A year on from Oct. 7, little hope for peace and a multifront conflict

Monday marks a year since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, kidnapping 251 people and killing up to 1,200 in an incursion that has taken the region to the brink of an all-out war.

Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, while a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has left around 1,800 dead and driven 1.2 million from their homes.

After a year of fighting, experts fear there is little framework for a lasting peace in Gaza, and the possibility of an uncontained conflict between Israel and Iran has inched closer.

“There’s no endgame — it’s starting to feel like a forever war,” said Frank Lowenstein, special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Barack Obama. The priority now is “not just about ending the war in Gaza, even temporarily, it’s also avoiding a war in Lebanon that I think we’re really concerned is going to spin out of control.”

Some in Israel are also uneasy about where the situation could head. “If we are dragged into a large confrontation in the north with the Iran-Shiite axis,” said Yoram Schweitzer, the IDF’s former head of international counterterrorism, then “what we have seen in Gaza will look like children’s games.”

Follow our live coverage here.

Storm-battered Florida declares another emergency as Hurricane Milton approaches

Tropical Storm Milton rapidly intensified into a Category 1 hurricane Sunday with its path aimed at Florida, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene made landfall in the state. Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a briefing that Milton is expected to make landfall in Hillsborough or Pinellas county Wednesday evening.

Since 1850, only two storms that originated in the Gulf’s Bay of Campeche have struck Florida. If Milton follows its current path, it would be the third.

You can track Milton’s path through the Gulf of Mexico here.

Trump strikes a defiant tone as he returns to site of assassination attempt

Former President Donald Trump campaigned in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, returning to the city where a would-be assassin fired on him during a July rally. Trump held a moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, a rallygoer who was killed in the shooting.

Billionaire Elon Musk joined Trump onstage, jumping up and down for the crowd and describing himself as “not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.”

Ever since that assassination attempt, the Secret Service has been under serious scrutiny. A dozen current and former agents told NBC News that an increased workload and a lack of sufficient staffing have brought the Secret Service to “a breaking point” and “a state of crisis.”

“The U.S. Secret Service is killing their people, and worse, they are supposed to have a zero-fail protective mission on zero rest/sleep,” said one former agent. “I love my agency, but they are setting themselves up for another incident.”

Meet the Press

Rep. Adam Schiff on Sunday echoed President Joe Biden’s remarks last week that the upcoming election would be “free and fair,” but maybe not “peaceful.”

“If it is close, if Donald Trump loses again, as I expect that he will, he will contest it,” Schiff told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. “He has more reason to contest it than he did before, not because of any flaw in the election, but because Donald Trump believes, and perhaps with reason, that if he doesn’t succeed at the ballot box, he may be going to jail. So he’s going to challenge the results.”

Schiff pointed to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol as an example of the violence that unfolded in the wake of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He added that he expects Harris to win the election but that “it is still scary close” and that larger-than-expected margins could stem the threat of violence related to the election result.

You can watch the full interview here.

Politics in brief

Presidential promotions: With just weeks before the election, Trump has taken to promoting items and businesses that aren’t connected to his campaign, from a new cryptocurrency platform to NFT trading cards.

Judicial vacancies: The next president is on track to enter office with the fewest number of vacant federal judgeships to fill in more than three decades, the culmination of both parties putting a high priority on confirming their preferred judges while in charge.

Shadow of Notre Dame: A conservative Catholic law school that counts Justice Amy Coney Barrett among its former faculty has a growing influence over the Supreme Court. It is increasingly successful at placing students and professors in prestigious clerkships.

Abortion rights ally: Former first lady Melania Trump on Sunday said her husband knew her position on abortion since the day they met. “I want to decide what I want to do with my body. I think I don’t want government in my personal business,” she said in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday.

Records could help thousands prove they were poisoned at Camp Lejeune

Leo Case survived the Battle of Iwo Jima and risked his life to save his crew during a clash in the South Pacific — only to die of multiple cancers at 58. In a quest to prove that he was sickened at Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps training facility in North Carolina, his granddaughter amassed an archive of records that she said could help thousands of other veterans and their loved ones bolster their challenging water contamination cases.

Up to 1 million people who lived or worked at Camp Lejeune from August 1953 to December 1987 may have been exposed to a drinking water supply contaminated with chemicals that have been linked to severe health problems, federal health officials said.

‘Microtrends’ make shopping a nightmare

It’s trendy one day, passé the next.

With the mill of TikTok aesthetics and microtrends constantly churning, shoppers feel disoriented and exhausted trying to keep up with the latest fashion. The fear of being “cheugy” in last month’s viral item gives many pause before they even start dressing.

Marketing on apps like TikTok and Instagram has changed the landscape of fashion, experts say, making clothing more instantaneously accessible and trends gigantic but fleeting. “It has people lost,” one personal stylist says.

‘Sunday Night Football’

• The Minnesota Vikings are still undefeated after a 23-17 win over the New York Jets in London.
• The Cleveland Browns fell to 1-4 against the Washington Commanders after another dispiriting performance by quarterback Deshaun Watson.
• Commanders punter Tress Way is one of the best in the NFL at his position. But thanks to a historically good offense, he’s barely had to run onto the field this season.

In case you missed it

• Over 1 million acres of California have burned so far this year, and nearly half were the result of blazes allegedly set by arsonists, according to fire authorities and an NBC News review of state incident data.
• Video showed flames coming from underneath a Frontier plane that made a hard landing in Las Vegas after reports of smoke in the cockpit Saturday, officials said.
• Preservationists and community leaders are fighting to save one of the oldest and last remaining Japanese-owned farms in California, which is set to be demolished to pave the way for urban housing.
• Mickey Guyton has been a trailblazer in country music for years. Now, with artists like Beyoncé and Shaboozey making strides in the predominantly white industry, she’s happy to see a “country music renaissance happening.”
• Rabbis embrace Adam Brody’s “hot rabbi” in Neflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” but not its portrayal of Jewish women.
• Internet personality Jack Doherty crashed his $200,000 McLaren during a livestream this weekend after appearing to look at his phone while driving in the rain.