to end Oct. 19 for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese. DHS said an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time” and that until then, those covered “retain protection.” The department did not say how long they could stay or whether they can keep their work permits, though TPS generally allows people to work while protections remain in effect.

Federal rules say TPS is automatically extended for six months if the homeland security secretary does not make a determination at least 60 days before a designation expires, the AP reported.

Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of the nonprofit Hope For Ukraine, called the announcement “last-minute patches” and a “bandage that has been placed on a wound that does not solve the real issue.” Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration, said: “It’s simply going to be an extension until it is a termination,” adding that “it’s beyond cavil that both Sudan and Ukraine are experiencing ongoing armed conflict,” The Guardian reported.

The Trump administration has already terminated TPS for more than 1 million people from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Syria. But about a month ago it kept protections in place for nearly 200,000 Salvadorans whose status was set to expire on Sept. 9, also saying a decision would come at the appropriate time.

Ukraine was first designated for TPS in April 2022, two months after Russia’s full-scale invasion; Sudan’s designation dates to 1997. The decision comes two weeks before the midterm elections.

Sources: AP, The Guardian, PBS NewsHour

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China Vows to Protect Its Companies After the U.S. Orders DeepSeek AI Removed From Federal Civilian Agencies: October 20, 2026

BEIJING — China said Tuesday it will “resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies” after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered federal civilian agencies to stop using artificial intelligence tools from the Chinese startup DeepSeek, the AP, BBC News and The Guardian reported.

“China consistently opposes the overstretching of the concept of national security and the politicizing of science, technology, economic and trade issues,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters at a regular briefing, the AP reported.

The DHS notice, made public on Monday, orders agencies to remove DeepSeek and its affiliated products, as well as third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek, from their IT systems, and bars them from buying DeepSeek products. The ban took effect at the end of July and applies to civilian agencies including the Treasury, State and Justice departments, but not to agencies within the Department of Defense, the BBC reported.

“DeepSeek’s models present multiple threat vectors,” said a document attached to the notice, warning that use of the tools “may result in the transfer of sensitive data to (China) if used by US government employees or vendors,” The Guardian reported. It said DeepSeek’s servers are located in China, where the legal system gives the government “extensive authority” to access private company infrastructure.

DeepSeek did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The U.S. has accused DeepSeek and other Chinese AI startups of large-scale “distillation,” or extraction of capabilities from frontier American AI models, claims Beijing has dismissed, the AP reported. DeepSeek shook up the industry in January 2025 with a low-cost, high-performance chatbot and released its V4 model in April.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet in mid-November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, where AI is expected to be on the agenda.

Sources: AP, BBC News, The Guardian

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Britain to Send RAF Typhoon Jets to Help Defend Saudi Arabia From Houthi Missile and Drone Attacks: October 20, 2026

LONDON — Britain will deploy Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets to help defend Saudi Arabia against escalating missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, the government said Tuesday, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported.

“The UK will fly defensive counter air missions to support the protection of Saudi cities and critical national infrastructure against aerial attack, using RAF Typhoon fighter jets,” the Ministry of Defence said. “These aircraft will operate in a defensive role and will not conduct offensive strikes against the Houthis,” Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said in a written statement. The BBC said the mission was authorised by Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

Britain will also send military advisers and an RAF A400M transport aircraft to help move defence equipment within Saudi Arabia, and has extended its air-to-air refuelling support for Saudi defensive operations by 90 days, the BBC reported.

“The continuing attacks from the Houthis on our ally Saudi Arabia are absolutely despicable. The targeting of the airport in Riyadh in particular shows the lengths the Houthis are going to escalate the situation in the region,” Streeting said, as Al Jazeera reported. “That’s why today I have approved further UK military support.”

The Houthis said they were behind two strikes on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on Oct. 10 and 11 that left 14 dead and more than 300 injured, according to the BBC. Earlier this month, Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree vowed to continue “escalating operations deep inside Saudi Arabia.”

Streeting also pointed to violence in the Gulf disrupting energy supplies and raising costs for families and businesses. The announcement came a day after Egypt’s parliament delayed for a second day a vote on President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s request to authorise military support for Saudi Arabia; state media said a new session would be held on Oct. 26, Al Jazeera reported.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera

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