Top World News

Oct 8, 2026 - World

A senior aide to U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee stopped an urgent warning from reaching Washington that Israel might be violating one of President Donald Trump's clearest demands, according to a new report.The New York Times reported that Israel approved in March more West Bank settlements at once than it ever had before , and staff at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as possibly crossing Trump's red line against annexing the West Bank – so they wrote an urgent memo for policymakers in Washington.According to three U.S. officials, Huckabee's top adviser David Milstein quashed it.The Times reported that this wasn't the only time. A dozen people who work with Milstein told the paper that since he arrived in April 2025, he has repeatedly blocked or rewritten embassy reporting to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government look better.When settler violence in the West Bank surged this spring, embassy staff drafted reports suggesting Israel was failing to stop it, but officials said Milstein blocked them. The cable that instead went to Washington, with Milstein listed as first author, was titled "Government Cracks Down on Escalating West Bank Violence."Milstein also buried a report on investigations into the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and soldiers, according to officials. Embassy staff found that most of the cases had stalled, some had been closed and no one had been charged. Milstein argued for telling Congress that Israel was handling the cases properly."If you don't get accountability, you endanger more American citizens," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who led 30 lawmakers in asking for answers.Embassy cables dropped from several a week to a few a month after Milstein took control of the section that handles Palestinian affairs. Staffers told the Times they stopped writing reports because they expected him to block them, and he also reportedly asked colleagues whether they were "pro-Israel" or "pro-Hamas."The gap between what the embassy reported and what was in the news became wide enough that White House and State Department officials contacted embassy staff directly at least twice to find out what was happening, the Times reported.Some senior White House officials have complained about Milstein to colleagues.The Times said it isn't clear whether Milstein's actions changed White House policy. It also isn't clear whether the blocked memos would have reached Trump himself. But since February, Trump has said little about annexation even as Israel has expanded its control of the West Bank.Milstein, 36, is the stepson of right-wing radio host Mark Levin, a close ally of both Trump and Netanyahu, and officials told the Times those relationships affect how he is treated. He previously worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TeX) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis."The embassy ought to tell Washington everything — the good, the bad and the ugly," said Dan Kurtzer, who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush. "If they're not doing so, they are damaging the policy-making process and possibly undermining the president's policies."Huckabee didn't address any of the specific incidents, and he blew off the Times' reporting as "so lacking in fact that it ranks up with other Times farcical endeavors" and said he "categorically" rejects it.

Oct 8, 2026 - World

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says the revelation that two of President Donald Trump’s top political advisers worked for a pro-Russian government in the Balkans while the midterms loom is a sign Republicans are looking beyond Trump, according to Politico.Christie, a Republican who Politico says is considering another White House run, said the episode is indicative of the party looking past the Trump era.“If your top political advisors are not paying attention to the midterms and instead are paying attention to taking money off the table in a foreign country, that seems to indicate to me that they’ve moved on from Donald Trump as their top priority, and I think you’re going to see a lot of that,” Christie said.His comments follow a New York Times report that Chris LaCivita and James Blair spent several days in Republika Srpska, a partly self-governing region of Bosnia, in the week before Sunday’s elections there. Each was reportedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington law firm to advise the government on voting issues. The midterms are Nov. 3.Trump, who according to Politico, wasn’t aware of the trip, distanced himself from the pair in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. “They do not work for me, other than as outside consultants,” he wrote, adding that they are “allowed to do work for others” and that if there is a conflict, “I will terminate them, immediately!” The post came just months after Trump hailed Blair as “one of the brightest political minds in the Country” and tasked him with helping Republicans win the midterms, Politico noted.Not everyone sees the trip as a problem for the party’s midterm push. A Republican consultant working for MAGA Inc. told Politico the group’s work wasn’t affected because most of it is done by phone. “We were summoned to a 9 a.m. Saturday conference call where we went over polling information for two hours,” the consultant said. “I didn’t know they were out of town till I read it in The New York Times.”

Oct 8, 2026 - World

Responding to a Guardian report that revealed thousands of tonnes of fuel was transported to Russia, Seoul said it was investigating the casesSouth Korea will take legal action if it finds that shipments of fuel from its ports to Russia broke domestic law, the government has said, responding to a Guardian report on the trade.The government, in a statement issued by the foreign and trade ministries and the customs service, said that it is “checking additional information concerning the loading cases reported by the Guardian” and “if the verification establishes that our laws and regulations have been violated, it plans to act in accordance with the law”. Continue reading...

Oct 8, 2026 - World

Investigators probe Asahi, Kirin, Suntory and Sapporo breweries – which together control more than 90% of Japan’s beer marketJapanese authorities have raided the country’s four biggest breweries over suspicions they colluded to set the price of beer and other beverages – a practice media reports said could have forced drinkers to pay over the odds.Officials from the Fair Trade Commission this week searched the offices of Asahi Breweries, Kirin Brewery, Suntory Beer and Sapporo Breweries – which together control more than 90% of the domestic market. The quartet are suspected of violating the anti-monopoly law. Continue reading...

Oct 7, 2026 - World

The Trump administration's seemingly flippant response to a new plague discovered in Russia left two political analysts stupefied Wednesday. Last week, the World Health Organization reported the discovery of a pneumonic plague in Russia after a 28-year-old lab worker died. Russian authorities have denied the cause of the lab worker's death, although the case has raised a specter of concern about another COVID-19-like plague spreading across the globe. In turn, Trump officials have been quick to dismiss concerns about the plague. For instance, Trump claimed that pneumonia has "gotten stronger" over the years and the administration "will help them." Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration is "watching and monitoring it closely."The answers from the administration officials stupefied former Obama administration staffers Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes, who discussed it on a new episode of their podcast, "Pod Save the World.""As we learned in COVID, transparency is your only friend when you're dealing with these types of things," Rhodes said. "And if you have these discrepancies between local authorities and the Kremlin, it makes you wonder what in the world you can trust, and that's concerning.""This is just highlighting, once again, that when you have a breakdown in geopolitical trust ... you just feel like this stuff happens and you hope it doesn't get worse because it doesn't seem like Trump, or Rubio, or the World Health Organization are going to share information to keep this thing in a box," Rhodes added. Vietor took issue with the way Trump communicates with the American public about it. "Trump is a g------- idiot," Vietor said.