YEMEN - Yemen’s Houthi rebels are mobilising for a major new assault in an attempt to take control of the country, The Telegraph can reveal. The Iran-backed fighters are massing forces in the territory they control for a push on the besieged city of Taiz and the Saudi-backed government’s interim capital, Aden. It is a part of a drive to seize as much of the country as possible before any negotiations with Saudi Arabia, sources on both sides of the war tell The Telegraph. Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, has been encircled by the Houthis for more than a month and is heavily defended, making it the harder prize. Aden, further south and less well defended, is seen as the softer target, according to Telegraph sources. The aim is to maximise the Houthis’ leverage on the ground so that when talks with Riyadh come, the rebels negotiate from a position of strength.

USA - Thirteen US states have threatened Britain with trade reprisals over its sanctions targeting Israeli settlers. In a letter sent to Christian Turner, the UK ambassador to the US, the 13 Republican attorneys general demanded that Andy Burnham’s government abandon sanctions targeting settler activity in the West Bank. In September, the UK Government announced sanctions and a trade ban on goods, services and advertising connected to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territory. The move provoked anger in Israel and was condemned by Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to the country, who accused the Government of “Jew hate” and warned that Britain could face economic repercussions. The new letter, led by Brenna Bird, the Iowa attorney general, argued that the sanctions threatened American businesses and undermined Israel’s sovereignty. In return, the states threatened to ban British companies from US government contracts, withdraw investments in UK companies, and seek federal approval for tariffs and other trade reprisals.

MIDDLE EAST - Despite market bets on a de-escalation in the Iran war, new evidence has emerged in recent days of strikes on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and on energy infrastructure in the Middle East. On Tuesday, crude prices hit two-month lows after US officials downplayed the need for additional military action against Iran, with analysts noting President Donald Trump's more conciliatory tone since the Republicans' defeat in the November 3 midterm elections. However, there is little sign of attacks abating in November, after 37 ships were attacked in October, the highest monthly total since the start of the war, according to data from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The International Maritime Organization has confirmed 130 incidents, most of them attacks, in the region since the conflict began in late February, with at least 25 seafarers killed.

UK - Wes Streeting has been urged to recruit carmakers as potential weapons producers over fears that Britain’s industrial base is not ready for war. In a report published on Wednesday, peers urged the Defence Secretary to consider how motor manufacturers could “surge” production of drones and missiles for the UK military in times of crisis. The Lords industry and regulators committee also recommended that drone manufacturers be paid to keep some spare capacity in reserve so they could respond quickly if required. Baroness Hayter, the committee chairman, said commercial manufacturers such as carmakers should be prepared to switch their production lines over to defence equipment when needed. The report warned ministers that keeping production capacity in reserve was important because stockpiling drones risked filling warehouses full of technology that would rapidly go out of date. It comes after Mr Streeting said Britain needed to be ready to fight a war in 1,000 days.

UK - Supermarket fridges turned up to 50C. Bomb threats paralysing airlines. Car production lines frozen. Websites used by millions suddenly blanked out. Such technological collapse was once the stuff of dystopian fiction. No more. In the past fortnight alone, coinciding cyber attacks have wrought economic chaos across Europe. The suspicion of many governments in the West is that hostile states such as Russia and Iran are to blame. What is clear is that the everyday systems that underpin and support civilian life now appear to be just as much of a target as military installations. And, worryingly, security chiefs, cyber experts and emergency responders are warning that this so-called shadow war – the below-threshold, “hybrid” acts of sabotage designed to demoralise an enemy without ever openly declaring combat – is only going to get worse. Britain is far from immune. Richard Horne, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre, has warned the UK could face a crisis within the next two years “when food isn’t on shelves, lights aren’t on [and] businesses have gone under” amid an “unprecedented” rise in hacking.

UK - For the second time in as many months, the United States has removed its planes from an RAF base in Britain because of an alleged threat from Iran. Alarm bells should be ringing in Downing Street. On Monday, the US military evacuated at least a dozen aircraft, including nine air refuelling tankers, from RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk. The majority of the planes are thought to have been sent abroad. The move was reportedly prompted by a new threat from Iran. The Pentagon has raised the security level at the base and at nearby RAF Lakenheath to FPCON Charlie, suggesting a form of terrorist action is likely. This comes hot on the heels of the US withdrawing its B1 bomber planes from RAF Fairford last month, after a suspected Iran-related terror incident near the air base. Washington has sought to play down these moves, suggesting that they are precautionary or routine measures. But there is a growing sense that Britain’s most important ally feels we cannot be relied upon to keep its assets safe on our own soil. The US does not seem to have similar concerns about its airbases Ramstein in Germany or Moron de la Frontera in Spain, where some of the Mildenhall planes were relocated.

UK - Yesterday it was reported that sales of canned goods were up 83 per cent; bottled water 37 per cent. “Be ready,” says the defence secretary, Wes Streeting. Only it doesn’t seem to be a priority for the government. I’m all for personal responsibility. But what is Whitehall doing? Britain is facing dangers from cyber and drone attacks and disinformation campaigns; our undersea cables are vulnerable; shipping is threatened; extreme weather is on the way, as is, perhaps, the next pandemic. Who knows what Vladimir Putin is plotting or whether AI is coming for humanity. Yet the UK is not ready for a sustained period of disruption to food and fuel supplies, even as the alarms sound. European supermarkets suffered a cyberattack causing their freezers to overheat to 50C, ruining fresh and frozen produce. Open AI tools discovered a flaw in the programming language PHP, which runs 70 per cent of websites.

USA - Of course the truth is that the cost of living is most definitely not “up about 4 percent over the last 12 months”. It is going up way faster than that. Since 1978, the way that the federal government calculates the rate of inflation has changed over and over again. When federal bureaucrats make these changes, the goal is almost always to make the rate of inflation appear to be lower. On the official BLS website, they actually have a list of all of the revisions that they have made to the way that the Consumer Price Index is calculated. [Over 60 modifications since 1978!] It is so important to understand that the way that the rate of inflation is calculated today does not even come close to resembling how the rate of inflation was calculated during the Jimmy Carter era. If we did calculate the rate of inflation the exact same way that we did back then, it would be well into double digit territory.

GERMANY - More than 413,000 workers across Germany’s crisis-hit industrial sector have taken part in strikes and rallies this week, demanding higher pay and job security, trade union IG Metall announced on Friday. Germany’s largest union reported more than 2,800 actions nationwide since Sunday, hitting carmakers, engineering companies, metal producers, and suppliers after three rounds of wage talks failed to produce a deal. New strikes hit more than 30 companies in and around Nuremberg on Friday, including Bosch, Siemens, MAN Truck & Bus, and Schaeffler. The walkouts are part of a wider wave of strikes and labor protests sweeping Europe.

RUSSIA - Donald Trump says he has settled eight wars, but the biggest prize – peace between Russia and Ukraine – still eludes and frustrates him. His negotiators, Steve Witkoff, the property developer, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, will head to Abu Dhabi this week for the first face-to-face peace talks with Russia and Ukraine since February. This three-way negotiation has squeezed out the other key players with skin in the game: the Europeans. Trump himself said last week that the deal “might involve all of Europe”. Although the Europeans are sidelined, their priority is clear: a peace deal must neutralise the threat of Russian aggression. But the Americans have muddied the waters. Reports suggest they are pushing for a peace deal that would controversially include the resumption of Russian gas exports to Europe. The Europeans have spent the past four years painfully weaning themselves off an addiction to Vladimir Putin’s energy bounty. They are now in the final furlong of a legally binding process to shut out Russian gas permanently.

USA - President Trump has suggested the midterm elections were not “honest” after previously insisting he would respect the results that delivered a crushing defeat to the Republicans. “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” he posted on Truth Social on Monday. “How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” Polling before the midterms put the Democrats on course for sweeping victories but they ended up understating the scale of the national swing to the party by about four percentage points. The scale of Democrat victories was so large that in Texas James Talarico, a Senate candidate, had more ballots cast for him in early and postal voting alone than his Republican rival Ken Paxton garnered overall.

USA - The US military pulled a number of aircraft from a Royal Air Force base after reportedly receiving a threat from Iran. Three refuelling tankers were diverted from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to Germany on Monday, with at least six US planes in total relocated. The evacuation was prompted by a new threat from Iran which US officials were alerted to on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal. The base in Suffolk hosts the 100th Air Refuelling Wing, the only permanent US refuelling wing in the European theatre. It operates the KC-135 Stratotanker.

UK - Britain’s grid operator has paid a gas power station more than £1 million an hour to keep the lights on following a slump in wind power. Langage Power Station, near Plymouth, was paid the equivalent of £1.4 million an hour on Monday evening, according to market transparency data. Gas-fired power plants across the country were paid millions of pounds to cover potential shortfalls in electricity after low winds cut the output of renewables. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) was paying around £1,500 per megawatt hour on Monday to at least three power stations to cover the evening peak in demand. That was about 10 times the average.

IRAN - When supermarket fridge temperatures across France began to soar in October, spoiling millions of euros worth of food, suspicion fell almost immediately on Russia. But on Monday, the French foreign minister identified an Iranian hacking group as responsible for the cyber attack, which he described as “unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression”. Shahid Kaveh, the accused cyber warfare unit, sits deep inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The commander of the shadowy formation has a $10 million (£7.4 million) US bounty on his head and now faces an international arrest warrant from a Western government. For years, the unit has lurked in the networks of its enemies, pre-positioning malware inside water plants, power grids and fuel systems from the United States to Israel. Last month it arrived inside the fridges of Europe’s supermarkets. The fridge attacks, which began in France and extended across Europe, thrust into public view a unit that normally operates in the dark. Western governments have said it is among the most dangerous instruments in Iran’s arsenal of deniable digital war.

UK - Around four in five Britons view Israel as a serious threat to world peace, according to a new survey by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), published last week. A total of 78% of respondents said they view Israel as a serious threat, compared with 48% 20 years ago. The percentage has also increased a full 10% in the last year. The number of respondents who said they view the US as a serious threat to world peace was similar to the number for Israel, at 74%. This had doubled in just two years, with the same question receiving 35% in 2024. The country deemed the highest threat to world peace was Russia (89%), followed by Israel, Iran (75%), the USA, North Korea (66%), China (62%) and Saudi Arabia (34%). Israel has surpassed North Korea in the last year.