Early Edition: July 17, 2026

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A curated guide to major news and developments over the weekend. Here’s today’s news:

IRAN WAR

The United States launched a new set of attacks against Iran overnight, as fighting continued for a sixth straight day. Iranian state media reported that strikes had hit two bridges in Bandar Khamir, killing at least seven people, as well as a railway junction near Bandar Abbas. Iran also launched new missile attacks against U.S.-allied nations in the Middle East, including Qatar, and its first direct attack in Syria. Iran’s state media said the Revolutionary Guards had attacked a U.S. special operations command centre in al-Tanf, Syria, in retaliation for the killing of Iranian soldiers in Iranshahr. The escalation in attacks has once again largely halted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Max Bearak, Shirin Hakim, and Farnaz Fassihi report for the New York Times; Jon Gambrell reports for AP News; Reuters reports.  

Iran has asked Yemen’s Houthis to stand ready to close the Red Sea oil route if the United States strikes Iranian power infrastructure, three sources told Reuters yesterday. Another source close to the Houthis said the group had completed preparations to attack shipping by deploying missiles and drones ​near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Representatives of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who are already in Yemen will control the decision on when to close the strait, the sources added. Parisa Hafezi, Samia Nakhoul, and Jonathan Saul report.  

YEMEN 

Yemen’s Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said yesterday that all Saudi oil and other vital facilities would be targets for the group’s missiles and drones if Riyadh escalated its involvement in Yemen. The warning came after the Houthis fired missiles at Saudi Arabia, accusing the kingdom of bombing an airport under their control ​on Monday, marking a rupture in a four-year ⁠truce between the two sides. “The real equation is Sanaa airport for Riyadh airport, airports for airports, ports for ports, and blockade for blockade,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech. Reuters reports  

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR 

Ukraine’s ousted defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, defended his efforts to modernize the Ukrainian military and directly attacked the country’s top general in a statement issued yesterday. “Instead of figuring out how to defeat Russia asymmetrically,” Fedorov said, referring to the drone campaign, Syrskyi “figured out how to split the country.” Fedorov added that he had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to remove Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi but that Zelenskyy declined. Cassandra Vinograd, Andrew E. Kramer, and Oleksandr Chubko report for the New York Times.  

Zelenskyy announced yesterday that he was appointing Yevhenii Khamara, acting head of Ukraine’s SBU domestic security service, as acting defense minister and would ask parliament to approve him permanently for the post. The SBU’s Alpha team, which Khmara had previously led, has played a leading role in Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure. Yuliia Dysa, Max Hunder, and Dan Peleschuk report for Reuters.  

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR 

Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, Palestinian health officials said. Conflict monitor ACLED, which tracks Israeli attacks in Gaza, said airstrikes ​in Gaza increased to more than ⁠40 in June, the highest monthly total since the ceasefire. Nidal al-Mughrabi reports for Reuters.  

OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS 

International Criminal Court judges yesterday ordered a suspect from Libya to stand trial on charges including murder, rape, and torture of detainees at the notorious Mitiga prison. The unanimous decision confirmed 17 charges against Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri. Mike Corder reports for  AP News.  

The Council of Europe yesterday warned Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands that proposed EU “return hubs” for rejected asylum seekers in third countries could pose serious human rights risks, including arbitrary detention and ill-treatment. It urged governments to adopt strict safeguards. Reuters reports.  

TECH DEVELOPMENTS 

Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI yesterday unveiled Kimi K3, a massive open-weight AI model that early benchmarks suggest rivals or surpasses leading U.S. systems in coding and general language tasks, while combining a 1-million-token context window with competitive pricing. Madison Mills reports for Axios. 

In a speech at the opening ceremony of the World AI Conference in Shanghai today, Chinese President Xi Jinping positioned China as the leader of a new global AI order, promoting open-source AI, greater support for developing countries, and the China-led World AI Cooperation Organisation as an alternative to U.S.-led AI initiatives. Laurie Chen, Casey Hall, and Eduardo Baptista report for Reuters.  

U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced plans this week for him to travel to Washington and meet President Trump on Monday, even preparing his aircraft and sending an advance team, but White House officials told Axios that no meeting had ever been scheduled, and Netanyahu’s trip was later cancelled. The officials added that Trump was angered last week when Netanyahu publicly criticized Trump’s plan to sell F-35 jets to Turkey. Barak Ravid reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted representatives from more than 65 countries at the State Department yesterday, hoping to rally support against what he said was the resurgence of far-left political terrorism, such as the antifa movement. Rubio was joined by FBI Director Kash Patel, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. After the conference ended, the State Department announced visa restrictions that it said would block the “entry of foreign nationals who finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal Far-Left Terrorist networks.” Adam Taylor reports for the Washington Post.  

Seven U.S. aid workers who had been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to fight the Ebola outbreak are in quarantine at a new isolation facility in Kenya, according to Samaritan’s Purse, the charity that employed them. They are the first known people to quarantine at the facility, which has sparked huge opposition in Kenya and is at the heart of a legal case in which a court has ordered work to be suspended. A State Department official said the aid workers had “voluntarily moved to the Kenya facility for precautionary monitoring and isolation.” Emma Farge reports for Reuters.  

China today urged the United States to withdraw its new “discriminatory” visa regulations and said it reserves the right to take reciprocal measures. The Department of Homeland Security yesterday moved to tighten visa durations for foreign students, cultural exchange visitors, and journalists, including reducing the period for Chinese journalists to 90 days. Reuters reports.  

U.S. IMMIGRATION DEVELOPMENTS 

The Department of Homeland Security also announced yesterday that it was reviving a policy that gives immigration officers wide authority to deny green cards to people they deem likely to rely on public assistance. The Trump administration first moved to restrict green cards for people receiving public assistance during the president’s first term. But those efforts were met with legal challenges and were later reversed by the Biden administration. Madeleine Ngo and Karoun Demirjian report for the New York Times.  

More than 25,000 federal law enforcement officers outside ICE were diverted to immigration enforcement at various points in 2025, according to a new report published by the ACLU. The administration has also focused on state agencies, including the Florida Highway Patrol and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which have begun conducting routine immigration sweeps, the ACLU found. Russell Contreras reports for Axios. 

The Trump administration’s removal of more than 100 immigration judges is undermining the independence of the courts and the U.S. justice system, a panel of independent experts appointed to the U.N. Human Rights Council said yesterday. Jasper Ward reports for Reuters.  

U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met yesterday with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) made the meeting a condition of his support for advancing Blanche’s nomination as attorney general. Tillis said on social media that “he commend[ed] Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did.” However, one victim who attended the meeting called it “insufficient,” adding that Blanche treated it as a “check-the-box exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation.” Chris Marquette reports for POLITICO.  

A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, published yesterday, endorsed the growing field of extreme event attribution, which measures how much climate change has contributed to specific events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires. The report says the science has become more reliable and could inform legal cases seeking damages from fossil fuel companies. Raymond Zhong reports for the New York Times. 

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS 

“Great damage has been done to our country,” Trump said yesterday in his prime-time address to the country. “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue.” However, the documents released by the White House yesterday to support Trump’s claims do not back up his most aggressive statements about election security. One document states, “We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results.” Julian E. Barnes and Maggie Haberman report for the New York Times. 

Trump used his speech to accuse U.S. intelligence agencies of covering up alleged Chinese efforts targeting the 2020 election. Trump said that documents released by the White House show that dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China’s election targeting and acquisition of voter files were kept out of the presidential briefing. His allegations on China’s influence went beyond the conclusions reached by the intelligence community, which stated that China sought influence but did not interfere with election infrastructure. China said today that it has never interfered in U.S. elections and has no interest in doing so, urging Washington to stop making “groundless accusations.” Rebecca Falconer reports for Axios; AP News reports.  

Trump yesterday said TV networks that did not feature live coverage of his address on election security should have their broadcast licenses revoked. CNN, ABC, and NBC opted against live coverage of the speech, with others such as CBS, MS NOW, and Fox News broadcasting parts of the speech. ABC and NBC did carry Trump’s speech live on their streaming platform, with both platforms airing special reports that analyzed his claims about the safety of the U.S. voting system. Michael M. Grynbaum reports for the  New York Times. 

The Treasury Department’s top tax policy official, Kenneth Kies, was forced out of his job after warning the White House that it risked violating a federal law prohibiting senior officials’ involvement in IRS audits, according to sources. The sources said that Kies repeatedly clashed with White House officials and that Trump had become increasingly frustrated with him. Brian Schwartz, Richard Rubin, and Josh Dawsey report for the Wall Street Journal.  

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