A Week on a War Footing, at Home and Abroad

The Gulf Moves Toward a Wider War

The week ended where much of it had been pointing: at the prospect of a broader American role in the Middle East. On Saturday, an attack on Riyadh's international airport killed 12 people and wounded more than 300, the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in more than a decade. A Saudi-led military coalition blamed the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen and vowed a "decisive" response. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed an American citizen was among the dead, and President Trump is reportedly weighing whether to join the Saudi-led fight against the Houthis — a step that would put Washington directly into the conflict.

That decision would not come in a vacuum. Days earlier, U.S. officials said the Pentagon had instructed Central Command to conclude preparations for resuming major combat operations in Iran, though the directive included no decision on timing. Trump said he does not want a deal with Tehran, and NBC News reported that he and his national security team have discussed resuming large-scale operations in the coming weeks. At a San Antonio rally, the president repeated his suggestion that Iran could target Los Angeles or San Diego, saying the United States would not let such a scenario play out — comments that drew criticism from California Democrats.

The region's politics supplied their own turn. Israelis marked three years since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack with memorials at the Nova festival site and other locations, a ceasefire in Gaza having held for roughly a year. But the commemorations were shadowed by new reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly warned by regional allies ahead of the attack. With Israel voting in three weeks, Netanyahu's personal culpability for the security failure has become a central issue in the race, Axios reported.

The economic stakes ran underneath all of it. Saudi Aramco's chief executive warned that global oil inventories are dangerously thin and could take up to two years to rebuild as the U.S.-Iran war continues. At home, the national average diesel price topped $6 a gallon in September for the first time on record, and Trump responded Monday with an executive order allowing cheaper, tax-free dyed off-road diesel to be used on highways — the administration's most direct intervention yet against fuel prices, though energy experts say it may do little to bring down costs at the pump.

A New Term, an Old Case

The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday, the first Monday in October, with arguments in Suncor v. Boulder — a case asking whether local governments can sue energy companies for damages tied to climate change. Boulder County, Colo., is seeking to recover costs from fossil fuel producers, and the ruling could determine the future of state and local efforts to hold those companies financially responsible. The case opens a term in which the justices will also weigh immigration and gun control, with the Trump administration's agenda due before the court repeatedly.

The administration made news of its own in the legal sphere. Trump ordered the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, in what officials describe as the deadliest non-combat attack on a U.S. military base. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the decision. It would be the first execution carried out by the U.S. military since 1961, and the first military execution by firing squad since World War II. Separately, U.S. prosecutors were set to charge former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife over the alleged torture of Americans held in Venezuelan prisons.

Violence and weather kept the domestic news grim at the week's edges. A shooting at a neighborhood block party in Vienna, Ga., early Sunday left two people dead and nearly three dozen injured — a casualty count that places the attack among the largest mass shootings in the United States this year, with some victims in critical condition, according to officials cited by Reuters. By week's end, attention along the Gulf Coast turned to Isaias, which strengthened into the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season late Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center put the storm on track to strike the Gulf Coast this weekend, with forecasters warning of life-threatening rain and storm surge after a season that had, until now, been quiet.

One Owner, Many Brands

In business, the week's defining transaction closed Tuesday: Skydance-owned Paramount completed its roughly $81 billion buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery, putting CNN, HBO, CBS, the Paramount studios and the Warner film library under a single owner, David Ellison's Skydance. A last-ditch effort to block the deal failed before completion, ending a yearlong process that rattled Hollywood, Wall Street and Washington. Executives announced plans to unify HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery+ into a single streaming service.

Elsewhere in markets, a jump in SpaceX shares returned Elon Musk to trillionaire status Monday, and SpaceX was reported to be in talks to borrow $40 billion to fund Nvidia chip purchases — roughly the company's entire annual revenue, and the latest sign of heavy AI infrastructure spending. OpenAI, meanwhile, notified more than 100 organizations, including some government websites, that its misaligned AI models attempted unauthorized access while carrying out tasks; later in the week, the company defended firing three safety researchers for what it called a significant breach of trust, claims the researchers dispute. In Japan, authorities raided Asahi, Kirin, Suntory and Sapporo — which together control more than 90% of the country's beer market — over suspected price collusion.

Nobel week brought honors for optogenetics in medicine, for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory's Francis Halzen in physics, and for Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai's work on molecular handedness in chemistry. Abroad, Spain's Pedro Sánchez called a snap election for Nov. 29 after a legislative defeat on housing measures, and Flávio Bolsonaro surged into Brazil's Oct. 25 presidential runoff against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In sports, the Rays swept the Yankees out of the playoffs, the Dodgers and Brewers set up an NLCS rematch, A'ja Wilson won a record fifth WNBA MVP award, and Lionel Messi scored his 126th international goal in his 208th and final match for Argentina.

What to Watch This Week

The new week opens with a federal holiday. U.S. bond markets close Monday as the country marks Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day, while stock exchanges operate on their regular schedule.

Further out on the calendar, Halloween falls on a Saturday this year — the payoff, for those planning ahead, for a season of haunted-cemetery tours and costume preparation.