Important Takeaways:
- The General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said the move was a “response to the grave situation in which the imminent danger of war is escalating day by day along the southern border”
- North Korea said it would fortify its side of the de facto border with “strong defense structures,” without elaborating.
- A “telephone message” communicating its intentions was sent to U.S. forces “to prevent any misjudgment and accidental conflict over the fortification project,” the army said.
- This week, the North Korean leader twice threatened to use nuclear weapons on the South if provoked.
- The South Korean defense ministry said the latest announcement likely was a continuation of the North’s efforts to severe inter-Korean connections—physical and symbolic—since April.
- The North Korean notification was sent via an existing channel to the U.S.-led United Nations Command, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said on Wednesday, citing military sources. Pyongyang said its DMZ fortification project would involve a large number of personnel, heavy equipment and “explosive work,” the report said.
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Important Takeaways:
- The call, under way late Wednesday morning U.S. time, was the leaders’ first known chat since August and coincided with a sharp escalation of Israel’s conflict with both Iran and the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah with no sign of an imminent ceasefire to end the conflict with Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.
- The Middle East has been on edge awaiting Israel’s response to a missile attack last week that Tehran carried out in retaliation for Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon.
- The Iranian attack ultimately killed no one in Israel and Washington called it ineffective.
- Netanyahu has promised that arch-foe Iran will pay for its missile attack, while Tehran has said any retaliation would be met with vast destruction, raising fears of a wider war in the oil-producing region which could draw in the United States.
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant canceled a Wednesday visit to the Pentagon, the Pentagon said, as Israeli media reported Netanyahu wanted first to speak with Biden.
- Israel has faced calls by the United States and other allies to accept a ceasefire deal in Gaza and Lebanon but has said it will continue its military operations until Israelis are safe.
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Important Takeaways:
- The National Weather Service (NWS) in Miami has issued a tornado watch and several tornado warnings for parts of Florida as Hurricane Milton rapidly approaches west-central Florida.
- On Wednesday morning, the NWS reported several tornadoes, including one crossing the I-75 highway, and urged residents to seek shelter immediately.
- The tornado watch remains valid until Wednesday evening at 9pm ET and covers parts of south Florida
- Videos and pictures posted online showed several of the spotted tornadoes growing in size as they move across south Florida.
- The agency also warned that isolated hail up to a 0.5in size is possible, along with isolated gusts of wind traveling up to 70mph.
- Approximately 12.6 million residents face potential exposure to the tornadoes, in addition to 2,424 schools and 170 hospitals.
- The tornado watch and warnings come as the category 5 Hurricane Milton is expected to double in size as the “storm of the century” by the time it makes landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday.
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Important Takeaways:
- US officials tell Axios that the Biden administration is increasingly distrustful of what Israel is saying about its military and diplomatic plans.
- Two of the officials tell the outlet that White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Friday that the US expects “clarity and transparency” from Israel over its plans for a potential attack on Iran after Tehran fired some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last week.
- The officials note that any Israel strike would have an impact on US forces in the region.
- An official says that Sullivan’s message was a signal that if the US is not given a heads-up as to Israel’s plans, it won’t necessarily join a coalition to defend Israel against a potential future attack from Iran.
- The report says the US is also concerned about the most recent operation launched by the IDF in north Gaza, despite the fact that Israel has told Washington that the evacuation orders for civilians there will not lead to a permanent displacement of the population.
- “They tell us what we want to hear — the problem is lack of trust,” a US official says.
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Important Takeaways:
- Omar is the son of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born founder of the al-Qaeda terrorist group and the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people in the biggest terror attacks on US soil in 2001.
- France’s Interior Minister announced Omar bin Laden had been deported from a Normandy village he was living in after he was accused of glorifying terrorism on social media.
- In a post shared on X early Tuesday morning, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau accused Omar bin Laden of “posting comments on his social media accounts in 2023, which made an apology for terrorism”.
- Calling the matter “a decision of national security”, the post did not detail when exactly Omar bin Laden had been deported nor reveal where he was sent to.
- The administrative ban ensures that Mr. bin Laden cannot return to France, for any reason whatsoever,” Retailleau said.
- According to local newspaper Le Publicateur Libre, a controversial tweet was posted by bin Laden on 2 May 2023, the date of his father’s birthday.
- The post from the now-deleted account @omarbinladin1 read: “History is written only with the blood of these people — to tell the story of these martyrs who made history, built nations and brought glory. Their blood is the lifeline of our faith until judgment day. Rest in peace.”
- “A person from another country managed to get the password of my Twitter account and posted a Tweet using my name. They were not my words. I reported the Tweet to Twitter and after a week or so, the account was thankfully blocked,” bin Laden said.
- “I no longer have access to my Twitter account,” he added, “so I was unable to remove it myself. I want to tell people I condemn terrorism and violence with all my heart”, he added.
- Although Omar bin Laden began training in al-Qaeda camps at the age of 14, he left the terrorist organization in 2000. In a 2008 interview with ABC News, he said, “my father is very kind man… and he was very sorry when he did something like 11 September.”
- “He believed if he brought two buildings down, maybe some people, few would die… But millions other would (be) save(d). He believed that”, Omar added.
- Omar bin Laden went on to assert that he did not agree with his father’s actions “I believe what he did was wrong.”
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Important Takeaways:
- With residents preparing for whatever Milton brings, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor sat down with CNN on Monday to discuss what’s at risk for residents who don’t heed evacuation orders.
- As the Gulf Coast prepares for yet another strong hurricane, Tampa Bay officials are urging residents to take evacuation orders seriously, especially if they live anywhere near the coast.
- Hurricane Milton poses a threat to the region that likely no one in the region has ever seen in their lifetimes, as the last time the Tampa area was hit by the eye of a major hurricane was on Oct. 25, 1921. The hurricane had no official name but is known locally as the Tarpon Springs storm, for the seaside town where it came ashore.
- “The number one message, as it has been for several days now, is that you need to prepare. Do whatever you need to do and then get out of the evacuation zones which now are evacuation zones A and B, and as we all have heard so many times now, you hide from the wind and run from the water and we are talking about, right now, the possibility of a direct hit with 10 to 12-foot tidal surge — put that in perspective, Hurricane Helene, which just left the Tampa Bay area a week ago, there was 6-foot storm surge and that literally devastating to so many in our coastal areas,”
- “Helene was a wake-up call, this is literally catastrophic and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Castor warned.
- She went on to explain that she’s never given that warning before but given the unprecedented circumstances of Milton and the threat of a direct hit to the Tampa Bay area, the warning could save residents’ lives who are on the fence about staying or leaving.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli forces have killed the would-be successors of late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, without naming them.
- “We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message.
- Netanyahu did not identify by name Nasrallah’s replacement that he claimed Israel had killed.
- It was not immediately clear who Netanyahu meant in his comments by the “replacement of the replacement”.
- “Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years,” Netanyahu said in his video message, which was directed at the people of Lebanon.
- “Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel also has a right to win. And Israel will win,” Netanyahu said.
- He urged Lebanon to “take back your country” and return it to a path of peace and prosperity and take advantage of an opportunity that hasn’t existed in decades.
- “If you don’t, Hezbollah will continue to try to fight Israel from densely populated areas at your expense. It doesn’t care if Lebanon is dragged into a wider war,” he added. “Christians, Druze, Muslims — Sunnis and Shiites — all of you are suffering because of Hezbollah’s futile war against Israel.
- “Don’t let these terrorists destroy your future any more than they’ve already done,” Netanyahu added. “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The country’s adversaries are stepping up efforts to influence the U.S. election, including down-ballot races, intelligence officials told the press on Monday.
- Officials said China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba have sought to “launder their narratives” into election discourse, as well as aggravate divisions among Americans through hot-button issues such as immigration.
- Though four weeks remain before Election Day, more than 16 million Americans had requested mail-in ballots or opted for early in-person voting as of Tuesday, according to an NBC News poll sourced from state officials and market research firm TargetSmart.
- One official said agencies have been privately briefing candidates for president, congress and local elections about foreign influence efforts.
- More of these notifications have already been carried out than during any past election, according to another official, who said suspected cases of foreign influence campaigns against public officials have seen a “more than threefold increase.”
- China-linked actors were said to have directly interfered in “tens” of down-ballot races, particularly when it comes to issues that most concern the Chinese Communist Party, Reuters reported.
- Russia and Iran have been focused on shaping the views of the U.S. electorate,” the intelligence officials said.
- Moscow’s efforts have reportedly been to drive down support for Ukraine, which is struggling against invading Russian forces in the eastern part of the country. Iran has been covertly seeking to drum up support for Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, according to officials.
- They believe Cuba has concentrated on giving a boost to its preferred candidates by swaying Spanish-speaking voters on social media.
- The news follows a report released last month by social network analysis firm Graphika that detailed a Chinese “spamouflage” operation attempting to sow division in U.S. social media spaces through fake accounts.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hezbollah pelted Haifa with rockets on Tuesday in the heaviest attack yet on the northern Israeli port city, as the Lebanese terror group insisted its military capabilities “were fine” despites weeks of devastating IDF strikes.
- More than 100 rockets were fired at the city within half an hour around midday.
- Most of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome system, although some got through, exploding in the Haifa suburbs of Kiryat Yam and Kiryat Motzkin, security services said.
- The blue skies above the city were filled with white trails of the interceptor rockets rising to meet the incoming barrages, and explosions mushroomed above Haifa as sirens wailed and thousands of Israelis ran for bomb shelters.
- The salvos came as the IDF announced that it was carrying out strikes against Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
- The large-scale attack also came moments after Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem, one of the last surviving members of the group’s top leadership, insisted that Hezbollah’s military capabilities were intact, that it had increased its rocket fire on Israel, and that it was itching for “clashes” with Israeli troops in Lebanon.
- He said Hezbollah’s top leadership was directing the war and that the commanders killed by Israel had been replaced. “We have no vacant posts,” he added.
- Qassem also said that Hezbollah supports efforts to reach a ceasefire for Lebanon, but for the first time omitted any mention of a Gaza truce deal as a precondition to halting his group’s fire on Israel.
- “In any case, after the issue of a ceasefire takes shape, and once diplomacy can achieve it, all of the other details can be discussed and decisions can be made,” he said. “If the enemy (Israel) continues its war, then the battlefield will decide.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a clash between a federal emergency care law and Texas’ near-total ban on abortion, declining to provide clarity over whether physicians in states with the most restrictive laws must provide abortion care in certain emergency circumstances.
- The court’s rejection of the Biden administration’s appeal leaves in place a lower court decision that blocked the federal government from enforcing guidance it issued to hospitals notifying them that they must provide emergency abortions if the health of the mother is at risk.
- The Department of Health and Human Services told health care providers in a July 2022 letter that when a state abortion law does not include an exception for the life and health of the mother, that measure is preempted by the federal emergency care law.
- The case began after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told hospitals more than two years ago that federal law requires them to provide pregnant patients experiencing emergency medical conditions with stabilizing treatment, including abortions, regardless of state restrictions.
- In Texas, abortion is banned except when the life of the mother is at risk.
- Texas sued the Biden administration to block its mandate requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions, alleging that the secretary exceeded his authority when issuing the guidance.
- A federal district court sided with Texas and blocked the guidance, finding that hospitals cannot be forced to provide abortions in certain medical emergencies when it would violate the state’s ban.
- They urged the Supreme Court to leave the lower court’s decision in place, writing in a filing that in Texas, a health care provider can comply with both EMTALA and state law by offering stabilizing treatment without violating its ban. In limited circumstances, they said, that can include providing an abortion when it is necessary to prevent the “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
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