Sinwar reported killed as Ukraine presses NATO plan and U.S. bombers strike Houthi facilities

Off leash update 17 October

***The IDF successfully eliminated Hama's leader Yahya Sinwar Venezuela •Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado denied Pres. Maduro's claim that she's fled the country for Spain: "Venezuelans know that I am here in Venezuela, the people know it and Nicolas Maduro also knows it." •Machado remains - wisely - in hiding and out of reach of police seeking to arrest her on bogus, politically-motivated charges. She told an independent TV channel that Maduro and his cronies "are desperate to know where I am and I'm not going to give them that pleasure." Ukraine •Pres. Zelensky was deprived of an opportunity to do a grand reveal of his "victory plan" during last week's multilateral meeting on Ukraine, but he instead pitched the plan bilaterally during a whirlwind tour meeting leaders of the UK, U.S., France, Italy, and Germany. •Yesterday, Zelensky shared the high-level plan with Ukraine's parliament and the media. •Its centerpiece is a request for NATO to extend an unconditional invitation to Ukraine to join its alliance - which has not been forthcoming - and it also calls on partners to expand their military support for Ukraine. •None of the plan's five public points contained any major new proposals - yet Zelensky insisted that "if we start implementing this Victory Plan now, we may be able to end the war no later than next year." (The plan also proposed three "secret" points that were selectively shared with partners). •So far, it's received a muted response. NATO's SecGen, Mark Rutte, said the alliance would "take note" of Zelensky's proposal, and several partners announced minor new aid packages (the U.S. offered $425 million in fresh military support - including for air defenses - and Australia said it would send Ukraine 50 old M1 Abrams tanks worth $164 million). Hezbollah •Israel brushed off a U.S. warning that it "had concerns with and [is] opposed to" Israel's strikes on Beirut and carried out more airstrikes on Hezbollah targets near the Lebanese capital yesterday, killing at least 16. •Israel didn't officially comment on the other U.S. critique conveyed yesterday - an ultimatum to improve aid flows to Gaza within 30 days or risk losing access to new U.S. weapons - but there was a slight uptick in humanitarian aid flows to Gaza. Yesterday, 50 aid trucks entered the strip - more than the recent rate of 30 per day but still far short of the 350 per day that aid officials say Gazans need. Iran •U.S. B-2 Spirit bombers targeted five underground Houthi weapons facilities yesterday. •The airstrikes were ostensibly carried out to "further degrade the Houthis' capability" to threaten Red Sea shipping, but the choice to use B-2s to strike underground targets was also intended to send a message to Iran that its underground nuclear sites could be next. •(The B-2 is the only U.S. plane that can carry the largest "bunker buster" bombs capable of destroying Iran's underground nuclear sites, and it has never before been used in Yemen - where F/A-18s can do the same job cheaper and with less fleet risk). •SecDef Austin alluded to the Yemen operation being a broader signal to Iran by calling it: "a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened or fortified." •Separately, there are unconfirmed reports that Iranian border guards massacred dozens - or perhaps scores - of Afghans trying to illegally enter Iran from Pakistan on Sunday. •Beijing's latest war games succeeded in scaring Taiwan. A senior Taiwanese security official told Reuters that the unprecedented drills showed that the People's Liberation Army is "increasing the building up of their capacity to turn military exercises into a conflict" and assessed that "this drill presented more of a threat than ever before to Taiwan."