While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 4, 2026

Shattered glass at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, following an air strike on a nearby building on Oct 3.

Yemen’s Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of launching dozens of strikes on Sanaa on Oct 3, while an AFP journalist in Riyadh reported seeing flames and smoke coming from an oil facility on the outskirts of the Saudi capital.

Though Saudi officials and the Houthis have not yet commented on the refinery fire, the Iran-backed group has in recent weeks launched attacks on oil facilities in the kingdom as part of the war in Yemen, where Riyadh backs the internationally recognised government.

The foes have traded strikes since the Houthis seized all of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and took control of the Bab al-Mandab strait in a lightning offensive.

Houthi-affiliated channel Al-Masirah TV reported that “Saudi enemy aircraft” hit Sanaa with 26 strikes, after earlier reporting “Saudi aggression” against the Yemeni capital, without providing details on the targets or casualties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct 3 invited to Israel as a guest of honour the Indian captain of a Tel Aviv-bound flydubai flight who offered a dramatic account of how he saved the plane after being attacked.

Netanyahu said he wanted Captain Smit Machchhar and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of Israel’s key international partners, to light a flame at a national ceremony for Israel’s Independence Day next May, saying the role was usually reserved for Israeli citizens.

“You are a true hero of the brave peoples of India and Israel and you are a hero of the entire world,” Netanyahu said, in a video his office released of his telephone conversation with the hospitalised captain.

Despite growing economic trouble and rising unease among ordinary Russians and the elite, President Vladimir Putin is not ready to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, his former prime minister said on Oct 3.

Speaking to AFP in an interview, Mikhail Kasyanov, Russia’s prime minister from 2000 to 2004, said he believed his former boss understood he had made a mistake by invading Ukraine in 2022 but would persist with the course he had set.

“He made a mistake that he cannot bring himself to admit,” Kasyanov, 68, said in Paris.

The head of the Tennessee Department of Correction will step down this month, state officials said on Oct 3, days after convicted murderer Christa Pike was left gravely ill from the state’s failed attempt to execute her by lethal injection.

The botched execution on Sept 30 left Pike unconscious, intubated and hooked to a mechanical ventilator to breathe, her lawyers wrote in an Oct 2 court filing.

It is the state’s second failed execution attempt this year, prompting Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to halt attempts to carry out the death penalty for the rest of 2026.

Harry Kane and Bukayo Saka scored twice apiece as England demolished Luka Modric’s Croatia 7-0 in Rijeka on Oct 3.

Jude Bellingham scored once and provided three assists for England, with Anthony Gordon and substitute Morgan Rogers also on target in a performance captain Kane described as “unbelievable”.

England are second in League A, Group Three with six points from three matches, behind Spain on nine. Croatia have three points and the Czechs remain pointless.