Evening Brief: Iran says four tankers hit trouble in Hormuz as Oman rescues 25 from a burning tanker; Trump says Iran war 'going to get wrapped up soon'; Kansas and Iowa rallies back on
Plus the Louise 1 limpet-mine attack and a record month of Hormuz strikes, $117 Brent, Houthi missiles at Aden, Oleshky evacuations, Rubio's G20, Stephen Hubbard at the White House, ICE's voter-fraud arrests, the Comey hearing and the Supreme Court's November sitting.
5 PM CT video brief · 1:53Presenter voice and image generated with AI tools.Read transcript
I'm Nora Vale with your 5 PM World Brief for Friday, October 30. Iran: 4 tankers halted in Hormuz, incl. a burning supertanker. Oman rescues 25 from tanker RITI. CENTCOM: main lanes cleared. Trump: Iran war 'going to get wrapped up soon.' Qatar carries peace-draft edits to Tehran. Brent: $117.56. Oleshky evacuations begin under truce; Russian strikes black out 350,000+ in Dnipro. Trump meets freed American Stephen Hubbard. Kansas and Iowa rallies back on for Sunday. Supreme Court: November sitting opens Monday; Guerrero v. Johnson argued Nov. 4. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: First wave of heavy rainfall moving through the Four Corners through Saturday morning. A second wave of more widespread heavy rain threat reaches southern California and Desert Southwest Saturday evening followed by northward expansion into the Great Basin and Four Corners Sunday morning. Our opinion. Keep the seas open, no Iranian bomb, no rewards for hostage-taking, finality for victims. Full stories and sources at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard said four oil tankers were halted Friday after "incidents" or hitting mines on what it calls an unauthorized southern route through the Strait of Hormuz, the latest a supertanker carrying more than 2 million barrels that it said exploded and was burning, AFP reported via Arab News; the AP said it could not verify the claims. Oman's navy evacuated 25 crew members from the Panama-flagged tanker RITI after it was targeted and caught fire, and the British navy's UKMTO reported a separate ship hit by an unknown projectile south of Iran's Lavan Island, crew safe. U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper said Friday that U.S. forces had cleared the strait's primary transit routes of Iranian sea mines.
Three maritime security sources told Reuters that the tanker hit Thursday about 25 nautical miles northeast of Oman's Khasab was the Panama-flagged Louise 1, and that a small boat attached two limpet mines to its hull in the first known successful use of such explosives in the strait since the U.S. war with Iran began in February. UKMTO counted just over 30 attacks in and around the Strait of Hormuz in October, twice September's number and the most of any month of the war, with 145 reported incidents since it began, CBS News reported.
President Trump told Kansas City radio station KCMO on Friday that the war with Iran is "going to get wrapped up soon," adding, "We need a guarantee there'll never be a nuclear weapon," CBS News reported. A source told CBS News that Qatari mediators were in Tehran to convey edits to a draft proposal to end the war, with Iran's response expected by the weekend; Iran has not yet answered Vice President JD Vance's letter, according to Iranian media. Brent crude rose 2.37% to $117.56 a barrel and U.S. crude to $104.17 on Friday, The National reported, and ExxonMobil said its third-quarter profit more than doubled to $15.4 billion.
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis targeted the presidential palace in Aden on Friday with two missiles, a police official told AFP, and witnesses saw ambulances entering the compound, CBS News reported. Earlier Friday the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted a Houthi drone near Riyadh and a ballistic missile in southern Saudi Arabia; the Houthis denied firing a separate drone the coalition said it downed in the Mecca region.
Residents of Russian-held Oleshky in southern Ukraine began evacuating Friday in the first joint relief operation by the two sides in the war, under a local ceasefire brokered by U.S. first lady Melania Trump, Reuters reported; Russian rights commissioner Yana Lantratova said 25 buses and 50 medical personnel were on hand. Russian strikes overnight left more than 350,000 people without power in Dnipro and the surrounding region, the regional head said, and a Ukrainian drone set fire to a refinery in Russia's Samara region, CNBC reported. U.S.-mediated peace talks are due to resume next month in Abu Dhabi.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio opened talks Friday in Atlanta with G20 foreign ministers including Russia's Sergei Lavrov, AFP reported via CBS News. Rubio warned that the world faces "interconnected economic and geopolitical crises" and urged cooperation on energy and food supply chains and freedom of navigation, ahead of a December G20 leaders' summit in Miami.
President Trump met Friday in the Oval Office with Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired teacher jailed in Russia for more than four years after being accused of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, calling him a "very special man" who "suffered greatly," CBS News reported. Hubbard said he would not have lived another year in that prison. Trump has said there was no "swap" for Hubbard, but appeared to tie his release to the decision to exempt Russia from sanctions passed by Congress.
President Trump will hold rallies Sunday in Salina, Kansas, and Dubuque, Iowa, the Republican National Committee announced Friday, less than a day after he said he would skip both for tele-rallies, NBC News reported. A source said he will also do nearly 20 tele-rallies and that the events were "rearranged for scheduling purposes." Trump is also campaigning Friday night in Daytona Beach, Florida, ahead of Tuesday's election.
ICE said Friday it has arrested another round of noncitizens in connection with alleged voter fraud, listing 17 cases including illegal immigrants and green-card holders it says registered or voted illegally in elections from 2004 to 2025. "Each vote by a criminal illegal alien cancels out a vote of an American citizen," ICE Public Affairs Assistant Director Micah Bock said, adding that the agency has uncovered hundreds of cases.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden on Friday heard former FBI Director James Comey's motion to dismiss a third federal case, brought by criminal information rather than a grand jury indictment over his 2016 authorization of staff to talk to a New York Times reporter, NBC News reported. Comey's lawyers argue the 10-year statute of limitations ran out; McFadden did not bar prosecutors from going to a grand jury and said he would be "extremely frustrated" by "some sort of predawn raid."
On Tuesday the Supreme Court, with no noted dissents, denied a request by three cities and an immigrant legal-services group to pause a Texas-Justice Department agreement that blocks a Biden-era rule letting immigration judges pause certain deportation cases, SCOTUSblog reported. On Thursday, opponents urged the justices to deny the administration's request to resume border-wall construction in Texas's Big Bend region, which remains pending. The November sitting opens Monday with Maxwell v. Dinis and Younge v. Fulton Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office.
The Supreme Court will hear Guerrero v. Johnson on Nov. 4, on whether Texas death-row inmate Dexter Johnson, convicted in 2007 of a double murder, can bring a second federal habeas petition claiming intellectual disability under updated diagnostic standards as a "previously unavailable" rule, SCOTUSblog reported. Texas says the Court's 2002 Atkins ruling was available long before; Solicitor General D. John Sauer and Louisiana with 21 other states back Texas, and a decision is expected by late June or early July.
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