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President Trump is on the trail in Iowa stumping for Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson as the midterm sprint enters its final stretch. He also waded into Ohio's governor's race, blasting Gov. Mike DeWine as a "RINO" and telling Vivek Ramaswamy to keep running his controversial ad. Meanwhile Democratic leaders filed a federal suit accusing the administration of meddling in state election administration over voter-roll reviews.
A Justice Department letter indicates Rep. Ilhan Omar's original legal identity was Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, according to sources, as federal investigators probe possible fraud in her immigration and passport paperwork. Omar broke her silence on the probe and, asked whether there was any kernel of truth to the long-running claim that she married her brother, answered "not to my knowledge." She called the allegation insane and the federal raid politically motivated.
Crude jumped and Wall Street sold off as Trump signaled negotiations with Iran are off the table. Making it worse for anyone trying to read the economy, the government shutdown has delayed the October CPI release indefinitely, leaving the Cleveland Fed's nowcast of roughly 2.96 percent annual inflation as the best available guess. Heating oil is the sharper pain point: a typical 250-gallon fill now runs about $1,500 versus $880 a year ago.
U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. ruled New York's body armor ban violates the Second Amendment, holding that protective armor qualifies as an "Arm" under the amendment's plain text. Sinatra wrote the state failed to show the ban fits the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation. It's another loss for New York in the post-Bruen era of gun litigation.
Tehran says seven oil tankers caught fire or were damaged overnight in the Strait of Hormuz, hit either by Iranian action or by naval mines. Iran issued what it called a serious warning to U.S. forces across the Middle East, threatening expanded strikes on American bases. The U.S. is surging a third aircraft carrier and thousands more troops into the region, the largest American naval and air presence there in decades.
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that Moscow and Kyiv have agreed to resume negotiations but remain far apart on the core issues. His "very high mountain" line tamps down expectations of a near-term deal. Overnight, Russian drones and ballistic missiles struck 12 Ukrainian regions including Kyiv, killing at least two and wounding 22.
Trump approved emergency declarations for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands as Category 5 Typhoon Champi tore through the western Pacific, unlocking federal assistance for local responders. The storm passed within about 10 miles of Guam, battering the island's south before moving into the Philippine Sea. It has since come ashore in the Philippines as the most powerful storm of the year.
Two critical remote-code-execution bugs in PHP, the language behind roughly 70 percent of all websites, are being exploited at massive scale. Emergency fixes landed in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35, but Cloudflare logged hundreds of thousands of exploit attempts within hours of disclosure, and AWS says the flaws are now being broadly abused in the wild. Exposure estimates range from 1.3 million to more than 22 million instances.
Astronomers have tracked a newly identified asteroid roughly the size of a skyscraper moving through the inner solar system. It poses no impact threat, but its size and speed make it a useful target for refining how fast-moving near-Earth objects are detected and characterized. Catching rocks this big relatively late remains a live argument for better sky surveys.
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre released a government-backed consent ad depicting grandparents hugging their granddaughter without asking first, and the backlash was immediate. The spot was scrubbed on Tuesday after Irish politician Jim O'Callaghan called it "both inappropriate and demeaning to grandparents." A reminder that public-awareness campaigns can wander a long way from the actual problem.
