“North Korea fired short-range ballistic missiles on two separate occasions Wednesday, Seoul’s military said, marking three launches over two days after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung expressed regret over a drone incursion. At 8:50 a.m. Wednesday, the North launched several short-range ballistic missiles from its coastal Wonsan area toward the East Sea, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to reporters. The missiles flew approximately 150 miles, the JCS said …. North Korea later fired a single short-range ballistic missile from Wonsan toward the East Sea at 2:20 p.m. Wednesday, the JCS said in a separate message. The missile flew approximately 435 miles.” (04/08/26)
“Unionized staff at ProPublica, one of the country’s leading nonprofit newsrooms, are walking off the job for 24 hours beginning Wednesday and asking the public to honor a digital picket line. The roughly 150 members of the ProPublica Guild are in the midst of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement after unionizing in 2023. The union says key issues are still in contention, including protections around the use of AI, ‘just cause’ provisions around disciplining or firing an employee, layoff protections, and wages. … The unit voted in March to authorize a strike if a deal was not reached with ProPublica management.” (04/08/26)
“A group of new accounts on the prediction market Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for these new customers. These bets were made even though, in the hours before a two-week ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric had escalated sharply and there were few signals that a ceasefire deal was imminent. … An analysis of publicly available blockchain data from Polymarket, using the crypto analytics platform Dune, shows that at least 50 accounts, or wallets, placed substantial ‘Yes’ bets Tuesday before Trump announced the ceasefire in a Truth Social post at around 6:30 pm ET. These were the first bets made by these particular wallets.” (04/08/26)
“Turkish authorities have detained nine people as part of an investigation into an attack on police outside a building housing the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul that left one assailant dead, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported Wednesday. Two other assailants were wounded and captured during Tuesday’s shootout in the city’s financial and business district, while two police officers sustained slight injuries, officials said. Israel had withdrawn its diplomats from Turkey over security concerns and deteriorating relations with Ankara shortly after the start of the war in Gaza, and officials said the consulate was closed at the time of the attack.” (04/08/26)
“Ethiopia’s military is harboring and assisting the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group accused of mass killings in Sudan, a Yale University research unit has found. The RSF has been sheltering in an Ethiopia National Defense Force camp in Asosa in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which tracks atrocities in conflict zones using open-source intelligence and satellite imagery, said in a report. Its investigations showed a new hangar and other construction had been undertaken at an airport at the military camp near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan. It also detected the movement of hundreds of vehicles, including large commercial carriers, over a period of several weeks, in the area and surrounds.” (04/08/26)
“Chris Taylor has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, expanding liberals’ majority in the key battleground state. Taylor, a state appeals court judge and former Democratic state legislator, secured a 10-year term on the court over conservative Maria Lazar, an appeals court judge who worked in Republican former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. … Taylor, who was backed by the state Democratic Party, held massive fundraising and ad spending advantages over Lazar throughout the race. She had put abortion and voting rights at the forefront of her campaign, much like other winning liberal Supreme Court candidates in the state in recent years.” (04/07/26)
“A US soldier’s wife who was [abducted] by immigration agents at the military base where he is stationed (just days after their wedding) has been released. Annie Ramos, 22, an undocumented immigrant who came to the US as a toddler, was [abducted] on 2 April and spent five days at a detention centre alongside hundreds facing deportation under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Immigration officials described Ramos as ‘an illegal [sic] alien from Honduras’ who was arrested after attempting to enter a military base. ‘I feel awesome. Relieved. Relieved,’ Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank told the New York Times after his wife’s release. ‘These have been the worst days of my life. I can’t wait to carry my wife into our home and start our lives together. I’m complete and ready to serve our country. And it’s her country, too!'” (04/08/26)
“The U.S. will impose tariffs of 50% on [American buyers of] ‘any and all’ goods imported to the country from any nation ‘supplying military weapons to Iran,’ President Donald Trump said Wednesday. Trump said in a Truth Social post that [American buyers of goods from] any country found to be supplying Iran with weapons would be subject to the levy ‘immediately,’ with no ‘exclusions or exemptions.'” (04/08/26)
“The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday defended his decision to repeal the legal determination that serves as the basis for federal rules to slow climate change, telling a gathering of climate change skeptics that they should ‘celebrate vindication.’ EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the remarks in the keynote address at a conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that rejects mainstream climate science and what it calls ‘climate alarmism.’ Zeldin told the gathering that repeal of the 2009 ‘endangerment finding’ reversed decades of unthinking adherence to liberal politicians and environmental groups about the dangers of climate change. ‘Today is a day to celebrate. It is a day to celebrate vindication,’ said Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who is widely believed to be under consideration for a possible promotion to attorney general, following Pam Bondi’s forced departure last week.” (04/08/26)
“A federal judge Tuesday refused to block filling prescriptions for the abortion pill mifepristone by mail across the U.S. — at least for now — in a setback to Louisiana’s effort to stifle groups that send it into states where abortion is banned. U.S. District Judge David Joseph, who sits in Lafayette, Louisiana, ruled against Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who asked that U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules that allow mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail be paused while a challenge to those 2023 regulations moves through the courts. He granted the government’s request to put the case on hold for now, though he warned that the pause would not be indefinite — and that he could side with Louisiana later.” (04/07/26)
