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Israel Marks Three Years Since the October 7 Hamas Attack as Gaza Remains in Ruins: October 7, 2026

REIM, Israel — Israelis gathered Wednesday to mark three years since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, saw 251 taken hostage and set off a war that has left much of Gaza in ruins, the Associated Press reported via NPR. It is the first anniversary since all the hostages, living and dead, were returned.

At the Nova music festival site near Reim, where more than 350 people were killed, relatives hugged at 6:29 a.m., the minute the first rockets were launched three years ago, as explosions boomed in nearby Gaza. “I have a video of him dancing here that ends at 6:29 in the morning, it’s in front of my eyes all the time,” said Anya Davitashili, whose 25-year-old son, Sean, was killed. Elkana Bohbot, freed after 738 days in captivity, marked the day in Israel for the first time.

At Kibbutz Nir Oz, a mile from the Gaza border, 41 residents and foreign workers were killed and 76 people were taken to Gaza, BBC News reported. “That’s one out of four of us: murdered or kidnapped,” resident Dalit Ram Aharon said. The anniversary comes as Israelis absorb reports in Israeli and U.S. media that regional allies warned Israel beforehand; a senior Egyptian official told NPR that Egypt’s then-intelligence chief had relayed a warning that Gaza was on the verge of an “explosion.”

For Palestinians, the day brought no relief. Most of Gaza’s roughly 2 million people live in tent camps, more than half the territory remains under Israeli military control, and Israeli strikes continue almost daily despite a ceasefire reached nearly a year ago, AP reported. Hamas praised the attack in a statement. “We witnessed death, destruction, and bombardment that we had never known before,” said Gaza City resident Walid Akram.

Sources: Associated Press (via NPR), BBC News, NPR

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African Union Launches Continent’s First Credit Rating Agency to Rival Wall Street’s Big Three: October 7, 2026

PORT LOUIS, Mauritius — The African Union is launching the continent’s first credit rating agency on Wednesday, seeking to offer an alternative to the “big three” global ratings firms as debt burdens weigh on many African economies, Reuters reported.

The Africa Credit Rating Agency, or AfCRA, will be based in Port Louis and will rate sovereign borrowers, financial institutions and private companies. “AfCRA complements existing global credit rating agencies by offering a perspective rooted in African data, expertise and realities,” the African Union said in a statement. The AU said the agency will operate independently and be funded through shareholder capital and its own operations, but did not name the shareholders.

African leaders have long accused Western agencies of failing to fairly assess the risk of lending to African countries and of downgrading them too quickly during crises such as conflicts and pandemics, Reuters said. The AU says 23 economies on the continent lack a rating from the three big agencies, and that the new body should improve access to capital markets and give investors more context-specific assessments. It will also rate non-African entities where appropriate.

The project has been nearly a decade in the making. The AU Assembly endorsed it in 2018, finance ministers backed it in a 2023 declaration in Nairobi, and its governance and methodology were developed under the African Peer Review Mechanism, according to the AU. The launch coincides with the 2nd Annual African Conference on Credit Ratings in Mauritius.

Sources: Reuters, African Union

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Mali’s Army Retakes Kidal From Tuareg Rebels With Russian Help: October 7, 2026

BAMAKO, Mali — Malian forces backed by Russia’s Africa Corps paramilitary group have retaken the northern town of Kidal from Tuareg separatists, the country’s military-led government said Tuesday, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and DW reported.

The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a coalition of Tuareg and northern separatist factions, said it had carried out a “controlled withdrawal” from the town after sustained air strikes by Malian troops and their Russian allies, calling it a temporary operational measure. Government spokesman Brig. Gen. Issa Ousmane Coulibaly said on state television that the operation was carried out by air and ground forces with Africa Corps assistance. An FLA spokesman, Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, said the army entered Kidal without a fight, AP reported.

The FLA and the al-Qaida-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) seized Kidal in a wave of attacks in April that also killed Mali’s defense minister. Malian troops and Wagner fighters had first retaken the town in November 2023, the most concrete gain of their partnership, before losing it this year.

Analysts cautioned against reading too much into the advance. Retaking the town “affirms the military-led government’s authority and boosts the army’s morale,” Beverly Ochieng of Control Risks told Reuters, according to DW, but she called it largely “symbolic” and not “decisive.” Mali’s junta, which took power in coups in 2020 and 2021, expelled French forces and U.N. peacekeepers and turned to Russian paramilitaries; rights groups have accused the army and its Russian partners of abuses during military operations.

Sources: Associated Press, Al Jazeera, DW

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Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai Win Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Solving Life’s Mirror-Image Puzzle: October 7, 2026

STOCKHOLM — French chemist Henri B. Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for discovering how chemical reactions can produce just one of a molecule’s two mirror-image forms, a puzzle at the heart of how life’s chemistry works, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

The academy cited the pair “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.” Molecules such as amino acids come in two mirror-image versions, like left and right hands, but living things use only one. Laboratory reactions usually yield an even mix of both, which matters in medicine because one version of a drug molecule may help while the other does nothing or causes harm, BBC News reported.

“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular,” said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. Kagan took the first step in 1986 with a way to create a greater excess of one mirror image than was thought possible. Soai described a reaction with the potential to be homochiral in 1995 and in 2003 achieved one that formed only one of the two possible forms. “Other than life itself, no one had previously achieved this feat,” the academy said.

Kagan, born in 1930 in Boulogne-Billancourt, is professor emeritus at the former Université Paris-Sud. Soai, born in 1950 in Hiroshima, is professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Science. Speaking by phone to the prize press conference, Soai said: “This is one of the most exciting days of my life.” The laureates will share 12 million Swedish kronor. The literature prize is announced Thursday and the peace prize Friday.

Sources: NobelPrize.org, BBC News, NPR

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U.S. Official Says Iran-Linked Plot Aimed to Kill American Troops at England’s RAF Fairford: October 7, 2026

LONDON — A U.S.-run air base in western England faced Iranian-related threats, and the Trump administration believed the aim was to kill as many American troops and destroy as many U.S. planes as possible, a U.S. official told the Associated Press, after the Pentagon pulled all of its bombers from the base.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, could not describe the nature of the potential attack. RAF Fairford, about 100 miles west of London, has been used by American B-1 and B-52 bombers to strike Iran during this year’s war. The U.S. moved its B-1s out on Sunday, and the Pentagon said all American bombers there had returned to their home bases in the United States.

“We had a threat, and if we’re going to be threatened, we would just move them, and that sort of alleviates that,” President Donald Trump told reporters Monday, saying those behind the threat “would be linked to Iran.” British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said there were “strong indications” Iran played a part in a Sept. 27 incident near the base, when police were alerted to three “suspicious vehicles,” BBC News reported. Tehran has strongly denied involvement.

On Tuesday, Counter Terrorism Policing arrested a 22-year-old British man in the Westminster area of London on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts, AP reported. It is the seventh arrest in the suspected plot; six other men have been released on bail. Whitehall officials told the BBC that “there is an ongoing high tempo of threat from Iran to the UK.”

Sources: Associated Press, BBC News

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Russian Missile Barrage Kills at Least 21 Across Ukraine on Putin’s Birthday: October 7, 2026

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian missiles and drones pounded Kyiv and a dozen other Ukrainian regions overnight into Wednesday, killing at least 21 civilians, including four children, and wounding around 60, Ukrainian officials said, according to the Associated Press. BBC News and The Guardian also reported on the attack.

The deadliest strike destroyed a five-story apartment block in Pryluky, in the northern Chernihiv region. Authorities said 15 people were killed there, including four children, and about 50 were wounded, AP reported, as rescuers dug through the rubble. Two people were killed in Kyiv, and deaths were also reported in Kremenchuk and Oleksandriia, with extensive damage in Dnipro.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia fired 70 missiles and called the Pryluky strike a “birthday ‘gift’” for Vladimir Putin, who turns 74 on Wednesday. “The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively,” he said, renewing his appeal for air defense: “Air defence packages for us right now are a vital necessity.” The Guardian said the barrage also included 46 jet-powered drones, and that Ukraine’s air force reported downing just over 80 percent of them. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russian generals had given Putin his favorite present: “war crimes.”

Zelenskyy said Ukraine had struck two oil facilities and a training ground in Russia’s Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions in the past 24 hours. Russian officials said naval drones hit a Liberian-flagged tanker off Sochi and its crew was rescued. Separately, Bulgaria called off the search for the missing crew of a cargo ship sunk by a drone in its Black Sea economic zone. Moscow had not commented on the overnight strikes, BBC News reported.

Sources: Associated Press, BBC News, The Guardian

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Flávio Bolsonaro Wins Key Endorsements for Brazil Runoff and Talks of Changing the Constitution: October 7, 2026

GOIÂNIA, Brazil — Right-wing presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro collected a string of endorsements on Tuesday for Brazil’s Oct. 25 runoff against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and said he wants to use a newly strengthened conservative Congress to change the country’s Constitution, El País, Valor International and G1 reported.

Former Goiás governor Ronaldo Caiado, who finished fifth in Sunday’s first round with 2.18 percent of the vote, formally backed Bolsonaro at an event in Goiânia. “I am here to defeat the PT,” Caiado said, referring to Lula’s Workers’ Party, according to El País. The União Brasil–Progressistas federation, which stayed neutral in the first round, also announced its support after a unanimous decision by its party leaders, Sen. Tereza Cristina said. Former Minas Gerais governor Romeu Zema of the Novo party declared his vote for Bolsonaro on Monday.

Bolsonaro, a senator and the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a sentence for coup plotting, won 47.03 percent of first-round votes to Lula’s 45.16 percent, according to G1. Speaking in Goiânia, he said voters had given him a Congress “much further to the right,” with majorities to choose the leaders of both chambers, “so that we can change the Constitution, so that we can redemocratize this country,” Valor International reported. He did not say which changes he has in mind.

G1 noted that the Constitution can be amended through proposed constitutional amendments that require large majorities in both houses, while some core clauses cannot be abolished. The Social Democratic Party (PSD) remains officially neutral, and Bolsonaro is also courting the Republicanos party of São Paulo Gov. Tarcísio de Freitas, who attended the Goiânia event, UOL reported.

Sources: El País, Valor International, G1

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U.S. Man Charged With Helping Plan Canada’s Tumbler Ridge School Shooting: October 7, 2026

SEATTLE — A 30-year-old Washington state resident has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country over February’s mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday, BBC News and The Guardian reported.

Federal prosecutors allege James Bryant was in daily contact with the 18-year-old shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, on the Discord app for six months before the attack, offering “technical advice,” sending money and agreeing to livestream the killings. Bryant had the “information and ability to alert law enforcement, and even discussed that possibility with the suspect, but chose not to,” acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd told a joint news conference with Canadian police.

Eight people were killed in the February attack: five children and an educator at the school, along with the shooter’s mother and 11-year-old stepbrother, making it one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. Van Rootselaar died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities said that after the killings at the family home, the shooter could not start the car and Bryant gave advice on turning on the engine, allowing the shooter to reach the school.

“Without Bryant’s misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the livestream, we don’t ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime,” said W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office. The stream was online for only about 20 seconds and was viewed by one account, according to court documents cited by the BBC. Investigators said Bryant at times tried to talk the shooter out of the attack but told Van Rootselaar he would not “snitch” to police.

Bryant faces up to life in prison if convicted. Authorities said there is no indication the two ever met in person. The case had already drawn scrutiny because the shooter used ChatGPT before the attack; British Columbia and some victims’ families have sued OpenAI for failing to alert police.

Sources: BBC News, The Guardian

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World Brief, Evening: October 6, 2026

France’s school revolt pulled a quarter of a million people or more into the streets on Tuesday, and a police officer now faces charges over a 14-year-old’s shattered jaw; the head of the World Health Organization pressed Russia for straight answers on a Siberian lab worker’s death as President Trump said he has a call lined up with Vladimir Putin; and Haiti shelved what would have been its first elections since 2016. Ten stories as of Tuesday evening, October 6.

1. Paris / France. The protests that began with leaking ceilings in Seine-Saint-Denis spread to parents, university students and unions on Tuesday, BBC News reported. The government counted more than 250,000 demonstrators and disruption at 891 high schools, almost a quarter of all lycées; students’ unions said 450,000 marched and 1,800 schools were blockaded. Police used tear gas in Paris and Marseille and water cannon in Rennes and clashed with marchers in Lyon, but there was less serious trouble than on earlier days. A police officer who fired a tear-gas grenade at a 14-year-old at a lycée in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône last week was charged with violence causing mutilation or permanent disability, France 24 and the BBC reported; the boy’s lawyer says his jaw was fractured and teeth broken. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused France Unbowed of trying to “sow chaos” seven months before the presidential election, and the interior ministry said 6,547 people have been stopped or arrested since September 28. President Emmanuel Macron was to meet ministers at the Élysée on Tuesday evening, and the CGT union says more protests are being planned for Thursday.

2. Irkutsk / Russia. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Russian health authorities told the agency that no case of plague had recently been registered in Irkutsk oblast, after a 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute, Darya Shipilova, died on October 2 with severe pneumonia. He said the WHO has asked Moscow to clarify the cause, the pathogen that prompted the public health measures, and media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause. A WHO spokesperson put the risk at “moderate to low” for Irkutsk, “low” for the rest of Russia and “very low” for Europe, The Guardian reported. Russia’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has denied reports of anti-plague measures, DW said. In Washington, Trump told reporters, “I have a call scheduled, yes,” with Putin to discuss the case, and the U.S. CDC said it is “aware of and closely monitoring” it but sees little risk to the United States, Al Jazeera reported.

3. Kfar Aza / Israel. Israel marks the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Wednesday, three weeks before its general election, France 24 reported, citing AFP. A tribute is set for 6:29 a.m. at Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, the minute the attack began, with another at the Nova festival site and a gathering of bereaved families in a Tel Aviv park in the evening. The defence minister said Tuesday he had put the military on high alert over intelligence that Hamas may try to attack troops in Gaza on the anniversary. The 2023 attack killed 1,221 people, by an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, and 251 hostages were taken. Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s offensive has killed more than 74,200 people, and more than 1,430 since the ceasefire began last October.

4. Merowe / Sudan. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed to retake “every inch” of territory held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and rejected negotiations, telling a gathering in Merowe that the “military option” would continue until the RSF is gone, Al Jazeera reported, citing the Sudan News Agency. A local charity said an RSF attack killed at least 10 civilians in Abu Ajal village in West Kordofan, where the army is advancing toward En Nahud, and the International Organization for Migration said more than 5,500 people were displaced in Blue Nile state over three days. The war, now three and a half years old, has displaced around 13 million people.

5. Port-au-Prince / Haiti. Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council has postponed indefinitely the first round of presidential and legislative elections set for December 13 and the February 21 runoff, saying the timetable “will be made public as soon as possible,” France 24 reported, citing AFP. Haiti has not voted since 2016, and its last president, assassinated in 2021, was never replaced. Only 769,000 voters have registered since July 20; some gang-held towns have no registration centres. The UN says gang violence has left at least 5,700 people dead or wounded this year, and the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force has about 1,500 of a planned 5,500 personnel.

6. Los Angeles / United States. Paramount Skydance closed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday, putting HBO, CBS, CNN, DC Studios, Nickelodeon and the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones franchises under one company, renamed Skydance Corporation, BBC News reported. Chief executive David Ellison called it “historic”; Trump called the deal “great.” Under a settlement with state attorneys general, the company has 180 days to set up an independent editorial board for CNN and CBS News, Al Jazeera reported. The combined company carries about $80 billion in debt, and its shares, trading as SKYD, had slipped 2.5 percent after Tuesday’s open.

7. Nashville / United States. Christa Pike, the Tennessee death-row prisoner who survived two lethal injections of pentobarbital last Wednesday, is “conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,” her lawyers said, as reported by BBC News and Al Jazeera. They called her recovery “medically unprecedented” and said she is still handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Governor Bill Lee has suspended executions for the rest of the year, and the state’s prisons chief says he plans to resign. Her lawyers are due in court in Nashville on Wednesday.

8. Muswellbrook, New South Wales / Australia. In Australia’s first High Court case to consider climate change, the court ruled 3–2 that the approval of MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coal mine expansion in the Hunter Valley was invalid, Guardian Australia and the ABC reported. The majority found the state’s planning commission had to consider ways to cut the emissions from burning the mine’s coal overseas — 98 percent of its projected emissions — and failed to. The expansion would have doubled output to 21 million tonnes a year until 2048. “We cannot dig up coal, ship it overseas, watch it drive climate change, and then pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us,” said Wendy Wales of the community group that brought the case. MACH said it accepts the decision and will review it.

9. Buenos Aires / Argentina. Lionel Messi played his last match for Argentina, scoring a 71st-minute penalty and setting up Nicolás Otamendi’s opener in a 3–0 win over Benin before 85,000 fans at the Monumental, France 24 reported, citing AFP. It was his 126th international goal in a record 208th appearance. The game stopped in the 10th minute for a minute-long ovation, and a drone show lit the sky at the final whistle. The 39-year-old led Argentina to the 2022 World Cup and remains under contract with Inter Miami until 2028.

10. Cosmonauts Sea / East Antarctica. China is proposing its own 127,000 square-kilometre marine protected area in the Southern Ocean, according to documents attributed to the Chinese delegation and seen by Daily Maverick. The South African paper says the plan would still allow commercial krill fishing for weeks at a time each year, would expire after 20 years unless renewed by consensus, and comes with proposed rule changes that would strike climate resilience from the listed purposes for new protected areas, though broader climate language stays elsewhere in the draft. China and Russia have blocked other Antarctic marine park proposals for nearly a decade. The documents are due before the 27-member Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources when it meets in Hobart from October 19 to 30.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 7 — Israel marks three years since the October 7 attack; Nobel Prize in chemistry. October 8, 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in literature, peace (Oslo) and economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; France 24; AFP; The Guardian; Guardian Australia; DW; Al Jazeera; ABC News (Australia); Daily Maverick; World Health Organization (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on X); U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Sudan News Agency and International Organization for Migration (as cited by Al Jazeera); Haiti Provisional Electoral Council (as cited by France 24).

World Brief: October 6, 2026

France is having its biggest day yet of school protests, with tens of thousands of students, parents and union members marching and police firing tear gas in several cities; drones hit two cargo ships in Bulgaria’s slice of the Black Sea, sinking one with its crew still missing; and Germany arrested a former head of its foreign intelligence service on suspicion of treason. Ten stories as of Tuesday morning, October 6.

1. Paris / France. Students, parents, teachers and trade unionists marched across France on Tuesday in the largest day yet of a two-week revolt over crowded, crumbling and understaffed high schools, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and BBC News reported. The interior ministry counted about 86,000 marchers outside the Paris region by Tuesday morning, with up to 40,000 more expected in the capital; police fired tear gas in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg and Rennes. The national lycée students’ union said 1,800 of the country’s 3,700 high schools were blockaded or shut. Government figures put the toll since the protests began at 715 police officers and 215 teenagers injured and 6,100 people arrested, almost all minors; on Monday a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off in Lens. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has told ministers to bring proposals on replacing absent teachers, the length of the school day and repairing old buildings by the end of October.

2. Black Sea off Byala / Bulgaria. Air and sea drones struck two commercial ships inside Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone at about 3am, sinking the Togo-flagged, Turkish-owned cargo ship Alfa Watan, whose crew is missing, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said, as reported by BBC News and Al Jazeera. A Bulgarian ferry and naval boat rescued all 18 crew from the second ship, the Palau-flagged grain carrier Able — 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals — and two seriously injured sailors were flown to Varna. Radev called it “absolutely unacceptable” and “a flagrant violation of maritime law,” but did not say who launched the drones; Moscow has not commented. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said attacks on civilian shipping “are unacceptable.” The strikes came a day after a Turkish-owned corn ship sank off Romania in what Ukraine called a Russian drone attack, and a separate strike near Odesa on Tuesday killed a crew member, the BBC said.

3. Germany. August Hanning, who ran the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets and attempted treason, the federal prosecutor’s office said, as reported by BBC News and the Associated Press via NPR. Prosecutors say his former bureau chief, identified only as Manfred D. and also arrested, passed him about 2,000 BND documents over the years in exchange for payment, beginning with an arrangement in 2010. Hanning allegedly used classified material to draft an analysis for one foreign intelligence officer and passed political information to a representative of another foreign service; prosecutors have not named the countries. The evidence surfaced in a separate investigation into the 2024 abduction of the children of Hamburg steakhouse heiress Christina Block. Green lawmaker Konstantin von Notz called it “a hard-hitting and deeply troubling story.”

4. Nairobi / Kenya. Kenya has confirmed its first-ever Ebola case: a Kenyan man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for seven years died in a Nairobi isolation facility late Monday, days after travelling overland to Kampala and flying home on Saturday, Health Minister Aden Duale said, as reported by BBC News and The Guardian. He tested positive for the Bundibugyo species, which has no approved vaccine or treatment. Officials have identified 28 contacts, including relatives and health workers, and are tracing 23 passengers and four crew from his flight; a health ministry official suggested medication he was taking may have masked his symptoms at airport screening. Duale urged Kenyans “not to panic.” The WHO has recorded 4,114 deaths among 8,544 cases in Congo’s outbreak this year, and Médecins Sans Frontières says the virus is now spreading “like a megafire” in North Kivu.

5. Jazan and Najran / Saudi Arabia. Houthi attacks on Monday evening hit King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz airport in Jazan and Najran airport near the Yemeni border, wounding three people and causing material damage, Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Authority said, Al Jazeera reported. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s secretary-general called attacks on airports and civilian facilities “a dangerous escalation.” The Saudi-led coalition said early Tuesday it had destroyed a ballistic-missile launch platform in Sanaa and a store holding 20 ballistic missiles in Saada, and that Saudi naval forces had begun an operation in Hodeidah governorate, while 100 coalition jets back the Yemeni government’s offensive along the Red Sea coast. The government says it holds Mokha and the Bab al-Mandab Strait; Houthi media deny it, and government sources told Reuters and AFP the forces had reached only Mokha’s outskirts, BBC News reported.

6. Los Angeles and San Diego / United States. The White House is defending President Donald Trump after he told a midterm rally in Nebraska, while talking about the Iran war, “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego,” BBC News reported. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the remarks “deranged and dangerous,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said they amounted to an attempt to “encourage attacks on American lives,” and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said his city was not collateral damage. White House communications director Steven Cheung said Trump “was clearly stating US cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.” Both cities host major military installations, including Naval Base San Diego, home port of the Pacific Fleet.

7. New Delhi / India. Delhi police detained opposition lawmakers, among them Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, as they marched from parliament toward the Election Commission to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported. They were bundled onto police buses, released shortly after and resumed with a sit-in near the commission’s headquarters; the opposition said 237 MPs took part. The fight is over the commission’s Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls, which has removed more than 130 million names from draft lists nationwide; opponents say eligible voters are being struck off to help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, which the party and the commission deny. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called the commission “a puppet in the hands of the government.” The Gen Z-backed Cockroach Janta Party has called more protests for October 10.

8. Buenos Aires / Argentina. Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno told a think-tank audience that included Britain’s ambassador, David Cairns, that Argentina would stop the Falkland Islands from exploiting offshore oil as part of a “peaceful” strategy to recover sovereignty, The Guardian reported. “Preventing the exploitation of our resources from consolidating the British occupation is part of a strategy to recover, through peaceful means, the full exercise of our sovereignty,” he said at the Argentine Council for International Relations event on Monday night; Cairns left shortly after. Quirno also warned third parties against helping develop the islands’ resources, as a new Chile–Falklands shipping link is due by year’s end. On September 28 President Javier Milei gave the UK two weeks to halt the Sea Lion oil project or face arbitration under the UN law of the sea convention.

9. Funafuti / Tuvalu. Pacific and global leaders toured low-lying Tuvalu ahead of next month’s COP31 talks in Türkiye, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned at the pre-COP meeting in Fiji that Australia faces “a summer of floods, of cyclones, of extreme heat” as a “super El Niño” builds, The Guardian reported. “Climate change is not a problem for the future. It is here right now,” he said, noting western Pacific seas are rising more than twice as fast as the global average. Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo asked, “Why should countries like Tuvalu take on more debt to protect ourselves from a climate crisis we did so little to cause?” Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka said the transition away from fossil fuels agreed at COP28 “is not open for renegotiation.” Tuvalu’s climate director said flood and storm-surge damage could cost $63 million a year by 2100 — more than the country’s GDP.

10. South Pole / Antarctica. Belgian-born physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin–Madison won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. IceCube turns a cubic kilometre of ice at the South Pole into a detector, with thousands of light sensors frozen deep in the sheet to catch the rare flashes when a neutrino hits an atomic nucleus; Halzen first pitched the idea in 1988 and the observatory was completed in 2011, BBC News reported. “When we started this project, everybody realised this was maybe a good idea, but very few thought it would work, including myself,” he said. The 82-year-old receives 12 million Swedish kronor, AP via NPR said. Chemistry is announced Wednesday.

Coming Up

Confirmed dates on The Watch: October 7, 8, 9 and 12 — Nobel Prizes in chemistry, literature, peace (Oslo) and economics. October 8 — New Zealand candidate nominations close at noon. October 12–18 — IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok. October 15–16 — European Council in Brussels.

Sources: BBC News; The Guardian; Al Jazeera; Associated Press; NPR; AFP; Reuters (as cited by BBC News); German Federal Prosecutor’s Office; Kenya Ministry of Health; Saudi Civil Aviation Authority; Saudi Press Agency (as cited by Al Jazeera); Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org.