IRAN - Major General Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, said on Wednesday that Iran would strike American bases, including those located in areas thought to be out of Tehran’s reach. He also said that Iran’s response to renewed US attacks would “target America’s more distant military installations – including the ones we have not yet attacked”, without specifying which bases. Speaking to a Lebanese-based media outlet, he said: “If American aircraft take off from an American military base, even one located in a European country or some other distant region, to bomb Iran, we will strike those bases as well.” “We may even strike certain islands that they assume are beyond the reach of our missiles,” he added.

UK - Cash withdrawals rose for the first time this year after the Government advised the public to stockpile for emergencies. Britain’s biggest cash machine provider, Link, said the total value of withdrawals climbed last week amid a surge in crisis preparations. The average amount withdrawn last Friday was just under £105, which the organisation said was a high for a day that was not the last working day of the month. It comes after Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, launched a “national resilience conversation”, urging Britons to prepare for emergencies by stockpiling food and water.

TURKEY - This year’s El Niño will cause “pandemic-scale mortality” worldwide, epidemiologists have claimed. Scientists on Tuesday said that El Niño – predicted to be the most intense on record – should be classified as a global health emergency which could kill hundreds of thousands. “The 2026-27 El Niño is going to cause pandemic-scale mortality,” said Dr Colin Carlson, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University, warning it would be deadlier than the 2009 swine flu pandemic, which killed roughly 284,000 people. Concerns about the fallout from El Niño rose as world leaders, climate scientists and policymakers met at the COP31 climate conference in Turkey this week, where the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) unveiled its latest State of the Climate update. It found the past four years had been the warmest on record, and warned El Niño would unleash “even more heat and extreme weather well into 2027”. In a speech on Monday, Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief, warned that the climate crisis, turbocharged by a super El Niño, was “a global health crisis of pandemic proportions”.

UK - Andy Burnham has promised a “new era of British leadership” on net zero as every other G7 leader shunned the Cop31 climate summit. The Prime Minister used his speech at the annual conference in Turkey to suggest his counterparts on the world stage were not taking climate change seriously enough. World leaders including Donald Trump, Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron have all been absent from the two-week climate meeting in Antalya. For a second year in a row, the US has not sent any official delegation after Mr Trump withdrew his country from the Paris climate agreement. Germany and France have sent their climate ministers. Mr Burnham said: “This crisis can only be solved in partnership. I have pledged a new era of British leadership over the next decade.” The Prime Minister insisted that the wildfires in Britain over the summer, which were among the worst in decades, had convinced him it was important to attend. Mr Burnham said: “I decided then it was important for me to be here, to show British leadership in a world where climate issues have taken too much of a backseat.

USA - Across the states, often under a veil of secrecy, ground is being cleared for a “shadow grid” of new private power plants – some with hi-tech fuel cells, and others with rows of portable gas turbines trucked in by the dozen. For many Americans, this blitz of building activity is sometimes the first warning they receive that the AI industry wants to generate its own electricity in their backyard. That’s because big tech stalwarts such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Amazon, and Oracle increasingly need more juice than local utility providers can deliver. So those building the data centres are turning to so-called “behind-the-meter” power sources with no connection to the wider grid, frequently using confidentiality agreements and permit tricks to deflect public scrutiny. Nevertheless, tech companies have pushed ahead with their projects, building centres across the country, even if that means employing dirtier forms of energy.

UK - We have been told to keep FM radios in our emergency kits for use in the event of a national blackout. But what would we be listening to, and how would it be broadcast? The BBC has revealed that, in the event of a country-wide power cut, a 100-person team would be tasked with keeping the lines of communication with the public open via an emergency radio station. Last month, the Government unveiled its “Be Ready” campaign, urging the public to stockpile three days’ worth of non-perishable food, bottled water, blankets and a wind-up radio. Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, asked Britons to prepare for the possibility of disruption caused by natural disasters or cyber attacks by hostile states. Given that so many vital services rely on electricity, if there were a “Black Sky” event that caused a significant power outage and the internet went down, the old technology of copper-wire landline telephones and FM radio could well be the only communication channels left standing.

YEMEN - Yemen’s Houthi rebels are mobilising for a major new assault in an attempt to take control of the country, The Telegraph can reveal. The Iran-backed fighters are massing forces in the territory they control for a push on the besieged city of Taiz and the Saudi-backed government’s interim capital, Aden. It is a part of a drive to seize as much of the country as possible before any negotiations with Saudi Arabia, sources on both sides of the war tell The Telegraph. Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, has been encircled by the Houthis for more than a month and is heavily defended, making it the harder prize. Aden, further south and less well defended, is seen as the softer target, according to Telegraph sources. The aim is to maximise the Houthis’ leverage on the ground so that when talks with Riyadh come, the rebels negotiate from a position of strength.

USA - Thirteen US states have threatened Britain with trade reprisals over its sanctions targeting Israeli settlers. In a letter sent to Christian Turner, the UK ambassador to the US, the 13 Republican attorneys general demanded that Andy Burnham’s government abandon sanctions targeting settler activity in the West Bank. In September, the UK Government announced sanctions and a trade ban on goods, services and advertising connected to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territory. The move provoked anger in Israel and was condemned by Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to the country, who accused the Government of “Jew hate” and warned that Britain could face economic repercussions. The new letter, led by Brenna Bird, the Iowa attorney general, argued that the sanctions threatened American businesses and undermined Israel’s sovereignty. In return, the states threatened to ban British companies from US government contracts, withdraw investments in UK companies, and seek federal approval for tariffs and other trade reprisals.

MIDDLE EAST - Despite market bets on a de-escalation in the Iran war, new evidence has emerged in recent days of strikes on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and on energy infrastructure in the Middle East. On Tuesday, crude prices hit two-month lows after US officials downplayed the need for additional military action against Iran, with analysts noting President Donald Trump's more conciliatory tone since the Republicans' defeat in the November 3 midterm elections. However, there is little sign of attacks abating in November, after 37 ships were attacked in October, the highest monthly total since the start of the war, according to data from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The International Maritime Organization has confirmed 130 incidents, most of them attacks, in the region since the conflict began in late February, with at least 25 seafarers killed.

UK - Wes Streeting has been urged to recruit carmakers as potential weapons producers over fears that Britain’s industrial base is not ready for war. In a report published on Wednesday, peers urged the Defence Secretary to consider how motor manufacturers could “surge” production of drones and missiles for the UK military in times of crisis. The Lords industry and regulators committee also recommended that drone manufacturers be paid to keep some spare capacity in reserve so they could respond quickly if required. Baroness Hayter, the committee chairman, said commercial manufacturers such as carmakers should be prepared to switch their production lines over to defence equipment when needed. The report warned ministers that keeping production capacity in reserve was important because stockpiling drones risked filling warehouses full of technology that would rapidly go out of date. It comes after Mr Streeting said Britain needed to be ready to fight a war in 1,000 days.