Global and U.S. News

The FBI, the Postal Inspection Service and the Capitol Police are investigating letters containing suspicious substances sent to congressional and election offices around the country. Packages with a powdery substance forced the evacuation of election offices in Louisiana and Oklahoma this week, and Ohio's secretary of state said the Postal Service intercepted one addressed to its office. The Senate's Sergeant at Arms told staff to treat the letters as potentially hazardous. No arrests had been reported as of Thursday, about three weeks before Election Day.

Lawyers for Representative Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, wrote to federal prosecutors on Friday demanding the return of the phone and passport agents seized when they searched her Washington home on October 12, Al Jazeera reported. The letter calls the search "neither justified nor lawful" and says investigators bypassed the House general counsel and ignored a magistrate judge's instructions; the Justice Department said it complied with all court orders. A Minnesota grand jury examining her immigration paperwork has issued more than a dozen subpoenas, some to relatives, three weeks before the midterms, and the New York Times reported that her sister's phone was seized before the search.

A three-judge federal appeals panel appeared unconvinced by the Justice Department's argument that the law requiring presidents to preserve and hand over their papers is unconstitutional, the New York Times reported. The department's position, in the Times's framing, is that records created in the White House belong to Trump. The skepticism came during oral argument.

The CDC is sending an Epidemic Intelligence Service investigator to Pennsylvania, where at least 1,222 measles cases and 225 hospitalizations have been confirmed in the country's worst outbreak in three decades, NBC News reported. Six people with measles have died in the state since August by the count of health officials and coroners; the CDC acknowledges two and lists the rest as under review. It is the agency's first in-person help since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Governor Josh Shapiro clashed in August, when Kennedy suggested the deaths may have been "fabricated"; the CDC is also releasing nearly $4 million for the response.

Senior Justice Department officials warned California election officials in a letter on Friday that anyone who "knowingly" tabulates ballots cast by noncitizens faces criminal investigation and possible prosecution, the Guardian reported, citing the Associated Press. The letter came a day after the administration sued California to stop it counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government flagged as likely noncitizens. California officials told the New York Times the federal list is sloppy, with thousands of names missing key identifying information.

Senator Darline Graham, appointed to the Senate seat of her late brother Lindsey, gently disagreed with President Trump's decision to exempt Russia from the sanctions legislation her brother championed, the New York Times reported. The mild public break follows the administration's order waiving new sanctions on Moscow amid fears that high energy prices will hurt Republicans in next month's elections.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that Kenya confirmed four new Ebola cases; the earlier reports I read counted two. Kenya's first case, a man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo, died in Nairobi and was announced on October 6, and a close family contact tested positive around October 14 while in quarantine. As of October 13, officials had traced 113 of 128 contacts and saw no evidence of wider community spread. The Congo outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain, had killed more than 4,000 people as of October 6.

The United Arab Emirates has agreed to re-enter the Yemen conflict by resuming payments to government forces fighting the Houthis in the south, with Saudi Arabia providing air cover in return, the Guardian reported, citing sources in Yemen; it is the first tangible sign that the Saudi-Emirati rift over Yemen is healing. The Financial Times reported that the Houthis have encircled Taiz, one of the country's largest cities, and the Wall Street Journal that Iran is supplying the group with targeting intelligence for its strikes on Saudi Arabia. Egypt's President Sisi vowed on Saturday to take "any measure" to defend the kingdom and called an emergency session of parliament for Sunday, Al Jazeera reported.

Israeli drone strikes killed at least six Palestinians across northern, central and southern Gaza on Saturday, medical and emergency workers told Al Jazeera. Gaza's Health Ministry counts 1,511 people killed and 5,375 injured since the US-brokered ceasefire of October 2025, and UNICEF said more than 340 children have been killed in that time, with about 800,000 still displaced as winter nears. An Al Jazeera mapping found Israeli forces control or restrict access to about 65 percent of the territory.

Thousands marched on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis on Saturday against President Kais Saied, led by the UGTT union with opposition parties, lawyers, doctors and journalists, Al Jazeera reported; AFP put the crowd above 3,000. Protesters demanded the release of detained critics and an end to limits on union rights, reviving the 2011 call for the government's fall. The march follows water and electricity cuts, medicine shortages and a fuel-transport strike last month; Saied has ruled with expanded powers since suspending parliament in 2021.

Asked on Tuesday whether the United States had cut war-related intelligence sharing with Ukraine, Trump answered "No. We have not." Politico Europe had reported he might block intelligence flows or press Elon Musk to cut Starlink service, and the Financial Times, citing European officials, reported threats to halt a weapons procurement program and intelligence sharing. Trump said Washington is working with both Kyiv and Moscow toward an end to the war and defended the Russian diesel deal, which Kyiv objected to, as supplying the world market.

Hundreds of thousands joined separate cost-of-living protests in four countries on Saturday, Al Jazeera reported: more than 550,000 in France, where clashes made it one of the most turbulent protest days in decades; tear gas and water cannon in Brussels and Liège; stone-throwing in Milan and Bologna; and tens of thousands in Lisbon over housing costs. Portugal's government said it "will not yield to shouts from the street." Alberto Alemanno of HEC Paris said the movement was spreading from its French epicentre, with protests expected in Greece, Germany and Austria next week, and Spain, France, Italy and Poland all face elections within a year.

France and Germany reached agreement on Thursday on the European Commission's proposals for the car industry, AFP reported, citing diplomatic sources. The Commission had proposed replacing the 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars with a 90 percent cut in exhaust emissions; Germany won the removal of a requirement to offset the remaining 10 percent with credits, and France won "Made in Europe" rules covering the 27 member states, with an opt-in for countries such as Britain and Norway. Credits for small affordable electric cars would extend to vehicles of every size, and the terms remain a draft.

Ukrainian officials say SpaceX imposed speed limits on Starshield terminals without notice, restricting terminals moving faster than about 100 miles per hour and forcing some drone operations to be cancelled, the Denver Gazette reported. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Zelensky, said the move was "no coincidence" and linked it to the rift with Washington, warning it weakens interceptor units against Shahed drones; SpaceX did not respond. On Saturday Zelensky called the limits a "planned operation," the Financial Times reported.

The Economist reports that Alice Weidel, the populist-right politician, would pull the plug on German support for Ukraine. The magazine says she holds that Ukraine has already lost against Russia and should sue for peace.

Reports of OpenAI's revenue ranged from nearly $50 billion in the Financial Times to $70 billion in Axios a week earlier, and the Economist argues the AI boom is threatened by an epidemic of such unreliable figures. AI firms count annualised revenue in incompatible ways, and Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft carry $2.4 trillion in off-balance-sheet commitments, more than they have borrowed in bond markets. Goldman Sachs estimates the cloud giants need about $1 trillion in annual revenue to earn a 10 to 20 percent return on data-centre spending, and write-ups of private stakes by Alphabet and Amazon lifted S&P 500 second-quarter earnings growth to 50 percent from an underlying 32 percent.

Investors have put about $40 billion into more than 40 research-first AI startups called neolabs since 2024, roughly $24 billion of it in the last two quarters, according to a market map the article cites. TypeSafe AI reportedly raised $870 million at a $7.5 billion valuation on October 9 with no shipping product, and Safe Superintelligence reportedly raised $5 billion at $32 billion. The article warns that Nvidia's investments create a circular loop, with funding returning to Nvidia as compute purchases, and that labs could exhaust their compute before reaching milestones that justify new rounds.

Why it matters: The risk sits with the investors and compute suppliers if these labs stall, a thread in the build-out financing story.

SoftBank is in early talks to buy Allied Universal, the private security company, in a deal that could value it at about $18 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The talks come in a week when the New York Times listed SoftBank's debt alongside CoreWeave's and Oracle's as weak links in the borrowing behind the AI build-out.

Schneider Electric raised its outlook again after data-centre demand more than doubled, helping lift revenue to what the company called a record for any quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company expects that demand to stay strong in the fourth quarter.

SpaceX now reports Starlink as its Connectivity business, which earned $5.3 billion in operating profit on $13.9 billion of trailing revenue and is the only profitable one of its three units, the Motley Fool writes, citing S&P Global Market Intelligence. The company is deploying larger V3 satellites and wants Starlink to become a major mobile carrier in the U.S., backed by what the article describes as an $8 billion purchase of cellular spectrum licenses. SpaceX shares closed at $146.03 on Friday, a market value near $2 trillion.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 3.8% on Friday, its eighth straight losing session and its longest run since 2008, while the Nasdaq 100 lost 2.5%. AMD, Intel and Micron each dropped more than 5%, and Nvidia slipped 1.4%. 24/7 Wall St. points to oil near $102, a 10-year Treasury yield of 5.10% and doubts that AI spending will pay off. Bank of America's Sebastian Raedler noted that consensus hyperscaler capex has roughly tripled to $1 trillion since early 2025, and that most big capital cycles of the past ended in disappointment.

Warsh, the Federal Reserve chairman, pledged at the IMF meetings in Bangkok on Friday to tame inflation while describing artificial intelligence as a shock to the economy, the New York Times reported. He held to his refusal to give guidance on the path of interest rates and did little to signal urgency about raising them later this month.

Sulphur has climbed to nearly $1,000 a tonne from a typical $100 to $200 before the Iran war, since about half of world trade in it passed through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a summary of Financial Times reporting by Next Move Strategy Consulting. Miners flush with high metal prices are outbidding fertiliser makers, and Mosaic and OCP, the largest phosphate exporter, have cut phosphate output; China has banned exports of sulphuric acid. The Economist warns the shortage could hurt mines and farms everywhere, and the summary flags sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia as most exposed on food prices.

Margin loans at Charles Schwab reached $187.9 billion at the end of September, up 14 percent from June, with $60.7 billion tied to long-short strategies, according to the firm's third-quarter earnings release. The Wall Street Journal reports that these tax-saving trades are juicing a wider borrowing binge on Wall Street. Schwab also reported record net revenue of $7.2 billion, up 17 percent from a year earlier.

The European Commission has until November 16 to decide on UniCredit's bid for Commerzbank, Germany's second-largest bank, according to a filing made public on October 9. UniCredit says it holds nearly half of Commerzbank's share capital through its tender offer, and the German government owns 13.3%. Brussels can clear the deal with or without conditions or open a full investigation that could delay it by months, and German and Polish approvals are still required. Berlin is pressing for commitments on jobs, headquarters and lending to smaller firms.

CoreWeave and Broadcom rejected a request from OKXICE, a joint venture of the crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, to list blockchain tokens of their shares, Digital Today reported, citing The Information; nine companies including AppLovin, Verizon and UnitedHealth objected after more than 60 were notified. Under the SEC's new exemption, a venue may list such a token if the issuer is notified and does not object within 30 days. The resistance complicates a policy the Trump administration supports.

Forest clearance in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1988, according to new government data reported by the Guardian and the BBC. The decline reverses the expansion seen under former president Jair Bolsonaro and counts as a success for President Lula. Whether it holds depends on the October 25 run-off between two candidates with sharply different plans for the rainforest.

Brazil's Attorney General's Office asked the Supreme Federal Court on October 2 to declare parts of the country's betting laws unconstitutional, reversing its earlier defense of the regulated market. It called the framework extensively flawed, citing rising household debt, weak protections for minors and a 140% jump in health-care visits linked to gambling addiction. The office still supports the technical rules issued by the betting secretariat.

Exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado told the New York Times that Alejandro Betancourt, who recently signed a deal with the Trump administration to control about a fifth of Venezuela's oil reserves, is responsible for "obscene corruption"; Betancourt denied the accusations. She said contracts will be honoured only if they comply with Venezuelan law, and that seven attempts to return home have been blocked; the State Department said the United States "does not facilitate the return of opposition figures." A Bloomberg poll found 52 percent would back Machado against 19 percent for interim president Delcy Rodríguez.

Canada's industry minister, Mélanie Joly, says "everything is on the table," including forced divestment or financial penalties, after Cleveland-Cliffs began idling departments at Stelco's Hamilton steelworks and issuing layoff notices affecting up to 500 workers, CP24 reported. Ottawa says the cuts breach the job commitments the company made under the Investment Canada Act when it bought Stelco in 2024; Cleveland-Cliffs says they do not and blames low steel prices and U.S. tariffs. The steelworkers' union calls it "a manufactured crisis" meant to pressure the government.

Foro Penal's latest tally lists 322 political prisoners in Venezuela, 182 civilians and 140 military personnel. Amnesty International said in April that at least 485 people remained arbitrarily detained for political reasons. An amnesty law took effect in February and many prisoners were released under it, but Amnesty says many applications have since been rejected or had their status changed. The two counts come from different dates and methods.

Seventeen people died and dozens were injured in a stampede at a religious event in India, the New York Times reported. The cause was not yet clear, and police detained the event's organizers and the officers who were on duty.

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said the central bank must ensure underlying inflation does not go above 2 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported. He said the Middle East situation, demand linked to artificial intelligence and exchange rates would affect the timing of the bank's next decision.

Japanese officials on Friday withdrew an alert sent when they believed a magnitude-9.9 earthquake, the strongest ever recorded, had struck, the New York Times reported. The tremor that actually occurred was hardly felt.

China is considering new export controls on artificial-intelligence technologies to safeguard what it sees as a strategically critical industry amid intensifying competition, the Wall Street Journal reported.

A court in China sentenced a nursery owner to life in prison after hundreds of children were poisoned, the BBC reported. She and five staff members were found to have put inedible paint in meals to make them look more appealing.

OpenAI released 377 claimed solutions to open mathematics questions on October 6, spread across 722 papers written by an unnamed internal model. OpenAI says the model tried about 4,000 problems and failed on most, and that about half the results were formally verified in Lean; a later Quanta update put the share near 42 percent and noted three algebraic geometry papers were withdrawn. Terence Tao worries that bulk publication leaves fields "much less fertile", and mathematicians say vetting could take months or years.