Oct. 7, 2026 - Daily News Digest
On this day in 2001, triggered by the September 11 attacks, the Afghanistan War began when US and British warplanes started bombing Taliban targets.
QotD: "The Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have full control over it. This situation will continue until Iran’s legitimate demands are met,” an adviser to the Revolutionary Guards' Commander told a news outlet Wednesday.
YEMEN/HOUTHIS/MIL – Houthis attack Aden airport as fighting intensifies.
Yemen's Houthis attacked Aden's international airport with ballistic missiles and explosive-laden drones on Wednesday, the country's Transport Ministry said, as fighting between the Iran-aligned group and Saudi-backed government forces intensified.
Battles have focused in recent days on areas around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a shipping route that has become more crucial for energy exports since the conflict between the US and Iran restricted trade through the Strait of Hormuz.
On Wednesday, the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile north of the Saudi capital Riyadh. It said it was tracking the launch platform over Houthi-controlled Sanaa and would destroy it, but gave no details of casualties or damage.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a statement that the group had targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with several drones. There was no immediate Saudi confirmation of an attack on the airport.
UK/US/SEC – Seventh arrest made after air base plot.
https://www.dw.com/en/uk-seventh-arrest-made-after-air-base-plot/a-79566985
Police in the UK arrested a man in connection with an alleged planned attack on a military air base used by the United States.
The suspect, a 22-year-old British national, was arrested "on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts," police said.
Police arrested the man in London, and he is the seventh person taken into custody in connection with the incident in which three vans were stopped near the RAF Fairford air base in England's southwest on September 27.
While no explosives were found in the van, police secured some gasoline in them, it said.
The other six suspects were also men in their 20s, including one who is a dual UK-Iranian national. All six have been released on bail.
NOBEL/CHEM – Nobel chemistry prize goes to pair who solved mystery of ‘mirror image’ molecules.
https://www.reuters.com/world/kagan-soai-win-2026-nobel-chemistry-prize-2026-10-07/
Scientists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving a long-standing riddle of asymmetric "mirror image" molecules, a discovery hugely important for pharmaceutical manufacturing, the award-giving body said on Wednesday.
Many of the molecules essential to life exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, like left and right hands. Yet living organisms almost exclusively use only one version, a phenomenon known as "homochirality" – from the Greek word for hand – that has puzzled chemists for more than a century.
This year's prize was awarded for discoveries that showed how chemical reactions can be driven to favour a single molecular mirror image, work that has been key for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.
"The left-handed version of the drug can have one effect, and the right-handed version can have another effect, and then we need methods for selectively preparing them," Peter Somfai, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said.
RUSSIA/PLAGUE – Russia keeps a tight lid on suspected case of pneumonic plague as global concerns mount.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-plague-irkutsk-who-trump-c1dfff772ca769bbdf26726787432d51
Russian authorities are keeping a tight lid on information about last week’s suspicious death of a lab worker in Siberia that has been surrounded by secrecy and claims that it could have been caused by pneumonic plague.
While the case has raised global concerns, Russian state TV and other national state-controlled media have steered clear of the subject. Some state-sponsored news outlets withdrew earlier reports about the case, which has topped independent online news outlets.
Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Sunday the lab worker was diagnosed with “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” meaning its origin was not known.
In its official, tersely worded statements, it does not link the case to pneumonic plague, saying only that “extensive” testing found no evidence her illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East.
EU/UKR/MEMBERSHIP – EU seeks ways to make expansion more palatable to members.
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-seeks-ways-to-make-expansion-more-palatable-to-members/a-79567297
The European Commission on Tuesday published a document called "Preparing for a wider Union," which sought to lay out new proposals on "the policy orientations and actions needed to prepare the [European] Union for future enlargements."
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that "Europe's future depends on the choices we make today," as she tries to encourage progress at the EU's leaders' summit this month and in other upcoming talks on the matter.
The EU's executive proposed an array of changes — including a gradual integration process for would-be members, new safeguards "to ensure that commitments undertaken during accession negotiations continue to be fulfiled steadily after accession," and changes to voting rules.
They were trying to strike a balance between simplifying the accession process, incentivizing candidate countries to continue to pursue it, and allaying concerns among existing members about potential risks or costs of expansion.
FRANCE/STUDENT PROTESTS – France suspends use of stun grenades to police student protests.
The French government said on Wednesday it was pausing the use of stun grenades in its policing of student protests after a 15-year-old boy's hand was blown off during a clash with riot police.
Rights groups, students and some political opponents have accused the French police of using disproportionate force during a more than two-week-old wave of student protests that has exposed deep-seated public anger ahead of elections next year.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said he had ordered the stun grenade suspension until there was more clarity around the events that took place in the northern city of Lens on Monday. Nunez said there was a "strong possibility" the firing of a non-lethal stun grenade had caused the teenager to lose his hand.
"I am suspending their use for the high school students' movement until light has been shed on what happened in this case," said the minister, who added that 18 investigations in total had been referred to the police inspectorate.
HORMUZ/IRAN – Iranian official says ‘illegal routes’ in Strait of Hormuz to soon be blocked.
Transit routes in the Strait of Hormuz deemed illegal by Iran will soon be closed, an adviser to the Revolutionary Guards' Commander told the semi-official Fars News Agency on Wednesday, referring to the southern pathway hugging Oman's coast.
Mohammadreza Naqdi said these "few routes" had been created by blasting and damaging some of the rocky passages in the strategic waterway and were used by "small boats smuggling oil and transferring it to tankers", challenging the narrative that Gulf oil exports are regaining pre-war levels.
"The Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have full control over it. This situation will continue until Iran’s legitimate demands are met,” he added.
A seven-day moving average for crude exports from the region was 18.3 million barrels per day on September 30, provisional data from Kpler showed, with volumes topping pre-war levels on 14 days in September.
ISRAEL/GAZA – Israel marks third anniversary of Oct. 7 attack as election looms.
Israel marks the third anniversary of Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Wednesday, just weeks before an election in which the deadliest day in the country's history will be front and centre.
Commemorative events will also be the first to be held since a ceasefire officially began in war-torn Gaza last year.
Memorial events are planned throughout the day to pay tribute to the scores of people killed by militants led by the Islamist movement during their assault from Gaza.
Palestinian fighters breached the border, storming southern Israel with gunfire, rockets and grenades, and resulting in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also dragged 251 hostages into Gaza, 44 of them already dead.
Israel says it controls more than 60 percent of the Gaza Strip and has continued its airstrikes, vowing to eliminate threats from Hamas and target those involved in the October 7 attack.
Since the ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,430 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry.
GERMANY/AZERBAIJAN/ESPIONAGE/LAW – Azerbaijan denies report of link to German spy scandal.
Azerbaijan on Wednesday denied a report that former German intelligence chief August Hanning, accused of buying secret documents and using them in an analysis for a foreign spy service, had been in contact with an agent from Azerbaijan.
The country's Media and Broadcasting Council said in a statement that allegations of an Azerbaijani connection to the case, first reported by Der Spiegel, were unfounded.
"The malicious intent of the forces behind this disinformation operation is to damage Azerbaijan-Germany relations," the council said.
Hanning, the former head of the BND foreign intelligence service, was detained on Tuesday on suspicion of attempted treason and espionage in one of Germany's biggest security scandals since the Cold War.
Prosecutors said he paid to receive classified documents from a BND office manager and used them to prepare an analysis for an officer of an unnamed foreign intelligence service.
US/JAPAN/MIL – US forces in Okinawa face curfew, booze ban after killing.
The U.S. military in Okinawa said it would impose a monthlong curfew on serving personnel after a U.S. Marine was arrested on suspicion of the killing and robbery of a Japanese woman.
The incident has revived tensions over the U.S. military presence on the Japanese island, triggering small street protests and drawing a diplomatic rebuke from Tokyo.
In a letter dated Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, commander of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa, ordered all American military activity halted for two days of on-base training in standards and discipline. Alcohol consumption is prohibited on or off base from Wednesday to Friday, the letter said. A nighttime curfew will be in place for a month, with all military personnel expected to return home by midnight.
On Sunday, Okinawa police arrested 20-year-old Marine Devin Jacob Ballard, accusing him of robbing and killing 39-year-old Anna Yagi in a hotel room in central Naha, Okinawa’s capital.
Okinawa is home to more than 30,000 American military personnel. Resentment over the U.S. presence has been a feature of Okinawan life and politics for decades. Sporadic incidents of violence involving U.S. military personnel have stoked anger.