Spotlight
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday dismissed his popular defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in a surprise announcement that came as Israel is embroiled in wars on multiple fronts across the region.
Netanyahu and Gallant have repeatedly been at odds over the war in Gaza. But Netanyahu had avoided firing his rival. Netanyahu cited "significant gaps" and a "crisis of trust" between the men in his Tuesday evening announcement.

North Korean troops recently deployed to help Russia in its war with Ukraine have come under Ukrainian fire, a Kyiv official said Tuesday.
It is the first time a Ukrainian official has said that Pyongyang's units were struck, following a deployment that has given the war a new complexion as it approaches its 1,000-day milestone.

U.S. Election Day voting began across the eastern and central U.S. on Tuesday morning after tens of millions of Americans hade already cast their ballots. Those early votes included record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state's office said the big day could look like a "ghost town" at the polls.

Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday reiterated that his country does not seek an escalation in the Middle East but reserved the right to defend itself against Israel’s attack with a “measured and calculated” response.
Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has approved sending an additional 7,000 draft notices to members of the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
Under long-standing political arrangements, ultra-Orthodox Jews had been exempt from military service, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. However, Israel’s Supreme Court in June ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the army.

The Lebanese Red Cross will send another convoy Tuesday to Wata al-Khiam in southern Lebanon to search for and remove the bodies of 15 people killed in an Israeli airstrike, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.
Paramedics accessed the site of the strike two days prior and removed five other bodies, but needed to return with larger vehicles to remove the rubble. The NNA said the deployment is in coordination with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which is the usual procedure.

A crowd of enraged survivors hurled clots of mud left by storm-spawned flooding at the Spanish royal couple during their first visit to the center of their nation's deadliest natural disaster in living memory.
Spain's national broadcaster reported that the barrage included a few rocks and other objects and that two bodyguards were treated for injuries. One could be seen with a bloody wound on his forehead.

Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his demands that the winner of the presidential race be declared shortly after polls close Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.

The Biden administration is stepping up criticism of Israel for not doing enough to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a 30-day deadline looms for Israeli officials to meet certain requirements or risk potential restrictions on military assistance.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday gave Israel a "fail" grade in terms of meeting the conditions for an improvement in aid deliveries to Gaza laid out in a letter last month to senior Israeli officials from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

A senior Hamas official said members of the militant group held a meeting with a delegation from the rival Fatah party in Cairo to discuss the war in Gaza and the enclave’s future governance, though the meeting did not lead to any major breakthroughs.
Osama Hamdan described the talks between the two heavyweights of Palestinian politics as “positive” but “frank.” He said the two sides discussed the formation of a future government for the Palestinian territories but provided few details as to how and when that would occur.
