Beni Rae Harmony, 24, has been ‘a trusted voice for the Maga movement’ as a correspondent, White House says
The White House has defended a newly hired press aide who posed for a holiday photograph in 2021 wearing a “Fuck Joe Biden” T-shirt and holding a rifle.
Beni Rae Harmony, the new assistant White House press secretary, announced on Friday that she was going to work for Donald Trump just days after covering him as a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a partisan rightwing outlet originally created as a video podcast platform for the US president’s former adviser Steve Bannon.
An online spot for Mr. Hilton, the G.O.P. candidate, is full of sexual innuendo that has befuddled Republicans and Democrats watching the race for governor in California.
An appellate court in Arizona threw out the prison sentence of a man convicted of manslaughter after an A.I.-generated video of his victim was played at a trial.
Stacey Wales with an enlarged photo of her brother, Christopher Pelkey. She created a video using artificial intelligence to depict her dead brother speaking at the sentencing of his killer.
The state hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly a century. Economic challenges during President Trump’s second term, as well as other factors, have put it in play.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton, left, and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas are currently tied roughly at 45 percent, according to a New York Times/Siena University poll.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv on an unannounced visit on 4 October and announced more than €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) in new German support for Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a joint press conference. Part of the money will fund interceptors against Russia's jet-powered drones, as Russian drones struck Kyiv again during Merz's visit. Merz also pledged to speed up Ukraine's EU accession and announced a Coalition of the Willing meeting in Berlin this winter.
Russia now attacks Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities daily, increasingly with jet-powered drones that outrun the cheap interceptors built for slower Shaheds. That leaves Ukraine dependent on scarce air defense missiles and on partners willing to pay for new weapons fast.
A package aimed at Russia's jet drones
The €1 billion ($1.13 billion) military part of the package includes funding for joint production of interceptor drones against jet-powered drones, Merz said. Recent technological progress means the new interceptors can quickly enter serial production, he added.
"This will quickly and noticeably strengthen Ukraine's air defense," Merz said.
The package also includes long-range weapons, combat drones, and satellite equipment, which Merz said should help Ukraine destroy Russian launchers more effectively. A separate €350 million ($394 million) will go to Ukraine's energy sector before winter, covering generators, transformer substations, and repair kits, Liga reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, damaged by a Russian drone strike on 28 September, 4 October 2026. Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine
The two countries also signed an agreement on counter-drone cooperation, Merz said. He stressed that the help runs both ways, with German defense companies learning from Ukraine's war experience. The broader deal also covers joint development of weapons with a range of more than 1,000 km, Reuters reported.
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Among interceptor drones, the Bars has so far shown the best results, downing up to 30% of its targets, Zelenskyy said. He expects the first results from small missiles designed to counter jet drones in the second half of October.
"We will not be intimidated"
Before the visit, Russia's Foreign Ministry warned foreign nationals and diplomats against staying in Ukraine and threatened new massive strikes on Kyiv. Merz arrived by train with Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and a delegation of German business executives.
"Despite the threats that have reached us from Moscow in recent days, I came today... This shows: we will not let ourselves be intimidated," Merz said.
Merz and Zelenskyy visited the National Academy of Sciences, where a Russian drone killed two people and injured seven on 28 September, the State Emergency Service and the Office of the President said. An air-raid alert sounded while they spoke with rescuers, and emergency service chief Andrii Danyk showed Merz the movement of Russian drones in real time. The same day, a Russian drone hit Kyiv's Northern Bridge again.
"I can only repeat it once again from this point: Mr Putin, put an end to this senseless war," Merz said during the visit. "We are ready for talks, we are ready to discuss bringing this war to an end, but these barbaric attacks on the civilian population of Ukraine must stop," he added, Reuters reported.
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Zelenskyy called the chancellor's presence despite the alert "a needed and brave signal" from Merz personally and from all of Germany.
EU path and a Berlin meeting
Germany wants to speed up Ukraine's EU accession and is working toward that in Brussels, Merz said. He welcomed Zelenskyy's assurances on rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms, which he said matter for further financial aid. Together with France and the UK, Germany plans to host a Coalition of the Willing meeting in Berlin this winter to coordinate further support, he added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha greets German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on his arrival in Kyiv, 4 October 2026. Photo: Andrii Sybiha/X
The trip was Merz's second to Ukraine as chancellor and his fourth since the full-scale invasion. He arrived just as his standing at home is slipping: the far-right AfD reached 30% for the first time in an INSA poll for Bild, while Merz's CDU/CSU fell to a record low of 18%. Days earlier, Merz had directly accused the AfD of having "Russian backers."
A replacement FlyDubai plane, carrying passengers who were on an aircraft from Dubai to Tel Aviv that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, arrives at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel, last week.
Democrats competing in historically conservative territory in the midterms are more aggressively responding to Republican attacks casting them as extreme.
It was the latest mixed messaging from President Trump, who regularly votes by mail, but has made baseless claims that the practice is “inherently corrupt.”
Nicole Linton was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder, which included the death of an unborn child, related to a 2022 crash in Los Angeles.
Nicole Linton in Los Angeles Superior Court in 2022. Prosecutors said she had sped through a red light like a “high-speed missile” in 2022 and crashed into multiple vehicles.
In a new ad, the wife of Ken Paxton, who is divorcing him for alleged adultery, tells Texas voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.”
Roger Fortson was shot by deputy when he opened door with gun in hand after a false domestic disturbance call
A Florida jury recently found former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black US air force airman who was killed inside his apartment after authorities responded to an unfounded report of a domestic disturbance.
An Okaloosa county jury acquitted Duran, 38, on Thursday after about two hours of deliberations. He had faced up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Ukraine has stopped paying veterans to go to the gym because of the economic crisis looming in the country, the war, Russian strikes, and the lack of reforms needed to receive extra funds from the EU. The Veteran Sports program, which provided veterans and combat participants with about $33 per quarter toward a nearly monthly gym membership, was suspended on 1 October after the state found no funds for it, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs said.
The suspension is a telling sign of Ukraine's budget squeeze, and the ministry puts it plainly: defense comes first, so the money for everything else runs short. It fits a wider government decision to freeze non-essential spending and fund only the army, pensions, and public wages.
The program proved far more popular than planned, drawing more than 800,000 users and costing over double its budget.
Defense takes the money
"The main priority of state spending remains the country's defense. Under these conditions, the state budget's ability to finance other areas is limited," the ministry said.
Launched in 2026 with about $13 million for an expected 100,000 recipients per quarter, and roughly 300,000 applications over three, the program instead saw more than 800,000 uses. Payments passed $27 million, more than twice what was set aside.
The crisis runs deeper
The squeeze has two main drivers. Russia's intensifying strikes on Ukraine's energy and infrastructure are pushing the war's cost higher and battering the economy.
And billions in Western money sit on hold: Kyiv has struggled to complete the reforms the EU set out before releasing roughly $20 billion in aid, and the prime minister has admitted that part of it is late because Ukraine missed commitments to its partners.
The ministry plans a 2027 restart
Ukraine intends to bring the program back in 2027, this time for good, said Deputy Veterans Minister Ruslan Prykhodko.
"We have to account for real demand, fix the shortcomings we saw this year, and make the use of funds more targeted," he said.
In next year's budget, Ukraine would provide significantly more funds, he added. In the meantime, the ministry says it is talking to the sports community and businesses about covering the gap for veterans, with concrete proposals to come.
Hundreds of schools will suspend some or all classes on Monday, the education minister said, as students protest conditions in the education system. Thousands of protesters have been arrested and hundreds of people injured.
Four people were rescued after being adrift in a life raft in the South Pacific. One of them said he thought he had a better chance of winning the lottery than of being hit by a whale.
Fuel costs are biting for crop growers, trucking firms and a host of other industries as Iran war stokes record prices
Joe Hamilton farms corn and soybeans on 2,500 acres in Indiana’s Delaware county. Next week, when his soybean harvest kicks off, four tractors, two combine harvesters and five semi-trucks will roar to life.
And with that, a record bill for about 9,000 gallons of diesel awaits him.
A FlyDubai plane carrying passengers from an earlier flight that had been forced to divert after a cockpit attack, arriving near Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
John Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas is the least affordable city in the US for the middle class, a recent Brookings Institution analysis found
Nestled between two mountain ranges at the crook of central California’s coastline sits a valley known as the “salad bowl of the world”.
Farm workers stoop over neatly lined rows of crops off Highway 101 to harvest more than half of the nation’s supply of lettuce and nearly a third of its strawberries. The soil here is so rich that author John Steinbeck made the Salinas valley the promised land in his literary depictions of people chasing the American dream: immigrants, farm workers, westward-moving hopefuls, hungering for a better life.
Our reporting revealed how Mexican criminal groups are relying on teenagers and young adults in border states like Arizona to help supply their weapons.
Two teenage American weapons traffickers — who provide weapons to Mexico’s deadly drug cartels — practice shooting at targets in the desert outside of Phoenix, Ariz.
President Trump personally directed the use of taxpayer money for ads praising his presidency, according to people familiar with the matter. Our White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman, explains.
Judge unseals bodycam footage from officers who responded to 911 from McDonald’s in Pennsylvania
Police bodycam footage released Friday shows the moment officers located and arrested Luigi Mangione at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s in connection with the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan.
In one video, officers ask Mangione to lower the face mask he was wearing to hide his identity.
Newly released police bodycam footage shows officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, approaching, searching and arresting Luigi Mangione at a McDonald's on 9 December 2024 in connection with the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The Guardian has edited the video from multiple cameras to show the moments of the arrest
Health screenings and criminal background checks may go only so far in identifying pilots who have become radicalized or try to hide their mental health issues, experts said.
In the United States, pilots undergo a criminal history check as well as a threat assessment to see if they have ever been flagged as a “person of interest” in federal law enforcement databases.
The country was shaken after nearly 30 people were killed in two separate mass shootings. South Africans are demanding greater government intervention.
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority are now considering setting trained falcons on the urban birds
The mass transit authorities in the greater Boston region are clawing around for ways to mitigate the excessive local pigeon population – or more graphically, pigeon poo all over stations – and have swooped on the possibility of setting trained falcons on them.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), the public system commonly known as “the T”, issued a “request for information” (RFI) last month from falconry experts on the potential use of birds of prey, such as falcons, to control the crowds of urban birds widely considered a public nuisance.
Prosecutors want remote testimony for witnesses unable or unwilling to travel to Guantánamo. The defense wants jurors to be told that, guilty or innocent, the defendant will not go free.
After the co-pilot stabbed the captain, two pilots who were seated in the cabin intervened alongside passengers and safely landed the Boeing 737 in Saudi Arabia.
A FlyDubai plane carried passengers to Tel Aviv on Wednesday after a midair cockpit attack on their earlier flight. Two other pilots who were seated in the cabin safely landed that plane.
Support for 37-year-old Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins could upend the governor’s race in the heavily Republican state
This July, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins spent four days and 450 miles (725km) wending his way down the Yukon River in a 24ft Alweld skiff, a flat-bottomed aluminum boat built for shallow Alaska rivers.
Starting in Koyukon Athabascan country, he passed through Indigenous Deg Hit’an communities like Anvik, before ending among the Yup’ik villages of the lower river, Russian Mission and Pilot Station among them. The boat carried him through 11 villages – some only reachable by water or small plane, andmost with fewer than 300 residents, and fewer still who could recall the last time they had seen a candidate for Alaska governor, Republican, Democrat or independent.
As the Republicans try to hold their majority, the Senate Leadership Fund is diverting resources to Kansas, which has become a growing concern for the party.
Economies in Latin America and Europe rely on American diesel. Stopping exports could tip some countries into recession, hurting trade with the United States.
A FlyDubai plane carrying Israeli passengers who had earlier been aboard another FlyDubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia approaches Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
The Coast Guard has intercepted two small boats it says were carrying illegal fuel to Cuba as the United States enforces a fuel blockade aimed at Cuba’s Communist government.
As LeBron James and other NBA stars wholeheartedly embrace the murk of betting and prediction markets, the San Antonio Spurs’ 22-year-old cornerstone has drawn a refreshing line
If the song from LeBron James’s agonizing Polymarket ad is as stuck in your head as mine thanks to the commercial playing during every YouTube video and HBO show (all I wanted to do was rewatch The Leftovers), let Victor Wembanyama be your antidote. At the Spurs’ practice on Thursday, San Antonio Express-News columnist Mike Finger asked Wembanyama if he would ever partner with a sports betting firm. It couldn’t have been easier for the 22-year-old to say yes. The NBA displays ads for both FanDuel and DraftKings, in addition to hawking betting odds on its broadcasts. Until the streaming service met its end a few months ago, plenty of NBA games streamed exclusively on FanDuel Sports Network. Then there are Wembanyama’s legendary peers: James is the new face of Polymarket; Kevin Durant reads FanDuel odds and invests in Kalshi; Giannis Antetokounmpo is a Kalshi shareholder.
“Absolutely not,” Wembanyama said instead. “I will never do that. Honestly, I think it’s very sad to see some players promote it. Everybody does whatever they want, but without me.”
Capt. Smit Machchhar, who was stabbed by his co-pilot midair between Dubai and Tel Aviv, said he “had to act” to prevent a crash despite serious injuries.
Israeli carriers in Cyprus in 2025. Two Israeli airlines, Israir and Arkia, said Friday that they had obtained “the required permissions” to land at Dubai’s airport.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows the danger of using AI in warfare. Humans must remain at the center of wartime decisions
As tech leaders warn about the threats of artificial intelligence, most conjure up images of AI agents running amok, such as hacking systems used to run our critical infrastructure, banks or even militaries. Yet one serious danger is mentioned less frequently – the threat posed by AI–empowered lethal weapons. Fully autonomous versions of these weapons are colloquially known as killer robots.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows that, in an important respect, such AI weapon systems are already here. An algorithm has been deciding who lives and who dies.
The government has sought to avert panic at the pumps, insisting that the UK is not facing a diesel shortage after Donald Trump threatened to cut off US supplies of the fuel.
The transport minister Keir Mather said on Friday that the UK has a wide range of sources of the fuel and is in talks with other European countries over the potential release of emergency diesel stockpiles.
Truckers are among the hardest hit by the soaring cost of diesel fuel. High prices are forcing some to stay on the road for months and others to park their rigs.
Iran has been launching drones and missiles at commercial ships in the waterway each week, though it has often failed to strike its targets, according to a Western security official.
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