El Niño will likely shift weather patterns to bring more rain, but much snow still isn’t forecast for the northern states

Winter in the United States looks like it will generally be wetter and warmer, but not necessarily snowier, according to the federal government’s seasonal outlook and other meteorologists’ forecasts. You can thank or blame El Niño.

El Niño is likely to shift weather patterns to bring more moisture, but with it higher temperatures. That should help erase persistent western drought, but it is unlikely to make northern snow-lovers happy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Thursday.

Election officers in Louisiana and Oklahoma receive a powdery substance, prompting evacuations

The FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service are investigating letters sent to state officials and election offices across the country containing an “unknown substance”.

Just weeks before November’s US midterm elections, election officers in Louisiana and Oklahoma received envelopes containing a powdery substance, leading to evacuations. A similar package containing white powder was also sent to the Ohio secretary of state, but the US Postal Service intercepted the package.

Republican Christopher Paul is running unopposed for seat despite allegations he raped two girls 20 years ago

A candidate for police chief in a small Louisiana town candidate is on course to be elected unopposed despite two charges of child rape pending against him, leaving his community to weigh whether to convert the position into an appointed office rather than one determined at the ballot box.

Christopher Paul, a Republican who on 6 August signed up to run for chief of police in the south-western Louisiana village of Elizabeth, was arrested on 8 September on allegations that he raped two girls in 2005 and 2006.

Kenya wants five of its citizens captured fighting for Russia in Ukraine to be treated as victims of human trafficking rather than prisoners of war, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi told Kenyan lawmakers on 8 October, Bloomberg reported. Botswana is also seeking a citizen's return.

In 2025, Ukrainian ambassador Ivan Kholostenko called Russia's role in Africa neocolonialism. As Africa Corps troops prop up friendly regimes, the Kremlin is carrying out "a typical colonial practice of resource extraction," taking gold, diamonds, bauxite, and uranium, according to Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence. Russia also uses the continent as a recruiting ground for its war: nearly 500 Africans have died fighting for Russia, Ukraine says.

Five Kenyans in a Ukrainian camp

Kenya is negotiating to bring the five men home, and President William Ruto has raised the matter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Mudavadi told the Senate. One has been held since November 2025, the others since March and April. The youngest is 23, Bloomberg reported. Kenya's honorary consul found them held in humane conditions at the Zakhid-1 camp, with access to medical care, the government said. Ukraine also holds the remains of four Kenyans.

Victims or fighters for hire

African governments say some of their citizens went to Russia for promised work as drivers, security guards, or cooks and were then forced into military service. The Kenyans "report having been recruited under false promises of employment," Mudavadi said.

"The circumstances of their recruitment and conscription are consistent with trafficking in persons," he said.

Ukraine's POW authority sees most foreign recruits differently. "The main motive for most of these mercenaries is financial gain," Dmytro Usov, secretary of Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said in November 2025, while stressing that many had ended up in Russia's army through fraud or coercion.

Explore further

Ghana negotiates Ukrainian drone deals as 1,780 Africans fight—and die—in Russia’s ranks

Ukraine holds that prisoners of war go home through exchanges, but Russia has never asked to trade for any foreign fighter except North Koreans, the headquarters said in May, adding it may consider other solutions if diplomats and lawyers find one.

Thousands of foreigners in Russia's ranks

Russia has recruited more than 28,000 foreigners from 135 countries, and more than 5,000 have been killed, a Ukrainian government website cited by Bloomberg says. Ukraine holds at least 213 foreign prisoners of war, not counting Russians and North Koreans, 37 of them African, according to documents Bloomberg saw. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claimed on 3 September that people are "coming forward voluntarily and signing contracts."

Kenya's government counts 354 citizens linked to the war: 84 killed or missing, 34 hospitalized in Russia, and 62 repatriated. Petitioners told senators that 841 Kenyans remain unaccounted for. Mudavadi said his March visit to Moscow put Kenya on a Russian recruitment "stop list," with no new Kenyans enlisted since.

Some African governments take steps

In August, Botswana stopped eight citizens from joining the Russian military at airports in Botswana, South Africa, and Ethiopia, Bloomberg reported.

Ghana accused Russia of luring its citizens into the war the same month, after Kenya and South Africa. The European Parliament said in March that Russia strips African recruits of their documents. Ukraine, meanwhile, is drafting its first Africa strategy.

Production of Pawn Shop allowed to go on despite concern about disruption and portrayal of immigration crackdown

A Daily Wire film production that appears to re-enact elements of Renee Good’s killing has been allowed to continue filming in a rural Montana town.

Production of Pawn Shop, the conservative media company’s upcoming movie, was temporarily halted earlier this month after residents of Livingston complained about inconvenient road closures, as well as the film’s portrayal of the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

Residents in areas from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Florida urged to ‘evacuate if told to do so’

Millions of people from Louisiana to Florida were under hurricane warnings on Thursday as Hurricane Isaias heads toward the US Gulf coast, with weather officials warning of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, heavy rainfall and flooding.

Isaias intensified from a tropical storm into the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season on Wednesday night, and has prompted state of emergency declarations in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, as well as evacuation orders and school closures in several Florida counties as officials urge residents to prepare for its arrival.

Wren Michelle Roberts was born with heterotaxy, a syndrome so rare a specialist could only find 15 similar cases

South-eastern Louisiana couple Nick and Savannah Roberts planned to bury their infant daughter the weekend after she was born in September with an exceedingly rare combination of birth defects that her doctors feared was unsurvivable.

But an unforeseen congenital trait in Wren Michelle Roberts’ heart, combined with her parents’ dedication to her complex medical care, has allowed her to defy her bleak initial prognosis and meet weeks’ worth of milestones that each are a “miracle in [their] own way”, according to her doctor.