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MIDDLE EAST WAR | Day 224.

• Following recent reports that U.S. military planners were preparing options for new strikes, U.S. President Donald Trump, citing "productive discussions" with Iran, said in a social media post yesterday that the U.S. will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections but that the naval blockade of Iranian ports will remain in force. [more]
• OpenAI said yesterday that operatives in Iran used its ChatGPT models to help place about 100 articles critical of the U.S. war on Iran, written under the names of fake journalists, in about a dozen media outlets, several of them in the United States. The company says it has banned the accounts involved but could not determine whether the operatives were directly affiliated with the Iranian government. [more]

UKRAINE | Today is day 1,686 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday accused the U.S. of "unwillingness" to help Ukraine, criticizing U.S. talks with Russia on future economic projects while U.S. officials call the war a stalemate. Zelenskyy says Russian strikes killed 78 people across Ukraine over the past two days, including at least 35 in the eastern city of Kramatorsk. [more]
• A Ukrainian delegation is scheduled to begin two days of talks in Miami, Florida, today with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on new proposals to end the war, including security guarantees for Ukraine and a postwar economic plan. [more]
• Russian technology company Yandex said today that a drone attack has disabled part of its data center in Russia's Kaluga region, a day after a Ukrainian drone struck another of the company's data centers, which houses supercomputers used to develop its artificial intelligence model. [more]

HURRICANE ISAIAS | In its latest advisory, the National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Isaias has strengthened, with maximum sustained winds near 110 mph, and is likely to become a major hurricane later this morning, before making landfall on the northern Gulf Coast tonight or early tomorrow. Evacuation orders have been issued for parts of the Alabama and Florida coasts, and nearly two-thirds of the Gulf's offshore oil production has been shut down ahead of the storm's arrival. [official update] [more]

U.S. IMMIGRATION | Alleging fraud and abuse of the work-visa system, the Trump administration said yesterday that it is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and six IT outsourcing firms from a program that allows companies to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. The administration also announced investigations into the use of J-1 exchange visas at nine universities, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [more on Microsoft] [more on universities]

MORE U.S. IMMIGRATION | Following reports that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded a man in the neck yesterday as he sat in a car with a 5-year-old boy during an attempted arrest in Manhattan, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged President Donald Trump to halt immigration enforcement operations in the city. [more]

U.S. MILITARY | After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's pledge that it would be "public," the Pentagon announced yesterday that the December 3 firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, will be live-streamed. [more]

U.S. FEDERAL DEBT | According to a Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday, the federal budget deficit rose to $2 trillion in the fiscal year that ended September 30 – up $218 billion from the previous year. Net interest payments on the national debt topped $1 trillion for the first time. [full report] [more]

U.S. EMPLOYMENT | Labor Department data released yesterday show that initial claims for U.S. unemployment benefits fell to 197,000 last week from a revised 199,000 the week before – the fourth straight week below 200,000. [full report] [more]

U.S. MORTGAGES | Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reports that the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in the U.S. rose to 7.40% this week – up from 7.28% last week and 6.30% a year ago. It was the seventh straight weekly increase, leaving the rate at its highest level since November 2023. [more]

U.S. AND VENEZUELA | Federal prosecutors in New York yesterday unveiled new charges against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him and his wife, Cilia Flores, of overseeing a state-sponsored system of torture whose victims included several Americans. [more]

YEMEN AND SAUDI ARABIA | Saudi authorities say three Saudi citizens were killed yesterday in attacks claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport. Lufthansa, Air India, and several other airlines have since suspended flights to the Saudi capital. [more]

ITALY | Ahead of next year's national election, Italian lawmakers yesterday gave final approval to a contested electoral reform championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which introduces a fully proportional system with a seat bonus guaranteeing a parliamentary majority to any alliance winning more than 42% of the vote. [more]

POLAND | Amidst fears of further violence following two attacks at Polish schools this week, police say they have detained at least 10 young people, mainly for making online threats, and have deployed officers to 10,000 schools across the country. [more]

FRANCE | Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters in Paris yesterday as student-led demonstrations demanding more education funding continued across France. The Interior Ministry says more than 6,600 people have been arrested since the protests began in late September. [more]

U.K. | Counterterrorism police say two Latvian men were arrested yesterday after being found inside the perimeter of RAF Molesworth, a U.S. Air Force-operated base in England that houses U.S. and NATO intelligence operations. Authorities say there is nothing to suggest a link to last month's security alert at RAF Fairford, a British base used by U.S. bombers. [more]

JAPAN AND RUSSIA | The Japanese government has lodged a protest with Moscow after Russia asked the Netherlands and several other countries yesterday to extradite nine International Criminal Court officials, including the court's Japanese president. Reports note that a Moscow court sentenced the nine in absentia last year in response to the ICC's 2023 arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. [more]

INDIA | Opposition parties and youth-led protesters plan a major demonstration in New Delhi, India, tomorrow demanding the resignation of the country's election commission chief amidst allegations that the removal of some 130 million names from voter rolls in a nationwide verification drive has unfairly benefited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party. [more]

AI INDUSTRY | Technology shares led losses on Wall Street yesterday following reports that OpenAI's annualized revenue is about $20 billion lower than investors had previously estimated. [more]

NOBEL PRIZES | South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights who has served as a judge on international tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today "for her efforts to promote peace and international law." [full announcement] [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 2012, a Taliban gunman in Pakistan's Swat Valley shot 15-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai, an outspoken opponent of the Pakistani Taliban's ban on education for girls. She survived the attack and in 2014, at the age of 17, became the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate. [more history]