Australia-Papua New Guinea treaty. The cabinet of Papua New Guinea (PNG) approved a mutual defense pact with Australia, paving the way for its signing. The treaty alliance, Australia’s first in more than seventy years, allows PNG soldiers to serve in Australia’s military. China, a major economic partner to PNG, indirectly criticized the pact, saying a bilateral treaty should not “prevent a sovereign country from cooperating with a third party.”
UK synagogue attack. Two people were killed in an attack at a Manchester synagogue and the suspect is believed to be dead, local police said today. The attack is being investigated as terrorism and occurred on Yom Kippur, an important holiday. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is flying back early from a Denmark summit and said extra police assets would be deployed to British synagogues. The incident comes after German authorities yesterday said they detained three people who they suspect of being Hamas members and of planning to attack Jewish or Israeli institutions.
Expiring U.S. trade benefits. U.S. programs offering duty-free access to Haitian textile products and various African goods expired on Tuesday. African and Caribbean officials, as well as the American Apparel and Footwear Association, had called for their extension. An unnamed White House official told news organizations that the Trump administration supports a one-year extension of the Africa program.
Ruling on Fed governor. The U.S. Supreme Court will wait until January to hear arguments in a case over the Trump administration’s efforts to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. The court has backed Trump’s efforts to remove government workers from their posts in other cases. Trump is the first president to try to remove a Fed governor in the bank’s more than one-hundred-year history.
Pope’s climate appeal. Pope Leo on Wednesday called for more global pressure on politicians to protect the climate and criticized people who “deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change.” His remarks came a week after Trump called warnings about climate change a “con job” while speaking at the United Nations. Leo was speaking at an event marking the ten-year anniversary of the publication of Pope Francis’s 2015 climate treatise, which built momentum toward the Paris Agreement the same year.
Gaza aid boats blocked. Israeli forces intercepted more than a dozen boats sailing to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza and protest Israel’s war. Organizers of the flotilla—which included more than five hundred participants from dozens of countries—called the interception an “illegal attack” on humanitarians. Israel countered that the activists were “not interested in aid, but provocation.” Israel maintains a blockade around Gaza and tightly controls what aid can enter, even as Gazans in parts of the enclave have been suffering from famine.
Argentina’s currency woes. A drop in the value of the Argentine peso led the country’s central bank to sell dollar reserves on Tuesday and Wednesday to try to prop it up. The interventions came after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pledged last week to provide U.S. economic support to shore up Argentine President Javier Milei’s reform program through mechanisms like the U.S. Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund. Washington has yet to act on Bessent’s pledge.
U.S. stake in lithium firm. The U.S. government is taking a 5 percent stake in mining company Lithium Americas, which is developing a mine in Nevada. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the deal “helps reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries for critical minerals.” It follows the government’s move to take a 10 percent stake in Intel, as well as a 15 percent cut of Nvidia and AMD’s chip sales to China.
