Early Edition: October 21, 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

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian yesterday said he told Pakistani Army Chf. Field Mar. Asim Munir that there would be no talks with the United States until Iran’s demands were met. According to an Iranian readout of the meeting, Munir also met Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who said the United States could not regain Tehran’s trust until it fulfilled seven conditions Iran set out last month for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Menna Alaa El-Din and Yasmine Ghania report for Reuters.

IRAN WAR – YEMEN

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis today denied launching any drones towards the Saudi holy city of Medina. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen earlier said it had intercepted drones over Medina and the wider Eastern region. Nayera Abdallah reports for Reuters.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi yesterday said Iran has not received a response from Saudi Arabia or the Houthis to its offer to help broker talks to end the fighting between them. Araghchi added that any “foreign intervention [in the conflict] would complicate matters,” and said Egypt has previously told Iran it would “not directly” interfere in the Yemeni conflict. Menna Alaa El-Din and Yasmine Ghania report for Reuters.

A Turkish lawmaker from the ruling AK Party today told Reuters that Turkey will submit to parliament a mandate allowing for military personnel to be deployed to Saudi Arabia under its joint defense pact with the kingdom and Pakistan. Nevzat Devranoglu reports.

IRAN WAR – OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

U.K. counter-terrorism police yesterday said two men have been re-arrested in connection to the incident near Royal Air Force Fairford last month. A U.K. national and dual U.K.-Iranian national are being held on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service under Section 3 of the National Security Act 2023, and the police said the investigation relates to Iran. Cachella Smith reports for BBC News.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing to resume large-scale strikes against Iran and had instructed the Israeli military to plan for a new major offensive earlier this month, sources told the Financial Times. The IDF had prepared for a multi-day bombing campaign to take place on the weekend of Oct. 10 that would have targeted civilian infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and regime targets, and would have surpassed the intensity of the joint U.S.-Israel offensive in Feb. 2026. The sources cited President Trump’s opposition to restarting any conflict before the midterms as why the mission did not go ahead. Neri Zilber reports.

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

Israeli strikes and gunfire in two separate incidents in Gaza yesterday killed at least four people, according to local health officials. The IDF later said that Akram Yassin, who was killed alongside his wife, was a senior official in Hamas’ general security apparatus in Gaza which was tasked with protecting senior Hamas officials, but did not comment on the two gunfire incidents, one of which killed a 17-year-old boy. Nidal al-Mughrabi reports for Reuters.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

Ukrainian police today said four people were killed in overnight Russian attacks that targeted energy facilities across four regions. Two of the dead were in the capital Kyiv, while the other two were killed outside the northeastern city of Kharkiv. Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said Russia had attacked power facilities in the Kyiv, Volyn, Odesa, and Mykolaiv regions, as well as civilian enterprises in at least two other regions. Dan Peleschuk reports for Reuters.

Russia’s western Bryansk region Gov. Yegor Kovalchuk today said a Ukrainian drone attack on a car killed a 19-year-old man and injured two people. Reuters reports.

Russia’s Defense Ministry yesterday said the Russian military struck three cargo vessels in Ukraine’s port of Reni, and two other cargo vessels en route to Odesa. Russian forces also hit two logistics hubs in Ukraine’s northwestern Volyn region and in the city of Khmelnitskiy. JekaterĪna Golubkova reports for Reuters.

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff today met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia and presented him with an updated proposal to end the war in Ukraine, a U.S. official told Axios. Witkoff yesterday met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European representatives in Norway, and following the meeting Zelenskyy said the next step should be a trilateral meeting between himself, Putin, and Trump, a format that Russia has so far rejected. Reuters reports; Barak Ravid reports.

Russia today released U.S. citizen Stephen James Hubbard from Russian custody in an act of goodwill before Putin’s meeting with Witkoff. Trump yesterday said he had asked Putin to release Hubbard. Hubbard was seized from his home in Ukraine months after Russia invaded Ukraine and was accused of being a mercenary. The United States has maintained that the charges against Hubbard were fabricated. Lucy Papachristou reports for Reuters; Luke Broadwater reports for the New York Times.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on a phone call yesterday told Zelenskyy that Trump hasn’t issued any kind of order to harm Ukraine. The 45-minute call took place several hours ahead of Zelenskyy’s peace talks with Witkoff. Rubio also acknowledged to Zelenskyy that there could be a delay in sending Patriot interceptors that have already been paid for by NATO countries because the United States needs to make sure it has enough to protect its own military bases around the world. Barak Ravid reports for Axios.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last week ordered the slowdown of Starlink, U.S. officials and other sources told the Wall Street Journal. Some sources said Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, which rendered some offensive and interceptor drones useless, and shortly after the news became public Musk discussed the decision on a call with Trump. Another source said the pair discussed the matter prior to the decision to slow down Starlink. Rubio today appeared to support the suggestion that Musk slowed down Starlink, as he said the decisions regarding Ukraine’s access to Starlink were up to SpaceX and Musk, not the White House. Alexander Ward, Natalie Andrews, and Josh Dawsey report; Gram Slattery reports for Reuters.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak today said Russia will dispatch its first tanker with diesel for the United States tomorrow. Novak said the vessel will carry 40,000 metric tons of diesel and that the paperwork on the fuel supply is nearing its completion. Vladimir Soldatkin reports for Reuters.

U.S. intelligence agencies say the failed drone attack operation at Germany’s Leipzig-Halle Airport this summer was one of the opening shots in a stepped-up campaign of covert action against NATO allies by Russia, European officials briefed on the findings told the Wall Street Journal. The officials said there was a growing frustration in Russia this summer over the standstill on the ground in the war in Ukraine and Ukraine’s refusal to agree to concessions Putin wanted. Bojan Pancevski reports.

The EU is preparing to try and persuade Canada and the United Kingdom to increase their support for Ukraine as part of an effort to fill a €70 billion funding gap Ukraine faces next year, EU sources told POLITICO. The EU-Canada summit on Oct. 29-30 and the EU-U.K. summit on Nov. 20 will give the EU a chance to make the case. Zoya Sheftalovich and Gerardo Fortuna report.

OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu yesterday said the country will reinforce police with troops and mount a huge security operation for upcoming protests over underfunding of education in the country and wider issues planned on Saturday. Lecornu acknowledged the government’s failures in its response to last weekend’s violence and said the deployment “will be massive.” French President Emmanuel Macron today pledged to prevent a repeat of the weekend’s riots. Elizabeth Pineau and Dominique Vidalon report for Reuters; Elizabeth Pineau and Dominique Patton report for Reuters.

Australian lawmaker Helen Haines, who was hit by a car on Monday in what authorities say was a deliberate attack, has lost both her legs, her husband confirmed today. Phil Haines added that “her heart and mind are in good shape” and that the “good news in all this is that she’s alive.” The alleged attacker Brendan Nugent appeared in court today on charges of dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury, and causing harm to a Commonwealth public official. Lana Lam and Katy Watson report for BBC News.

Burkina Faso’s Justice Ministry today said their parliament yesterday adopted a revised penal code that restores the death penalty. The revised code reintroduces the death penalty for crimes including terrorism, espionage, treason, and importing expired or banned products that result in death. Reuters reports.

Meta yesterday said it has complied with an order from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court for the company to give equal treatment on its platforms to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro before Sunday’s presidential runoff. Meta added that the restrictions ordered by the court “do not affect organic posts.” Mauricio Savarese reports for AP News.

CLIMATE DEVELOPMENTS

U.K. Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh today said “following careful consideration,” the government has made the decision to approve production at Jackdaw gas field off of the east coast of Scotland. Fahnbulleh added that Jackdaw will start supplying gas to homes from as early as the end of the month. Jackdaw was initially approved for production in 2022 but has faced years of litigation and pushback from environmental groups, who insist that more drilling would hamper efforts to cut carbon emissions, and production would not protect energy security. BBC News reports.

The Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Johan Rockström yesterday told the Reuters Sustainability Europe conference that global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions is accelerating. Rockström said damage to coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest was close to becoming irreversible, and parts of the Atlantic Ocean circulation system were close to collapse. Simon Jessop reports.

A U.N. Environment Program report published today said countries are not doing enough to cut emissions that cause climate change, and that the United States sticks out as the only major country where planet-warming pollution increased dramatically last year. The United States was tied with Russia as the G20 countries with the most per capita emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases. The report also warned that global warming is now projected to exceed previous estimates, with even the most optimistic scenario seeing average temperatures rise to 1.7-1.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by mid-century. Rebecca Hersher reports for NPR; Simon Jessop reports for Reuters.

AI DEVELOPMENTS

The U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research will launch a new initiative tomorrow on the military uses of AI. Head of UNIDIR Robin Geiss yesterday warned that “the margin for human judgement is increasingly narrow, including in the nuclear domain,” and that it is difficult to assess how close the world is to machines acting outside of human control. Edith M. Lederer reports for AP News.

China yesterday accused the United States of discrimination “under the pretext of so-called national security” after a U.S. order banned products by Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek from the technological systems of many U.S. government agencies. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s order, published on Monday but issued in July, cited fears that China may gain access to sensitive U.S. data from DeepSeek to “produce actionable intelligence.” Ephrat Livni reports for the New York Times.

U.S. TECH DEVELOPMENTS

Google yesterday said that several of its cloud computing services remained disrupted around London following an outage. Google said the cause of the “power event” had been dealt with and that it was working to restore service. Leo Sands reports for the New York Times.

U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack yesterday told Middle East regional security officers at the Global Security Forum in Qatar that “America as the guarantor to the world, for the last 80 years, it is no longer there.” Barrack said what the Trump administration is doing is not an abandonment, but a “realignment,” and that the region is right to pivot toward smaller and more diversified alliances like the new defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey. Feliz Solomon reports for the Wall Street Journal.

The Liberty Justice Center yesterday filed a lawsuit on behalf of food business Gellert Global Group, urging the Court of International Trade to find the Trump administration’s “liberation day” import taxes against Canada unlawful and to order refunds with interest for affected importers. The suit argues that the White House exceeded its authority in imposing the tariffs and caused “immediate harm to American businesses.” Rachel Clun reports for BBC News.

U.S. IMMIGRATION DEVELOPMENTS

ICE yesterday denied hitting Ricardo Gonzalez with a car while he was cycling in Long Beach, California before detaining him, but video footage obtained by the New York Times contradicts their statement. The footage shows an S.U.V. driving the wrong way down a one-way street and swerving toward an oncoming bicyclist, and an officer then proceeds to jump out and appears to draw a weapon. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson (D) submitted a complaint to the DHS Inspector General Office and said Gonzalez has worked for the city. In the video footage, Gonzalez can be heard saying “I’m a U.S. citizen!” Madison Malone Kircher reports.

The State Department yesterday said the Trump administration has revoked over 300,000 visas during Trump’s second term. The number showed an acceleration in the pace of visa revocations in recent weeks, as an Aug. 10 State Department update had put the number of visa revocations at 175,000. Kanishka Singh reports for Reuters.

The FBI yesterday said it is investigating reports of an “incendiary device” being thrown at the ICE building in downtown Atlanta late last night. The FBI said there were no reports of injuries or significant damage. AP News reports.

U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS

A bribery investigation conducted by FBI anti-corruption investigators uncovered by ProPublica showed that before Trump purged the FBI and Justice Department of their teams dedicated to taking on public corruption, the now deceased Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and other members of Congress were under investigation for taking bribes from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. In early 2025, the FBI opened an investigation into bribery on Capitol Hill and Navatek CEO Martin Kao confessed to federal agents that Navatek’s business model consisted of bribing officials in exchange for government contracts. The FBI took the formal step of naming two former Navatek executives as subjects of a bribery investigation but did not yet designate Graham or others as they were still actively investigating their interactions with Kao. Molly Redden, Avi Asher-Schapiro, William Turton, and Kirsten Berg report.

The FBI released 38 pages of FBI interview notes, surrounding a criminal investigation led by prosecutor John H. Durham over the use of a torture program by the C.I.A. against 9/11 terrorism detainees, to the New York Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The interview notes were the first tranche to be released, which could offer insights into the controversial program. Charlie Savage reports.

The Mississippi Attorney General’s office on Monday announced a police officer who shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley while chasing two women accused of shoplifting was justified in shooting at their car in June, and that the state would not file charges as there was “insufficient evidence of criminal conduct.” Although a police officer was not named as the shooter, Senatobia Police Department officer Hunter Foster was the only officer among those present that day who was placed on leave. Body camera footage released yesterday shows the car the two women were in slamming into a parked vehicle, and after it had been ordered to stop, accelerating left and appearing to travel toward at least one of the officers before passing between two of them. At least one officer shoots into the vehicle. Joseph Cranney and Mukta Joshi report for the New York Times; Joseph Cranney, Mukta Joshi, Eduardo Medina, and Devon Lum report for the New York Times.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan yesterday criticized the court’s conservative majority for a series of election-related decisions in recent years that Kagan said have led to more polarization and a dysfunctional democracy. Kagan delivered the critique in front of an ideologically mixed crowd of law students and professors, and said that the court “has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works.” Ann E. Marimow reports for the New York Times.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTION

Trump and Vice President JD Vance yesterday announced the $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program which will pay out cash for people who tip off the government about fraudsters. Trump said if “anybody turns anybody in… you get a 1 per cent commission, and I think that will be amazing, because the kind of money that’s been stolen is trillions from this country.” Trump will act as the sole arbitrator of who receives payouts. Mallory Wilson reports for The Hill.

Trump will highlight his administration’s efforts to crack down on foreign criminal networks that lure U.S. citizens into fraudulent crypto investments today, a White House official told Reuters. The official said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Todd Blanche are expected to attend the White House event. Courtney Rozen reports.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton yesterday told state officials they must increase their financial reserves and emergency capabilities to handle most disasters on their own, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by POLITICO. Hamilton added that a “future I hope we would shoot for is one where we wouldn’t require as many disasters because the capability of states is so high and so substantial.” Hamilton’s remarks add detail to his previously reported Oct. 15 internal memo. Thomas Frank reports.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION

CNN is threatening further legal action if its journalists continue to be denied access to Air Force One and the “pool” of journalists who accompany Trump when he travels. Jocelyn Noveck reports for AP News.

Did you miss this? Stay up-to-date with our Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions.

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