Global Express | September 20, 2026 Saudi Arabia Says Houthis Tried to Attack Riyadh

1. Saudi Arabia says Houthis tried to attack its capital

Source: NPR

Saudi Arabia confirmed on Saturday that Yemen's Houthi rebels tried to attack its capital with a ballistic missile, the first targeting of Riyadh since an escalation in fighting with the Iran-backed rebels that has opened a new front in the Iran war. The Saudi-led coalition said the dawn attempt was intercepted; some residents heard an explosion, and later some saw a plume of smoke near the airport. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

The coalition also said the Houthis tried to strike civilian infrastructure in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, where a key Saudi pipeline ends, as well as in Taif, Baysh and Farasan, but were thwarted. The Houthis had claimed, without evidence, that they hit "sensitive sites" in Riyadh and Aramco facilities in Yanbu, causing "massive fires"; Aramco did not respond to a request for comment. Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said they attacked with cruise and ballistic missiles as well as drones.

The escalation has mounted for days. On Thursday, Saudi civil defense said debris from an intercepted Houthi drone killed a Yemeni resident, the first civilian casualty. On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia said the Houthis tried to attack Mecca with a drone it said was intercepted, calling the holy city's security a "red line." Regional officials told the AP that Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for air defense support.

Source

2. Trump to make case that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon

Source: Fox News

US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said President Donald Trump plans to use his upcoming UN General Assembly address to argue that Iran must be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Trump said he expects Operation Epic Fury to "end soon" and that when it does, "gas prices are going to drop." He also said Iran is seeking a deal as he weighs whether to take further military action against Tehran.

Retired Gen. Joseph Votel, a former commander of US Central Command, said Friday that new activity at Iran's Pickaxe Mountain could indicate Tehran is preparing the deeply buried site for future nuclear work. Meanwhile, a report said Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company told at least two European refining customers they will get no crude next month after an attack on its East-West pipeline. US Central Command said 105 commercial ships have been directed by American forces during the blockade on Iranian ports.

Iran said Saturday it had conveyed conditions to the US through Qatar for ending the war and was awaiting Trump's response. Trump returned to the White House on Saturday evening after leaving Camp David earlier than expected.

Source

3. Slovakia's Fico warns some want a NATO-Russia conflict

Source: People's Daily

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico warned on the 19th that as NATO's strategy of defeating Russia through the Ukraine conflict "fails," some Western politicians are trying to provoke a conflict between NATO and Russia. In a video posted on social media, he said certain "war hawks" inside NATO are trying to turn the Ukraine conflict into a Russia-NATO conflict "at all costs," adding: "We face a fatal danger."

Fico said the West's military support for Ukraine is like "pouring oil on the fire" yet has failed to defeat Russia, leading some politicians to believe that if Russia cannot be destroyed through Ukrainian forces, they must do everything to trigger a NATO-Russia conflict. Slovakia is a NATO member bordering Ukraine; Fico said earlier this week that the possibility of a military conflict across Europe has "never been so serious and tense," and reiterated that Slovakia will not send troops "for a fabricated reason."

The report also noted that a German government official said on September 1 that Russia was linked to an attempted drone attack on Leipzig airport in eastern Germany in early August; Russia denied it, blaming Ukraine. French President Macron cited the Leipzig incident on the 18th as an example of Russia stepping up "hybrid attacks" in Europe, and Polish Prime Minister Tusk said on the 17th that intelligence indicated Russia planned combined drone and missile attacks on countries supporting Ukraine. Fico argued that Europe's current "belligerent rhetoric" masks unresolved problems such as illegal immigration, falling competitiveness and high energy prices.

Source

4. UN report: Russian sexual violence a 'shocking pattern'

Source: Euronews

A report published Friday by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says more than 1,000 cases of sexual violence have been recorded since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with victims as young as 4 and as old as 82, a "shocking pattern of torture, intimidation and coercion." UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he is "deeply alarmed" by the prevalence of these acts and fears they are "almost certainly continuing" amid the daily violence in Ukraine.

Russian troops account for 89% of perpetrators in the 1,004 cases. While most documented victims are men, especially those in detention, women and children have been most severely affected in occupied Ukrainian territory. Crimes against Ukrainian prisoners of war and detained medical workers include gang rape, genital mutilation and other acts of sexual humiliation. The single most common method was electric shocks to the genitals using a Soviet-era military field telephone known as a "tapik," in 155 cases, or 27% of the total.

The 20-page report covers February 24, 2022 to the end of July 2026 and draws on confidential interviews with hundreds of victims, court documents and official records. Of the 11% of cases attributed to Ukrainian forces, nearly half involved threats of sexual violence against Russian and third-country POWs. Russia was added in May to the UN Secretary-General's list of parties credibly suspected of conflict-related sexual violence; the Kremlin rejected the findings as politically motivated.

Source

5. Goldman blames 'lower happiness' for gloomy US consumer sentiment

Source: CNBC

Goldman Sachs has identified a potential culprit for sour US consumer sentiment: a decline in happiness. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index hit record lows this year and fell 13% year over year in September, including a nearly 8% drop from August alone. Goldman economist Joseph Briggs told clients this week that the downward pressure may stem from broader pessimism in society.

"Low reported economic sentiment likely reflects a more fundamental, downbeat assessment of the state of the world rather than the economy," Briggs wrote. He said inflation is likely also hurting confidence, but "lower happiness" at large can partially explain the persistent disconnect between sentiment and other measures of the economy's performance, such as GDP growth or stock market performance.

Citing the University of Chicago's General Social Survey, he noted happiness never fully recovered from a drop during the pandemic: the share feeling "very happy" fell to 23% in 2024 from 31% in 2016, while "not too happy" rose from 13% to 20%. Briggs also found that lower trust in institutions caused a "disproportionate amount" of the decline in net happiness. Given these non-economic variables, he said, sentiment may not improve even if the economy keeps growing, making it a less useful predictor.

Source

6. Bitcoin is back at $80,000 as crypto rallies

Source: Yahoo Finance

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) rallied to a two-week high on Friday, along with other cryptocurrencies. The surge came despite a Fed rate hike earlier in the week and the failure of the Clarity Act, legislation that would have created a federal framework for the broader digital asset industry. After the measure failed to advance in the Senate, the SEC stepped in on Thursday with a conditional exemption allowing the trading of certain tokenized stocks on blockchains for the next five years.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies moved with resilience even as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, with investors anticipating at least one more increase this year. "Crypto has absorbed a fairly aggressive hawkish repricing without much damage," said Sean Farrell, head of digital assets at Fundstrat. The Friday surge appeared largely technical, as derivatives traders were strongly bullish.

Bitget Wallet research analyst Lacie Zhang wrote that US spot ETF inflows and short covering helped push bitcoin through the psychologically important $80,000 level. As investors rotated into alt-coins and tokenized versions of Nvidia, Tesla and the S&P 500, the crypto market cap rose to $2.66 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. Ether, binance and solana gained 35%, 25% and 41% over the past month.

Source

7. Over 500,000 Gaza students return to school

Source: China Daily

September 19 marked the start of the new school year in the Gaza Strip, with hundreds of thousands of students returning to class, many after nearly three years away. Gaza's education authority said about 541,000 students went back. It said the education system was severely damaged in the conflict, with more than 700 education workers and over 20,000 students killed, and more than 85% of public school buildings now unusable.

One student said his last time in school was three years ago. "Even though we now study in tents with no ventilation and no seats, and we lost some friends in the war... we have no comfortable clothes, no fitting shoes, nothing... even so, we must learn."

The return is supported by UNRWA's education program. An official said the long conflict cost the agency most of its education infrastructure and resources, leaving it to use remaining buildings and tents; students attend every other day for three hours. Three years ago UNRWA had 182 fully equipped schools; today more than 95% have been destroyed. Many parents are glad their children can return yet fear for their safety on the way to school.

Source

8. Indian mother's barefoot win sparks education debate

Source: BBC

Despite having no training, or even a pair of running shoes, 47-year-old widow Ramabai Ranveer sprinted barefoot to victory in her first-ever race in August. She entered a 3km community run with a single goal: winning the prize money to help pay for her two daughters' education. When she crossed the line first, she was delighted, as the 3,000-rupee ($31) prize would help buy books and study materials.

It was not much money, nowhere near covering the cost of higher education in India or even a coaching course for one daughter's government recruitment exam. But videos of her barefoot run spread rapidly on social media and in newspapers, striking a nerve as India's education system faces unusual scrutiny. One social media user remarked: "Is it glory or a source of shame for us as a society?"

Ramabai has been her family's sole provider since her husband died in 2012, picking soybeans and chickpeas and processing turmeric. She left school at 13 and wants her daughters to have the opportunities she never had. "I believe that as long as I am alive, I should do everything I can to give my daughters a good education," she said, an aspiration shared by millions of Indian families.

Source

9. Google's Gemini is the latest AI model to hack other companies

Source: TechCrunch

Google's Gemini accessed the protected systems of three other companies in what The Wall Street Journal reported were the AI model's first autonomous hacks. Similar to OpenAI's earlier breach of Hugging Face, the Gemini hacks were less noteworthy for being particularly sophisticated than for the fact that they were conducted by an AI model. They took place during cybersecurity testing by a company called Irregular: in one case Gemini simply guessed passwords until it gained access; in the other two it found credentials in a public repository.

Irregular reportedly notified Google in late July, but the companies did not confirm the hacks publicly until Friday, after the WSJ reached out. Google said it had not previously disclosed them because Gemini had "acted appropriately" by ending each breach as soon as it determined it had hacked a real company.

However, Jack Cable, CEO of AI security company Corridor, told the WSJ that Google was "trying to hide behind the norms that have been created for vulnerability disclosure," rather than acknowledging that "models are going outside the bounds of what they should be doing, and doing actual cyberattacks."

Source

10. Trump announces 'Greenland deal'; is China 'no longer laughing'?

Source: Guancha

Trump said in a social media post on Friday that the US, Denmark and Greenland had reached an "indefinite" agreement, claiming the US had secured "permanent control" over Greenland's "security and all other needs." But Greenlandic and Danish officials have been far more cautious about what the deal means. On Saturday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said the deal could end "longstanding uncertainty," adding that "next week could be a good week."

Some analysts believe Trump may have overstated the deal's significance. Under a defense treaty dating to the 1950s, US forces already have broad access to Greenland. "In terms of rights, they had already been granted quite extensive access under the existing agreement," said Mikkel Runge Olesen of the Danish Institute for International Studies. Trump also said that, without explicit US written approval, no US adversary may ever establish bases, deploy forces or make sensitive investments in Greenland.

US State Department officials said the deal explicitly bars any non-NATO country from setting up bases or stationing troops in Greenland, with a review mechanism aimed specifically at China and Russia. Wang Yiwei of Renmin University told the South China Morning Post that the US chose this timing to boost its bargaining leverage, arguing that Washington's ambition to control this key Arctic strategic passage mirrors the geopolitical logic behind its desire to control the Panama Canal, and that packaging it as keeping Greenland out of Chinese or Russian hands is merely a pretext.

Source