President Trump rallied outside Dayton on Saturday night for Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, his third rally in three nights as the November midterms close in. He leaned hard on economics — touting a $400 million Stellantis investment in Toledo and an $850 million Electra aerospace project near Springfield — and brushed off unfavorable polling, saying surveys "don't account for the fact that Trump is out campaigning." Current projections have Democrats at 215 seats to the GOP's 201, with 19 toss-ups left on the board.
The national average slipped to roughly $4.38 a gallon this weekend, down from $4.49 a week ago, though still elevated as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and tankers keep taking hits. Trump told reporters Saturday that once the Iran war wraps, "oil prices will come tumbling down," possibly below first-term levels. For now, drivers are paying a war premium at the pump heading into the midterms.
The Supreme Court struck down a three-judge panel's ruling that had blocked Texas from using its redrawn congressional map, which makes five districts friendlier to Republicans. The lower court had called the map a racial gerrymander; the high court found the challengers committed "at least two serious errors," including failing to extend the Texas legislature a presumption of good faith. The map now stands indefinitely — a meaningful seat-math shift with weeks to go before Election Day.
A federal grand jury returned an eight-count indictment against Brian Cole Jr., splitting each prior charge so the RNC and DNC devices are now charged separately. The move came days after Cole's own attorneys released a 161-page transcript of his FBI interview in which he identified himself in a surveillance image. Defense lawyers argue agents coerced Cole, who has autism, by calling his denials illegal and threatening to haul in family members; he has pleaded not guilty.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi floated a plan he says could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, while Tehran's foreign ministry rejected the latest US proposals as unchanged on the nuclear question. Iran's central bank is injecting up to $2 billion to prop up a collapsing rial as the naval blockade strangles crude exports and inflation runs wild. Trump says the war ends "very soon" — and privately pegs it to just after the midterms.
Student unrest that started over timetables, class sizes and overheated classrooms has metastasized into nationwide rioting, with police reporting roughly 5,000 arrests since Monday — about 90 percent of them minors. More than 560 high schools have been shut or disrupted; at least 65 staff including 40 principals have been injured, with one Marseille principal doused in gasoline. The French government is pointing the finger squarely at Jean-Luc Mélenchon's hard-left France Unbowed party.
The UAE attorney general confirmed that the co-pilot of Tel Aviv-bound flight FZ1073 attacked the captain with a crash axe and tried to seize the aircraft in an attempted terrorist act. The accused, 29-year-old Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, had been barred from flying with Oman Air in 2024 over extremist-views concerns. Israeli passengers stormed the cockpit and restrained him, and off-duty pilots aboard landed the damaged jet in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 lifted off from Cape Canaveral just after 11 a.m. ET aboard a Falcon 9, carrying NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canada's Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The booster returned to Landing Zone 40 right beside its own launch pad. The Dragon then made the fastest trip a Crew Dragon has ever flown from Kennedy to the orbital outpost — about eight hours door to door.
Harvard physicist Avi Loeb is arguing that 3I/ATLAS — an interstellar object bigger than Manhattan — shows an odd glow pattern and a suspiciously convenient planetary alignment. He floats the possibility its trajectory is designed, perhaps for a reconnaissance pass or to drop mini-probes. Most astronomers read it as a natural comet; either way, it hits its closest approach to the sun on October 30.
Researchers drilling into the boat-shaped Durupinar formation near Mount Ararat punched down more than 60 feet and found no solid rock underneath, pulling over 300 soil samples along the way. They report rich black soil with chemical signatures consistent with decayed organic material, plus hollow voids and oddly linear walls suggesting passageways and a 151-foot tunnel network. Organic testing happens this winter at Ankara University — so the skeptics and the believers both have to wait.
