Early Edition: October 22, 2026

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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:

IRAN WAR

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy today said four vessels involved in illegal oil transfers in the northern Persian Gulf were simultaneously hit and caught fire after being tracked by Iranian forces yesterday. The IRGC added that three more vessels collided with mines west of the Strait of Hormuz, and warned the U.S. military that continued provocations could lead to a wider response against its regional bases. Tala Ramadan reports for Reuters.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the U.S. midterms, U.S. officials and other sources told the New York Times. The countries’ militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. The strikes would likely include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal. Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, Farnaz Fassihi, Natan Odenheimer, and Ronen Bergman report.

Dozens of Israeli Air Force fighter jets on Monday conducted a sortie, flying as far as the Iranian border, Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios. The operation took place on the same day U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but wasn’t connected to Hegseth’s visit. Barak Ravid reports.

IRAN WAR – YEMEN

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation yesterday blamed the Iran-aligned Houthis for a new attack on the eastern Saudi city of Dammam’s airport which killed two people and injured another eight. The U.S. State Department said it ordered the departure of nonemergency U.S. government employees and their families from the kingdom in response to increased hostilities against Saudi Arabia by the Houthis. David Gritten reports for BBC News; James T. Areddy and Abeer Ayyoub report for the Wall Street Journal.

IRAN WAR – OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

The Greek Finance Ministry today said it was implementing sanctions linked to Iran and that it backed efforts to effectively combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The statement comes after the U.S. Treasury Department yesterday said it imposed sanctions on Karnakis & Karnakis, a law firm based in Greece and Panama, saying the firm had for years provided legal assistance to Iranian shipping networks. The Treasury also said the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an administrative subpoena to advance an investigation into a Greek bank, which it did not name. Angeliki Koutantou reports for Reuters.

Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel at a private lecture on Oct. 12 said he is skeptical of the Iran war and does not believe the United States should have launched it, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. Thiel said maybe the United States doesn’t have “the hard power. Maybe we’re going to lose the soft power war.” Calder McHugh reports.

WEST BANK DEVELOPMENTS

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese today told Reuters that Indonesia should reconsider its involvement in President Trump’s “Board of Peace” because it is being shaped by Israel and the United States and lacks a Palestinian voice. Albanese said Indonesia has historically supported the Palestinian cause, but joining the board was dangerous. Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said the Board of Peace discussions remained on hold, reiterating its earlier position. Stanley Widianto and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam report.

New York Democrat congressional candidate Brad Lander yesterday said he was briefly detained and released by the Israeli military while he was supporting Palestinian farmers during an olive harvest in the occupied West Bank. The New Israel Fund said approximately 90 volunteers of what they’re calling the Protect the Harvest initiative were released. Two Israeli lawyers told NPR it was the largest mass detention of activists in the occupied West Bank in at least a decade. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Lander’s actions amounted to “political provocation,” and noted that he chose to enter a restricted area and participate in an unauthorized activity without coordinating with local authorities. Joseph De Avila reports for the Wall Street Journal; Ruth Sherlock, Samantha Balaban, Nuha Musleh, and Daniel Estrin report.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff yesterday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “humanitarian” following the release of U.S. citizen Stephen James Hubbard from Russian custody. In a meeting between the pair, Putin told Witkoff that he “agrees in principle” to resuming trilateral peace talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States to end the war in Ukraine, Russian and U.S. officials told Axios. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he hoped the three-way talks will be held as soon as possible, preferably no later than early November. David E. Sanger, Kim Barker, and Ivan Nechepurenko report for the New York Times; Barak Ravid reports; Ron Popeski reports for Reuters.

Ukraine’s Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko yesterday said a Russian missile attack was launched at Ukraine’s capital, injuring six people. The attack came hours after Putin said he was “ready in principle” to resume peace talks and after Trump said the world was “the closest we’ve been” to ending the war. Russia said Ukraine launched 630 drones towards its capital Moscow overnight. Jaroslav Lukiv reports for BBC News; Olena Harmash and Gleb Bryanski report for Reuters.

The Director of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency Jacqueline Borsboom told the Financial Times that NATO will allow Ukraine to buy weapons, ammunition, and military equipment via the agency. Borsboom said the partnership with NSPA “provides Ukraine with the ability to have a more structured framework to leverage a broad range of capabilities that we offer.” Barbara Moens reports.

Russia-linked hackers used a decentralized volunteer-run network to conceal communications during an attack on a Ukrainian grain logistics company, marking the first documented case of a state-linked group using the network this way, according to Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET. The attack culminated in the destruction of data at the company in Sep. 2025 after the attackers gained access to the company’s systems in Jul. 2025 through a phishing email carrying a malicious attachment. Leo Marchandon reports for Reuters.

U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) and House Intelligence ranking member Jim Himes (D-CT) yesterday said the Russian government launched a covert online influence campaign to sway public opinion and undermine bipartisan candidates sympathetic to Ukraine ahead of the U.S. midterms. The pair said the findings were detailed in a classified report on foreign election interference sent to their offices by the U.S. intelligence community earlier this week. Warner said the report suggested that Russia is using AI tools to spread the ideas faster and target U.S. citizens more effectively. Maggie Miller reports for POLITICO.

OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS

The U.K. House of Commons Defense Committee yesterday warned that the United Kingdom has “glaring gaps” in its ability to defend the Arctic region, leaving it vulnerable to potential Russian attacks. The committee said a shortage of Royal Navy warships and submarines was leaving the country’s critical infrastructure in the High North vulnerable. Helen Sullivan reports for BBC News.

Italy’s Interior Ministry today said it has agreed to lift border controls with Spain on each other’s citizens. Italy first suspended its open-border arrangements with Spain on Jul. 31, saying it wanted to make sure no migrants entering Ceuta could travel on to its territory. Spain responded by taking similar action against Italy, calling the Italian measures “unjust, contrary to European Union interests, and discriminatory to the population of Spain.” Alvise Armellini reports for Reuters.

CLIMATE DEVELOPMENTS

The U.N. World Meteorological Organization yesterday said the El Niño weather pattern could cause a record rise in ocean temperatures in the Pacific as it barrels across the world like a “wrecking ball,” causing floods and droughts. The WMO’s seasonal outlook predicted the El Niño event would become extremely strong and cause temperatures to rise by 3.8 degrees Celsius. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said “we have not seen in our records 3.8. We have seen around 3 in some record El Niños before, with very substantive impacts across the world.” Olivia Le Poidevin reports for Reuters.

Thousands of Indonesian protestors this week have taken to the streets to voice anger over the government’s failure to stop fires in rainforests. The demonstrations began on Monday and have spread to more than a half dozen cities across the country. The protests demand Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto to declare a national emergency and take steps to prevent destructive agricultural practices that many blame for fueling the fires. Muktita Suhartono reports for the New York Times.

AI DEVELOPMENTS

CEO of global connectivity and internet security company Cloudflare Matthew Prince yesterday said the company saw thousands of attempts to exploit a flaw AI identified 10 hours before global hacks were publicly announced. Developers of the PHP programming language released urgent new fixes to vulnerabilities that had been lurking in their software for years until they were uncovered by AI. Government officials across the world are warning companies to apply a patch to fix the bugs or consider taking down their sites to avoid an attack. Sam Sabin reports for Axios; Raphael Satter, Leo Marchandon, Kanjyik Ghosh, and Rajveer Pardesi report for Reuters.

Company executives are twice as likely as rank-and-file workers to trust AI over their own judgement, according to a survey from Charter published yesterday. Charter in August surveyed 5,002 U.S. office workers at companies with at least 100 employees who said they use AI at work. 32.8% of executives said they trust AI more than their own judgement, while only 16.3% of other workers said the same. Emily Peck reports for Axios.

U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The Pentagon is looking to build a more robust deep-cover spying program to conduct economic warfare against China and other U.S. competitors, sources told the Washington Post. Under the new initiative, U.S. operatives would go undercover as business people or other private sector personnel without any overt U.S. government affiliation. Zach Dorfman and Warren P. Strobel report.

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday said that Trump was one among numerous global leaders who had made false claims about the unrest in France to advance their own political interests. Macron said all “the people who are speaking ill of our country right now are people who don’t like our country,” and that leaders “who echo what certain circles obviously want people to believe about what happened in France, they’re campaigning at our expense.” Ségolène Le Stradic reports for the New York Times.

The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada yesterday accused prominent Canadian politicians of interfering in U.S. elections and distributed a “fact sheet” to journalists. The document said that the Canadian government “brushes off concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections, even as its ministers and premiers openly describe plans to influence American politics.” The unsigned document singles out Canadian Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, and Canada’s consul general in Boston, Massachusetts, Bernadette Jordan. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Trump’s tariffs have driven up costs for U.S. families and upended a decades-old trade relationship. Nick Taylor-Vaisey reports for POLITICO; Rob Gillies reports for AP News.

U.S. IMMIGRATION DEVELOPMENTS

House Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) yesterday said she will move out of her Washington D.C. residence that federal agents searched last week. Omar said the attention brought on by the raid made her feel unsafe in the house, and in response to the raid said she is “confident in the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong.” Hannah Schoenbaum reports for AP News.

U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier yesterday said Kissimmee Mayor Jackie Espinosa was arrested on charges of grant theft and organized scheme to defraud in connection with $50,000 in Covid-19 grant funds that she and her family received from a city program Espinosa helped create. Espinosa has been the mayor of Kissimmee since Nov. 2024. Uthmeier said “Florida taxpayers funded that money to help small businesses recover, not to enrich the mayor who controlled it.” Christine Hauser and Alexandra E. Petri report for the New York Times.

New Mexico yesterday filed a civil lawsuit against sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime lawyer and accountant, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, accusing the pair of helping finance and conceal Epstein’s sex trafficking at his remote Zorro Ranch property in Stanley, New Mexico. The suit alleges several Jane Does, including minors, were abused at the ranch, and Indyke arranged payments to victims that left them indebted to Epstein, while Kahn monitored the spending of victims and even prepared tax returns for some. Khadeeja Safdar reports for the Wall Street Journal.

A New Mexico judge yesterday ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties after a jury in September found that the company misled users about their data privacy. The penalties come nearly a decade after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first broke. New Mexico is the only state to take its claims to trial after 48 others settled with Meta. Josephine Walker reports for Axios.

Meta yesterday warned CEO Mark Zuckerberg could leave California if the state enacts a billionaire tax. The company said Zuckerberg had informed its special committee of the possibility, and the committee decided to give him a financial incentive to continue leading the company from California for the next eight years, despite the risk of a “significant, multi-billion dollar tax payment.” Christine Mui reports for POLITICO.

Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr on social media yesterday said that broadcast networks could violate their regulatory obligations by airing “entirely fake polls and suppression polls.” Carr said there had been a significant surge in polls “designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm.” David Shepardson reports for Reuters.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTION

The Justice Department’s inspector general yesterday declined to investigate the handling of the criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn, who was cleared of accusations that he intentionally damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to a letter to Hearn’s lawyer. The internal watchdog told Hearn’s lawyer that the allegations of professional misconduct they made fall outside of its jurisdiction and are instead within the purview of the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Eric Tucker reports for AP News.

Vice President JD Vance yesterday defended an advertisement featuring the estranged mother of the Democrat nominee for Ohio governor, Dr. Amy Acton. In the ad, Dr. Acton’s mother said her daughter had lied and exaggerated about her childhood struggles. While the ad did not directly mention sexual abuse, it was met with outrage given Dr. Acton’s stepfather was charged with raping the candidate when she was 12. Vance lauded the ad, saying it “calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar,” and criticized the response by some Republicans to the campaign ad. Campbell Robertson and Bayliss Wagner report for the New York Times; Ford McCracken reports for The Hill.

White House Counsel Will Scharf in a letter on Monday warned POLITICO that it had 48 hours to retract or correct recent stories about alleged staff drama, or it would suffer unspecified consequences. The letter singled out three stories concerning White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles despite “on-the-record refutations” or contrary evidence supplied by Trump and senior staff. Marc Caputo reports for Axios.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION

The Supreme Court yesterday refused to allow the Trump administration to immediately enforce new medical restrictions for transgender people in federal prison. The brief leaves a lower-court block on the policy in place, and does not detail its legal reasoning. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the policy to be enforced as the lawsuit played out in lower courts. Lindsay Whitehurst reports for AP News.

A federal judge yesterday blocked the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out most field operations focused on uncovering voter fraud in nine states. The ruling covered stops and field interviews being carried out by hundreds of DHS agents assigned to fan out across the country in search of instances of voter fraud, under what the Trump administration has referred to as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” Zach Montague and Shawn Hubler report for the New York Times.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer yesterday submitted an emergency application to the Supreme Court to allow the Trump administration to move forward with construction of a border wall along hundreds of miles in the Big Bend region of southwest Texas. A federal judge blocked construction of the barriers which had drawn local objections. Sauer called the lower court “baseless” and asserted that halting the section of the wall at issue would leave “a 300-plus-mile gap in border defenses.” Abbie VanSickle reports for the New York Times.

Democratic groups on Tuesday sued the Trump administration, accusing it of using unfounded voter fraud claims to influence how states run elections. The suit said the administration is issuing a stream of threats to intimidate and bully both voters and election officials, and condemns the targeting of state voter rolls by insisting that local officials review federally compiled lists of alleged noncitizens on their voter rolls. Josephine Walker reports for Axios.

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