Highlights

The U.S. Army plans to fund construction of rare earths processing facilities, part of an urgent push by Washington to secure domestic supply of the minerals used to make military weapons and electronics, according to a government document seen by Reuters. The move would be the first of this kind since World War Two’s Manhattan Project built the first atomic bomb.

Police in the New York metropolitan area were put on high alert to protect Jewish neighborhoods after an hours-long gunbattle with two men around a Jersey City kosher market that killed six people, authorities said. The six dead included three civilians, one police officer and both gunmen.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday it was halting operational training of all Saudi Arabian military personnel in the United States until further notice after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a base in Florida.

A former White House counterterrorism czar helped the UAE build a secret spy unit to monitor threats. The hacking unit later expanded its hunt beyond suspected extremists to target a Saudi women’s rights activist, U.N. diplomats and FIFA personnel. Read the Reuters Special Report: Made in America.

World

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said the case brought against her country at the World Court was “incomplete and misleading” as she began her defense to accusations of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority on Wednesday.

A major polling forecaster slashed its prediction for Boris Johnson’s majority in Thursday’s British general election, saying the race has tightened and the prime minister can no longer be sure of victory. Meanwhile banks including Barclays and HSBC plan to deploy extra staff through the night, not just in London but also on trading floors in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore, to make sure they’re constantly on call for clients.

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg accused political and business leaders of polishing their images rather than taking aggressive action in the fight against climate change at a United Nations summit on Wednesday. “It seems to have turned into some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition,” the 16-year-old Swede told the meeting in Madrid, drawing applause.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern faces tough challenges as she heads into a general election campaign next year, with economic growth slowing, divisive referendums looming and a country reeling from disasters both natural and man-made. Read our exclusive report.

Increasing tremors on a volcanic island in New Zealand have hampered efforts by authorities to recover the bodies of eight people thought to be left on the island, two days after it erupted, engulfing dozens of tourists in steam and hot ash. An update from geological agency GeoNet showed conditions on the uninhabited island remained dangerous, which would likely delay any recovery.

Sponsored by IBM: Another security tool? Chaos. More security tools = more chaos. You don’t need new tools. You need new rules. IBM Security helps everything work together. And work better. See why IBM leads in Security