“Sudan’s army has been accused of launching several drone strikes that have reportedly killed more than 300 people, including dozens travelling to a funeral. The death toll from strikes in two areas of West Kordofan state on Sunday evening was 150, sources told the Sudan War Observatory, which tracks the conflict that erupted in 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In Abyei, a disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan, 153 people were killed when drones hit a market on Monday, the region’s information minister said. A military source told the BBC the army had carried out the Abyei attack, saying the market was a fuel supply site for the RSF.” (10/20/26)
“Democratic Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s mother urged voters not to cast their ballot for her daughter, calling her ‘a liar’. ‘I love my daughter. But when I saw her lying about her opponent — it’s not easy for a mother to say this — but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar.’ … Acton, a former Ohio Department of Health director, issued a statement from her brother. The release containing the statement described the woman as the siblings’ ‘estranged and abusive mother.’ ‘It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,’ Philip Stearns said in the statement. ‘After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.'” (10/20/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I don’t really fit in with any group. Too woo-woo spiritual for the Marxists. Too angry for the Buddhists. Too political for the nondualists. Too much of a liberal-hating commie for the witches. Too radical for the socdems or demsocs. Too grown up for the anarchists. If hippies were real I guess I’d be one of those. Like, if it had been more than psychedelic-fueled idealism that collapsed into vapid yuppiedom as soon as the drugs wore off. I’d be a hippie if there were something more substantial to it than navel-gazing escapism, because at least in theory they try to synthesize the political and the spiritual.” [editor’s note: Most anarchists are more “grown up,” emotionally at least, than Johnstone’s 40s going on 14 – TLK] (10/20/26)
“Iran-backed Houthi rebels [sic] struck a residential area in Yemen’s third-largest city on Tuesday, killing two teenage girls and renewing attention on the dangers faced by civilians in Taiz, which has been under attack and siege during the country’s escalating conflict. The Houthis have largely encircled Taiz, cutting it off from most supply routes and putting civilians at ‘grave risk’, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Tuesday. The U.N. says the siege has left many residents without food and other necessities as prices soar. The attack on Taiz came a day after a Houthi strike on a government military camp killed 73 recruits, the deadliest strike since the resurgence of the conflict over the summer, according to a senior Yemeni government official.” (10/20/26)
“With Saturday’s mid-day murder in the tourist-packed 7th Avenue subway station at 53rd Street, the city has now seen seven transit killings since January — almost double the number over the same period last year — and the politicians plainly won’t do what’s needed to seriously reverse the trend. That grim milestone indicts Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his movement’s anti-public-safety policies — as he all but acknowledged Monday with a long, ugly silence before claiming to be ‘heartbroken’ over the death of Darrel Rodriguez and vague noises about addressing gun violence. Progressives have been on a ‘criminal justice reform’ roll for over a decade now — starting with the disastrous ‘success’ of getting city district attorneys to quit prosecuting fare-beating, even though such perps are regularly wanted for more serious offenses.” (10/20/26)
“The re-arrests announced on Tuesday relate to a 24-year-old man who was initially arrested on 27 September near the base and a 25-year-old who was arrested on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts days later on 1 October in the borough of Westminster. The other five men – who also include a 22-year-old British national arrested in Westminster on 6 October – remain on police bail. The head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said: ‘This is very much a live investigation, and our evidence gathering continues, but at this time our position remains the same; we consider it highly likely that there is Iranian state involvement. Our investigators are continuing to examine what that level of involvement was and the ambition behind it’.” (10/20/26)
“The woman who has accused seven students of raping her at a Cornell University fraternity house has weighed in on a looming faculty vote of no confidence in the school’s leadership, saying the university’s president questioned why she waited to report being assaulted — an alleged remark she said left her feeling ‘unsupported and disbelieved’. Her case has prompted student protests, renewed scrutiny of the university’s disciplinary system and a state investigation into the alleged assault. In an Oct. 14 letter to faculty leaders obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, described a conversation she said took place shortly after she reported the alleged assault in November 2024. According to her secondhand account, the president of her sorority told her that Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff had questioned Jane Doe’s delay in reporting the alleged assault, which the sorority leader interpreted as casting doubt on her story.” (10/20/26)
“Imagine that the U.S. had a gifted progressive president, with a common touch and a large majority in Congress. That’s basically what Britain has today with its new prime minister, former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, whose Labour Party has a working majority of 167 seats in the House of Commons. For a generation, Labour had been badly fragmented into Corbynites on the left and Blairites on the center-right, as well as a middle group representing a ‘soft left’. Burnham mercifully bridges over yesterday’s schisms. He has explicitly repudiated neoliberalism (both Margaret Thatcher’s and Tony Blair’s), espousing and defining a new kind of leftism that he calls business-friendly socialism, rooted in his success as an effective northern mayor far from the infighting of Westminster.” (10/20/26)
“The Republicans have been so successful at hyping the fraud around the Feeding Our Future child nutrition program in Minnesota that even liberal Democrats reflexively all say ‘fraud’ when they discuss Minnesota. Apparently, it is news to even well-informed types that Trump and his sycophants lie about liberal politicians, especially successful ones like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Rather than wallow in contrition over the fraud that took place, it would be worth spending more time in Reality Land. No one should ever apologize for fraud. It is a serious crime, especially when the money was designated for a nutrition program designed to help children from low- and moderate-income families. But we need a sense of proportion. Fraud in government programs will never be zero.” (10/19/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Politico has a new article out titled ‘Anthropic quietly pitches its own AI safety bill to lawmakers’, revealing the contents of a leaked confidential draft on regulations the tech giant would be willing to accept in the name of public safety. Buried in paragraph four of the article, we come to the real story in these revelations: ‘The bill would let the government block a model’s release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.'” (10/19/26)
