🌀 🇺🇸 📍 Las Vegas is officially in the cone ahead of Hurricane Rachel

📎 Bryce Shelton

🌀 🇺🇸 📍 Chicago is officially in the cone ahead of Hurricane Isaias

📎 Bryce Shelton

🗳 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials. -The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/10/trump-iran-strike-midterms/688910/

https://archive.ph/5Em1d

📎 Faytuks News

🇪🇹 🇪🇷 🇪🇹 Several credible reports (including AFP and DW) confirm that Eritrean forces are not only inside Ethiopia but also expanding in northern and central Tigray, digging trenches and more.

In its attempt to create strategic depth in Ethiopia, the Eritrean government is making Ethio-Eritrea war a self-fulfilling prophecy.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/10/war-has-returned-tigray-time-it-may-not-stay-ethiopia

📎 Abel Abate Demissie

🇰🇷❌🇺🇦 South Korea recalled its ambassador from Ukraine after Kiev failed to issue the requested apology to the South Korean government.

The ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated however that it will keep a door open so that Kiev and Seoul may resolve this dispute in the future.

Recall that Ukraine violated a confidentiality agreement with South Korea over the repatriation of two DPRK prisoners, refused to take accountability and called the ROK ambassador a liar by denying they even signed such an agreement and refused to apologise for everything.

🔗 https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20261008180000504?section=politics/all&site=topnews02

🇫🇷🇩🇪⛽️ France and Germany say diesel promise to Trump won’t require new stock release

The G7 pledge to release a further 100 million barrels of crude oil and fuel stocks to temper rising gas prices is being reframed by Paris and Berlin as part of a previous commitment made under the IEA back in March at the outset of the 3rd Gulf War when all IEA members pledged to release 400 million barrels of crude oil and fuel.

That 400 million barrel release commitment has still not been fulfilled as IEA member states are continuing releasing barrels of crude oil and fuel.

As many have noticed at the pump, those releases had virtually no effect on gas prices.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/france-and-germany-say-diesel-promise-to-trump-wont-require-new-stock-release/

🇮🇷💰🛢 Kpler Suspects Gulf Producers Are Paying Iran for Safe Passage

Middle East crude exports have rebounded toward pre-war levels, but Brent remains near $100 as costly rerouting, tanker shortages, STS transfers and military escorts keep delivered oil expensive.

Analysts suspect Iran may be quietly collecting tolls for safe passage through Hormuz, potentially taking 10%–20% of some cargoes, although the claims remain unverified.

Any Iranian transit fees would face major legal and geopolitical challenges, while the Gulf’s vessel-intensive shuttle system continues to drive freight rates higher and tighten global tanker availability.

Kpler estimates Middle East crude and condensate exports averaged roughly 16.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in September and exceeded the pre-war average of 18 million bpd on several days during the final week of the month. That recovery has done surprisingly little to bring oil prices back down, as we noted earlier this week. Producers are moving more crude through alternative pipelines and ports, while tankers moving through Hormuz increasingly rely on U.S. military escorts and vessel-intensive chains of ship-to-ship (STS) transfers. Brent crude is still trading around $100 per barrel, nearly $30 per barrel above its pre-war level. Iran could be quietly collecting tolls from ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, with exporters passing on these costs to consumers. According to Michelle Brohard, head of policy and geopolitical risk at Kpler, certain Gulf nations could have quietly struck deals with Iran to keep their oil flowing on fears that they cannot rely indefinitely on Washington to keep Tehran at bay.

“I suspect there is a toll that’s being paid, which is giving these ships safe passage,” Brohard said in an interview with energy analyst Rory Johnston last week. “I also suspect that these countries know that this is unsustainable from a perspective of [the] US escorting [ships], and also unsustainable from them paying Iran 10 percent of their cargo, or 20 percent of their cargo. So you’re starting to see like what I would call like a race to get out as much as possible, as quickly as possible before the war restarts,” she added.

🔗 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Kpler-Suspects-Gulf-Producers-Are-Paying-Iran-for-Safe-Passage.html

🇵🇰⚔️🇾🇪 The New York Times reports that Pakistani fighter-bombers conducted air strikes over Houthi territory, marking Pakistan's official entry into the Yemeni Civil War on the side of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There are 8.000 Pakistani soldiers deployed in the KSA defending oil infrastructure and the KSA's borders.

A few days ago, press release from the PLC reported the death of a "foreign military advisor" as a result of Houthi attacks. The foreign advisor was likely Pakistani according to conflict observers.

🔗 https://archive.ph/S44nD

🇺🇸🇷🇺🇪🇺 After sabotaging the Nordstream Pipeline, the U.S. wants to join forces with Russia and rebuild it with the U.S. taking a cut from the profits.

If the original Nordstream project was built by a German-Franco-Dutch-Russian consortium, the new project will involve American and Russian investors.

Discussions were led by Kirill Dmitriev the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or Russia's sovereign wealth fund, and Special Envoy, Jared Kushner.

Kushner, who has been ‌trying to broker a truce between Russia and Ukraine, views doing business as central to restoring peace. Such a deal would enable US investors to profit from energy flows to Europe once the war ends.

Dmitriev and Kushner have met in Moscow and New York in recent weeks. While it was unclear to what degree they discussed Nord Stream on those occasions, the topic remains on the agenda, two of the people told Reuters.

"Any deals will have to be negotiated by Russia with DFC (US International Development Finance Corporation) and Treasury and must ​benefit United States taxpayers and companies," a White House official said, when asked about the pipeline discussions.

Its unlikely that these discussions will progress further as the U.S. has sanctioned the Nordstream pipeline and the companies involved and so did the EU. For the Trump Administration to be able to lift the sanctions, it would need to convince Congress which the GOP is unlikely to keep the majority after the Midterms and a Democratic dominated Congress will most certainly be opposed to any easing of sanctions on Russia.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle would also be the EU's total unwillingness to resume purchases of Russian gas. A spokeswoman for Germany's economy and energy ministry said Nord Stream and Russian gas were sanctioned in Europe and that Germany had found alternatives. She said any reopening of the pipelines required government approval and this was not desired.

While Germany's main opposition party, the AfD, is in favor of resuming Russian gas purchases, there will be stiff opposition from the mainstream parties and other EU countries especially Poland.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-russia-explore-gas-sale-europe-amid-ukraine-war-say-sources-2026-10-08/

🇺🇸🇪🇺🇨🇦🇱🇹 EU, Canada and Lithuania pull out of disinformation conference after US pressure

The Trump administration pressured diplomatic officials from the EU, Canada and Lithuania to pull out of an international conference on disinformation after organizers announced panels warning of the threat posed by American government officials and the country’s influence broadly, according to excerpts of a State Department cable seen by POLITICO.

The conference, titled # Disinfo2026, included sessions that described the U.S. as a “foreign information manipulation and interference” actor, or “FIMI,” which bothered the Trump administration, according to the cable. The conference is being held Wednesday and Thursday in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

The State Department asked American embassies in several European countries and the EU to express Washington’s concerns and “assess” whether the governments involved in the conference agree with the U.S. being characterized as a FIMI actor, according to the cable.

FIMI is an EU term used to describe activities that try to distort public information, such as spreading disinformation online, usually by foreign actors such as Russia. The conference conflates the U.S. with “foreign adversaries like Russia and China,” which is a “false equivalence” that “obscures the scale and nature of Russian and Chinese interference in our democracies,” the cable states.

The demarche request appears to be an unusual administration effort to use allied government pressure to silence criticism from European citizens and Americans abroad (three U.S. citizens appeared on one of the panels that prompted the cable). It also marks an acceleration of the Trump administration’s years-long pressure campaign on the continent, which includes U.S. criticism of perceived EU censorship.

The recipients of the cable included U.S. embassies in France, Norway, Romania and Poland. The embassies each were told to tell their hosts — verbally, not in writing — that the U.S. was unhappy with the panels on American disinformation, according to the cable and a U.S. official, who, like others, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.

One of those panels, titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back” featured two American researchers and a former CIA official and looked at how the U.S. had become a disinformation threat to Europe. Another, titled “Under attack: How the counter-disinformation community is dealing with US government pressure,” asked legal experts to weigh in on the threat of U.S. government travel bans against European figures.

The State Department asked some of those countries — but not all — to reconsider participating in the event, said the U.S. official familiar with the cable, which came from the secretary of State’s office.

🔗 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/07/disinformation-conference-europe-us-pressure-01111134