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.
A fast-growing wildfire in the Angeles national forest north-east of Santa Clarita, California, has triggered evacuation orders and warnings in the area. Firefighters battled the blaze, which had spread to 1,000 acres by Saturday evening, from the ground and air, while authorities ordered residents in surroundings areas to leave as the fire spread quickly across the rugged terrain. The cause of the fire was not immediately reported
At least 25 injured at block party shooting in Georgia and three wounded in Baltimore park shooting, officials say
Two people were killed and at least 25 others injured when a shooting erupted at a homecoming block party in Vienna, Georgia, early on Sunday, according to authorities.
In another high-profile mass shooting in the US over the weekend, a 12-year-old girl was shot and killed and three other people were wounded after gunfire evidently broke out over a parking spot in a Baltimore park on Saturday, officials said.
The EU Delegation and all EU embassies will keep working in Kyiv despite Russia's warning that foreign diplomats should leave or risk their lives, EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernová said on 4 October. Poland and Estonia also said their embassies would stay, calling the threats an attempt to intimidate Europe.
Russia attacks Kyiv daily as Moscow tries to make the city unlivable. Alongside the strikes, it now threatens the foreign missions that anchor Ukraine's support in the capital.
"We are staying"
Russia's Foreign Ministry singled out the embassies still working in Kyiv and the foreign officials who keep visiting Ukraine, Mathernová wrote. Moscow claimed that if something happened to them, the responsibility would be theirs.
"The responsibility for russian attacks belongs to russia! Not to anybody else," Mathernová wrote, adding: "Moscow wants to scare Europe into reducing its support for Ukraine. That will not happen."
The EU Delegation continues its work while taking the security of its team seriously, she added.
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Russia’s drones keep targeting the bridges Kyiv can’t easily replace—now the Northern crossing is cratered
She pointed to the morning's strike on the Northern Bridge, saying the repeated attacks disrupt the connections between the two banks of the Dnipro. People worry about getting to work, reaching their families, and getting home safely, she wrote.
Poland and Estonia keep their embassies open
Poland's Foreign Ministry said it had no intention of changing how its Kyiv embassy works. The Kremlin's threats and calls for diplomats to leave show it is trying to intimidate Europe and undermine support for Ukraine, the ministry said. Such threats contradict international law and will not work, it added.
Estonia's Foreign Ministry said its embassy stays in Kyiv and its support for Ukraine remains firm. Russia's threats only strengthen Estonia's resolve to stand with Ukraine, the ministry said.
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“Mr Putin, put an end to this senseless war”: Merz in Kyiv, with €1 billion in military aid
The European Commission also responded. Russia's threats show the Kremlin is losing the war and losing its self-control, Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand said, Suspilne reported.
More aid, more sanctions
This year alone, the EU has approved €28.3 billion ($32.3 billion) in defense procurement plans for Ukraine and is releasing another €6.6 billion ($7.5 billion) linked to military aid, Mathernová wrote. It is also moving forward with its biggest-ever sanctions listings against Russia, and this week imposed new sanctions over the deportation of Ukrainian children.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to Kyiv on the same day, as Russian attacks on the city continued. He and Zelenskyy visited the National Academy of Sciences building, hit by a Russian drone in September, and Zelenskyy thanked him for coming despite the air raid alert, calling it "a needed and brave signal," in a post on Telegram. Germany remains a reliable partner at Ukraine's side even in difficult times, Merz wrote.
More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.
A treaty from the 1960s declared that nobody can own outer space. Half a century later, billionaires and superpowers see fortunes to be made nonetheless.
Our reporter Ivan Nechepurenko looks at gas stations in Moscow to see how severe the shortages have become as Ukrainian attacks target Russian refineries. An earlier version of this video misidentified Yandex. While it is a Russian app, it is not state-run.
The United States wants a reactor on the moon by 2030. A Russian-Chinese alliance is working on one for 2036. Some leading scientists say the danger is great.
The moon and Earth were aligned in the same frame, each partly illuminated by the sun, as seen from behind the moon during the Artemis II flight in April.
A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.
President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
The negotiations about the Lukoil deal show that personal business interests in President Trump’s inner circle are also in play. Lukoil is Russia’s biggest private oil company.
Two blistering court opinions have put Mr. Krasner, a prominent progressive district attorney, in what may be the most precarious position of his public career.
The conflict is raising fears of a regional war in the Horn of Africa, drawing in foreign powers including Eritrea, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The Israeli military published an investigation it said rebuts accusations that it intentionally targeted journalists. But it and a journalists group disagree over 78 people who are on the list.
The site, near a hospital in Gaza City, was hit by an Israeli strike that killed an Al Jazeera reporter and several of his colleagues in August last year.
Russia has ordered Hungarian diplomatic staff to leave the country weeks after Hungary expelled 10 Russian diplomats over activities Budapest said were incompatible with their diplomatic status, Euronews reported.
The tit-for-tat expulsions mark a significant change in relations between Budapest and Moscow following Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule as Hungarian Prime Minister.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Hungary’s chargé d’affaires Gábor Gergics on 1 October and informed him that staff at the Hungarian embassy in Moscow and consulates in St Petersburg and Kazan would have two weeks to leave. Moscow described Hungary’s September expulsion as “baseless and openly unfriendly,” according to Euronews.
Hungary stands by expulsions
Hungary expelled 10 Russian diplomats on 8 September, citing activities it said were unacceptable for diplomats under the Vienna Convention. The government did not publicly provide details of the alleged activities.
Budapest said it was not seeking an escalation but would maintain its decision, while also saying its diplomatic missions in Russia would continue operating.
The expulsions come as Hungary’s foreign policy shifts under Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who took office after Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz lost the April election. Magyar’s government has moved to strengthen Hungary’s alignment with the EU and NATO while maintaining what it describes as pragmatic relations with Moscow.
A break with the Orbán era
Under Orbán, Hungary maintained unusually close relations with Russia compared with other EU members. Budapest continued cooperation with Moscow after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Orbán repeatedly opposed or delayed EU measures related to Ukraine.
The new government has taken a different position. In September, Hungary expelled the 10 Russian diplomats, and its new foreign policy doctrine identified Russia as a threat to Hungary’s security. Earlier, the government’s guidance for its UN delegation condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine and affirmed Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to self-defense, according to Euronews.
The shift has not amounted to a complete break with Moscow. Magyar has said Hungary will pursue pragmatic relations with Russia, while Budapest continues to seek concessions from Kyiv over the rights of Hungary’s minority in Ukraine.
A report on the fires that devastated the Los Angeles area in early 2025 recommended that local governments take a broader approach to preparedness and emergency response.
The clearest lesson from the Palisades and Altadena fires was the extent to which climate-driven fires are outstripping modern firefighting, a new report found.
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.
Kazakhstan detained Ukrainian citizen Liubov Rozhanska in Astana on 1 October at Russia’s request, after she traveled there to receive her grandson, a Ukrainian boy whose father has sought his return to Ukraine, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.
Russia accuses Rozhanska of attempting to abduct the child and is seeking her detention through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led security alliance that includes Kazakhstan.
She could now face deportation to Russia, despite never having entered the country, according to her lawyers cited by DW.
A Ukrainian child Russia wants to keep
The case involves a boy born in Odesa in 2018. His mother took him from Ukraine to Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast in 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion. In 2022, she and the child obtained Russian citizenship.
The boy’s Ukrainian father challenged the child’s residence in court. In March 2025, Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled that the boy should live in Odesa with his father.
According to Rozhanska’s lawyer, Oleksii Pryanishnikov, the boy’s stepfather and step-grandfather contacted her in July 2026 about arranging the child’s transfer to his Ukrainian father and grandmother.
By August, a Kaliningrad court had issued a warrant to detain Rozhanska in connection with an alleged attempt to abduct the child. Russian investigators were also preparing documents to seek her extradition through the CSTO, according to documents cited by DW.
Rozhanska then traveled to Astana and was detained at the airport after arriving from Istanbul.
Kazakh lawyer Riza Nurbaeva told DW that Rozhanska did not know about the Russian criminal case and had never entered Russia. She said the Ukrainian was detained under the Kaliningrad court’s warrant.
Lawyer alleges political motive
Pryanishnikov described the detention as a “planned operation” by Russia’s Federal Security Service and alleged that it has a political dimension connected to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
His allegation comes in the context of Russia’s documented transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and efforts to assimilate them into Russian society, grant them Russian citizenship and sever their ties to Ukraine.
In this case, Russia is using international legal mechanisms to potentially prevent a Ukrainian child from returning to his father in Ukraine.
Rozhanska is currently being held in a Kazakh pretrial detention center. A court hearing is expected within three days, according to DW.
Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, was bombarded overnight, after government forces reported some of the most intense clashes in years around Taiz, the country’s third largest city.
Hundreds were detained in New Delhi as demonstrators expressed anger over the removal of 130 million people from the rolls. The government denies accusations of “vote theft.”
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.
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.
Russia lost almost 300 km² of Ukrainian territory on net between March and September 2026, and it likely gained no ground in September despite its heaviest casualties of the year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed. Ukraine's Operation Vivaldi accounts for much of the swing. The think tank notes that Ukraine's secrecy around such counterattacks makes exact monthly tallies hard.
Russia has pressed attacks along the entire front through 2026, accepting mass casualties for marginal ground, and its battlefield year has already been called its worst since 2023. Its losses have been outpacing its recruitment for months.
Russia came out behind in September
Russian forces seized 175.54 km² in September but lost 256.35 km², a net loss of 80.81 km², or minus 2.69 km² a day, ISW calculated. The balance stayed negative when Russian infiltrations into areas Russia does not control are counted: Russia seized or infiltrated 143.2 km² but lost 318.38 km², a net loss of 175.18 km².
Russian territorial gains in Ukraine with and without infiltrations, April–September 2026. Graphic: ISW
The September figures include at least 147 km² near Lyman that Ukraine liberated over earlier months, but that ISW recorded only once details of Operation Vivaldi emerged in September. The operation already disrupted Russia's plan to encircle the Fortress Belt cities from the Lyman and Dobropillia directions.
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Ukraine’s Vivaldi counteroffensive disrupts Russia’s plan to encircle Donetsk Fortress Belt – ISW
Almost 300 km² lost since March
Russia's rate of seizing territory dropped sharply in March 2026 and has stayed low, or even negative, since, ISW found. After controlling for the gains Ukraine made during Vivaldi, Russia lost control of 293.59 km² net across the front since March. Counting infiltrations, it gained a presence in only 174.44 km² over the same period.
ISW's monthly chart shows net Russian losses of 116.01 km² in April and 281.1 km² in May, modest gains in June, July, and August, and a net loss again in September. Oleksandr Syrskyi, then Ukraine's commander-in-chief, reported in June that Ukrainian forces had recaptured 100 km² in May.
Russian casualties by month as reported by Ukraine's General Staff, April–September 2026. Graphic: ISW
More than 46,000 casualties for no ground
Russian forces suffered 46,230 casualties in September, Ukraine's General Staff reported. It is the third straight month above 40,000 and the highest monthly toll of 2026, by Kyiv's count. Monthly Russian casualties have climbed from 32,980 in April to 42,860 in July and 42,020 in August, ISW's chart shows.
Russia keeps suffering heavy personnel losses while making extremely limited or even net-negative territorial gains, ISW said, and its current force generation system still recruits fewer soldiers than it needs to replace them.
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Russia’s mass drone attacks on Ukraine have a goal—likely Ukraine’s capitulation by spring 2027, ISW says
Ukraine's effective operational security around Vivaldi, likely to continue in future counterattacks, will make meaningful month-to-month assessments of Russian gains and losses hard, the think tank added.
Ukraine may soon receive a multimillion package of 20-mm rounds for its F-16 fighter jets, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told journalists, Hromadske reported. He called the ammunition critical for shooting down Russia's jet-powered drones and said several partners have already begun transferring it. He expects the larger package after an upcoming high-level visit.
Russia now strikes Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities daily, increasingly with jet-powered drones that outrun the cheap interceptors built for slower Shaheds. Fighter jets are among the tools Ukraine uses against them, while its overall interception rate for jet drones still trails its rate against propeller drones.
"Critically important" ammunition
Sybiha said Ukraine has yet to build up its capability to repel jet drones.
"Given that we have not yet built up the capability to repel jet drones, and given the preparations for new strikes, it was critically important to help our military shoot down these drones. Apart from air defense systems, which are too expensive to use constantly against drones, the most effective tools right now are F-16 fighter jets," Sybiha said.
He thanked Spain, Belgium, and Poland, which have begun the process of transferring the ammunition, and said that thanks to them Ukraine will "very soon" have the rounds it needs.
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Belgium will send three F-16 fighter jets, but maintenance delays may keep Ukraine from using them
A "very serious visit" ahead
Sybiha linked the larger package to a visit he did not name.
"We will soon have one very serious visit. We think that one of the decisions following this visit will be a multimillion package of this ammunition for Ukraine," he said.
Talks on buying the rounds from private manufacturers are also underway, he added.
Ukraine has already received urgent batches of F-16 ammunition from Belgium, Spain, and other partners, and Belgium plans to send three more F-16s by the end of 2026 under an accelerated procedure. The jets' air-to-air missiles and cannon rounds are imported and not always in stock.
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Combat shows speed alone can’t catch Russia’s jet-powered drones, despite eight Ukrainian makers’ assurances. So why can’t they stop them?
Another night of Russian strikes
Overnight on 2 October, Russia launched 108 drones at Ukraine, 47 of them jet-powered, and air defenses downed 88 of them. In Kyiv, a Russian strike on a 25-story residential building in the Darnytskyi district killed one person and injured two. Russia also targeted the Southern Bridge again, after striking it three times the previous day, and the city restricted public transport across several bridges.
In Kharkiv Oblast, a Russian FPV drone hit a car in the Solonytsivka hromada on the afternoon of 1 October, injuring a man and a boy. A Russian strike damaged a civilian enterprise in Rivne Oblast and started a fire that forced an evacuation of nearby homes, regional head Oleksandr Koval said, and drones attacked Cherkasy Oblast.
In neighboring Romania, an object believed to be a drone crashed near the village of Plauru in Tulcea County during the attack, starting a fire that caused no casualties, Romania's Defense Ministry said.
A Latvian guard patrols the border with Belarus. Migrants have streamed into Latvia, many through considerable border defenses, cutting gaps in fencing or burrowing under it.
The United Arab Emirates has said it is leading the investigation into the episode, and FlyDubai’s service between Dubai and Tel Aviv has been suspended.
A passenger raises his arms in relief as he walks through the domestic arrivals doors with his dog and luggage at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
The government claims that reporters from Matsaddash, a well-known news outlet that debunks false reports, spread disinformation for the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
The Russian government has submitted a draft federal budget for 2027–2029 to the State Duma, Meduza reported on 30 September, citing TASS. In all three years, Russia's expenditures will exceed its revenues, the outlet noted.
Russia's finances have been eroding since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To keep paying for the war, the Kremlin has drained its reserves, borrowed more, and pushed tax burdens onto residents and businesses, while the wider economy stalls.
The government listed social obligations, including aid to those who fought in its war against Ukraine and their families, along with defense needs among the budget's priorities, while its press release left out the planned cuts to social spending and the rise in military spending, Meduza noted, citing The Bell.
Spending will exceed revenue by about 2% of GDP a year
Russia's federal budget for 2027 sets spending at 48.8 trillion rubles ($585 billion) and revenue at 43.3 trillion ($519 billion), the Russian government stated, leaving a deficit of 5.5 trillion rubles ($66 billion). It claimed the draft is "balanced" and that healthcare spending will rise compared with 2026.
Deficits of 5.1 trillion rubles ($61 billion) in 2028 and 5.3 trillion ($64 billion) in 2029 are also planned, about 2% of GDP a year, Meduza noted.
This year's deficit is now set to reach a record 7.345 trillion rubles ($88 billion), nearly double the previous forecast of 3.785 trillion ($45 billion), The Moscow Times reported on 1 October. To help close the gap, Moscow plans an array of tax hikes for 2027–2029 to fund military spending. Already by May, its four-month deficit had run 50% above what it had planned for the whole year.
Head office of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Photo: Central Bank of Russia
Even as the deficit widens, Russia plans its highest defense spending since the full-scale invasion began: 17.1 trillion rubles ($202.58 billion) in 2027, 27% more than the 13.5 trillion originally planned.
Only 2.3 trillion rubles ($28 billion) of that sum is itemized in public documents, and 34.9% of all 2027 spending will be classified, the highest share in at least 12 years, exiled outlet Vyorstka reported. The Duma is expected to hold the first of three readings on 29 October, the date proposed by Budget Committee chairman Andrei Makarov, Interfax reported.
Both sides are finding it increasingly difficult to finance the conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s 2027 budget envisions more debt, higher taxes and lower social benefits.
A Russian military recruitment poster in Moscow says “Who, if not you.” Russia intends to spend more than $200 billion on its military in 2027, a sharp increase.
The Finnish Parliament building in Helsinki. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that it was “very possible” there was a foreign actor behind the suspected home entries, the national broadcaster reported.
Ukraine has cracked the riddle of strange metal "whiskers" that appeared on Russian jet-powered drones striking Kyiv, and they don't appear to be some clever new sensor. They are a simple mechanical detonator, a metal tube, and a rod that, on impact, closes a circuit to set off the warhead, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, presidential adviser, says, ending online guessing about the strange devices.
Photos of Russian drones with long metal prongs jutting from the nose had set off speculation about what they were for. The answer, Flash explains, is low-tech: when the prong hits something, the contact closes, and the charge goes off, with no sensors or electronics.
That simplicity sits against a more worrying trend: Russia is steadily upgrading what its drones carry, from the mix of warheads on the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 to a new charge designed to sever power pylons.
A contact closes the circuit
"It's all mechanically simple, no sensors or complex detectors," Flash says, commenting on the "whiskers".
It is the kind of crude, cheap fuze that suits a weapon meant to be built and spent in the thousands, where cost matters more than finesse.
Russia upgrades the warheads
Russia's jet drones, now built at roughly 3,000 a month, have become the dominant threat in its nightly campaign. The day when Flash published his "whiskers" post, Russia hit Kyiv with another round of drone strikes, hitting a school, a café, and warehouse buildings across the capital. The children inside the school were in its shelter. Fires broke out across two districts, and one person in the city was wounded.
On 28 September, Russia struck Kyiv's Academy of Sciences, which has a century-old history.
On the same day, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, said Ukraine must "pay a price" for its actions in recent months and calls Russia's intensified strikes "part of this price."
Less than 50% of the F-16 fighter jets delivered to Ukraine may be operational, Defense Express reports, citing a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial published on 29 September. On the same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Belgium would deliver three F-16 fighter jets this year.
F-16s are used extensively to intercept Russian cruise missiles and drones. As the number of Russian attacks has increased, these aircraft have become particularly important for Ukraine. However, the jets Ukraine receives are old, and keeping them flying takes regular maintenance, extra work, and hard-to-find parts.
Routine inspections are taking as long as 40 weeks in Belgium, retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery told the WSJ.
The maintenance process for these aircraft for Ukraine is lengthy
A likely reason for the problem is the lengthy maintenance process handled by Belgian company Sabena Aerospace Engineering, according to the WSJ, whose questions the company declined to answer. This process, according to Defense Express's estimates, takes 6–20 times longer than maintenance in the United States, which usually takes between 2 and 6 weeks. Ukraine uses the services of the Belgian company, meaning its F-16s are not being serviced quickly enough.
Ukrainian F-16 armed with SDB bombs and AIM-120 and AIM-9 missiles. Photo via Militarnyi
Delivering three additional fighter jets will not significantly help the Ukrainian military until the issue with aircraft maintenance times is resolved, Defense Express notes. The lengthy turnaround may be caused by a large maintenance backlog at the company, limited capacity, or logistical constraints, and older jets may need extra work and scarcer parts.
The delivery is part of an earlier commitment. Belgium plans to provide seven fighter jets this year: three for operational use and four for spare parts, Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken said in June.
"I'll propose to the government to send all our F-16s to Ukraine in the coming years. It depends on having the F-35s in place because, of course, we have DCA [dual-capable aircraft] capacity. We have our role in the nuclear doctrine of NATO," Francken said.
Belgium has pledged its entire F-16 fleet of 53 aircraft as F-35s replace them, according to Defense Express.
F-16s in Ukraine have already shot down several thousand Russian aerial targets
F-16s operated by Ukrainian pilots have shot down more than 3,150 aerial targets. These include 666 cruise missiles and around 2,500 drones of various types. The aircraft have also carried out more than 650 strikes against Russian ground targets, Lieutenant General Anatolii Kryvonozhko, Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, said during a meeting between a Ukrainian Air Force delegation and representatives of Lockheed Martin on 29 September.
At the meeting, Conor McGuire, Lockheed Martin's head of F-16 capability development, highly praised the combat use and operation of F-16s by Ukrainian pilots and the entire ground aviation personnel. He also expressed his intention to help Ukrainians enhance the capabilities of the existing platform, the statement said.
Student journalists, their advisors, and legal advocates say colleagues and administrators are attempting to undermine student reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, Gaza, and other issues that public institutions would rather not have their reputations connected to.
Public records obtained by 404 Media show administrators taking meetings with parents and alumni when they take issue with student reporting and asking advisors to compromise their professional ethics. They also show escalating tensions between student newsroom staff and administrators, prompting more legal aid requests to advocacy groups.
This comes as student journalists at The Cornell Daily Sun earned recognition for breaking the “Cornell Seven” story regarding the lawsuit filed in New York’s trial court last month by a Jane Doe accusing current and former Cornell University students of drugging and sexual abuse. The student journalists told The Cut this week that a vague university and campus police statement from nearly two years ago prompted more questions than answers. Such is the basis for most accountability journalism on college campuses.
The cases we reviewed involved the phase of the reporting process that comes later, where a factual dispute the newsroom has defended or a complaint where the person doesn’t bother to explain what is allegedly wrong with the students’ reporting.
In Colorado, a high school social studies teacher emailed the student publication’s advisor at the time, accusing a student’s opinion piece called “Why is Gaza Important?”of being “published with factually inaccurate and racist information,” but then said in the same email, “I’m not going to start listing the inaccuracies along with the omissions.”
In California, a high school principal told a student journalism advisor to redact the name of an individual threatening to sue the district for defamation after student journalists published an Instagram carousel to their school’s newspaper account about the number of times their county turned up in the Epstein files. In this case, which has already been widelyreported on, the administrator told the journalism advisor to redact the name of the woman who was threatening suit without determining whether the reporter made a factual mistake (the students did not).
“I can’t remove the name without your help,” the principal told the advisor via email, after the advisor said the students would first seek legal guidance from the Student Press Law Center before taking any actions.
Soon after the op-ed was published, the student newspaper’s advisor was reassigned to another role within the district. The advisor from the California school district stepped down from her role during the last school year; she now consults schools and nonprofits on best practices for their student media programs. Mike Hiestand, who is a lawyer with the Student Press Law Center, has spent decades advising student newsrooms. He says it’s common for administrators to target advisors, adding that it’s one of the more effective censorship methods available to them.
“School officials, they see employees as kind of an easy target over whom they have some authority, and they know that in many places, that relationship between the students and their advisor is a tight one,” Hiestand told 404 Media. “Unfortunately, some school officials take advantage of that bond and definitely go after advisors.”
In 2025, the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) claimed that the nonprofit had responded to nearly 1,000 hotline inquiries from student newsrooms in 46 states and Washington D.C. The most common inquiries involved censorship, libel and copyright. Overall, SPLC says calls are down, but hotline inquiries about censorship specifically are up 17 percent from the year prior.
“One of the biggest things we’ve certainly found with censors over the years is they want to be called everything but a censor,” he added. “What they’re doing is everything but censorship.”
This tracks with what 404 Media is observing through public records requests into school, library and university censorship. The same state laws that have been used to restrict how topics like race, gender, and systemic inequality can be accessed and taught have also put student journalists covering those beats in a bind.
Records from Pensacola State College obtained by 404 Media show that last spring, an administrator tried to block funding for a journalism professor to print students’ class assignments for their portfolios because at least one of the stories involved reporting on the LGBTQ+ community. The campus later relented and agreed to release funding for students’ portfolios. In an email to the advisor, an administrator involved in the situation wrote that “the proper role of administration is to facilitate rather than impede the completion of legitimate classroom projects.”
“When you have a principal coming in who doesn’t have a lick of journalism experience claiming that they’re there to guide young journalists, that’s where I have problems,” Hiestand said. “Every principal and every superintendent in the country seems to think that they are qualified editors.”
Similar verbiage has appeared in other public records requests involving student journalists, like in the case of a Maryland school district memo about principals reading and approving every story before publication. In the memo, the chief of schools wrote that “[a]s responsible adults and educational leaders, we have the duty to guide the work of our students as they are developing their skills in a school setting during a school-directed activity.” But internal correspondence obtained by 404 Media suggests that the memo was “really to be sure an administrator could initial any printed posters, review school apparel, and scan over the yearbook to be sure that there is no violation” of the student handbook.
Marie McMullan, program manager and counsel for the Student Press Legal Hotline with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, says so far, 2026 has been a very consequential year for students leading their school publications.
“Student journalists are a very bright group,” McMullan told 404 Media. “They are great at sounding the alarm and bringing advocates out of the really blatant examples. But I always just worry about making sure that student journalists know their rights so that they can assert them in cases where there are subtler forms of censorship.”
At Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), student reporters with The Alestle, the university’s student newspaper, claim that the institution’s marketing and communications department had become more insistent on attending interviews conducted by student reporters in recent months. The department took issue with editor-in-chief Dylan Hembrough’s framing of the dispute, calling several of the claims “inaccurate.” In an interview with 404 Media, Hembrough said the paper investigated and determined there was nothing inaccurate about the story. When Hembrough did not retract the story, the executive director of marketing and communications at SIUE sent an open letter to the entire campus—a mailing list of more than 14,000 people, including faculty and staff—taking issue with that story, along with other stories throughout the years as well.
“The Alestle appears willing to substitute alarming headlines for verified facts, to rely on posturing rather than careful reporting and to treat corrections as an inconvenience rather than a professional obligation,” the open letter reads. With the letter was a link to a 27-page document of corrections the department expected student leadership to act on.
“I have been on the other side of panicking over things like this,” Hembrough told 404 Media. “Something that has helped me get through that, or at least stave it off, is the idea that the truth is more important than whatever I feel about it. Embarrassment or humiliation should have no bearing on how or even whether a publication makes a correction.”
Then in September, Hembrough learned via email that he was being investigated by the campus police for harassment against the department. When Hembrough’s journalism advisor asked the officer to clarify on what grounds, the officer said the report was based on a line in an email, which read: “Marketing and communications’ insistence on interfering with our newsgathering process is dangerous and detrimental to both press freedom and freedom of speech.” Hembrough shared his email with 404 Media, which reads as an editor defending another student reporter’s right to conduct an interview without the department exercising prior restraint over the publication. In her statement to campus police, she reportedly told the officer that “other members of my office have approached me stating Alestle reporters have been by my office uninvited,” and that she didn’t have a lock on her door.
“Due to the media between Marketing and Communications and the Alestle I am worried a ‘January 6th’ type of crowd may be outside my office,” the complainant told the officer, according to the campus police report. The officer advised her to contact facilities management about getting a lock for her office door and concluded that the facts of the case don’t “meet the statutory threshold for Harassment by Electronic Communications.”
The public records reviewed by 404 Media from SIUE support the claims The Alestle’s journalists make throughout their reporting on the department. SIUE did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.
The situation at SIUE serves as an example of a dispute about institutional reputation that’s escalated to involve campus law enforcement, but law enforcement nonetheless. McMullan says this escalation has an undeniable chilling effect on free speech, noting that policies and laws that public institutions use to silence young reporters still need to abide by the First Amendment. But overall, she’s impressed with how students at SIUE and other campuses are meeting the moment, even when the adults in the room aren’t.
“Whether it’s in a court of public opinion or a court of law, students are not accepting censorship,” she said. “They’re pushing back against it.”
Most of the Republicans, such as Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, are incumbents in districts that President Trump won comfortably in 2024.
Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, is one of seven congressional Republicans being targeted by a super PAC backed by renewable energy investors.
The Kremlin is signaling that it will hold the Russian assets of European companies hostage to pressure Europe into rethinking its sanctions, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote on 30 September. Moscow has already put well-known European retailers and food makers under Russian "temporary management." A senior Russian official has now hinted that European banks could be next.
As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, it has long turned hostages and threats into weapons. Its record includes nuclear threats against Europe from its Oreshnik missile launch sites and a fresh warning over Kaliningrad. It has played games with Europe's largest nuclear plant that it occupied in 2022, applied gas and water pressure on its neighbors, and Kyiv accuses it of blackmailing the families of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Europe's companies are now one more lever in that kit.
"Let them be scared"
Russia is taking "asymmetric measures" to make Europe rethink its sanctions, a senior Russian government source with direct knowledge of the seizures claimed, Reuters reported. "Let them think about what measures they are taking and what sanctions they are introducing," the source said.
Asked whether the Russian units of Italy's UniCredit and Austria's Raiffeisen could be placed under temporary management, the source answered: "Let them be scared."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed the decisions were driven by "the increasing level of involvement of these unfriendly countries in direct battlefield hostilities" against Russia. He suggested the moves were "reversible," but added: "For now, we do not see any grounds for a reversal."
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Nestlé, Auchan, and Metro under "temporary management"
Putin's decree of 17 September placed 16 companies under the "temporary management" of a firm called L.E.V. Management, with no end date. They include the Russian units of France's Auchan and Lemana PRO, formerly Leroy Merlin, and of Switzerland's Nestlé. A second decree, on 28 September, handed the Russian assets of German wholesaler Metro AG to UK Torg Rus.
Both decrees amend Putin's April 2023 decree No. 302, which lets Moscow take over the property of firms tied to countries it labels "unfriendly." Because the "temporary" management has no expiry date, ISW considers it effectively nationalization. Independent outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe identified L.E.V. Management's director as retired Russian Major General Andrei Krayushkin.
European companies as corporate hostages
The Kremlin likely wants to use the seizures to take European companies as corporate hostages, ISW assessed. It also likely expects a temporary fiscal boost from the revenues of the seized businesses.
The strategy assumes that European firms will judge the benefits of staying in Russia to outweigh the risk of losing their assets, the think tank said. Whether a company is seized depends entirely on Moscow's relations with the country where it is headquartered, ISW added.
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Seizing others' property is an old Moscow habit
Since the start of the full-scale war, Russia has introduced temporary administration at 135 foreign-linked firms, mostly from EU countries, according to TASS data cited by Reuters. Earlier targets included French food group Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg.
The method was tested on Ukraine first. Russia's proxies in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts stole most Ukrainian assets there in 2014 and 2015. In March 2017, after Ukrainian activists blocked rail trade with the occupied areas, they placed the remaining Ukrainian-registered firms under "temporary administrations," a label close to the one Moscow uses today. The published Donetsk list alone ran to 43 assets, from coal mines and ironworks to the Donbas Arena stadium. Much of the coal and steel business later ended up with firms tied to Serhii Kurchenko, a fugitive oligarch from Yanukovych's era.
Riot police officers clashing with protesters in Hong Kong in 2019. Tang Ho-wing covered a gathering that marked the anniversary of the storming of Prince Edward station by riot police.
Ukraine is about to tell Washington exactly which Russian targets it wants punished under America's new sanctions law, the Associated Press reported. A senior Ukrainian diplomat said Kyiv will hand the Trump administration and Congress a wish list of companies, ships, and people this week—and at the top are the firms supplying parts for Russia's answer to Starlink.
The law requires Washington to act but lets the president waive the sanctions if he certifies that doing so serves US national interests, and the first choice falls due in weeks. For Ukraine, a measure that names no targets changes nothing on the ground—which is why the fight now is over whose names make the list before the clock runs out.
A list topped by Russia's Starlink clone
Denys Sienik, chargé d'affaires at Ukraine's embassy in Washington, said the priority is a group of Russian firms making components for Rassvet, Moscow's homegrown satellite network, which Russia hopes to complete by the end of the year—though its own officials have put the start of service in 2027. Bureau 1440, the firm building Rassvet, is not itself on US sanctions lists, but its parent company, ICS Holding, is under US blocking sanctions, according to Militarnyi. The suppliers feeding the network parts are not sanctioned, and those are the ones Kyiv wants added to the list.
Russia sped up the project after Ukraine and SpaceX cut off the Starlink terminals its troops had used without authorization at the front. If Russia completes the constellation, Sienik said, it could strike Ukraine at will with real-time information—a danger he warned would bite hardest this winter. "If these entities are not sanctioned, it will actually make this program possible for Russia and that will be a game-changer," he told reporters, Reuters reported. Kyiv wants access to Starlink inside Russia, too, so it can strike targets there.
Euromaidan Press has reported how such a network would change the battlefield: the satellites transmit in high-frequency bands that are hard to jam, and a relay overhead would feed drones and missiles fresh coordinates mid-flight, letting them fly low under air defenses that struggle to see them.
Oil tankers and attacks on US firms
Ukraine is pushing for tougher action against Russia's shadow fleet, too—the aging tankers that sell its oil around Western restrictions—and is asking the administration and American industry to publicly condemn Russian attacks on US companies' operations inside Ukraine, Sienik said.
The deadline Washington is now facing
The requests arrive as the administration faces an 18 October deadline to decide which Russian entities, if any, to sanction under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which US President Donald Trump signed into law on 18 September. The law directs the White House to impose tariffs on Russia's biggest oil buyers and to block its banks, officials, and tankers—but lets the president waive those measures, which is why Kyiv is lobbying for the toughest list it can get.
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