The death toll from a U.S. missile strike on a wedding party in Iran has risen to five. Among the dead is a 6-year-old boy. A funeral for the victims was held on Thursday. Nearly 70 others were wounded in the U.S. bombing that struck a home in the Iranian city of Kuhestak on Tuesday, one of dozens of U.S. attacks on Iran earlier this week. Reuters reports it was likely a direct hit by a U.S. munition, and not a ricochet off another target. Other news outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC, came to similar conclusions.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. will investigate the missile strike but that he doubts the U.S. was behind the attack.

Vice President JD Vance: “I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what’s happened in the conflict thus far, so I’m extremely skeptical of this.”

Vance’s pledge to investigate the bombing of the wedding party comes six months after U.S. cruise missiles struck an elementary school in Minab. That attack killed over 150 people, most of them students. The Pentagon has yet to publicly release a report on the strikes. Meanwhile, Vance was asked by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins whether the war would continue into November.

Kaitlan Collins: “Will this war be over by the time of the midterm elections?”

Vice President JD Vance: “Well, Kaitlan, again, I don’t — I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now there is no active shooting. I recognize there is — there have been places where this has flared up. Major combat operations — again, major combat operations lasted for about six weeks.”

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has outlined a plan to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. He called for the next government to form a ministry in charge of emigration to carry out his plan of mass expulsion.

Itamar Ben-Gvir: “Two hundred fifty thousand in the first year, is it possible? It is possible. One-point-one million within three years, and within seven years, we can reach almost 1.9 million, which will accumulate. It is possible. It is realistic. It is in our hands. It is within our capabilities.”

This comes as Israel continues to carry out deadly attacks in Gaza, killing at least three Palestinians on Thursday despite the U.S.-brokered so-called ceasefire. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has accused Israel of brazenly confiscating land in the occupied West Bank as part of what the group calls Israel’s “annexation agenda.” 

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to strip federal funding from universities that participate in boycotts of Israel.The measure passed 237 to 169 with 33 Democrats supporting the bill. Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian American, blasted the legislation.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “This bill is an attack on free speech and academic freedom, all in the name of defending a genocidal apartheid state. While the Trump administration is stripping universities of their funding, deporting international students and pressing universities to shut down their Black and African American studies departments, Congress is voting today to force universities to pledge their loyalty. To what? To a foreign government. That’s right: Support Israel’s government’s — right now — war crimes, or lose federal student aid.”

Missouri’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that a new Republican-drawn congressional map may not be used in November’s midterm elections. Republicans had hoped their mid-decade redistricting effort would gain them an additional House seat in the next Congress.

The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court Thursday seeking to reverse a federal judge’s order blocking U.S. Postal Service restrictions on mail-in ballots from taking effect. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued the temporary restraining order last week, halting President Trump’s directive to USPS to deliver ballots only to voters on federally approved lists. On Thursday, Judge Talwani grilled government lawyers over the plan, warning it could lead to “major disenfranchisement.”

The Justice Department says states could lose billions of dollars of federal funding for low-income residents, unless they report undocumented immigrants living in their communities. In a legal opinion issued Wednesday, the DOJ warns that any state resisting the Trump administration’s mass deportation program could lose funding for TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and SSI, the Supplemental Security Income program. The changes are almost certain to draw a legal challenge from Democratic state attorneys general.

This comes as new data show nearly 10 million people — including 2.5 million children — have lost access to health coverage during President Donald Trump’s second term — and that’s before new work requirements and steeper cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program fully take effect. Five million fewer people are receiving SNAP food assistance benefits following passage of the 2025 GOP budget reconciliation package known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Federal authorities have once again deported asylum seekers from the U.S. to Haiti, despite an epidemic of gang violence that’s displaced nearly 1.5 million people. It was the third consecutive Thursday that a deportation flight landed in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien. Haiti’s main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous. In June, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 to allow the Trump administration to cancel temporary protected status for more than a third of a million Haitians living in the U.S. UNICEF warns one in 13 children in Haiti are suffering from acute malnutrition.

China’s government is demanding answers after a Chinese national was found dead just hours after being booked into ICE detention in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. Fifty-one-year-old Lianyong Wei is at least the 57th person to die in the custody of ICE or the U.S. Border Patrol since March 2025. 

In Washington state, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released Loreto Javar, a 76-year-old green card holder from the Philippines who was detained during his U.S. citizenship interview. He was jailed for over two months even though he’s battling stage 4 cancer. 

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Venezuelan immigrant in Minnesota was taken into federal custody late Thursday on charges of making false statements to investigators. That’s according to CBS News, which reports a federal grand jury returned a six-count indictment against the agent, Christian Castro. He’s expected to appear in court today. This comes after Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott refused to extradite Castro to Minnesota to face more serious charges of second-degree assault and falsely reporting a crime.

Meanwhile, ProPublica reports a U.S. prosecutor in Minnesota planned to file federal civil rights charges against Castro but was overruled by higher-ups at the Justice Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Evans wrote in an email reviewed by ProPublica, “This is being directed by the Main Justice and the US Attorney. I objected in the strongest possible terms and fought it as hard as I could. It wasn’t enough.” 

In Nepal, rescue workers pulled two survivors from a hydropower tunnel Friday morning, nine days after the partial collapse of a glacier triggered a massive flood and landslide. Rescue work is continuing, as authorities believe dozens of others remain trapped in similar tunnels. On Thursday, authorities said the disaster had killed at least 1,280 people on both sides of the China-Nepal border, with more than 5,600 still missing. The United Nations warns the Himalayas are warming twice as fast as the global average, accelerating the retreat of glaciers and increasing the risk of devastating landslides and floods. 

The United Nations warns that nations will fail to limit global heating to 1.5° Celsius above preindustrial levels, falling short of a cornerstone of the Paris Climate Agreement. A new report by the U.N. Environment Programme finds that even under the most optimistic scenario, global temperatures are set to rise by at least 1.8 degrees, with catastrophic consequences. This is UNEP Director Inger Andersen.

Inger Andersen: “Above 1.5 degrees centigrade, we can expect an intensification of extreme weather, of glacier melt, of ecosystem loss and of sea level rise. And human health, and food and water security, cities and infrastructure will come under an increasing strain. So, put simply, there is no good outcome if we remain above the 1.5.”

The report concludes that the best remaining option is to exceed current climate goals on the road to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. 

The U.N.'s weather and climate agency is calling for an urgent global response to an unprecedented ocean heat wave that's fueling extreme weather in many parts of the world. The World Meteorological Organization reported Thursday that a “supersized” El Niño effect is likely to persist through at least next February. Last month, the World Food Programme estimated nearly 50 million additional people in highly vulnerable communities will be pushed into acute hunger because of the strengthening El Niño.