Oil Surges Past $100 as Houthis Seize Red Sea Chokepoint

Oil prices jumped past $100 a barrel for the first time since July after Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline following a drone attack from Iraq. The strike landed just as Yemen's Houthis completed a takeover of the Red Sea's key chokepoint. Over the past two days Houthi forces captured the port of Mokka, seized Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb strait, and pushed further south along Yemen's coast, positioning for full control of a passage carrying much of the world's oil shipping. Trump rejected a Saudi request for American strikes on the group, leaving Riyadh to face the threat largely alone. Meanwhile Russia kept up drone attacks across Ukraine. A drone killed a man in Kharkiv's Kyivskyi district, and forces hit a Kyiv office building twice in a day, sparking a fire after earlier strikes had already killed two people. In Donetsk region, strikes killed civilians in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and hit an ambulance in Krasnohirka, killing a medic; near Dobropillia, Russian troops reportedly executed two captured National Guard soldiers, prompting a war crimes probe. Ukraine's SBU also charged Georgy Shevkunov, Putin's "spiritual mentor," in absentia for backing the invasion. Russian drones drifted into Moldovan and Romanian airspace too, closing it on September 8 just after Zelensky's plane left Chisinau — the war keeps edging toward NATO's borders.