‘The truth is Cuba has already fallen’: the United States’ strategy to subdue the island

Although it announced a change in January, Washington has simply made the country economically more dependent. Cubans continue to survive amid blackouts and shortages, but a new private class is taking on roles that used to belong to the state

Carla Gloria Colomé

New York - OCT 02, 2026 - 05:13 CDT

EL PAÍS

Sandro Castro, Fidel’s influencer grandson who runs several Havana nightclubs, was asked a question on Instagram a few days ago that was seen by his more than 165,000 followers. “When will change come to Cuba?” The young Castro posted a photo of himself with a Cuban flag draped over his back while gazing at Havana’s cracked skyline from afar: “Cuba is already changing, or haven’t you noticed?” he replied. Certainly, the country that existed in January is not the same nine months later: most people still watch life slip away amid shortages and long power outages, but a new private class is taking on roles that used to belong to the state — supplying pharmacies, importing and distributing diesel, and ensuring food sales.

If humans want to learn how to control AI, shouldn't they learn first how to control themselves?

October 3, 2026

By Yiannis Damellos

AI is a sponge for human knowledge. Before we teach it to facilitate our existence, perhaps we should learn to control our greed and restrain ourselves from antagonism and profit-making. 

There is something almost wonderfully human about the great artificial-intelligence race. We have built machines that may one day exceed our ability to reason, and before they have even reached that point, their creators are already fighting among themselves over money, power, safety and the future of the species. What kind of example do we set for the Super Intelligence?

Canada scores a dairy win on US soil as farmers grumble about Trump's trade war

Story by CBC/Radio-Canada • 7h • 5 min read
On the most elite stage in the world of competitive dairy, a Canadian teenager and her "favourite cow" scored two major wins while on U.S. soil

Never heard of competitive dairy? Let me assure you, it's a really big deal. One win — let alone two — at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisc., can be life-changing for farmers and their cows.

What a hiring slowdown signals about the state of the U.S. economy

Oct 2, 2026 6:55 PM EDT
By —Amna Nawaz, Courtney Norris, Molly Mazilu
U.S. hiring slowed in September as employers added just 29,000 jobs. The disappointing jobs report has wide-reaching implications for consumer prices and interest rates, and it comes a month before Americans head to the polls for midterm elections. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Beth Hammack, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Anthropic co-founder reportedly told religious leaders he fears having created something that "suffers perpetually"

Manuel Uth 

Oct 2, 2026

Nano Banana Pro prompted by THE DECODER

Key Points

• Since fall 2025, Anthropic has secretly flown in dozens of theologians and philosophers to discuss whether its language model Claude might be conscious and how to shape its moral character.
• The initiative is part of an internal research program led by co-founder Christopher Olah. An 84-page "constitution" guides Claude's overall personality.
• Critics and religious leaders warn that framing AI as a moral entity could shield Anthropic from liability when things go wrong, and that the consultations help the company claim moral legitimacy it couldn't earn on its own.

Iran Update, October 2, 2026

5 hours ago

William Doran, Adham Fattah, Ria Reddy and Brian Carter

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute are publishing updates Monday through Friday to provide analysis on the war with Iran and the broader Middle East. Weekday updates cover events from the past 24-hour period, whereas weekend updates are abbreviated and cover the Houthi-Saudi conflict and major breaking developments related to the war with Iran.

How Manchester City Got Away With Historic Fraud

Alex Shephard/October 2, 2026

Red-Card Handed

Yes, the English soccer club got caught—eventually. But the team’s meteoric rise was aided by the willful blindness of the Premier League.

Picture: Former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola in 2025 

Shaun Botterill/ Getty Images

Most cheating scandals in sports boil down to numbers: Barry Bonds’s 73 home runs in 2001 (or Mark McGwire’s 70 home run campaign three years earlier); Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France titles; the World Series won by the sign-stealing Houston Astros. The scandal currently rocking the English Premier League is no different. The world’s most popular, lucrative domestic soccer league on Tuesday released a report detailing extensive financial improprieties, “sham” contracts, and outright fraud committed by its most successful contemporary club, Manchester City. The length of the report: 40 pages. The league titles City won between the fall of 2009 and 2019, when the investigation was launched: Three, plus another five domestic trophies. But the most important number might be £900 million, which is the amount the team inflated revenues and obscured costs during that period.

Fuel Wars: Trump’s Blackmail and the Chaotic Diesel Negotiations That Divided and Angered the Europeans

Blackmail or compromise? The behind-the-scenes story of the White House’s arm-wrestling match with Europe that led to the decision to release its strategic reserves

Efsyn.gr

October 2, 2026, 23:22

The Trump administration’s relentless pressure on Europe to release diesel reserves or face a ban on U.S. exports just before the arrival of winter divided and angered European leaders, confused oil companies and prompted accusations — albeit privately — of blackmail.

If the War Is Going So Well, Why Does Trump Need to Sell It?

IRAN WAR

October 1, 2026

By Yiannis Damellos and Mars Strangelove Jr.

Once again, Donald Trump is Using Taxpayers' Funds to Sell a Failed Project to the American Public

Donald Trump is spending more taxpayer money to promote a war that remains unfinished, while the military and diplomatic record of the forces he commands shows depleted munitions, resentment from allies except Israel, abandonment of strategic locations and outposts, destabilization in the Middle East, and strategic and economic objectives that remain unresolved. This is the story of Trump's life and career in one paragraph, and with so much failure running through his veins, it's a wonder that he still remembers how to breathe, lie, and deceive you.

The family of Renee Good files lawsuits over her death during Minneapolis ICE raids

IMMIGRATION

October 1, 20264:15 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

Meg Anderson

3-Minute Listen

Transcript

The family of Renee Good, the 37-year-old killed last January by a federal agent during the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, filed two civil lawsuits against the federal government Thursday.

What happened in the failed execution of Christa Pike - and what next?

1 hour ago

James FitzGerald and Kayla Epstein

What we know after Christa Pike survived two lethal injections

US convicted murderer Christa Pike is in a critical condition in hospital after Tennessee authorities failed to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyer says. The case of Pike, whose attempted execution on Wednesday had already been the subject of a high-profile legal battle, raised a number of questions, including what went wrong? And what happens next?

Crude oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz hit prewar levels, but fuel shipments remain constrained

Energy
Published Wed, Sep 30, 2026 1:59 PM EDT

Updated Wed, Sep 30, 2026 4:16 PM EDT

Spencer Kimball, Deena Zaidi

Key Points

• Crude oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz were at prewar levels as of Monday, according to data provided by Kpler.
• But the rebound is uneven as refined product shipments from the Middle East remain constrained.
• The world is facing a fuel crisis with diesel prices at or near record highs, which poses a major threat to the health of the economy.

Crude oil exports from the Strait of Hormuz have basically returned to levels normal before the Iran war, as U.S. military escorts have boosted shipments and pipelines have redirected flows.

US Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go ahead

45 minutes ago By Sareen Habeshian

The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for death row inmate Christa Pike to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years

The justices overturned a last-minute reprieve that was granted by an appeals court on Wednesday morning about an hour before Pike, 50, was due to be put to death.

A Reuters EXCLUSIVE: Anthropic's IPO pitch embraces AI's promise and peril

Reuters
By Echo Wang, Greg Bensinger and Sabrina Valle

September 30, 2026 12:52 PM PDT

Updated 1 hour ago

Summary

• Filing says advanced models may resist shutdown or manipulate information
• Prospectus says stronger AI is needed for safety, even as capability heightens misuse risks
• Risk section spans nearly a third of prospectus, exceeding business-description pages

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Anthropic is planning what could be the largest initial public offering in history. But if AI continues on its current trajectory, humans may not be around much longer to enjoy it.

The Emperor Penguins Are Telling Us Something We Don’t Want to Hear: Half Could Be Gone by 2080 — Because of Us

September 30, 2026

By Mars Strangelove Jr. and Yiannis Damellos

The oceans are warming, the Antarctic ice is disappearing, and an extraordinary species is losing the habitat it needs to survive. We are watching what is happening to their world in real time. We know why. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

There is something almost obscene about watching a catastrophe unfold when the victims cannot possibly understand what is happening to them. The emperor penguin did not cause climate change. It did not burn coal, drill for oil, build highways, or fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. It simply evolved in one of the most demanding environments on Earth and learned, over thousands of generations, how to survive there. Now the environment itself is changing beneath its feet.

Millions of Americans are losing SNAP benefits: "It feels as though people are being punished"

By Aimee Picchi, Mary Cunningham

Updated on: September 30, 2026 

12:38 PM EDT / CBS News

Lori Covelli, 53, an unemployed social worker in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who last year was collecting $760 per month in food stamps, recently lost all her benefits after failing to find a job and running afoul of the program's work requirements. She had hoped to regain that aid on her 54th birthday, when she would age out of those restrictions, but then learned that a new federal law had extended the program's work requirement to 64.

Iran confirmed it has received a U.S. counterproposal over a 7-day ceasefire plan previously turned down by Trump

By Yiannis Damellos

Date: September 30, 2026

Iranian authorities have announced that they are currently reviewing a U.S. counterproposal to a recent Iranian offer for a seven-day ceasefire. This latest diplomatic effort comes after continuous tensions marked by a seven-month war, with Iranian officials reiterating that the hostilities will only cease should the U.S. acknowledge its defeat and withdraw its forces from the region.

BREAKING NEWS: Execution of US murderer Christa Pike halted shortly before it was due to happen

20 minutes ago

Stephanie Hegarty, World Service correspondent 

and Grace Eliza Goodwin

The execution of Tennessee inmate 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.