Oct. 9, 2026 - Daily News Digest
On this day: in 1604, Kepler's Supernova is the most recent supernova to be observed within the Milky Way.
QOTD: "Russia is demonstrating ways, which, if employed directly towards a mega constellation like Starlink, could have an impact on their lifetime" and on the quality of service for all users, not just Ukraine, General Traut told Reuters. He said satellite capabilities could be disrupted even without a direct attack.
YEMEN/KSA/UH OH - Houthi strikes on Riyadh airport killed three Saudis as war escalates
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthi-strikes-riyadh-airport-killed-three-saudis-war-escalates-2026-10-09/
Thursday's attacks on Riyadh airport killed three people, Saudi authorities said on Friday, as Yemen's Houthi group stepped up missile strikes on the kingdom and tried to shut down its airspace in an escalating war triggered by the US-Iran conflict.
The strikes, which also injured several people, damaged a Saudia Airlines plane and sent smoke billowing over the airport, led many airlines to cancel flights to the Saudi capital days before it is due to host a major meeting of global oil chiefs.
Saudi airstrikes hit Houthi targets in the Yemeni capital Sanaa overnight, Houthi officials and affiliated media said, part of an intensifying air war against the Iran-allied group aimed at reversing its recent territorial gains, threats to international shipping, and attacks on the kingdom.
A Saudi-led coalition backing government forces in Yemen said it had destroyed three missile launch platforms used by the Houthis and warned it would respond firmly to attacks on civilians.
The Houthis, who have encircled Yemeni government forces in Yemen's third-largest city of Taiz and are trying to defend positions on the Red Sea coast against a Saudi-backed offensive, had already killed three people with strikes on airports in the kingdom earlier this week.
ETHIOPIA/ERITREA/MIL - Ethiopia says it must defend itself against Eritrea's 'all-out invasion'
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ethiopia-says-it-must-defend-itself-against-eritreas-all-out-invasion-2026-10-09/
Ethiopia said an "all-out invasion" by Eritrean forces had left it with no option but to defend itself, in a letter to the UN shared with Reuters on Friday, as blasts continued near the border between the two countries.
In response, Eritrea's information minister said his country had shown restraint since Ethiopia had declared a war of aggression against Eritrea by stating in 2023 it would acquire sovereign access to the sea.
The countries traded accusations after a reported incursion by Eritrean troops this week raised fears of outright war in the region, where the two nations have fought previous conflicts. The stakes have been raised this time around by conflicts in the Horn of Africa region and tensions across the Red Sea.
Ethiopia lost its access to all coastline when Eritrea secured independence in 1993. Addis Ababa argues that restoring sea access is an existential issue but has said it would be restored through peace and dialogue.
Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of supporting a rebel alliance in Ethiopia. Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos said in the letter that Eritrean forces had advanced up to 60 km (37 miles) into the country.
EUROPE/RUSSIA/MIL - As Putin Wages Shadow War, Europe Looks for a Way to Hit Back
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine-war-europe-nato.html
Russia is escalating its campaign of sabotage in NATO countries, trying to break European support for Kyiv — and Europe is struggling to respond.
European officials say they do not expect a major Russian invasion of a NATO country; in that sense, traditional deterrence has worked. But countries are grappling with how best to counter this heightened pattern of Russian attacks. What officials say they fear most is that, by accident or by intention, one of those attacks will cause a significant loss of life.
Moscow is “trying to break the will to support Ukraine and trying in a broader sense to change the security architecture of Europe,” said David Cattler, a former NATO intelligence official now at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank. Operationally, he said, the Russians are using tools “that are hard to attribute, that they believe are big enough to matter and yet small enough not to trigger” a larger war.
Internally, the debate among European officials, they said, is whether and how to retaliate by taking the fight to Russia. The first response should be to maintain calm and not fall into a Russian trap by overreacting, said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official, while not being so complacent as to ignore reality. The Russian campaign is a continuation of a pattern, he said, but “the growth in the number and nature of the events is significant, and the dangerous nature of them.”
[Russia is continuing—if not outright expanding—its campaign of chipping away at various parts of European defenses. Whether its drones looking for gaps in radars and air defenses, alleged sabotage campaigns at industrial wartime suppliers, or continued attempts to gain access to intel operations, Moscow is keep pressure on NATO. -mnno]
GERMANY/RUSSIA/TECH/SEC - Russian satellite activity raises concerns for Starlink, German space commander says
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russian-satellite-activity-raises-concerns-starlink-german-space-commander-says-2026-10-09/
The shadowing of a Western satellite supporting Ukraine by a cluster of Russian military satellites earlier this year demonstrates capabilities that could threaten commercial constellations such as Elon Musk's Starlink, Germany’s space commander told Reuters.
In May, Russia manoeuvred four military satellites, known as Cosmos 2610 through 2613, close to a commercial radar-imaging satellite, according to the US Space Force. Finland's ICEYE, which supplies data to the US and its allies, confirmed to Reuters that it was one of their satellites.
Major General Michael Traut, head of German space command, described the Russian spacecraft as “chasing” the ICEYE satellite, which provides battlefield intelligence imagery.
"Russia is demonstrating ways, which, if employed directly towards a mega constellation like Starlink, could have an impact on their lifetime" and on the quality of service for all users, not just Ukraine, General Traut told Reuters. He said satellite capabilities could be disrupted even without a direct attack.
That “concerns me quite a lot,” he said.
His fears underscore Western militaries' growing reliance on commercial satellite networks, raising questions about who should protect them. Traut's comments also come as European officials accuse Russia of escalating sabotage efforts across the region aimed at undermining support for Ukraine, including recent drone and arson attacks and a plot to disable undersea cables.
FRANCE/POL - French student protesters vow to keep up their fight after scoring first win
https://www.reuters.com/world/french-student-protesters-vow-keep-up-their-fight-after-scoring-first-win-2026-10-09/
French student unions vowed on Friday to keep up protests after scoring what they called their first win in a campaign that is increasingly supported by Paris' elite universities, with 141 schools still shut around the country.
The protests have snowballed into a wider movement, with more university students weighing in to express their anger over what they call a dysfunctional system, worsened by spending cuts spurred by France's budget crunch.
Student and teacher unions have called for another round of nationwide school strikes next Tuesday.
France's education ministry is in the process of urgently contacting around 3,000 spare teachers who could be sent to schools with the most pressing needs, often located in low-income areas, Education Minister Edouard Geffray said.
Speaking during a visit to a school in the Paris region that was vandalised during protests, he said more than 100 teaching staff had been injured so far in the nationwide protests.
The movement has fueled similar student protests in Belgium, which on Friday were amplified by a national strike during which scuffles broke out between protesters and police in Brussels.
IRAN/TECH - Iranian campaign planted fake articles in real U.S. publications using ChatGPT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/10/09/chatgpt-users-iran-planted-ai-generated-articles-us-news-media/
“The bill will follow Americans beyond the fighting itself,” an opinion piece in the Port St. Joe Star, a tiny Florida weekly newspaper, warned of the Iran war last month.
The article ran under the byline Ervin Hoskins, which has also appeared on articles critical of the war in larger publications including Daily Kos and Middle East Monitor, which together have more than 3 million followers on Facebook.
But ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday that Hoskins’s purported work was generated using its chatbot by users based in Iran as part of an “influence campaign.” The campaign placed about 100 fake articles across at least 20 news outlets, the company said.
RUSSIA/TECH/MIL - Russia's Yandex says it is unclear whether data centre can be restored after drone strike
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-yandex-says-unclear-whether-data-centre-can-be-restored-after-drone-2026-10-08/
Russian technology and AI company Yandex said on Thursday it could not yet determine whether equipment at a data centre hit by a Ukrainian drone attack could be restored.
Yandex said earlier that the attack on its Sasovo hub, one of its five large data centres, caused a fire and forced it to suspend operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers.
"The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed," Yandex said in a statement. "For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is possible to restore the data centre equipment in Sasovo."
The company earlier said some of its services were unavailable and specialist teams were at the site assessing the damage.
Two of Yandex's three supercomputers, used to develop its AI model, are housed at the Sasovo data centre. Yandex has not said whether they were damaged.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking to reporters in Kyiv, did not refer specifically to the strike on Yandex, but said Ukraine was "mirroring" Russian attacks on data centres.
"We always respond in mirror-like fashion," Zelenskiy said. "You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can't share all the details."
RSA/POL/SEC - South Africa pulls asylum directive after violent protests
https://www.dw.com/en/south-africa-pulls-asylum-directive-after-violent-protests/a-79605037
South Africa has halted a new directive for the processing of asylum applications after violent protests broke out in Johannesburg and Durban.
The directive was issued by the Department of Home Affairs in response to a court judgment.
The court had ruled that asylum seekers could not be denied access to South Africa's asylum system solely on procedural grounds, such as entering the country illegally.
Offices for asylum seekers were quickly overwhelmed, and that placed officers at serious risk, the Department of Home Affairs said.
That's because the court ruling led to days of protests in the major coastal city of Durban, which then spread to Johannesburg's Soweto township on Thursday.
Rioters torched 14 cars in Durban and 10 in Soweto. Shops were looted in both locations.
GIFT LINK: How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/world/middleeast/israel-embassy-milstein-huckabee.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HVE.KhLK.EuNOyYL06s53&smid=url-share
In late March, at the height of the Iran war, Israel quietly approved more settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank than it ever had at one time.
Staff members at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as potentially flouting one of President Trump’s explicit red lines for Israel — no annexation of the West Bank — and drafted an urgent report intended for policy makers in Washington.
That memo never reached Washington. It was quashed by David Milstein, a top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the process.
This was no isolated incident.
Since taking up his post in April 2025, Mr. Milstein, 36, has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein in both Jerusalem and Washington:
· As settler violence in the West Bank surged in the spring, for instance, he stymied embassy reporting suggesting that the Israeli government was failing to take action, according to the three officials. Instead the embassy sent a cable to Washington, viewed by The New York Times, praising Israel for “cracking down” on the attacks.
· When members of Congress pushed for accountability over the killings of Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces, he suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written, effectively stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts to gain information, according to multiple officials briefed on the matter.
· Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, Mr. Milstein began insisting on approving communications from the embassy section that handles Palestinian affairs, multiple officials with direct knowledge of the process said. The flow of cables plummeted from several a week to a few a month, as some staffers refrained from writing reports for fear that Mr. Milstein would block or rewrite them, these officials said.
Mr. Milstein’s interventions go far beyond those of any recent predecessor, several officials said. They and others said they were speaking out of concern that officials in Washington were getting a distorted view of Israeli actions through core diplomatic channels.