Global and U.S. News

Federal prosecutors sent letters on Friday to at least 18 California county registrars demanding, within 48 hours, identifying details for voters on a Justice Department list and the sequestering of ballots whose citizenship cannot be verified; San Bernardino's letter names 1,133 people. 'Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,' said first assistant U.S. attorney Bill Essayli. State lawyers say the list is unreliable and the demand threatens to delay certification, with more than 330,000 mail ballots already counted; a hearing on the department's suit over about 20,000 'likely' noncitizen voters is set for Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the Pentagon has added Confucius Institutes, the Chinese-funded campus cultural centres, to its list of national security threats. He said 80 such centres had reappeared at 30 universities under different names after congressional restrictions, and that the Pentagon had dismantled all of them over the past two months. Neither report names the universities or the legal mechanism, and the Chinese embassy did not immediately comment.

Moody's kept France's credit rating unchanged on Friday, sparing it a downgrade while warning about its finances, according to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The agency cited the steady rise in French debt, higher borrowing costs and the political fragmentation that has made it hard to rein in borrowing, as protests continue across the country.

Ukraine says its military Starlink service is working again, the Wall Street Journal reports, after speed restrictions imposed by SpaceX on October 14 hampered its drone forces. The restoration follows a day after Kyiv said the cap was still in place.

U.S. officials told the New York Times that Iran is in 'advanced stages' of planning attacks against Americans, and the Financial Times reports an intelligence memo warning of plots to kill U.S. citizens in the Middle East. The government has ordered diplomats and other federal employees out of Saudi Arabia and is drawing down staff at other missions in the region.

Iraq began closing its border crossings with Iran on October 21 under U.S. pressure, shutting Shaib first and planning to keep only two of seven open, AFP reported; Iraq-Iran trade exceeded $10 billion last year. Pakistan halted trade at the Taftan and Gabd-Rimdan crossings on October 17, stranding about 2,000 trucks, citing security. The Wall Street Journal reports the closures tighten the squeeze of the U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports and air sanctions.

A 65-year-old woman, a close relative of the man who brought Ebola to Nairobi from Congo, has died in quarantine, Kenya's health ministry said, the second death in the country's first outbreak. Seven other patients, including three health workers, are in isolation, and the ministry says all cases belong to one cluster with no community spread. The Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine or treatment; more than 4,000 people have died in Africa since Congo confirmed the outbreak in May.

North Korea's Kim Jong Un arrived in the Chinese border city of Dandong on Saturday over the New Yalu River Bridge, which opened a week ago after a decade of delays, South Korean officials told Reuters and AFP; Reuters reported that Chinese Premier Li Qiang met him there. It is Kim's first known trip to China since the Beijing summit with Xi Jinping in September 2025, and it falls a day before the anniversary of China's entry into the Korean War. Neither Beijing nor Pyongyang had confirmed the visit.

Typhoon Champi glanced off Taiwan's northeast coast early on Saturday, killing a man swept away by waves off Liuqiu island and injuring 527 people, Taiwan's fire department said. More than 167,000 homes lost power, and offices and schools across northern and central Taiwan, including Taipei, closed for a second day. The weakening storm is forecast to turn north toward the Chinese coast and then southern Japan.

The former chief executive of Polar Train LNG told the Financial Times that Russia's Novatek financed and controlled the $25 billion Alaska gas project without Washington's approval, and U.S. executives have quit the venture. The New York Times, from interviews and documents, reports the hidden Russian financing of the U.S. firm and that the deal has been discussed in talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Senior creditors of JetBlue Airways are working with the financial adviser PJT Partners and the law firm Akin as the airline's shares and bonds fall, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Cubans seeking political change that 'now is the time' and urged them to pursue it through a discreet partnership with the CIA, in a post published moments after President Trump told a Florida rally that a warship returning from the Iran war would stop 50 yards off Cuba's coast. Cuba's deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said Washington was now resorting to public recruitment for the CIA. Talks between the two governments in recent months produced only more U.S. sanctions.