PART I — THE ASSIGNMENT: FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The photograph arrived without an explanation.
Against the blackness of space, a small winged spacecraft hangs above Earth. Its shape recalls an American space shuttle, stripped of the machinery and proportions of its larger predecessor. Beneath it, a separate structure extends outward, its solar panels unfolded like dark wings. The spaceplane's payload-bay doors are open. There is no astronaut in the picture. No national insignia announces its mission. No visible instrument reveals what the spacecraft has been doing or what it intends to do next.
The DOJ said it had identified over 20,000 “likely non-citizens,” but California officials said that the claim wasn’t backed by evidence and that the government was trying to interfere in the electionOct. 28, 2026, 4:52 PM GMT-8By Gary Grumbach and Dareh Gregorian
A federal judge in California on Wednesday refused the Trump administration’s request to segregate 20,000 mail-in ballots from individuals it alleges are noncitizens.
October 27, 20262:57 AM GMT-8 Updated October 27, 2026
ATHENS, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates aligned with Greece to denounce a Turkey-Libya maritime accord as a threat to regional security and international legal order in a long-standing dispute over sea borders in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The collision occurred shortly before 9 a.m. local time on the high-speed railway connecting Madrid with southern Spain. The trains involved were a Renfe AVE service travelling from Madrid towards Seville and a train operated by private rail company Iryo. The two services were carrying hundreds of passengers.
As economists in the rest of the world look at the billions being poured into the AI industry with their hands over their eyes, the fate of China’s AI industry may be a sign of things to come.A report from Reuters suggests that the AI bubble in China “has already burst.” Or it might be more apt to say that it shriveled like a rapidly deflating balloon: over the past four months, Reuters notes, the country’s STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor companies collapsed by 40 percent, wiping out $480 billion in market value. That is not a typo.
Israel’s election has ended without a clear path to a governing majority, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his principal challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, facing a difficult political calculation. Neither camp appears to have secured the 61 seats required to command a majority in the 120-member Knesset. Meanwhile, Arab-led parties have made significant gains and could influence the formation of the next government.
The initial exit polls placed Netanyahu’s bloc at approximately 50–52 seats and the opposition led by Eisenkot at 49–53, depending on the broadcaster. Arab-led parties were projected to win 17–19 seats. With roughly 40% of ballots counted early Wednesday, October 28, the official count remained incomplete. Exit polls indicate the political balance, not the final seat allocation.
Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has disappeared from public view after losing Sunday's presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On Tuesday, October 27, Brazilian Federal Police sources told Reuters that Flávio had missed a Supreme Court deadline to surrender his passports and that the documents had been cancelled. Authorities were trying to establish his whereabouts.Argentina said it had no record of his entry, while people close to the Bolsonaro family were unable or unwilling to clarify where he was. A senior Brazilian Federal Police official said he had not left through a regular migration checkpoint. His departure from Brazil, let alone his arrival in the United States, has not been confirmed.
Trump’s deal with Putin is opening an American market to Russian fuel just as international investigators document the human cost of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. The arrangement has triggered bipartisan opposition in Washington, raised questions about federal law and exposed the conflict between domestic fuel prices and national security.Three tankers carrying approximately 140,000 tonnes of Russian diesel are heading toward American ports under a temporary sanctions exemption negotiated by President Donald Trump’s administration. According to the Financial Times, the vessels are expected to arrive in November, shortly after the November 3 midterm elections. One of them, the Leruo, is sanctioned by the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada. The shipments are among the first to move toward the United States under Trump’s October 9 arrangement with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
They organized through assemblies, rejected the traditional political hierarchy, and won a parliamentary majority. Now Serbia faces an experiment whose consequences could extend far beyond its borders: can ordinary citizens build a democracy that does not surrender its power to a new political elite?
Trump invokes 9/11 to attack Abdul El-Sayed, but the Michigan Senate candidate is talking about groceries, gas prices and health care — the bills Americans must pay every day.
On Sunday, Donald Trump offered no evidence whatsoever establishing that Abdul El-Sayed was a terrorist or had ties to extremist violence, yet brought the memory of September 11, 2001, into Michigan’s Senate race, using the terrorist attacks to launch a personal assault on the Democratic candidate. At a rally in Port Huron, Trump called El-Sayed a “jihadist,” accused him of being a Muslim Brotherhood member, and invoked Todd Beamer, one of the passengers who fought back against the hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93. Trump warned that electing El-Sayed would put a threat inside the US Capitol.
A new gene-editing trial could change how inherited diseases are treated — but the first patient’s results are still unknownImagine discovering that a disease is caused by a tiny mistake in your body's genetic instructions. Instead of treating the consequences for the rest of your life, doctors might one day be able to correct the mistake itself.
That possibility has moved a step closer to reality.
There has long been talk of “hunter” satellites and an intensifying confrontation in space between Russia and the United States. But this week brought an unprecedented escalation in the new “star wars.”
On October 18, a Russian inspector satellite came closer than ever to a spacecraft operated by the Finnish-American company ICEYE. The company openly helps Ukraine, giving its armed forces access to satellite images of Russian military facilities, including airfields, naval ports, and oil refineries. Here’s what we know about the exceptionally close encounter, how Moscow is describing it, and why independent experts are alarmed.
Is Texas Turning Blue? Trump carried Texas by nearly 14 points in 2024. Now, Democrats are challenging Republicans in statewide races as voters confront rising costs, a controversial war and the consequences of tariff policy.
For more than a century, Texas was predominantly Democratic territory in presidential elections. From 1872 through 1976, the state voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in all but four elections: 1928, when Republican Herbert Hoover defeated Al Smith; 1952 and 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower carried Texas; and 1972, when Richard Nixon won the state in a national landslide. Jimmy Carter reclaimed Texas for the Democrats in 1976. Then the political map changed.
