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NEWS NEWS.

An update on U.S.-South Korea military drills. Ulchi Freedom Shield began Monday as scheduled, with about eighteen thousand South Korean troops expected to take part. President Trump had ordered the exercise substantially reduced, but officials still have not said which parts of the eleven-day drill will be cut. Trump also said Kim Jong Un responded to his request for a conversation, without giving details. The alliance normally holds two theater-wide drills and more than one hundred smaller combined training events in a typical year.

Next, President Trump said U.S. forces could strike Oman if it gets in the way of talks over the Strait of Hormuz. Oman has been mediating between Washington and Tehran, and a sixty-day negotiating window expired Monday without a deal. The threat is especially striking because Oman has been a U.S. defense partner since nineteen eighty and permits American forces to use Omani military facilities.

A second update: Jared Kushner pressed Benjamin Netanyahu to take incremental steps in Gaza and test whether Hamas will begin disarming. Netanyahu agreed to measures on water and sanitation and to working groups on demilitarization and humanitarian conditions. Those are the first concrete Israeli commitments after Kushner’s weekend meeting with Hamas, but there is still no disarmament agreement.

NOT NEWS NEWS.

And the United States admitted ten thousand two hundred fifty-eight refugees in the first ten months of fiscal twenty twenty-six. That is about fifty-nine percent of the administration’s seventeen-thousand-five-hundred annual ceiling. Reaching the ceiling would require seven thousand two hundred forty-two admissions in the final two months, a monthly pace more than three times the rate so far.

You’re caught up.