Eight years ago, the WSWS first exposed and analyzed the remarkable and unprecedented influx of military-intelligence operatives into the Democratic Party, with dozens of former military officers, intelligence agents and State Department and National Security Council officials seeking Democratic congressional nominations.

Eleven of these candidates won seats in the House of Representatives, and in the three elections that have followed, in 2020, 2022 and 2024, that number has held roughly constant, as new candidates from a military-intelligence background have replaced those who have moved on, either to higher office, reelection defeat or retirement.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Hamburg Higher Regional Court announced on Friday that it had decided not to allow the operators of the Nord Stream gas pipelines to participate as victims in the trial, which will consider the case of former Ukrainian armed forces officer Serhii Kuznetsov.

"By decisions dated September 30, 2026, the 3rd Criminal Collegium of the Hanseatic Higher Land Court refused to allow additional claims by Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG to be considered in case No. 3 St 2/26 (case of the Explosion of the Nord Stream Gas Pipelines)," the court said in a statement.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned that Germany's democracy is once again being challenged.

The 70-year-old used his final German Unity Day speech as president to reflect on more than three decades of political change.

"I thought everyone had learned the lesson from history, and now I see supporters of right-wing extremism seeking to erase the memory of the victims of the Holocaust," Steinmeier said at the official ceremony in Bremen.

"I believed our democracy was secure and now have to experience it being challenged anew."

Steinmeier, whose second and final term as president ends in March, said his expectations after the changes that began in 1989 had been greater than what ultimately became reality.

The incident aboard FlyDubai flight FZ1073 has yielded some confirmed facts, but it is still too early to draw firm conclusions. The passenger jet was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday when a confrontation broke out in the cockpit. The aircraft then transmitted a distress signal and made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. All 174 passengers and crew members survived.

The FlyDubai cockpit attack is over. The hardest questions remain

The FlyDubai emergency puts aviation’s insider threat under scrutiny against a backdrop of war and growing regional radicalization

BY Farhad Ibragimov

Pope Leo XIV has called on artists to join forces to protect human creativity in the age of AI.

Speaking to cultural figures at the Vatican on Friday, the Pope said the Catholic Church hopes to renew its alliance with them to safeguard “what is human.”

“We live in the age of search engines that offer us thousands of instantaneous answers,” he said, contrasting them with art, which he described as a different kind of “search engine” that “does not proceed by indexing but by inquiry.”

He warned that one of the dangers facing modern culture is “homogenization,” arguing that art can provide a counterweight by challenging people rather than simply giving them what they expect.

Ten years ago, Jesse Farrar produced what will probably be the most influential piece of writing of his life. It was a tweet, fired off casually late in the evening of October 1, 2016. He doesn't even remember what prompted him to do it. "I was probably bored and wanted attention," Farrar admitted.

The tweet that defined a decade of Trump

David Mack, CNN

Farrar's post was a tiny script, of sorts, in which a character makes a pronouncement that is then interrupted by an action denoted by asterisks. It read:

Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide delivered Norway’s statement during the general debate of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. His speech highlighted how international law is eroding, wars are multiplying and the UN faces financial and institutional crisis. Reform is urgent, not because the organisation has failed, but because it still matters.

Espen Barth Eide

“The old world is dying, and a new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

President, distinguished delegates

Con Coughlin’s September 30 column in the Telegraph tells readers that Vladimir Putin’s decision to raise defense spending is a “desperate gamble” that could end with Russia following the Soviet Union into economic collapse. It is a familiar story. Western commentators have been predicting Russia’s economic implosion since the first sanctions packages in 2022. What the story lacks, as it did then, is evidence.

Russia Is Not Collapsing: A Reply to Con Coughlin

by Larry C. Johnson

Guten Tag from DW's newsroom in Bonn.

Things are getting increasingly tense inside Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition.

The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is piling pressure on its center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) partners to deliver on pension and labor market reforms agreed earlier this year. And the CDU appears ready to play hardball.

The gloves are also coming off at Volkswagen. Germany's IG Metall union has accused VW management of provoking a conflict "that the company cannot afford."

Stay with us here for these stories and more of what Germany is talking about today.

Jordan Klepper gets into the headlines: Famously pro-Hispanic President Trump hosts a Hispanic Heritage Month event at the White House, and even invents a new stereotype to honor the occasion! Pete Hegseth purges the U.S. military's “beardos, weirdos, wimps, and radicals,” which has us wondering where that leaves… most of his fellow cabinet members.

Plus, Josh Johnson comes to us live from the Pentagon with exciting updates from Hegseth’s star-studded team tasked with studying the future of warfare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSuiWyrR2bY

PLEASE VISIT:

Burnham reopened the divisive Brexit debate by saying his centre-left Labour government could go "all the way" and propose membership of the bloc as one possible way to boost relationships with Europe.

Right-wing rivals immediately criticised the comments, as the UK appeared to be gearing up for a re-run of the bitter "Brexit wars" that dominated politics after the contentious 2016 vote to leave the European Union.

Burnham, premier since July after Labour MPs turfed out Keir Starmer, told his party's annual conference in Manchester on Tuesday that Britain's departure in 2020 had done "more harm than good".

Brexit had triggered "a decade of low growth" and the country must "decide on a long-term relationship" with its largest trading partner, he said.

Burnham promised to set out "different options" closer to a planned summit with the 27-member bloc later this year.

For most of human history, the age of the Earth was a theological question before it was a scientific one — and the answers ranged from a few thousand years to vague gestures at eternity, with almost no empirical foundation either way.

The real breakthrough came not from geology or astronomy but from physics, when the discovery of radioactivity in the late 19th century handed scientists an atomic clock hidden inside rocks themselves, one that had been ticking since the planet first formed.

The European Commission’s attempt to bolster its “digital sovereignty” and reduce reliance on US technology has fallen flat, with its chosen “backup”internal communications app facing sharp criticism from EU officials, Politico has reported.

Dubbed ‘Element Pro’, the new app was described by the Commission as a “sovereign back-up to Teams” – the body’s main communications tool developed by US software giant Microsoft – according to an internal memo seen by the news site. Element Pro was introduced in July to help “ensure… business continuity” in the event of a potential “disruption.”