Daily Brief: Russian Strikes Kill 25 Across Ukraine

In today's Bilig's Daily Brief, Ukraine said Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 25 people, and Saudi Arabia said Houthi attacks on two airports killed three. Elsewhere, US Treasury yields touched their highest level since 2002, Samsung forecast a record profit and France suspended police stun grenades at school protests.

Russian strikes kill at least 25 across Ukraine

Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 25 people across Ukraine overnight into Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. Nineteen of them, including five children, died when a missile destroyed a five-storey apartment block in Pryluky, in the northern Chernihiv region, he said. Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi put the toll at 28, Reuters reported. Zelenskiy said Russia fired 70 missiles. Russia's defence ministry said it carried out a "massive strike" on military-industrial facilities.

Saudi Arabia says Houthi airport attacks killed three

Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports on Tuesday and Wednesday killed three people and injured 36, Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said on Wednesday. Two women, a Moroccan and an Algerian, died at Abha International Airport, and a Sudanese man died at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. On Thursday the Houthis claimed a new missile strike on the Riyadh airport and warned international airlines against using Saudi airspace, CBS News reported.

Tanker struck by projectiles off Qatar coast

A tanker was struck by multiple projectiles 51 nautical miles off Qatar's north coast on Wednesday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency said. It reported casualties among the crew but gave no number, and did not say who was responsible. Attacks on tankers around the Strait of Hormuz last week reached their highest weekly level since the Iran war began, Reuters reported, citing maritime security sources who counted at least 12.

Wall Street slips as Treasury yields hit 2002 highs

US stocks fell from record highs on Wednesday as bond yields rose. The S&P 500 lost 0.2% to 7,801.77, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.7% to 51,179.87 and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.2% to 27,538.69. The 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.36%, its highest since 2002. Minutes of the Federal Reserve's September meeting showed most officials expected another rate rise by year-end. Brent crude rose almost 4% to $104.18 a barrel in Asian trading on Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

France suspends police stun grenades at school protests

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez suspended police use of stun grenades at high school protests after a 15-year-old lost a hand in the northern city of Lens. The suspension will last "until the facts of the incident have been clarified", he said. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Wednesday the government would present proposals at the end of October. More than 6,500 people have been arrested since the protests began.

White House seeks Iran strike options, Atlantic reports

The White House has asked the Pentagon for options for strikes on Iran that could be carried out before the 3 November midterm elections, The Atlantic reported on Wednesday, citing two administration officials. No final decision has been made, it said. A Pentagon official told Turkey's Anadolu Agency that the department's job was "to develop and present military options to the president". US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Athens that Iran had "lost complete control" of the Strait of Hormuz.

WHO presses Russia over plague laboratory death

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday asked Russia for more information about the death of a worker at an anti-plague research institute in Irkutsk, Siberia. Darya Shipilova, 28, died on 2 October of what Russian authorities called "pneumonia of unknown origin". Russia told the WHO that no plague case had been registered. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no call between President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump had been scheduled, but one could be arranged quickly.

Samsung forecasts record $80 billion quarterly profit

Samsung Electronics on Thursday forecast a third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won ($80 billion), up about 783% from a year earlier and the first quarterly profit above 100 trillion won for a South Korean company. Revenue rose 126.6% to 195 trillion won, the preliminary figures showed. Analysts credited sales of high-bandwidth memory chips for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Samsung shares fell more than 1%, Investing.com reported. Full results are due on 29 October.

Kagan and Soai win Nobel chemistry prize

Henri Kagan, 95, of Universite Paris-Sud in France and Kenso Soai, 76, of Tokyo University of Science in Japan won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for the "discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis". Their work explains how reactions can favour one of two mirror-image forms of a molecule, a property shared by more than half of the drugs in clinical use, STAT News reported. They share 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million).

OpenAI rolls out GPT-6, Anthropic cuts prices

OpenAI began rolling out its GPT-6 model to ChatGPT users on Wednesday, with a feature called Intelligent UI that answers with interactive charts, forms and small tools. Paying subscribers received it first, with free users following on Thursday. OpenAI said ChatGPT has more than 1.2 billion weekly users. Rival Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 the same day, pricing it at $0.10 per million input tokens, 90% below its predecessor for shorter prompts, VentureBeat reported.

Merz condemns extremism after far-right gains

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday that extremism was forcing its way into the country's parliaments, a day after a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected speaker of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament. "Anyone who casts their vote for the AfD is playing the extremists' game," he said in Berlin, Reuters reported. An ARD survey this month found one in 10 respondents satisfied with his performance.

Badenoch rules out Conservative pact with Reform UK

British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch ruled out an alliance with Nigel Farage's Reform UK in her speech to the party's conference in Birmingham on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. She called the Conservatives "the no-drama party" and criticised Reform figures who have questioned who counts as English. "We must not let these people take us backwards," she said. Polls put the Conservatives behind Labour and Reform.