The New York Times reports that Timothy Mellon, a railroad magnate and heir to the Mellon family fortune, is the $130 million donor funding the U.S. military during the government shutdown. President Trump praised Mellon as “a great gentleman” and “a great patriot” without naming him.
The IDF confirmed a drone strike in southern Lebanon that killed Zayn al-Abidin Hussein Fatouni, a terrorist in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force. Fatouni led the group’s anti-tank missile unit and was involved in rebuilding Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the region, the military said.
Trump on the White House ballroom: “We’ve raised over $350 million. It’s a beautiful room… I don’t have any plan to call it after myself… we haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
Trump on the September inflation data beating expectations: “Very good. We have great financial numbers… We had a new stock market high — we’re doing great.”
French investigators have confirmed that the $102 million Louvre jewel heist was an inside job, with digital evidence linking a museum security staffer to the suspects. Authorities say over 150 clues, including DNA traces, support the case. The Louvre has since reopened amid nationwide outcry and a full security audit.
Israel will return to standard time overnight between Saturday and Sunday, marking the end of daylight saving time for the year. At 2 a.m. early Sunday, October 26, clocks will move back to 1 a.m., giving Israelis an extra hour of sleep. Daylight saving time will return on March 27, 2026. The time change coincides with that of the European Union, but not with the United States, which will switch back on November 2.
President Donald Trump has embarked on a five-day trip to Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea—his longest foreign visit since taking office—aiming to secure trade, mineral, and ceasefire deals before meeting China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday, where he hopes to strike a major agreement despite lingering tensions over his trade policies.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel’s main goal in Gaza is to destroy Hamas’s remaining tunnels and dismantle its weapons, calling this key to securing victory. He said the IDF is prioritizing tunnel demolition while coordinating with U.S. officials to fully implement President Trump’s plan to eliminate Hamas’s military infrastructure.
New York Attorney General Letitia James was arraigned at a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, Friday, where she pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The charges against James stem from her 2020 purchase of a home in Norfolk, Virginia. Prosecutors allege that James misled a bank about the nature of the residence in order to obtain more favorable loan conditions. The indictment states that James misrepresented the financial institution in claiming it would be her secondary residence, and instead rented it out to a family. According to the indictment, the lower interest rate would allow James to save nearly $19,000 over the course of the 30-year loan. James entered the not guilty plea herself to U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker. She is being represented in the case by defense attorney Abbe Lowell, and by Andrew Bosse, a former assistant U.S. attorney based in Norfolk who formerly headed up the office’s criminal division. James’ arraignment is the latest in a string of prosecutions brought against the president’s perceived political foes, despite objections from career prosecutors — some of whom have since been fired or resigned. James, a Democrat, has long-drawn Trump’s ire after she campaigned for attorney general in 2016 largely on vows to investigate Trump’s actions and businesses. She also successfully secured a $450 million civil fraud case against him last year, though an appeals court later tossed the financial penalty portion of the case. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a statement after she was indicted. “These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” she added. Her indictment, like the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, was presented to a grand jury by former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, whom President Donald Trump installed as the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia last month. Trump, in September, said he would install Halligan as the top prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia, replacing interim attorney Erik Siebert, who resigned under pressure to indict both Comey and James. “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” Halligan said in a statement. “The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.” After the arraignment, it is likely that she will file a motion to dismiss her case for vindictive and selective prosecution, following similar steps taken by Comey’s legal team in Alexandria earlier this week.
British Airways has confirmed it will restart daily flights between London Heathrow and Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, joining a growing list of European carriers restoring scheduled service to Israel. Spain’s Iberia will relaunch its Madrid–Tel Aviv route, rejoining Air Europa which recently resumed operations on the same city pair. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) will resume its Copenhagen–Tel Aviv route next week after a nine-year hiatus. Germany’s low-cost carrier Eurowings and Swiss International Air Lines are also resuming flights, while Italy’s ITA Airways and Air India are expected to restore service by year-end. The return of major European airlines is beginning to ease the surge in fares that followed months of reduced capacity. Winter ticket prices on key routes have already fallen sharply as seat supply improves. U.S. carriers are also returning. American Airlines announced it will resume daily nonstop flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport beginning March 28, deploying Boeing 777-200ER aircraft; tickets go on sale October 27. The move follows United Airlines’ resumption of Newark–Tel Aviv service in July and Delta Air Lines’ restart of JFK–Tel Aviv service on September 1, which now operates seven times weekly. The coordinated return of transatlantic and European services signals a broader normalization of air links with Israel after months of disruptions, offering travelers more capacity and downward pressure on fares ahead of the winter season. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen has offered an account of his agency’s global intelligence operations—revealing that the widely-publicized sabotage of Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure in September 2024 is only part of a far broader espionage campaign. In an appearance on the The Brink podcast, Cohen said the now-notorious “pager operation” — in which operatives within Hezbollah were duped into activating explosive-laden devices — reflected a strategic paradigm he developed more than two decades ago. The method, he said, is known within Mossad as the “manipulated equipment method” or “pager method,” and it was implemented across “virtually every potential theatre of operation.” “You know how many equipment I mean treated equipment that we have in these countries? You can’t. You don’t. I do,” Cohen said of the scale of the campaign. “In all the countries that you can imagine,” he added when pressed for geographic specifics. Cohen traced the origins of the scheme to the early 2000s, saying it was developed in the period 2002-2004 while he led Mossad’s Special Operations division under former chief Meir Dagan. According to Cohen, the logic was simple: if adversaries are purchasing equipment, Israel should intervene by embedding itself into their supply chain and exploiting it. “If I know that … Iran or other countries … are buying something that I can be part of their supply chain, I will do,” Cohen said. He pointed to the 2006 Second Lebanon War — in which Israel fought Hezbollah — as the initial battlefield where this “manipulated equipment” tactic was tested. Cohen says that the strategic method was then scaled and refined for global use. Perhaps most striking, Cohen admitted that the system had not been deployed effectively in the Gaza Strip, identifying the region as a “critical shortfall” in Mossad’s intelligence architecture. “Not Gaza. Not enough,” he told the podcast host. He suggested that had the system been operational there, Israel’s readiness in the run-up to the October 7th 2023 attack might have been very different. Cohen didn’t restrict his critique to foreign targets. He also took aim at Israel’s internal security agencies. He said that when he sought to take responsibility for intelligence operations in Gaza prior to the October 7 attack, he was met with stiff resistance from both Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service) and the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Cohen claimed the agencies treated Mossad’s proposals with institutional arrogance: “We’re the IDF… we’re Shin Bet… we don’t need you.” He maintained that his warnings about a deficiency in intelligence coverage were regularly voiced, but went unheeded: “I have told and written that they ‘have nothing sufficient on the level of intelligence’ prior to October 7th.” And he challenged those agencies for failing to publicly dispute the claim. The revelations raise fundamental questions about how far Israel’s covert operations have extended—and where vulnerabilities remain. By describing a system that is global, meticulously engineered and highly embedded in adversary logistics, Cohen’s account sheds light on the evolving nature of intelligence warfare in the 21st century. But the admission of a gap in Gaza may fuel renewed scrutiny of Israel’s strategic posture along its southern border. Critics may argue that if Mossad’s capabilities were so advanced elsewhere, why were they unable—or perhaps unpermitted—to deploy them where they were arguably most needed. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Democratic Socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani tried to deflect mounting criticism Thursday after a bruising mayoral debate in which his rivals painted him as untested, unproductive, and missing in action in Albany. Speaking at a press conference in Murray Hill, Mamdani accused former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa of running on empty rhetoric rather than ideas for the city. “I spent 90 minutes on stage with Andrew Cuomo and I, like many here, could tell you his critiques of me, his critiques of Curtis Sliwa, but I could not tell you what he was actually running on to deliver for this city,” Mamdani said. But the Queens lawmaker, 34, refused to answer questions from reporters about his legislative record — or his absence from the state Capitol — even as critics continued to pounce on his threadbare résumé. Cuomo, running as an independent, accused Mamdani during Wednesday night’s Spectrum NY1 debate of “never accomplishing anything,” blasting him for passing just four bills in five years. “You never even proposed a bill on housing or education,” Cuomo charged. “You don’t know how to run a government. You don’t know how to handle an emergency. You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly… Shame on you!” Sliwa, the perennial GOP contender, was even more cutting. “Your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin,” he told Mamdani, drawing laughs from the audience. Mamdani, who entered the Assembly in 2020, has struggled to shake criticism that his legislative record is thin and his time in Albany fleeting. The New York Post reported in June that he missed roughly half of all Assembly votes this year while campaigning for mayor. After collecting his paycheck when the state budget passed in April, Mamdani didn’t return to Albany for the remainder of the session. He passed just one bill in 2024 — the same number as an 88-year-old Republican lawmaker from Nassau County who was homebound with health issues. Even some of Mamdani’s colleagues have expressed frustration. “I show up! I’m there every day doing my job,” said Assemblyman Chris Tague (R-Schoharie). “He should be an actor in Hollywood — everything is theatrics and acting with him.” While the number of standalone bills passed isn’t always the defining measure of a legislator’s influence, Mamdani has also struggled to shape the state’s sprawling budget process. His flagship free-bus pilot program, briefly included in the 2023 budget, was axed by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie the following year after Mamdani voted against the spending plan. Cuomo, 67, used the debate to turn Mamdani’s signature issues against him, mocking his complaints that Albany hasn’t delivered funding for juvenile offender programs. “If Zohran thought that there was money locked up in Albany, maybe he should have gone to Albany and proposed a bill to release it,” Cuomo quipped. The former governor, who’s styled his independent bid as a centrist alternative to both Mamdani’s democratic socialism and Sliwa’s hard-right populism, sought to portray the Assemblyman as an unserious protest candidate. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives,” Cuomo said. Mamdani fired back from the stage, accusing Cuomo of rewriting history. “We just had a former governor say, in his own words, that the city has been getting screwed by the state,” he […]
Authorities are on the scene after two suspicious packages were found near a kosher supermarket in Johannesburg, South Africa, following an earlier report of a suspicious device in the area.
