Global and U.S. News

Indirect U.S.-Iran talks in Doha ran into a third day on Sunday as Qatar sought the release of more than $6bn in frozen Iranian assets, a step that could lead to the Strait of Hormuz reopening and nuclear talks restarting, the Guardian reports. Qatar is pressing to compress the sequence of sanctions relief, reopening and talks, and Iran has agreed to cut that timetable from seven days to two; Gulf officials are waiting on Washington's answer to an Iranian proposal that could reopen the strait before Tuesday's midterms. Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi ruled out direct talks, and the UAE's Anwar Gargash said the Gulf was "braced for the worst" after missiles hit a Qatari LNG tanker near Hormuz on Friday.

Israeli forces kept Hebron, the West Bank's largest city, under lockdown for a tenth day and threatened to widen the operation, which began after two Israeli soldiers were killed near the city on October 23, Al Jazeera reports. Mayor Yousef al-Jabari said more than 3,300 Palestinians have been displaced or affected, 15 homes and other structures demolished, 327 businesses closed and about 80,000 students kept out of school, with daily economic losses above 12 million shekels ($3.8m). The UN's OCHA counted 397 settler attacks across the West Bank in October, the most in any month since its monitoring began in 2006.

Israeli strikes killed at least eight people in Gaza on Sunday despite the ceasefire in force since October last year, hospitals told the BBC. A drone strike in al-Mawasi near Khan Younis killed five officers of the Hamas-run police, and a missile killed three people beside a school in Gaza City, among them a four-year-old boy; the Israeli military said it had targeted militants. The Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN considers reliable, counts 1,580 people killed since the ceasefire began, as the Trump-brokered peace plan stalls.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the Trump administration's suit asking her to stop Alaska from certifying its Senate result while it investigated voter confusion over two similarly named candidates, Sen. Dan Sullivan and the unaffiliated Daniel Sullivan Jr., ruling that the federal government could not bring the case, NPR reports. She wrote that the order sought would likely breach Alaskans' right to a secret ballot. The Justice Department said it would appeal, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy has said certification could be "stopped or changed" if his inquiry into the second candidate's recruitment finds wrongdoing. Sullivan said on Sunday he would accept the result, win or lose.

Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan's Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican opponent Mike Rogers on Sunday, less than 48 hours before polls open, NPR reports. She skipped a planned unity event with El-Sayed, citing his ties to the streamer Hasan Piker and an outside ad blaming Israel for grocery prices that his campaign disowned. Chuck Schumer called the move a "despicable betrayal"; El-Sayed said it did not matter. The split in one of the seats deciding Senate control reflects a wider Democratic rift over Israel.

A charter Learjet 60 flying from Austin to the Bahamas crashed in a fireball in Palm Beach County on Sunday afternoon, killing all nine aboard, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed, CNN reports. Air-traffic audio has the pilot reporting ice and turbulence, then declaring a mayday in an overspeed descent; tracking data show a 27,000-foot drop in about a minute through a storm cell. No one on the ground was reported killed, though about 600 people need shelter. The FAA and NTSB are investigating what CNN says is the year's second-deadliest U.S. crash.

Three exit polls reported by the state agency BTA give acting President Iliana Iotova about 51% against roughly 44% for Andrey Gyurov, a banker and former caretaker prime minister backed by the pro-Western opposition, in Sunday's run-off, Al Jazeera reports. Iotova, who opposes military aid to Ukraine and favours dialogue with Moscow, took over in January when Rumen Radev resigned to win a parliamentary election. Turnout was about 27–29%, and official results are due Monday; the presidency is largely ceremonial, but a win would give both of Bulgaria's top offices to Radev's camp.

The local ceasefire that let civilians leave Russian-occupied Oleshky expired on Sunday night after five days, the BBC reports; it had been brokered with help from Melania Trump and Pope Leo and widened to the Kherson region. Overnight Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in four regions left hundreds of thousands of homes without power, more than 60,000 customers in Dnipropetrovsk were still cut off on Sunday evening, and a strike in Vinnytsia killed two, among them a 13-year-old girl. Zelensky said Russia was exploiting a shortage of ballistic-missile interceptors and again asked for Patriots.

Largely peaceful cost-of-living rallies called by the group Gen Z regelt across German cities on Saturday turned violent in Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg, the BBC reports, with shops looted in central Frankfurt. German authorities said at least 54 people were arrested in Frankfurt and more than 100 police officers were injured. The government had said beforehand that it did not expect the violence seen in France's protests to spread to Germany.

The Financial Times reports a rout in junk debt that it calls a "bloodbath" for credit investors, with aggressive tactics by borrowers to shift assets beyond creditors' reach adding to the sell-off.

Why it matters: It lands in the week the edition has tracked rising default protection on AI borrowers such as CoreWeave and Oracle; the FT piece itself could not be read.

OPEC and its allies kept crude output targets unchanged on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reports, with the group's production still below prewar levels and key shipping routes disrupted.

Binance resumed normal transactions and reported $3.64 billion in customer outflows as withdrawals picked up immediately, the New York Times reports, after the theft of $6.3 billion in tokens. The exchange told the Wall Street Journal it has now replaced roughly 95% of the stolen assets, up from the 90% it reported on Friday.

National Grid has agreed to buy 29.5 hectares at Dorman Point on Teesside for what would be Britain's largest electricity substation, next to a planned AI datacentre of nearly 500,000 square metres, the Guardian reports. Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen said up to 3.2GW of capacity would let the region compete for such projects. The purchase follows the government's draft national policy statement treating datacentres as core infrastructure, as local opposition to them grows elsewhere in Britain.

Slavery reparations are not on the official agenda of the Commonwealth summit that opened in Antigua and Barbuda on Sunday, and former St Vincent prime minister Ralph Gonsalves told the Guardian his understanding was that Britain had been "vehement" about keeping them off. He said British officials had suggested Prime Minister Andy Burnham might not attend otherwise; the government did not comment. Burnham agreed on Friday to a structured dialogue on reparatory justice, further than any predecessor, and Gonsalves expects its format to be settled at the leaders' private retreat.

New South Wales police have begun patrols by a new Armed Response Command, officers carrying long-arm rifles in busy tourist areas, at major events and at places of worship, the BBC reports; the unit will grow to 250 officers. It responds to the December 2025 Hanukkah shooting at Bondi Beach that killed 15, Australia's worst mass shooting in nearly three decades. Jewish community leaders backed the move, while Amnesty International warned against militarised policing and its use at peaceful protests.