“Pakistan has launched fresh airstrikes in Afghanistan, targeting the alleged hideouts of Islamist militants blamed for deadly cross-border attacks, officials said on Thursday. At least two hideouts were targeted in the provinces of Helmand and Kunar in early morning airstrikes, Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said. At least 22 militants were killed and their arms and ammunition were destroyed, Tarar said in a statement. Afghanistan’s Taliban government, however, said homes were hit in the strikes, killing nine civilians, including women and children.” (10/01/26)
“Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a bill sponsored by vulnerable GOP incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts (Neb.) to restrict members of Congress from buying new stocks of publicly traded companies, arguing the legislation didn’t go far enough to crack down on possible corruption. The Stop Insider Trading Act failed by a vote of 53-47. No Democrat voted in support of the measure. It needed 60 votes to advance on the Senate floor. Ricketts, who is facing a competitive race in Nebraska, argued before the vote that his bill would ‘ban congressional insider trading’ and touted it as a ‘commonsense’ reform that ‘we need to pass.’ It passed the House in July by a vote of 232-198 with the support of 13 Democrats.” (09/30/26)
“Before Stonehenge was raised, before Egypt’s first pyramid broke ground, before the Nazca people drew their famous lines across the Peruvian desert, someone in what is now southern Arizona shaped a 272-foot fish into the earth. On April 23, 2026, a border-wall contractor drove heavy equipment across it. Conservation advocates describe the damage as irreparable. … The Las Playas Intaglio sits inside the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, west of Ajo, Arizona. A geoglyph is an image made by scraping or arranging the desert surface; this one, shaped like a fish, stretches roughly 272 feet in length. … Earlier estimates placed the carving at roughly 1,000 years old. Archaeologists David S. Whitley and geologist Ronald I. Dorn …. revised that estimate dramatically. Their findings, published in The SAA Archaeological Record in September 2026, date the intaglio conservatively at 6,500 to 7,300 years old, with the possibility it is closer to 7,500 years old.” (09/30/26)
“On Tuesday, President Donald Trump and top AI leaders announced a signed pledge called a ‘Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities’ — a voluntary promise to implement more controls and safety measures as the rapid development of artificial intelligence continues. But there seems to be a catch — namely that the ‘United States’ was misspelled as ‘Unites States’ in a photo of the signed agreement the President shared to Truth Social. … Via an executive order, the President is also mandating that all government departments and agencies now change their phrasing from ‘artificial intelligence’ to ‘superintelligence’ or ‘SI.'” (09/30/26)
“English soccer club Manchester City has been found guilty of breaking financial rules, throwing the fate of one of the sport’s most successful teams into jeopardy. An independent commission, charged to investigate 115 charges, found the soccer club arranged what it described as ‘sham’ accounts with several commercial partners to hide an additional funding stream of around $1 billion. The club has repeatedly topped English’s soccer’s top division, the Premier League, since being acquired by the private investment vehicle of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE deputy prime minister and a member of the royal family in Abu Dhabi, in 2008.” (09/30/26)
“The execution of US murderer Christa Pike has been halted, just over an hour before it was due to happen. Pike, 50, has been awaiting execution since she was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. In their ruling on Wednesday, judges from the Sixth Circuit Appeals court said they needed more time to consider the arguments in Pike’s case. It is unclear how long the pause will last. This latest ruling comes after the Supreme Court denied a reprieve and the Tennessee governor declined to grant Pike’s request for clemency earlier this week. Her lawyers said that for years, the state of Tennessee argued in court that Pike had lied about being sexually abused as a child. But at a recent hearing about her execution method, the State said it does not dispute she suffered sexual abuse and rape.” (09/30/26)
“A federal judge in Manhattan blocked New York state from enforcing a first-of-its-kind law prohibiting landlords and real estate industry professionals from using algorithmic pricing tools to set, and potentially inflate, residential rents. US District Judge Valerie Caproni issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday in favor of RealPage, a software provider owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which said the law violated its First Amendment free speech rights by restricting use of its software’s pricing recommendations. … Richardson, Texas-based RealPage sued two days after reaching a settlement with the US Department of Justice and agreeing to restrict its algorithmic software from using non-public data from competitors to generate price recommendations.” (09/30/26)
“The Department of Justice filed a complaint Wednesday against federal judges in Minnesota over their remarks to the media related to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge. The complaint escalates the department’s battle with the federal judiciary, which has halted administration priorities, dismissed high-profile prosecutions and accused government lawyers in some cases of failing to comply with court orders. The department is demanding that the judges recuse themselves from all criminal or civil cases involving the Department of Homeland Security, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters, because of what he described as ‘obvious bias they have shown’ in recent remarks to The New York Times. At issue is a September article in which seven federal judges in Minnesota — nominated by Democrats and Republican presidents — spoke on the record about their experience dealing with a flood of cases during last winter’s immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests.” (09/30/26)
“Romania’s parliament rejected Siegfried Mureșan’s attempt to form a government Wednesday, deepening a crisis that began when the coalition collapsed in May. President Nicușor Dan, an independent moderate, proposed MEP Mureșan for the job — but lawmakers in Bucharest refused to back his candidacy in a crunch vote Wednesday. It is the second time parliament has formally voted down Dan’s nominee, and under Romania’s constitution that means a snap election is now a possibility. But Dan does not want to dissolve parliament for a national vote that would likely benefit the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party, which is currently ahead in the polls. He wants the feuding political leaders to put aside their differences and make a deal to support a new coalition.” (09/30/26)
“A group of Senate Democrats on Wednesday pushed US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to pay back the nearly $1 million in Medicare payroll taxes that he reportedly owes from his years as a hedge fund manager. In a letter to Bessent, the senators pointed to a recent court ruling clarifying the scope of a self-employment tax loophole that is widely exploited by hedge fund managers and private equity executives. During his confirmation hearing last year, Bessent cited the then-pending litigation to justify his decision not to pay $910,000 in payroll taxes he potentially owes the Internal Revenue Service, and pledged to set up ‘a reserve fund to address any contingency related to this issue.'” (09/30/26)
