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TODAY IN HISTORY
November 5, 1556: At the Second Battle of Panipat, the army of the would-be Hindu ruler of northern India, Hemu (or Hemchandra Vikramaditya), is defeated by the Mughal Empire under the young Emperor Akbar and his regent, Bayram Khan. The Mughal victory ended a string of successes by Hemu, a Hindu notable who became the de facto ruler of the remnants of the Suri Empire. His death collapsed his kingdom and left the Mughals as the unchecked power in northern India.
November 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes is arrested by English authorities for his role in the “Gunpowder Plot,” a scheme by a group of Catholics to blow up the House of Lords with King James I in it and install James’ young daughter Elizabeth as a Catholic monarch. Fawkes became the symbol of the plot, and his arrest is celebrated annually as “Guy Fawkes Day” or “Guy Fawkes Night.” Fawkes’ image went from reviled would-be assassin in the years following the foiled plot to something more sympathetic (depending on your perspective) by the 19th and into the 20th centuries.
MIDDLE EAST
TURKEY
The Turkish military is saying that one of its soldiers was killed by gunfire from Iran on Saturday. The soldier was “responding to an illegal crossing” in southeastern Turkey’s Hakkâri province when the shooting took place. Turkish and Iranian authorities are investigating. The incident may have been related to criminal/smuggling activity along the border but there is at least an outside chance that there’s a Kurdish angle to it as there are Iranian Kurdish groups that operate in the border area.
JORDAN
An attacker stabbed a Jordanian security officer to death and wounded another person in Amman on Thursday. Authorities are treating it as an act of terrorism and say they’ve found evidence that the suspect, who was arrested, had planned to attack state security personnel.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least five people in multiple incidents across Gaza on Thursday. That figure includes a 12 year old boy gunned down in central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp. The IDF continues to rampage through much of the West Bank, wounding at least eight people and arresting more than 50 on Thursday alone.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog met with party leaders on Wednesday and Thursday to begin the process of picking a prime minister-designate following last week’s Knesset election. He’s committed to choosing between incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu and main opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot by Sunday but it seems like things are strongly leaning in Eisenkot’s direction at the moment. Between his opposition bloc and the two Palestinian-Israeli parties Eisenkot received the support of a group representing 67 seats in the forthcoming Knesset, six seats more than a majority. Netanyahu, meanwhile, actually lost the support of one of his coalition members when the ultra-orthodox United Torah Judaism party opted not to recommend either candidate.
Assuming that Herzog picks Eisenkot that’s only the beginning of the coalition formation process. He will still need to negotiate an agreement that turns this 67 seat voting bloc into a workable governing coalition. That could happen very quickly or it might not happen at all, as the tensions between the right-wing elements of his group and the Palestinian-Israeli parties might be difficult to overcome. He’ll have up to 42 days from Herzog’s designation to close the deal.
YEMEN
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ansarullah is demanding a high price for ending the war in Yemen:
After Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacked Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea and seized territory commanding the strategic Bab al-Mandeb chokepoint, the kingdom reached out to the group to see what it would take to arrive at a negotiated halt to the hostilities. The answer it got back: $51 billion.
The Houthis said that was the sum needed to cover the cost of years of Saudi strikes and a long blockade, people briefed on the discussions said. Other figures have come up since, the people said, but the message was clear: The price of an exit would be in the tens of billions of dollars. For good measure, the Houthis would want the kingdom to officially recognize the militants as the rulers of Yemen, effectively accepting an Iranian-armed adversary on its southern border.
The demands hammered home how Saudi Arabia faces only bad options as it tries to find a way out of the conflict it started more than a decade ago when it intervened against the Houthis in Yemen’s civil war.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry official “categorically denied” the WSJ’s claims about Ansarullah’s demands, though not the part about the Saudis having no good options for extricating themselves from Yemen.
IRAN
The New York Times is reporting that Iranian officials are “reviewing a set of proposals presented by mediators that could shape the future of [Iran’s] nuclear program.” This may amount to nothing but it’s noteworthy that they’re even looking at something nuclear related. Iran’s negotiating position since the start of the war has been that it wants to see a peace deal first, including US concessions, and will discuss nuclear issues only in a subsequent round of talks. If it’s looking at nuclear issues now that suggests that mediation efforts are actually making some progress. NYT sources indicate that this movement has been enabled in part by recent contacts between US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaee. The latter appears to be taking a leading role on the Iranian side and has reportedly expressed “openness to discussing the nuclear issue” in private discussions.
It’s unclear exactly what the mediators’ “proposals” entail but Reuters reported later on Thursday that the Iranians had sent a “nuclear proposal” of their own to the US via the Qatari government. US officials are “reviewing” it. While I remain skeptical that this ends with anything other than a resumption of the shooting war this is the first bit of news I’ve seen this week that makes me think that a diplomatic resolution might actually be at hand.
On the other hand, Donald Trump’s rhetoric took a decidedly pro-war shift on Thursday, when he told reporters that he “would rather not destroy the rest of [Iran] if possible, but maybe [he’ll] have to.” Resuming the war is the most obvious and immediate way for Trump to lash out after he and the Republican Party took a drubbing in Tuesday’s midterm election.
ASIA
CAMBODIA
An new AP investigation into the Cambodian government’s handling of the country’s scam operations finds that authorities have punished workers — who are usually themselves victims of human trafficking — while mostly coddling the people who made the operations possible:
After the raids ramped up in January, tens of thousands of former workers ended up in the capital, Phnom Penh, many sleeping in the streets. Some faced police harassment and arbitrary detentions. More than 10 months later, hundreds remain stranded.
“The government generally treats migrants found trapped in scam centers as offenders, and we have seen no evidence of adequate efforts to screen them for internationally recognized indicators of human trafficking,” said Li Ling, of the Eos Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to investigating human trafficking, which has helped 220 stranded workers return home.
Cambodia said in September, that it had dismantled all the larger compounds, and was prosecuting court cases linked to the scams. Last month, it said it seized assets worth $1 billion from one alleged scam network and called on Interpol to help track down 29 ringleaders. But it provided no evidence it was taking action against the Cambodian political and business elites behind the operations.
“They need to begin holding accountable evidenced elite perpetrators, not concocted, mid-level token investigations, but the ... Cabinet-level members, senators and members of the prime minister’s family,” said Jacob Daniel Sims, a transnational crime expert and visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center.
NORTH KOREA
The Diplomat’s Piergiorgio Pescali argues that Donald Trump’s outreach to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is being undermined by the actions of his administration:
But the rest of the [US] government seems to be working from a different playbook. Also on October 31, the FBI blamed North Korea for the $6.3 billion Binance theft, the largest crypto heist on record. And just two days before reiterating Trump’s interest in a summit with Kim, Rubio and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts reaffirmed their “resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization” of North Korea during a meeting on the sidelines of a G20 ministerial. Pyongyang has repeatedly said that its nuclear program is no longer up for negotiation.
On November 4, Kim Yo Jong responded to these developments in a press statement, saying that “the continued hostile signal of the U.S. to our state compels the DPRK to reconsider the U.S. entity in various aspects.” (DPRK is an abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.) She specifically objected to the FBI accusation over the Binance hack, the trilateral demand for denuclearization, joint military drills, continued U.S. and multilateral sanctions, and the State Department “Trafficking in Persons Report,” which criticized North Korea. Kim cited these as evidence of “Washington’s invariable hostile policy toward the DPRK.”
A Korean analyst quoted by Reuters read the statement as a reminder that an end to Washington’s “hostile policy” is now a precondition for North Korea to engage in talks. Kim Yo Jong indeed rejected the idea of a meeting under these circumstances. “It is our clear stand that we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons who refuse to abandon their policy of confrontation while talking about dialogue,” she said in the statement. “…To the hostile signals that the United States continuously sends, we do not know how to respond otherwise.”
Hours later the South Korean military reported another missile launch by Pyongyang, the fourth in a month.
In Pescali’s view these incidents reinforce a view that Kim adopted after his 2019 Hanoi summit with Trump, which is that even if Trump himself is open to diplomacy with North Korea the institutional US government won’t permit it. So he sees little point in reviving those contacts.
AFRICA
SUDAN
After the Ethiopian government closed the Sudanese consulate in Asosa and expelled six diplomatic staffers on Wednesday, Sudan’s military government retaliated by shuttering the Ethiopian consulate in the city of El-Gadarif and expelling its staffers. I haven’t seen any indication as to how many people were involved in that second expulsion. The Sudanese military has repeatedly accused Ethiopia of aiding the Rapid Support Forces militant group and recently lodged complaints to that effect with the United Nations Security Council and the African Union, which prompted the Asosa closure. The Ethiopian government has, in turn accused the Sudanese military of collaborating with the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Each government has denied the other’s accusations.
SOMALIA
A new political crisis may be emerging in Mogadishu as Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has removed the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court and reportedly used military forces to do so. Earlier in the day the court ruled that Mohamud had broken the law by remaining in office past the end of his term earlier this year. Mohamud has argued that a constitutional amendment passed back in March extended his current term into the middle of next year but the court found that the amendment should not have been applied to Mohamud’s current presidential term. That decision appears to have prompted the move against the chief justice.
Mohamud’s decision to delay elections and extend his term, which he claims is part of a project to shift Somalia’s political system to a direct voting system rather than one based on the country’s clan system, has proven extremely divisive. Several regional governments have simply stopped recognizing Mogadishu’s authority and that has led in at least one case, in Somalia’s Southwest state, to open conflict.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A whopping 30 flights were targets of hoax bomb threats across Europe on Thursday, two days after “seven flights and a cruise ship” were similarly targeted. There’s no indication as to responsibility or even as to whether the hoaxes were all connected, but the sheer number of incidents speaks to coordination and potentially some sort of “hybrid” attack. And as has become routine in Europe officials are pointing fingers toward Russia. At this point that’s just a suspicion, but one of the threatening emails sent on Thursday referred to a group called “Fighters of the Male State,” which the BBC notes may refer to a proscribed far-right Russian organization.
UKRAINE
Russian attacks killed at least four people and wounded two others in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Wednesday, according to provincial officials. Overnight both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries continued to target infrastructure in their bombardments.
US First Lady Melania Trump hosted a meeting of Russian and Ukrainian officials at the White House on Thursday to try to build on the local ceasefire she recently brokered around the city of Oleshky in southern Ukraine’s Kherson oblast. There’s no indication that the participants made any progress, but she did send both teams away with messages for their respective presidents. Further limited humanitarian ceasefires could alleviate pressure on civilians along the front line and potentially help build some rapport that could aid more comprehensive peace negotiations.
FRANCE
The French Interior Ministry says that around 600,000 people participated in a day of nationwide protests and strikes on Thursday in opposition to poor school conditions, the high cost of living, and other effects of years of austerity politics. The demonstrations culminated in a major march on Paris. They appear to have been mostly peaceful, though there were reports of clashes with police as the AP reports:
AMERICAS
PARAGUAY
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña resigned on Thursday after the collapse of the bank Ueno, which the country’s central bank took over on Tuesday due to its insolvency. Prosecutors are investigating links between Ueno and Peña’s administration, in particular through former central bank governor and former Ueno boss Carlos Carvallo. Peña named Carvallo to lead the central bank shortly after he took office in 2023 and Carvallo subsequently approved Ueno’s transition from a money lender to a full-blown bank. It was all purely coincidental I’m sure.
Prosecutors are now pursuing a criminal investigation into Peña. The Paraguayan Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously to impeach Peña after he submitted his resignation, sending the case to the country’s Senate for trial. Under Paraguayan law ex-presidents are made honorary senators for life, which doesn’t carry voting rights but does grant them automatic immunity from prosecution. Peña’s removal via impeachment would prevent that and thus facilitate the criminal process.
CUBA
The Trump administration expanded its Cuban sanctions targets on Thursday to include the country’s “electronics, manufacturing, marine and technology sectors,” according to the Miami Herald. This puts a number of international companies under threat of sanctions, which will presumably force them to divest from the Cuban market. It also blacklisted two people and eight entities allegedly involved in shipping networks tied to the Cuban military.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Reuters reports that the second Trump administration has overseen a collapse of inter-agency collaboration within the US intelligence community:
Former officials and outside experts said the disruptions risk leaving policymakers with an incomplete picture of threats facing the country, echoing intelligence failures exposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. The slowdown comes as the administration weighs whether to resume strikes on Iran after the midterm elections on Tuesday.
The problems emerged during Tulsi Gabbard’s tenure as director of national intelligence, amid deep tensions between her office and the CIA. While those tensions have subsided since her resignation in June, problems stemming from the clash persist, according to two US officials familiar with the matter.
The CIA last year stopped co-authoring assessments with the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an analytical group within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the officials said, reducing the number of reports that pull together the intelligence community’s views for decision-makers on subjects including Iran. One US intelligence official said the CIA has begun engaging as co-authors on some of the group’s assessments in recent months.
Lawmakers and their staffs also briefly stopped receiving intelligence reports from Gabbard’s office in the days after the US military intervention in Iran in June 2025 and again after the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, according to two people familiar with the matter. Gabbard’s team had accused lawmakers of leaking to the press.