3: Airports in the French cities of Lyon, Toulouse, and Lille closed and were evacuated on Wednesday after receiving email threats. This followed similar recent evacuations from other tourist attractions like the Louvre Museum and Palace of Versailles. A government spokesperson encouraged French citizens not to allow terror tactics to overwhelm them, urging “Vigilance, yes. Fear, no.”
10: The US Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned 10 members of Hamas involved in managing the terrorist network’s global financial operations. Access to any funds held in the United States will be blocked, and they will be prohibited from doing business with American companies and individuals. Treasury officials said they would even clamp down on fundraising done via cryptocurrency.
19 million: The World Food Program is asking donors for $19 million in emergency funds to assist survivors of the series of major earthquakes in western Afghanistan that have killed thousands and flattened entire villages. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: The WFP urgently needs $400 million to bring food to Afghan communities before winter, when many are cut off from the wider world for weeks at a time as snow and landslides prevent access to mountain towns.
3: A Cambodian court sentenced opposition politician Thach Setha to another three years in prison over a social media post that criticized then-Prime Minister Hun Sen’s policy toward Vietnam. It’s a sensitive subject in Cambodia, as Hun Sen was originally installed in 1985 in a government backed by Vietnam, which had invaded the country to force out the Khmer Rouge in 1979. The Hun Sen regime has been known to target the opposition with legal harassment and imprisonment.
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What is President Trump trying to achieve in Iran, and how does his strategy compare to past US interventions in the Middle East?
The US has paused Russian oil sanctions in a bid to stabilize energy markets rocked by the war with Iran. Administration officials stress that it’s a “tailored” measure, applying only to oil already loaded onto tankers, but it’s still a gift to Russia, which has already been clocking an extra $150 million daily in oil revenues since the war began.
4: The number of crew members aboard a US refuelling plane – out of six total – who died after the aircraft crashed in neighboring Iraq on Thursday, US Central Command said this morning.