US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he and a large group of leaders from artificial intelligence companies had signed a voluntary accord that will include internal and external reviews during a meeting at the White House aimed at addressing Americans' fears about the technology.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has announced plans to launch a probe into a new religious affairs office recently unveiled by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit said on Thursday that it is seeking transparency into the office’s funding, operations and plans to assess troops’ “spiritual fitness.”

The announcement came shortly after Hegseth said the Pentagon was establishing the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA) to address what he described as a decline in religious community in the military following an era of “political correctness.”

In his State of the Force address on Wednesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Hegseth said the new office’s head is expected to serve as the secretary and deputy secretary’s chief adviser on religious affairs.

French police have arrested a teenager on suspicion of using an aerosol can to direct a jet of flames at a woman’s face during high school and university student protests sweeping the country.

The altercation was filmed on Thursday in the southern port city of Marseille, where protesters attacked public transport, torching at least one bus and a fire engine. The victim, a social worker, told BFM TV that she was waiting for a bus when a crowd of young people approached and began vandalizing the bus stop. She said she tried to intervene, prompting one of the youths to use an aerosol can as an improvised flamethrower.

“I wasn’t expecting such violence. I thought I might get shoved … I didn’t expect kids to be so violent,” the woman said. “Fortunately, my face didn’t suffer injuries as serious as the images might suggest,” she added.

Saudi Arabia is planning a major offensive in civil war-torn Yemen, hoping to reverse gains made by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who seized a strategic Red Sea chokepoint last month, Reuters reported on Friday, citing Gulf and Yemeni officials and Western diplomats.

More than 100,000 Yemeni government troops could be mobilized for the offensive, depending on the scale, according to Reuters. The operation would be overseen by Saudi Arabia and supported by Saudi airstrikes. The US and other Western countries providing intelligence and material support to Riyadh are not expected to take part in combat operations.

I'll explain how the Vietnam War shaped my thinking about international relations, and the lessons it holds for today.

Forget Vietnam, You Get Iran And Iraq | Ask The Professor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1De4Ej28qA

————————————————————

CHAPTERS

0:00 The Question: How did Vietnam shape my thinking?
0:39 My military service during the Vietnam years
1:47 Lesson 1: Nationalism is the most powerful ideology
2:30 The domino theory
5:15 Communism was not a monolith
6:58 Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran
8:01 Lesson 2: The limits of military force
10:19 When military force works: the Gulf War
10:47 Bottom line

4 Oct 2026
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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.