The US midterms and a widening cyber-security story dominated the hour, with the Iran conflict as the main market driver. Polls opened with control of Congress at stake for Trump's final two years ¹. The Justice Department deployed roughly 1,000 monitors across all 50 states for the first time, its largest such effort ^2,3. Local officials worry the monitors could intimidate voters ³, and the administration had lost a string of court cases over its attempts to interfere in the election ⁴. Kalshi gave Democrats a 94% chance of taking the House . Pollsters warned that white Democrats were about 30% likelier than white Republicans to answer battleground polls, a gap that could skew final surveys showing a Democratic surge ^5,6. US stock futures drifted and bonds slipped as voting began ⁷. In the Gulf, US forces carried out limited 'defensive' strikes on Qeshm Island after a surface-to-air missile was fired at an American aircraft ⁸. The IRGC claimed three more tankers hit naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz ⁹. Oil rebounded after the strike, with Brent above $105 ¹⁰, then fell on reports that Washington and Tehran had agreed concessions on the nuclear file and frozen funds ¹¹. A senior Iranian official said the two sides remain far from a deal ⁹. Separately, Saudi Aramco reported a 9% rise in quarterly profit to $31.2 billion on higher crude prices ¹². The fallout from the roughly $6.3 billion Binance hack continued ¹³. Net outflows reached $5.3 billion before deposits again exceeded withdrawals ¹⁴. Binance lost market share as Bybit and Bitget saw deposit surges ^13,15, and it began restoring withdrawals for a range of assets ^16,17. North Korea denied US allegations that it was behind the heist ¹⁸, and South Korea's President Lee called for a centralized cybersecurity agency ¹⁹. In an unrelated campaign, a second wave of cyberattacks hit supermarket refrigeration systems across several EU countries ²⁰, including Germany ²¹. The UK cyber agency warned that AI-powered ransomware will highly likely hit critical infrastructure by 2028 ²². In AI finance, Anthropic reportedly filed for a Nasdaq IPO under the ticker ANT ²³, with a likely junk rating and a target valuation that has slipped to $1.5 to 1.6 trillion ²⁴. Meanwhile, Meta is preparing its first-ever euro borrowing of up to $15 billion to fund the AI buildout ²⁵. Other items not to miss: a Russian airstrike reportedly killed 31 people at an aid distribution point in southern Ukraine ²⁶, and a child in New York died of measles, the state's first such death in 30 years ²⁷.