IRAN - Donald Trump has authorized defensive strikes on Iranian targets on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz just one day before the midterm elections, a US official confirmed. Iranian state television reported that explosions were heard on Qeshm Island. The official, who wasn't authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that 'Iranians using surface to air missiles against US assets' had been targeted. The strikes appeared to be limited as opposed to a return to full hostilities but followed President Donald Trump previously saying the US would not launch new strikes on Iran before Tuesday's midterms.

EUROPE - Europe faces a gas shortage this winter unless Donald Trump strikes a deal with Iran, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned. Gas reservoirs could shrink to just 10 percent full if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed until early next year and the Continent suffers a cold winter, the agency said. Once storage sites fall below 30 percent of working capacity, the rate at which they can deliver gas to European homes and factories starts to slow. “This would leave the European market exposed to late cold spells,” the Paris-based IEA said in its quarterly gas report on Tuesday. The squeeze would also leave Europe scrambling to refill its storage tanks next summer from a much lower level, keeping the war-inflated gas price higher for longer. The IEA’s warning comes as the world waits to see how Mr Trump will seek to end Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which he has vowed to do after the US midterm Congressional elections on Tuesday.

UK - Artificial intelligence will create novel threats at a once unimaginable scale in the coming months, says GCHQ. Britain faces an “unprecedented rise” in cyberattacks in the coming months because of AI, according to GCHQ. Richard Horne, the chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), will warn on Tuesday that artificial intelligence is helping to “industrialise” cyberattacks and could create novel threats. In a speech at the NCSC, which is part of GCHQ, Horne will say: “In the coming months, we face a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents… vulnerabilities that have been tolerated for far too long can now be discovered and exploited at a scale and pace that was once unimaginable.” He adds that “AI has the potential to become a genuinely novel cyber capability, enabling new forms of attack and fundamentally changing cyber security”.

RUSSIA - Western Europe is falling apart – we should prepare for what comes next. Europe’s political crisis may bring new leaders, but Russia has little reason to assume they will choose peace over confrontation. Nevertheless, Russia can’t base its security on the assumption that European political upheaval will produce more sensible leaders even if the temptation to hope for a peaceful transformation of Europe is understandable. Hope isn’t a strategy, and history provides ample grounds for caution. Russia must therefore prepare not for the miracle of a Western Europe reconciled to peaceful coexistence, but for the possibility that its internal crisis will once again find expression in confrontation abroad. Whatever political forces eventually emerge from the present turmoil, preparing for a military confrontation with our European neighbors must remain one of Russia’s central strategic priorities.

UK - Telling someone who identifies as a cat that they are human will be illegal under an 'unworkable' Labour law, a new report warns. The wording of the bill intended to outlaw conversion therapy against trans and gay people is so 'extraordinarily broad', the study claims, that it would even protect those who call themselves 'catgender'. Primary school pupils could also be taken to court over remarks made about classmates who want to change sex, according to the damning assessment of Labour's Conversion Practices Bill co-written by Britain's former equalities watchdog, while parents face up to five years' jail if they refuse to fund their children's gender surgery. The report says the draft legislation breaches the right to a fair trial by introducing the contentious ideology of 'gender identity' into law by the back door, and will allow activists to bring private prosecutions against their opponents.

USA - Thousands of residents have been evacuated from their homes as flash floods swept through the US. Heavy rainfall caused “catastrophic flooding” on Sunday, forcing entire towns to evacuate. In Pagosa Springs, Colorado, a town of some 2,000 residents in the Rockies, severe weather caused more than $13 million in damage, according to the area’s water and wastewater service providers. The San Juan River was forecast to crest at more than 20ft on Sunday night. The Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement: “To put the forecast into perspective, during the devastating 1911 flood that wiped out most of what existed as the town of Pagosa at that time, the San Juan River crested at approximately 17.8ft. This is a potentially catastrophic flood event.”

UK - The term “mogging” has been chosen as the Collins word of the year. The word, which means outperforming or outshining, is said to be the “fast-growing slang” among Generation Z and Generation Alpha, those born since 1997. It saw off competition from other words such as “Manchesterism”, “carspreading” and “hydration break”. Lexicographers at Collins Dictionary chose the word after monitoring their database, Collins Corpus, which draws upon language used on social media. Use of the “playful and ironic” term “mogging” has risen by 210 per cent, and the word featured on badges worn by young attendees at the Conservative Party conference last month.

SWITZERLAND - Scientists are on the threshold of a first glimpse into the “zeptoverse” — a minuscule world where exotic new particles may be hiding — after British-led researchers made a breakthrough by observing a one-in-ten-billion event using the Large Hadron Collider. After a 42-year search, an ultra-rare event has been captured at Cern in Switzerland in which a subatomic particle called a beauty meson decayed to produce two even smaller particles called muons. Beauty mesons exist for less than two trillionths of a second before decaying, and only one in every ten billion undergoes this specific type of decay, making it incredibly difficult to detect. The finding could unlock the door to discovering particles that exist at the scale of one zeptometre, or one sextillionth — which is one billionth of a trillionth, or one 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th — of a metre.

IRAN - Iran threatened an “earth-shattering blow” against the United States and Israel on Saturday, warning that “red lines are a thing of the past” if either resumes military strikes against the Islamic Republic, as President Donald Trump weighs renewed action amid escalating threats from Tehran. The warning came as Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly ordered his armed forces to prepare for retaliation without geographic limits, while Washington reinforced its military posture and regional mediators scrambled to secure an agreement ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi issued the threat in response to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who cited the conflict’s soaring energy costs for Europe while urging a diplomatic resolution. “100 billion Euro is nothing compared to the Earth-shattering blow Iran’s Powerful Armed Forces will deal against those who dare harm our people,” Araghchi wrote on X. “Red lines are a thing of the past,” he warned.

USA - Trump says US ready to hit Iran's nuclear program 'in ten minutes' after speaking with Netanyahu. "There are 'one or two sites' left that need to be dealt with, including Pickaxe Mountain. We can do it in ten minutes. We have a plan for it, and we can execute it very quickly," the president said. According to previous reports, the Pentagon reinforced air defense systems, ammunition, and military equipment in the Middle East in recent weeks, while simultaneously repositioning forces from bases that could be vulnerable to an Iranian retaliatory attack. The timing is particularly sensitive politically. Trump is in the final stretch of the campaign for the congressional midterm elections, which will take place this Tuesday, November 3.