“After Tennessee unsuccessfully tried to execute Christa Pike last week, an ambulance whisked her to a Nashville hospital, where the condemned murderer became a patient in urgent need of lifesaving care. Should Pike recover from two botched administrations of pentobarbital, which left her unconscious and unable to breathe on her own, she might travel that road in reverse after she is well enough to be killed. That bizarre episode illustrates the perverse consequences of trying to disguise the brutal reality of capital punishment by dressing it in medical garb. Although most Americans say murderers like Pike should be executed, the method they prefer suggests they are squeamish about admitting what that entails.” (10/07/26)
“In a latest move by the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on foreign students, the US Department of Homeland Security has proposed a $70,000 fee for international students seeking to participate in a programme that allows them to work in the United States. Under the proposed rule, colleges and universities would have to pay the fee for each international student entering the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme. The programme enables foreign students to work in positions connected to their fields of study while completing their education or after graduation. International students are generally permitted to work through OPT for up to one year after completing their studies. Those graduating from certain science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes can qualify for an additional two years. Schools would be required to pay the $70,000 for each new student’s initial application to the program, and a $30,000 fee for each renewal.” (10/07/26)
“It turns out that Americans loathe inflation, which is pretty amusing for someone who spends a lot of time writing about parts of the world where a 20 percent inflation rate barely warrants comment. They delivered unified government to the Republicans in 2024 on inflation, and they seem primed to throw them out of Congress this year on the same grounds. (Although the residual classical monetarist in me would like to distinguish between supply shocks and inflation simpliciter.) At the same time, the Trump administration has an ambitious if not always coherent program that needs to be paid for and that only minimally involves the legislature’s oversight. … Something’s gotta give here. Either the American people will have to make their political peace with running the economy hot and the consequent inflation, or real austerity will come and wash all this spending off the streets. A debt crisis could force the issue.” (10/07/26)
“Speaking in Nairobi on Wednesday, WHO Representative Dr. Neema Rusibamayila Kimambo said the coming days would be decisive in preventing community spread of the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, which has now claimed its first life in Kenya. The victim, a local man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for several years, fell ill there, where a deadly outbreak continues to spread in the east. He flew to Nairobi via Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda on 3 October, went straight to hospital and died in the Kenyan capital on Monday. Authorities have since identified the people who had come in direct contact with him from social contact and his admission to hospital. So far, there have been no other infections.” (10/07/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“On August 3, 1940, a mere six months into World War II, Ludwig von Mises arrived with his wife in New York City. The fifty-eight-year-old Austrian economist had narrowly escaped Europe as the continent was engulfed by war. Because air travel was not an option amid the escalating fighting, the couple had to cross by bus from their home in Geneva, Switzerland, across southern France, into Spain, and eventually to a port in Portugal, where a ship would take them across the Atlantic. The bus had to stop and reroute several times to narrowly avoid the advancing Nazi forces pushing into France. An invading army is dangerous to anyone attempting to flee in its path. But Mises was also a known Jewish intellectual opponent of the ideology fueling the German war effort.” (10/07/26)
“Lawmakers in Kosovo elected economist and academic Justina Shiroka Pula as the country’s new president in a marathon late-night session, moments before a constitutional deadline that would have forced a snap election. The election late Tuesday was a significant moment in a political crisis in the small Balkan nation that has caused legislative deadlock for over 19 months and two early parliamentary elections. Just before Shiroka Pula was elected, lawmakers also approved a law limiting the powers of a special court in The Hague, Netherlands, which was set up to investigate and prosecute war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the country’s 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia. … She will have to endorse the law limiting the power of the Hague court for it to become binding.” (10/07/26)
“We cannot even be secure in our use of the word ‘terrorist’ any longer, given that so many are determined to abuse it. How else to explain the fact that comedian John Cleese, of Monty Python and ‘Fawlty Towers’ fame, has been reported to Prevent, the British government program designed to stop people from becoming terrorists? Are dead parrots, silly walks and disgruntled hoteliers now deemed early warning signs of radicalization? The complaint to Prevent against Cleese was made by a member of the public, and the details passed to 5Pillars, an Islamist media outlet based in London. In its report, 5Pillars characterized the complaint as alleging that Cleese’s social media jokes and comments ‘go beyond legitimate criticism of Islam and instead portray Muslims collectively as violent, criminal and morally depraved.'” (10/07/26)
