Sudan’s government says the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has killed at least 2,000 people in the three days since it seized control of the city of El Fasher in the Darfur region. This comes as the World Health Organization says it’s appalled by reports that 460 patients and their companions were slaughtered at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher. On Wednesday, U.N. refugee agency official Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet said tens of thousands of displaced people have been arriving at Tawila, a refuge for civilians fleeing the violence. They described widespread ethnically and politically motivated killings and indiscriminate attacks, particularly affecting the most vulnerable.

Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet: “We have accounts of people with disabilities who were — who were executed, who were killed, as they were unable to flee. But we also hear people that are trying to leave the city and manage to get out of the city, but on the way, they’re caught up and they are also being shot.”

In Gaza, Israel’s military launched several airstrikes on the southern city of Khan Younis this morning — even after it announced a “resumption” of the ceasefire agreement. The bombings followed a wave of Israeli attacks a day earlier that killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 46 children. On Wednesday, friends and neighbors held a funeral procession through Nuseirat for the Abu Dalal family, killed by an Israeli strike on their home.

Mounir Maymeh: “Nine people from the Abu Dalal family in the house next to us were completely wiped out. Not a single person survived. They pulled them all out as remains from under the rubble. Remains. They would bring a piece of a body and say, 'This belongs to so-and-so,' bring a hand and say, 'This belongs to so-and-so.' It was a very difficult process.”

Israeli forces have intensified raids across the occupied West Bank, storming villages near Jenin and Ramallah. Separately, Israeli settlers stormed a Bedouin village east of Jerusalem, destroying Palestinian property and blocking roads. In another incident, Israeli settlers cut down hundreds of olive trees near Nablus. The settler attacks came as Israeli authorities said they would deport two Jewish women who recently joined Palestinians harvesting olives. In a statement, the group Rabbis for Human Rights said, “The decision to deport these volunteers reflects an alarming trend of silencing nonviolent human rights work and Jewish voices for justice in Israel-Palestine.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday the Pentagon had bombed another alleged drug-trafficking boat in international waters in the eastern Pacific, killing four people. In a social media post, Hegseth wrote, “The Western Hemisphere is no longer a safe haven for narco-terrorists bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans.” He provided no evidence supporting his claims there were drugs aboard the vessel. This comes as CNN is reporting the Trump administration pushed three-star General Joe McGee out of his role on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff following months of tensions with Secretary Hegseth on issues ranging from Russia and Ukraine to the extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean.

President Trump says he’s agreed to a one-year trade truce with China that includes the rollback of some tariffs, following face-to-face talks in South Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping. As part of the deal, Beijing agreed to postpone export controls on rare earth minerals and said it would crack down on fentanyl trafficking. China also agreed to resume buying American-made soybeans. We’ll have more on the Trump-Xi summit later in the broadcast.

President Trump says he’s instructed the Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time in over 30 years. Citing China and Russia, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.” It is unclear what he was referring to. Russia and China have not tested a nuclear weapon in decades; North Korea tested a nuclear weapon more than eight years ago. The U.S. conducted its last nuclear test back in 1992, soon after President George H.W. Bush announced a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. After headlines, we’ll have more on this story.

Hurricane Melissa is bearing down on Bermuda after leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, with at least 34 people confirmed dead — most of them in Haiti. Jamaica has confirmed at least eight deaths, after Melissa made landfall Tuesday as one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record. This is Sasha Hamilton, a resident of the hard-hit Catherine Hall neighborhood of Montego Bay in Jamaica.

Sasha Hamilton: “Yesterday was absolutely catastrophic and life-threatening. We were totally inundated. The entire ground floors of all the houses in Catherine Hall and West Green have been flooded. Major asset loss to vehicles, furnitures. We had to do rescue. … And we are literally desperate for some help at this point.”

According to AccuWeather, Melissa could cost Jamaica $22 billion in damages and economic losses — more than Jamaica’s annual gross domestic product. Rebuilding could take more than a decade.

The United Nations General Assembly has condemned the U.S. embargo on Cuba for the 33rd consecutive year. On Wednesday, 165 countries voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling on the U.S. to lift the embargo, while seven nations, including the U.S., Ukraine and Israel, voted against it. This is Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez.

Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla: “The blockade is collective punishment, as an act of genocide, which flagrantly, massively and systematically violates the human rights of Cubans. It doesn’t distinguish between social sectors or economic actors. … If the United States government had the smallest concern with helping the Cuban people as they say, suspend or make humanitarian exceptions to the blockade, given the damage it will cause, just like Hurricane Melissa is causing.”

Wednesday’s vote came as Hurricane Melissa struck eastern Cuba, causing major damage but no deaths, after more than 700,000 people evacuated. Later in the broadcast, we’ll get an update from reporter Liz Oliva Fernández, who’s on the ground in Santiago de Cuba.

The U.S. federal government shutdown has entered its 30th day. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune blocked a bid by Senate Democrats to fund food assistance programs through the shutdown, after the Trump administration refused to draw from a $5 billion contingency fund to maintain SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Without federal funding, some 42 million people who rely on SNAP could lose benefits beginning on Saturday.

A congressional candidate in Illinois’s 9th District has been indicted on federal charges by the Department of Justice. Democrat Kat Abughazaleh faces one count of conspiracy and one charge alleging that she “forcibly impeded, intimidated, and interfered” with an ICE officer. Abughazaleh has been frequently protesting outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. Soon after her indictment, she posted this video on social media.

Kat Abughazaleh: “As I and others have exercised our First Amendment rights, ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls and tear-gassed hundreds of protesters simply because we had the gall to say that masked men coming into our communities, abducting our neighbors and terrorizing us cannot be our new normal. And because Chicago doesn’t back down from bullies in masks who tear-gas our neighborhoods, this administration has resorted to weaponizing the federal justice system to scare us into silence. But we’re not going to be silent.”

Click here to see our interview with Kat Abughazaleh.

The Department of Justice has suspended two federal prosecutors after they referred in court documents to the January 6 insurrection as carried out by a “mob of rioters.” The prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, had filed a sentencing memo against January 6 rioter Taylor Taranto, who was pardoned by President Trump on the first day of his second term in office. The two prosecutors were seeking 27 months in prison for Taranto for bringing guns and illegal ammunition to Barack Obama’s home in 2023, after Trump posted Obama’s Washington address to social media. By Wednesday afternoon, the sentencing document was removed and replaced with another document without references to January 6, Trump’s social media post and the two prosecutors.

A jury in Illinois convicted Sean Grayson, a sheriff’s deputy, of second-degree murder in the 2024 shooting death of Sonya Massey, a Black mother of two who had called 911 about a suspected prowler. Grayson was originally charged with first-degree murder, but the jury opted to convict him on a lesser charge. That prompted anger from Massey’s supporters, including her father, James Wilburn.

James Wilburn: “There’s a difference in this country when you have my skin color and Grayson’s skin color. We need serious justice, not a miscarriage of justice that happened here in Peoria. We need to pass the George Floyd Policing Act. We need to pass the John Lewis Voting Act. We need to make the Sonya Massey law across the whole United States. Then no family in our country can go through what our family has gone through.”

In July 2024, Grayson and another deputy officer arrived at Massey’s house after she reported suspicious activity. Grayson then shot Massey after he confronted her about how she was handling a pot of hot water. There is no indication from bodycam video that Massey intended to throw the hot water at either officer.

In the Netherlands, the center-left D66 party made huge gains in national elections, winning the largest share of seats in the Dutch House of Representatives. The far-right anti-immigrant party of Geert Wilders lost support and came in second place. The election was triggered after Wilders pulled his party out of the government in June, after the other parties refused to endorse his anti-refugee policies. The election results allow the 38-year-old Rob Jetten to form a government as the Netherlands’ youngest and first openly gay prime minister.

Rob Jetten: “This is an historic election result, because we’ve shown not only to the Netherlands, but also to the world, that it is possible to beat populist and extreme-right movements.”