Iran holds Hormuz line as Russia’s overnight strikes kill 14 in Ukraine and DOT tees up Monday CAFE rollback
Four Americans among six killed in an Athens blast; pocket-rescission clock runs to Wednesday; Supreme Court still awaits Monday’s third-country deportation response.
6 AM CT video brief · 2:04Presenter voice and image generated with AI tools.Read transcript
I'm Nora Vale with your 6 AM World Brief for Sunday, September 27th. Iran stands firm on Hormuz conditions after Trump's rejection. Araghchi says nothing formal has been conveyed by mediators. Russian attacks kill at least 14 and injure 57 across Ukraine. Odesa hit in a mass strike; 170 attack drones overnight. Four American tourists among six killed in an Athens Plaka building blast. A major gas leak is the suspected cause. DOT set Monday to finalize ~34.5 mpg CAFE target, down from Biden's 50.4. Duffy teases a major auto-worker victory. No new Sunday Supreme Court orders. Third-country deportation response still due Monday at 4 p.m. Eastern. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: Hurricane Nolo, with top winds near 100 mph, may bring impacts to parts of Hawaii. A strong Nor'easter off the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast will bring coastal flooding, rip currents, strong wind gusts, and heavy rain to the region through Monday evening. Our opinion. Iran needs real enrichment limits in writing. Ukraine needs an endgame, not blank checks. End the EV mandate, and clear Monday's path to remove criminal aliens. Full stories and sources are at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale. Thanks for watching.
Iran on Sunday insisted it will not back down from its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz after President Donald Trump publicly rejected Tehran’s seven-day plan on Saturday, AFP and Deutsche Welle reported, citing Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on state broadcaster IRIB. Araghchi said Iranians “saw the first reaction from the US president, but so far, nothing has been conveyed to us by the mediators,” and that any reopening is contingent on conditions that include ending the U.S. naval blockade, lifting oil sanctions and releasing frozen assets under the collapsed June memorandum. Early Sunday, Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority warned ships of consequences for using “illegal routes,” while BBC reported Araghchi said only a negotiated solution can end the conflict and that Tehran awaits a definitive official U.S. response through mediators.
At least 14 people were killed and 57 injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day, with southern Odesa Oblast hit in what local governor Oleh Kiper called a “mass strike” that damaged a residential building, a medical facility, a hotel, a shop and a grain storage facility, the Kyiv Independent reported Sunday. Ukraine’s Air Force said overnight forces launched 170 Shahed-type attack drones, including 76 jet-powered versions, plus decoys; air defenses shot down or suppressed 147, with strikes recorded at 18 locations. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said residential buildings and energy infrastructure were attacked in Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Poltava, Zhytomyr and Kyiv oblasts, and that over the past week Russia launched more than 2,200 attack drones, about 1,650 aerial bombs and 38 missiles.
Rescue teams recovered six bodies after a powerful blast collapsed a two-storey building in Athens’ historic Plaka district on Friday, Al Jazeera reported Saturday citing AFP and AP. Documents and belongings indicated four of the victims — two men and two women — were United States citizens, Greek state broadcaster ERT and other local media said; the other two were reported as an elderly British man and a Greek woman who lived on the second floor. Athens Mayor Haris Doukas said the blast was believed to have been caused by a major gas leak, neighboring buildings were damaged and evacuated, and two adjoining buildings might have to be demolished; residents had previously reported a smell of gas, a Greek police spokeswoman confirmed on ERT.
The Transportation Department on Monday will finalize sharply lower vehicle fuel-economy standards through 2031 after President Donald Trump said Saturday he approved new Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules that “TERMINATE” what he called the Biden administration’s EV mandate, the New York Post and Washington Examiner reported. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the administration would formally announce the change Monday; a December proposal set a fleetwide average of about 34.5 miles per gallon by 2031, down from 50.4 under Biden. Trump said the standards will mean lower prices for new cars; Reuters reporting carried by The Spokesman-Review said the department estimated average new-vehicle costs would fall by about $930 under the proposal, while AAA put the national average for regular gasoline at $4.48 a gallon on Saturday.
The White House’s pocket rescission of about $810 million in congressionally appropriated funds — announced Friday and still pending as the federal fiscal year ends Wednesday, Sept. 30 — includes $567 million in HHS services for refugees, asylees and other non-citizens, according to the White House statement and CNBC. The White House said President Trump is using Impoundment Control Act authorities to cut “wasteful and harmful” spending that does not benefit American citizens, listing grants to immigration NGOs among the targets. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the maneuver a clear violation of the Impoundment Control Act and said the Government Accountability Office has concluded pocket rescissions are not permitted if Congress has not approved them.
As of Sunday morning, the Supreme Court’s public docket for Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., No. 26A406, still showed only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Sept. 24 order directing respondents to file a response by 4 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 28, with no further Sunday order on the government’s stay application. The application, docketed Sept. 24 after being submitted to Justice Jackson, seeks a stay of lower-court limits on third-country removals while the case proceeds. The Court’s public orders page for the term showed no new overnight Sunday orders as of this edition.
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Every source linked. Wire services, national news outlets, and primary documents such as whitehouse.gov releases, Supreme Court opinions and court filings.
Analysis labeled. Our point of view appears only in the What This Means (As an American Citizen) box under each story, never mixed into the facts.
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