Global Express | October 16, 2026 — Houthi Missile Strike on Yemen's Presidential Palace Kills Five

1. Houthi Missile Strike on Yemen's Presidential Palace Kills Five

Source: BBC

Five people have been killed and 16 injured in a Houthi missile attack targeting the presidential palace in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, the seat of the internationally recognised government, officials say. Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani told the BBC that the prime minister and other ministers were unhurt when five ballistic missiles hit al-Maashiq Palace.

The Houthis' military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said they struck “the Saudi enemy's military operations headquarters in Aden”. Yemen's health minister, Qasim Buhaibeh, said the casualties included “those working to guard the site and civilian employees”. Prime Minister Shaya Zindani condemned the attack as “cowardly”.

Yemen has been devastated by a civil war since 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government; a Saudi-led coalition backs the government against the Iran-backed Houthis. Saudi Arabia's deputy foreign minister accused Iran of encouraging the Houthis to escalate. At least 1,282 people have been killed and 5,890 injured in the fighting since 6 August, and the UN says another 201,000 have been displaced.

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2. China Tells Israel to Stop 'Forced Establishment' of West Bank Settlements

Source: Al Jazeera

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Azerbaijan that Israel should stop and reverse its “forced establishment” of West Bank settlements, China's foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. Wang said China has consistently viewed the Palestinian question as the greatest historical injustice of this century.

Wang stressed that the “two-state solution” is the right path to a resolution, and said the immediate priority is to fully open access to the Gaza Strip so a humanitarian “catastrophe” is not allowed to spread. He added that China is willing to work with the international community to push all parties to return to dialogue and seek a political settlement.

Wang is attending the Seventh Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in Baku as the special representative of President Xi Jinping. China is Iran's largest trading partner, buying up to 90 percent of its oil, while also cultivating closer ties with Gulf states.

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3. Russia Returns to the G20 Table in Bangkok, Angering Europe

Source: CNBC

Russia's finance minister attended a G20 meeting in Bangkok on Thursday, his second in-person appearance at the event since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, testing how far Washington's rapprochement with Moscow will strain ties with Europe.

Anton Siluanov and Bank of Russia Deputy Governor Elizaveta Danilova were listed as Russia's delegates, seated between attendees from South Korea and the UAE, according to a seating plan seen by CNBC. German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said after the meeting that “there will be no pretending that Russia is now returning as a normal member of the G20 and simply taking its seat at the table again — not with me, and not with the other Europeans.”

The U.S., which took over the G20 presidency this year, welcomed Russia's finance minister back after years of isolation. The Trump administration also introduced a deal to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel imports until April, drawing criticism from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European allies. The meeting ended without a joint communique.

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4. NATO Allies to Meet over Black Sea Drone Attacks on Shipping

Source: POLITICO

NATO allies will hold a crisis meeting to discuss how to respond to a series of drone strikes on cargo shipping in the Black Sea, Romania's President Nicușor Dan told POLITICO. Two chemical tankers were hit by aerial drones in the past 24 hours in or near Romania's territorial waters, he said.

Dan said it was “too early” to say for sure whether Russia was behind the attacks. He said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte expressed the alliance's solidarity and that a North Atlantic Council meeting will discuss the whole Black Sea situation. He added that invoking NATO's collective defence clause, Article 5, was “not now” being discussed, and Romania had not requested Article 4.

Rescuers are searching for seven missing crew members after the two chemical tankers were hit. Over the past 10 days, drones have hit at least five more cargo ships close to Romania and Bulgaria, killing at least 23 sailors. Romanian army and intelligence teams are investigating the latest strikes.

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5. S&P 500 Heads for a Losing Week as Chip Stocks Slide Again

Source: CNBC

S&P 500 futures rose slightly on Friday, but the benchmark index was headed for a mostly losing week amid declines in tech and artificial intelligence-related names. Futures tied to the broad market average traded 0.2% higher, while the S&P 500 is down 0.9% this week and the Nasdaq has shed 2.4%.

Chipmakers fell again: the VanEck Semiconductor ETF shed 0.7%, led by declines in Micron, AMD and Sandisk, and is down 7.4% week to date amid jitters about competition from China. Tesla shares rose after the company unveiled its next-generation Roadster, though the model will not go into production until 2028.

Investors are also weighing hotter-than-expected inflation data and elevated energy prices. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh spoke at an IMF event in Bangkok without commenting on whether the Fed would raise rates before year-end, and CME's FedWatch tool points to an 85% chance the Fed holds rates steady at its Oct. 27-28 meeting.

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6. U.S. Wholesale Inflation Hits Four-Year High in September

Source: CNN

U.S. wholesale inflation jumped in September to its highest level in more than four years, the second hotter-than-expected inflation reading this week and a fresh concern just weeks before the midterm elections. The Producer Price Index rose 1.3% from the month before and 6.3% from a year earlier, up from August's 0.5% monthly and 5.6% annual rates.

It was the fastest monthly increase since March 2022 and the highest annual rate since December 2022. Energy prices drove the increase, accounting for 80% of a 2.9% leap in goods prices. Core PPI, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.7% on the month, its fastest in five months, lifting the annual rate to 5%, its highest since January 2023.

The PPI followed a CPI report showing consumer prices rose 3.7% year over year, with core CPI accelerating to 2.6% from 2.4%. A separate report showed U.S. retail sales slowed to 0.8% in September after a 1.3% gain in August; excluding gas stations, sales rose just 0.2%.

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7. Pakistan School Roof Collapse Kills 33 Pupils and a Teacher

Source: BBC

At least 33 pupils and a teacher have been killed after a school roof collapsed in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, according to hospital officials. More than a dozen others were injured, some critically. Rescue officials said emergency services were called to the private Al-Khair school in Dir Colony at 08:48 local time on Thursday after lessons had begun.

Police chief Mian Saeed said the school's owner had been arrested and promised a thorough inquiry into whether building codes were violated. He said the structure had “substandard” roof slabs and was “overloaded” beyond its weight limit, and that the roof of an upper-floor classroom collapsed, crashing through classrooms below.

The Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Faisal Karim Kundi, ordered a safety audit of all schools in the province. Furious relatives accused the school of ignoring safety concerns. In June, 14 children died after the roof of a private tuition centre near Lahore collapsed.

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8. Kenya Confirms Second Ebola Case

Source: BBC

Kenya has confirmed a second case of Ebola, 10 days after a businessman died of the virus after travelling to the East African nation from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new patient, a 39-year-old man, is a close relative of the first case and was already in quarantine when he fell ill on Tuesday, Kenya's health ministry said.

The incubation period for Ebola ranges from two to 21 days, meaning those exposed may not become ill for weeks. The ministry said detecting his illness early improved his chances of recovery and limited the chance of passing the virus on, urging the public to “stay calm but vigilant”. It said both cases are linked and there is no evidence of spread in the wider community, and that Kenya remains open.

After the first patient died, officials determined he had been in contact with 128 people, and 113 of them had been found by Tuesday, with 108 in quarantine and tracing of the remaining 15 continuing. More than 4,000 people have died from Ebola in DR Congo this year, in what is the second most deadly known outbreak. It is caused by the rare Bundibugyo species, with no approved vaccine or treatment.

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9. Meta Launches an Open-Weight AI Model That Runs on Macs

Source: TechCrunch

Meta has launched what it calls the “most capable” open-weight model in the United States. Dubbed Muse Spark Open, the model also has the distinction of having been designed to work with Macs. According to evaluation results released by Meta on Thursday, it leverages 816 billion parameters and a 1 million token context window.

Muse Spark Open is natively multimodal and built for complex coding tasks and agentic labour. It has been designed to run locally on Apple's computers, but it requires at least 1 terabyte of RAM and runs best on the Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra chip. Meta says it paired the model with Muse Code, its AI coding terminal.

Open-weight models can be significantly more cost-efficient and can offer transparency and flexibility that closed-source models do not allow. Meta is making the new model available now through a number of different API platforms.

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10. Trump Cancels Live Broadcast of Fort Hood Gunman's Execution

Source: DW

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday (October 15) that he was cancelling a live broadcast of an execution, scrapping the Pentagon's plan to air the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas. The plan, announced last week by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, had drawn strong criticism at home and abroad.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said broadcasting an execution might have a powerful deterrent effect, but that many very good people would rather not witness Hasan's death. He said immediate family members of the victims could still attend if they wished. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Trump and Hegseth discussed the matter and decided to cancel the broadcast.

Hasan, born in 1970 in Virginia, was an Army psychiatrist sentenced to death by a military court in 2013. His execution would be the first by firing squad in the U.S. since World War II. According to Amnesty International, 17 countries carried out more than 2,700 executions last year.

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