Evening Update: France admits police 'lost control' as Macron keeps his interior minister; Supreme Court takes Asian-American admissions and home-distilling cases; Trump says Ukraine needs a new negotiator
Also: Lavrov in Tehran as Netanyahu tells Trump 'a job to finish'; Houthi missiles kill 53 in Yemen; Canada vows a public Wainwright inquiry; Florida's Castro warrant; Trump's women's health order and Kansas border pitch; a judge alleges 'bad faith' in the golf-course case; justices reject the 9/11 plea bid.
5 PM CT video brief · 1:49Presenter voice and image generated with AI tools.Read transcript
I'm Nora Vale with your 5 PM World Brief for Monday, October 19. France: minister admits 'we lost control'; Macron refuses his resignation; about 550,000 marched. Court takes Asian-American parents' admissions case and the 1868 home-distilling ban. Justices reject 9/11 defendants' plea-deal bid and Wilcox's NLRB case. Trump: 'time for somebody else to negotiate' for Ukraine; Johnson: 'Putin cannot be trusted.' Houthi missiles kill at least 53 at Yemen camp; Saudi investment forum pushed to 2027. Trump signs order creating an NIH Women's Health Division. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: Nor'easter moving north just off the Mid-Atlantic Coast will produce scattered rain showers off and on along parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Coast through Wednesday. Low pressure moving southward along the West Coast will develop scattered rain over parts of California through Tuesday and heavier rain over the area on Wednesday. Our opinion. Account for France's failure, judge students as individuals, make Moscow earn relief. Full stories and sources are at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale. Thanks for watching.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 'in certain large cities, we lost control' and offered his resignation, but President Emmanuel Macron refused it and ordered a review of the failures in planning and intelligence, Fox News and the New York Post reported. The Interior Ministry counted some 550,000 marchers Saturday, far above an intelligence estimate of about 200,000, and Fox News reported nearly 1,000 officers and firefighters injured, at least 2,400 arrests and some 3,000 businesses damaged. President Trump posted that 'the migrants have taken over France' and urged it to 'CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!', while French authorities have blamed ultra-left militants and criminals rather than immigrants, Fox News reported.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made his first visit to Tehran since the war began, condemned the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal and said Moscow's efforts were 'aimed at preventing the return of a large-scale war,' CBS News reported, citing AFP. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released video of a call in which he told President Trump, 'Donald, we have a job to finish,' after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on X, 'we have unfinished jobs too,' Fox News reported. CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins told Fox News Digital that about 97% of ships seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz have done so without being hit, while the U.K. navy counted 10 attacks on commercial vessels last week, CBS reported.
At least 53 soldiers were killed and 200 recruits injured Monday when Houthi ballistic missiles struck a military camp in Yemen's southern Shabwa province, Yemeni military officials said, CBS News reported, citing the AP; the head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad al-Alimi, promised a 'firm response.' The Houthis claimed six operations in Saudi Arabia over 48 hours, including against Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport and Aramco facilities in Yanbu, and Riyadh residents received alerts of a 'hostile aerial threat,' CBS reported. The Future Investment Initiative, set for Oct. 26-29 in Riyadh, was postponed to 2027, and Egypt's parliament put off its debate on military support for Saudi Arabia until Oct. 26.
Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan pledged to make public the board of inquiry's findings on the grass fire that killed four soldiers and wounded 39 during live-fire training at CFB Wainwright, saying the probe could take a year, the Globe and Mail reported. Prime Minister Mark Carney told the House of Commons that 50 investigators are on the ground and that 'driven by ferocious winds, the fire jumped nearly a kilometre in less than a minute to where soldiers were gathered.' The military has not yet identified what started the fire, and Carignan declined to say whether soldiers should have been training in those conditions.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Monday at Florida International University in Miami a new arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro over the 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes, which killed three U.S. citizens and a legal resident, CBS Miami reported. 'Raúl Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop pursuing accountability for that communist conspiracy,' Uthmeier said. Court documents say Cuban spies transmitted flight data and monitored the Naval station in Key West, and the 95-year-old already faces a federal indictment for the same incident.
President Trump signed an executive order Monday directing the HHS secretary, through the NIH director, to set up a Women's Health Division within 90 days to advance research on conditions such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, endometriosis, infertility, maternal health and menopause, according to the order on whitehouse.gov. It creates a White House Women's Health Task Force co-chaired by the HHS secretary and the White House chief of staff and revokes President Biden's Executive Order 14120 of March 18, 2024. First Lady Melania Trump, who championed the order, said 'our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest,' the White House said.
Before leaving for Kansas, President Trump told reporters Zelensky 'should have had this war settled a long time ago' and 'I think it's time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,' adding that Russia 'has been fine on Ukraine' and saying 'I would do it' about a meeting with Putin and Xi next month, the New York Post reported. Trump also said Putin is 'laying off Iran' and that he is 'not looking to break up negotiations right in the middle,' Fox News reported. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures' that he urged the White House to 'carefully consider the unintended consequences' of easing Russia sanctions, saying 'Putin cannot be trusted,' the Post reported.
At a contentious hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said there appeared to be 'a strong showing of bad faith' in the government's reliance on a 2019 landscape report to justify removing more than 500 trees from East Potomac golf course over Columbus Day weekend, ABC News reported. Overnight, Reyes denied a Justice Department motion to disqualify her for alleged political bias, and President Trump attacked her on social media before the hearing. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward clashed with Reyes and said he would instruct DOJ lawyers not to answer her question about why none had signed his briefs, and Reyes ordered him to file a brief by 3 p.m. explaining that instruction.
President Trump is expected to tout his immigration agenda at a rally just outside Wichita Monday night, Fox News reported, weeks after ICE's three-day 'Operation Safe Community — Kansas' made more than 100 arrests in southwest Kansas. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital that '3 million illegals have left the United States and zero illegals have been released at the border in seventeen months.' The Cook Political Report rates the race between Sen. Roger Marshall and megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton a toss-up, and Marshall has said that when ICE operates in Kansas 'it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement.'
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, in which mostly Asian-American parents argue that a Maryland county's lottery-based magnet-school admissions policy, though race-neutral on its face, was meant to reduce the number of Asian-American students, SCOTUSblog reported; the Court limited review to whether challengers must show an aggregate disparate impact. It also granted Department of Justice v. McNutt, on whether an 1868 federal law banning home distilleries, with penalties of up to $10,000 in fines and five years in prison, is a valid use of Congress's taxing power; the 5th Circuit struck the ban down and the 6th Circuit upheld it. Both cases are likely to be argued early next year.
The Court denied petitions from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and other 9/11 defendants seeking to reinstate plea deals that would have spared them the death penalty, and it turned down fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving in place a D.C. Circuit ruling that the for-cause limit on removing board members violates the separation of powers, SCOTUSblog reported. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, voiced 'serious concerns' as the Court declined to review Chicago's policy of seizing and selling, without compensation, cars of drivers with as few as two unpaid parking tickets. The justices also invited the solicitor general's views on Iowa's bid to defend a law making it a crime to be in the state after illegally reentering the U.S.; the November sitting opens Nov. 2.
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