1. The Iran-backed Houthi militia yesterday launched a deadly attack on an international airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital that Saudi officials said killed at least 12 people and injured over 300 more, in a dramatic escalation of the war between the kingdom and the Houthis. The strike, which a senior Houthi official said the militia was responsible for, was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February.The latest toll was announced early Sunday morning by the Saudi civil aviation authority, which said four Saudi nationals and one U.S. citizen were among the 12 dead. It added that of the 309 people injured, some were in critical condition. (Source: nytimes.com)
2. President Trump yesterday told reporters he is considering whether the United States will conduct offensive strikes against the Houthis in response to recent Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and other civilian infrastructure. The Houthis are attacking several Yemeni government positions south and west of Taiz City in an effort to fully encircle and capture the city, while Yemeni government-aligned forces continue to stall the Houthi advances. (Source: understandingwar.org)
3. Iran has managed to preserve its missile and drone factories despite months of US and Israeli bombing, officials familiar with the matter said, allowing it to replenish its arsenals while President Donald Trump holds off on strikes ahead of the midterm elections. Tehran still has the capacity to manufacture weapons to rebuild its arsenal, according to the Western officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private assessments. One official said Iran remains well-stocked with ballistic missiles and some anti-ship weapons, and can quickly add more. The Western official said Russia was providing missiles as well, echoing a separate assessment in June. Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment. (Source: bloomberg.com)
4. More than a week after a young plague researcher’s mysterious death from pneumonia, Russia has still not publicly identified the pathogen that killed her. The possibility that the researcher contracted pneumonic plague in her lab led to global fears of an outbreak. Those worries have begun to recede as no other known cases have surfaced in the Irkutsk region, where Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old researcher at the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died on Oct. 2. But the absence of an official explanation for Ms. Shipilova’s death, despite thousands of tests conducted on others in the community and on her own remains, has stoked concerns about what, if anything, Russia’s authoritarian government might be hiding. (Source: nytimes.com)
5. Kevin Esvert:
It's worth highlighting how unusual it would be for a previously healthy 28 year-old woman like the Irkutsk researcher to die of pneumonia from something other than lab exposure. For 15-44 year old's in the UK in the 90s, the rate was just 1.2 per million annually. (Sources: sculptingevolution.org, x.com)
