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Oct 29, 2026 - World

A bipartisan group of senators hoping for answers about a recent disruption to Ukraine's battlefield communications hit a wall at the Pentagon.The Defense Department's inspector general has turned down the lawmakers' request to investigate the throttling of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. In a response dated Tuesday, the watchdog told the nine senators that the Air Force was better positioned to address their concerns.The senators, four Republicans and five Democrats, sought the probe after Ukrainian officials said this month that connection speeds on Starlink and Starshield, its military-grade counterpart, had been slowed. Officials in Kyiv said the restrictions hampered their ability to intercept incoming Russian drones.A congressional aide who spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity characterized the decision as the watchdog declining to look into Musk and Starlink, even though the office is well equipped to do so. According to the aide, worries in Congress about Musk's grip on Starlink stretch back years and helped drive the creation of Starshield in the first place."It is concerning that the Inspector General has apparently decided not to investigate satellite communication disruptions that Ukraine relies on to protect its civilians," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the lawmakers requesting an investigation, said in a statement to the AP.Shaheen added that "the Trump administration and SpaceX have provided conflicting accounts of what led to those disruptions" and called for "an independent accounting and review to determine responsibility and prevent this from happening in the future."Those accounts have indeed diverged. Musk admitted over the weekend that SpaceX had throttled Starlink in Ukraine, claiming the country broke the service's terms, a charge Ukrainian officials rejected. He insisted, however, that any changes to Starshield were in the hands of the U.S. government. President Donald Trump has denied ordering any restriction, while Vice President JD Vance has hinted at coordination between the White House and Musk.Mollie Halpern, a spokeswoman for the inspector general's office, said the watchdog "carefully considered the congressional request and determined that the matters raised were best addressed by the Department."The Pentagon pointed questions to the inspector general's office, and the Air Force did not immediately answer the AP's request for comment. Both have previously sidestepped questions about the slowdown.

Oct 28, 2026 - World

Vice President JD Vance has quietly stepped into an unexpected role while President Donald Trump threatens to unleash more bombing.Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, a hard-line power broker in Tehran, in an attempt to get peace negotiations back on track, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Rezaei leads Iran's Supreme National Security Council and has commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps longer than anyone else. One person familiar with the matter told The Journal that the letter went out at Trump's direction, and Trump knows about the outreach.According to The Journal, Vance is feeling out whether the two countries share enough ground to convince Trump to hold off on a brief but punishing attack he has signaled could come within weeks.The back channel cuts against Trump's own public messaging. Last week, he insisted the administration was not in talks with Tehran. "We're not negotiating with them," Trump said, adding that "it'll happen soon." On the campaign trail in recent days, he has told audiences he expects fighting to resume and that the conflict will end on his timeline.Trump kept up the pressure Tuesday night. "They've wanted to make a deal, but they like tapping it along," he told reporters, suggesting Iran might be waiting out the election before warning "that's not gonna help them."The exchanges so far have centered on how talks might be structured rather than the terms of any deal, a source told The Journal. Rezaei himself said last week Iran would not come to the table until certain core demands were satisfied. Earlier this month, he warned Tehran could hit the United Arab Emirates along with internet cables and data centers across the region.Vance has publicly supported the war while privately voicing doubts about dragging it out, according to The Journal. He pushed for more diplomacy before Trump launched "Operation Epic Fury" in February and later served as lead negotiator, traveling abroad twice for talks. A memorandum of understanding reached in June fell apart within two weeks over disputes about reopening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.The timing also carries political weight. Republicans are bracing for losses in next week's midterms, with voters pointing to the war and rising fuel costs as reasons for their frustration. Vance is considered the early frontrunner for the GOP's 2028 presidential nomination, The Journal noted.A Vance spokesman declined to discuss the talks, and the White House referred questions to the vice president's office. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media that "Iran continues to give diplomacy a chance to succeed."

Oct 28, 2026 - World

A former Defense Intelligence Agency staffer’s warning that Americans need to start preparing for a crisis has caused a stir with observers, and they can’t agree on whether to start stockpiling or roll their eyes.Farijah “Doc” St. Clair is head of technology and intelligence at the risk firm Crisis24. He wrote on X that “something is brewing” and that Americans’ “window to prepare, even with the basics, is closing.” He warned that “you will be on your own” in a national-scale crisis, urged people to prepare quietly and even “feign poverty,” and closed with: “It’s going to get rough.”Some readers took the warning seriously.“I have no idea what’s coming, if anything,” wrote novelist Danielle Langlois. “But when a former Defense Intelligence Agency employee shares advice like this (on top of the announcements I’ve seen from other nations), I take note. Go buy more food, maybe. Because this is weird.”Don Shift, a post-apocalyptic fiction author and Ventura County Sheriff’s veteran, called it “probably a very sober take on what’s really ‘up.’”Others wanted to know what, exactly, they’re supposed to be getting ready for.“What. Are. We. Preparing. For??” wrote Martin Skold, a geostrategist, policy adviser and author. “I’ll grant the premise: Having useful things on hand is useful, but anything more than that requires specifics.”“Preparing for an internet outage is not the same as preparing for a gasoline shortage is not the same as preparing for a nuclear strike is not the same as preparing for riots is not the same as preparing for a bank hack is not the same as preparing for a market crash,” Skold wrote. “I’m old enough to remember when telling people to stockpile necessities was considered pointless panicmongering.”Rebecca V., opinion editor at the publication Wrongspeak, dismissed it outright.“This is all a psyop to get people scared,” she wrote. “Power hungry elites just want more power. This is the way it’s been forever and will be until the end of time.”AI researcher David Bellamy, who works on training infrastructure for open-source AI and holds a PhD from Harvard, responded with a joke about AI-powered cyberattacks: “Yeah…so anyways, thrilled to release Claude Fable 5.5, which is a step change in cyberattack capabilities. Good luck everybody else!”St. Clair didn’t say what kind of event he believes is coming, telling readers “to not focus on the ‘what.’”

Oct 28, 2026 - World

Vice President JD Vance has been pulled into a Brazilian police investigation of whether a donor network he co-founded illegally aided Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro’s losing presidential bid.Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered the investigation Tuesday in a 38-page decision, two days after Bolsonaro lost a runoff election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.The order focuses on the Rockbridge Network, a donor group Vance co-founded in 2019, The Washington Post reported. Vance spoke at the network’s donor gatherings as recently as a year ago, and his office declined to comment Tuesday.Dino’s order lists five questions for federal police, and two of them name Rockbridge directly.The order says police must examine talks between Rockbridge representatives and Brazilian businessmen Tallis Gomes and Pedro Sang. A petition filed in the case named the two men, described as allegedly tied to Rockbridge, as possible go-betweens for financial support to Bolsonaro’s campaign, Dino wrote.“[It is] necessary to verify if there was the effective furnishment of resources — including human resources — services, or other measurable economic advantages, identifying its origin, its destination and its eventual use in the campaign,” Dino added, according to the Post’s translation.Brazil law makes it a crime for a candidate to accept money or other campaign help from a foreign source, the Post reported.Dino also ordered police to determine whether those funding talks were tied to foreign interest in Brazil’s rare earths and critical minerals, according to the order.Police must find out who made any proposal, who received it and what was offered in return, Dino wrote. He added that those minerals belong to the federal government and can be mined only with its permission.Dino placed the investigation under the Supreme Court’s direct supervision because members of Congress may have taken part, the order says. Bolsonaro is a sitting senator.Bolsonaro's opponents filed complaints that reached Brazil’s courts before the Oct. 25 runoff, including Lula’s Workers’ Party, the Post reported.Renan Santos, a presidential candidate eliminated in the first round, alleged that Brazilians claiming to represent Rockbridge discussed U.S. support with Bolsonaro campaign officials, the Post reported. A person with direct knowledge told the Post that the same representatives also helped the Santos campaign.“The Brazilians made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge and created documents representing or referencing Rockbridge without Rockbridge’s knowledge or consent,” the network said in a statement Tuesday.Still, Dino’s order directs police to identify who took part in contacts between Rockbridge representatives and Brazilian businessmen, and what those contacts were for.The order also covers paid posts by foreign accounts that promoted Bolsonaro using odds from Polymarket, a prediction market banned in Brazil, and any deliberate manipulation of algorithms by internet companies to favor or hurt candidates.Bolsonaro fled Brazil for the United States on Tuesday, the day of Dino’s ruling, in defiance of a separate Supreme Court order, three people with knowledge of the matter told the Post. A senior State Department official told the newspaper that he and his family will be issued visas to stay.Dino also sent his decision to 10 federal agencies, including Brazil’s intelligence agency and its central bank, and told the federal police director to report the new case number back to the court, according to the order.

Oct 28, 2026 - World

Warnings of escalating clampdown on press freedom come after Cairo court convicts Attalah of managing an unlicensed websiteLina Attalah, a prominent Egyptian journalist and the editor-in-chief of the news outlet Mada Masr, has been released from detention by Egypt’s authorities and had her website ordered to be shut down by a court amid an intensifying crackdown on independent media in the country.Attalah was taken briefly into custody after a Cairo court convicted her of managing an unlicensed website, prompting fresh international concerns over press freedom in Egypt. Continue reading...