Morning Brief: Drone sinks ship off NATO's Romania; Trump invokes Defense Production Act for oil refining; Supreme Court lets New Hampshire bar student voter IDs
Plus an oil spill on UAE beaches as Hormuz attacks multiply, Macron's protest bans, a West Bank shooting, Trump's housing-cost order, his Russia sanctions waiver, DOJ's California ballot appeal and the Big Bend border wall at the Court.
6 AM CT video brief · 1:39Presenter voice and image generated with AI tools.Read transcript
I'm Nora Vale with your 6 AM World Brief for Friday, October 23. Drone sinks cargo ship off Romania; 1 dead, 3 missing. Romania's president blames Russia. Trump invokes the Defense Production Act to expand U.S. oil production and refining. Most new Russia sanctions waived to keep peace talks alive; some GOP senators push back. Court lets New Hampshire bar student voter IDs for now. Big Bend border wall request filed. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: There is a Slight Risk of excessive rainfall over parts of the Southern High Plains and Southwest on Friday, the Southern Rockies on Saturday, and the Central/Southern High Plains on Saturday and Sunday. Severe thunderstorms with hail, damaging gusts and a tornado or two are possible across portions of New Mexico and southern Colorado today into tonight, a level 2 of 5 severe storm risk. Our opinion. No rewards for Moscow while ships sink; build U.S. refining; don't rewrite election rules late. Full stories and sources at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale. Thanks for watching.
A drone strike sank the Comoros-flagged cargo ship Khoryv about 13 nautical miles off Romania's port of Constanta on Friday, just beyond Romanian territorial waters, killing at least one sailor with three still missing out of a crew of 13 Ukrainian and Azerbaijani sailors, Reuters reported. Romanian President Nicusor Dan said the attack 'is part of Russia's escalation process in its war in Ukraine.' Reuters said at least seven cargo ships have been hit off NATO members Romania and Bulgaria in the past two weeks, with some 30 sailors dead or missing, and NATO said Tuesday it would send more patrol aircraft, radar systems and drones to the Black Sea.
The United Arab Emirates said Friday it detected a tanker oil spill on the beaches of Umm Al Quwain, north of Dubai, and closed them while crews work on containment and cleanup, Euronews reported. The report said attacks on ships near the Strait of Hormuz have multiplied in recent weeks, that Iran's Revolutionary Guards said this week they target tankers using what Tehran calls an unauthorized route near the Omani coast, and that Iran has no recognized authority under international maritime law to restrict passage through the strait.
French President Emmanuel Macron said last Saturday's violence was 'political and seditious acts by ultra-left groups whose aim is to bring down the Republic' and said protests requested by 'individuals or groups with no legitimate authority' will be banned, Fox News reported, citing Reuters. Businesses in central Paris began boarding up windows ahead of a large demonstration Saturday, protests planned in Lyon that day were banned, and a Paris court overturned a police ban on Thursday's march, which the AP said was peaceful.
Five Israelis were wounded, two of them critically, in a shooting Friday near the Judea Junction area in the southern West Bank, and Israeli forces killed two suspected gunmen, Fox News reported. The Israel Defense Forces set up a blockade and continued searching the area, and Magen David Adom said it treated two people in critical condition at the scene; the attackers' identities were not released.
President Trump signed a determination Thursday under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act declaring domestic petroleum production, refining, pipelines, storage and marine terminals essential to the national defense, and directed the Secretary of War to make purchases, commitments and financial arrangements to expand that capacity, according to the White House. Announcing the move at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, Trump said the aim is to put downward pressure on record-high diesel and gasoline prices, the Washington Examiner reported.
An executive order Trump signed Thursday tells the Federal Housing Finance Agency, if its director finds it appropriate, to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pilot proactive cancellation of mortgage insurance for borrowers with enough equity, and to expand a program accepting automated title reviews instead of lender's title insurance on refinances, according to the White House. The order also creates a Task Force on Manufactured Housing Innovation to recommend within 180 days how to cut federal barriers to factory-built homes, and directs the Agriculture and Veterans Affairs departments to lower rates on their direct home loans.
Over roughly a week, the administration waived most of the new Russia sanctions and tariffs in the Graham Act enacted last month and separately eased restrictions on Russian diesel exports, Fox News reported. Trump wrote that he did not want to 'drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,' while Sen. Thom Tillis called the move 'Beyond irresponsible' and Sen. Katie Britt said now is the time to 'turn up the pressure.' The waiver does not remove sanctions that predated the law, and the administration can revisit the new penalties, Fox said.
The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal Thursday after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter did not rule by its noon deadline on a request to stop California from sending and counting mail-in ballots from people on a federal list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens until their citizenship is verified, the New York Post reported. 'Every minute that goes by, American citizen votes are being diluted in the state of California,' First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said, while Attorney General Rob Bonta's office moved to dismiss the suit and Secretary of State Shirley Weber questioned the federal list.
In a brief unsigned order Thursday in Scanlan v. Coalition for Open Democracy, the Supreme Court paused a federal judge's ruling that required New Hampshire election officials to still consider student IDs, citing the principle that lower courts should ordinarily not alter election rules on the eve of an election, SCOTUSblog reported. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter. The order is interim while the state's appeal proceeds; Attorney General John Formella called it 'an important victory,' Fox News reported.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency application Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to lift a 'baseless injunction that halts a major portion of the construction of the border wall' in Texas's Big Bend region, the Washington Examiner reported. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone had blocked three Homeland Security waivers that allowed construction, siding with environmental groups that sued, the Examiner said. SCOTUSblog noted the dispute is now on the Court's interim docket, and the November argument session opens Nov. 2.
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Analysis labeled. Our point of view appears only in the Our Opinion box under each story, never mixed into the facts.
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