In recent news, a variety of significant global topics have emerged, spanning environmental issues, health crises, geopolitical tensions, and societal shifts. This article collates these pressing concerns, providing valuable insights into the events shaping our world today.
Breathing Through Our Butts Declared Safe After First Human Trial 404 Media
Climate/Environment
Increasing likelihood that Melissa will produce catastrophic impacts in parts of the Caribbean Balanced Weather
Record Autumn Rains Swamp Harvest in China’s Grain-Belt Provinces Caixin Global
Causal mechanisms of subpolar gyre variability in CMIP6 models European Geosciences Union. Summary: “The subpolar gyre is a wind-driven circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean that enables mixing of water between surface and deeper layers. We investigate interactions between the strength of the gyre’s circulation, salinity, temperature, and mixing in climate models. Most models capture an increase in salinity or a decrease in temperature, leading to mixing. However, the feedback from the density in the gyre center to the strength of its circulation is poorly represented.”
Why Are Electricity Prices Rising? Distilled
Trump Plan Would Open Almost All Coast to Offshore Drilling Bloomberg
What’s “essential” to Trump’s EPA? More mercury pollution. HEATED
Pandemics
Children with multiple long-term conditions face nearly threefold higher COVID-19 mortality Royal Society of Medicine
Measles spreading beyond the center of the Utah-Arizona outbreak NBC News
Free vaccines cheaper than consequences of low vaccination rate: Alberta Medical Association CTV News
Africa
The end of ‘aid’ The Continent
The Koreas
Why North Korea Has Scaled Back Its Missile Tests This Year WSJ
South Korea says ‘considerable’ chance Kim, Trump will meet next week Channel News Asia
Japan
Japan PM Sanae Takaichi Says She’ll Get Japan’s Security Spending up to 2％ of GDP in FY25 Yomiuri Shimbun
Japan Will Play A Much Greater Role In Advancing The American Agenda In Asia Andrew Korybko
India
PM Modi’s latest post pours cold water on possible meeting with Trump India Today
U.S. Sanctions Seen Pushing India to Curb Russian Crude Purchases Reuters. Historically, there is often a slowdown immediately following sanctions before effective workarounds are established.
China?
Chinese State Buyers Step Back From Russian Oil on Sanctions Bloomberg
White House: Trump to attend one-to-one meeting with Xi next Thursday DPA
China names new Central Military Commission vice chair amid ruling elite’s biggest shake-up in 8 years Channel News Asia
Asean Summit: Trump’s KL visit puts South-east Asia’s neutrality to the test Business Times
Old Blighty
UK removes Syria’s HTS from ‘terrorist’ organisations list New Arab
Palestine action prisoners announce hunger-strike in letter to British Government Cage International
O Canada
Trump says trade negotiations with Canada are ‘terminated’ after Ontario’s anti-tariff ads CTV News
Syraqistan
Weapons, warlords, and wasteland: Israel’s strategy for post-war Gaza New Arab
Updates: Gaza humanitarian crisis worsening despite Israel, Hamas ceasefire Al Jazeera
Oops.
“A master plan Jared’s been working on for 2 years”
Watch Jared Kushner’s face when this goofball blurts out that they were planning to rebuild Gaza into prime beachfront property BEFORE the October 7th attacks.
Secrets out.🤐 pic.twitter.com/NS7ulUJH0w
— Genghis Khan (@GenghisMFKhan) October 23, 2025
JD Vance said there would be a “constructive role” for Turkey in Gaza but that Washington wouldn’t impose anything on Israel regarding foreign troops “on their soil.” What? So Gaza isn’t Palestinian but Israeli territory? https://t.co/rkqxaDHPPR
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 22, 2025
Inside Israel’s prisons, Ben-Gvir drives campaign to kill Palestinian detainees New Arab
***
Israeli Knesset advances bills imposing ‘sovereignty’ over West Bank Al Mayadeen
Trump is always sincere and will therefore of course fire Huckabee immediately. https://t.co/yYDK1iji5y pic.twitter.com/O6CxWRXsAs
— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) October 23, 2025
European Disunion
‘I’m not a bad boy’: Belgium’s De Wever defends Ukraine loan veto Euractiv
Inside Belgium’s budget standoff: What happens if talks fail? Brussels Times
France’s Socialists threaten to oust government by Monday amid fraught budget talks Straits Times
Spain to buy US weapons for Ukraine, says it is ‘a reliable partner’ El Pais
Poland’s Janus face on Ukraine is untenable Ian Proud
The Curtain Falls on Aleksandar Vučić’s Foreign Policy “Balancing Act” Lily Lynch
Costa pumps the brakes on Merz’s victory lap on Mercosur Politico
Export-grade poison: sale of EU-banned pesticides soars as Brazil becomes the world’s top consumer Brasil de Fato
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskyy thanks EU for ‘signal’ that it will financially support Ukraine for the next 2 years Anadolu Agency
Answers to media questions President of Russia, The Kremlin. Putin on new sanctions and other matters.
Russia is calling up its reservists.
Why now? Guessing it’s connected to the October 21 bombings conducted by the AFU.
What is special about these bombings? The AFU were utilizing targeting data authorized by U.S. European Command (EUCOM).
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) October 23, 2025
Russia Launches Large Scale Nuclear Forces Drills: ICBMs and Cruise Missiles Launched to Test Land, Sea and Air Components Military Watch
Why did the Armed Forces of Ukraine decide to combine brigades into corps? Marat Khairullin Substack
NOW THE NEW PHASE OF THE ELECTRIC WAR John Helmer
South of the Border
Trump plans land strikes against alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela The Guardian
US Flies B-1 Bombers Near Caribbean in Latest Provocation Aimed at Venezuela Antiwar
Maduro warns that he has 5,000 anti-aircraft missiles to ‘guarantee peace’ El Pais
Trump 2.0
Disgraced Binance Founder Gets a Pardon From Trump Gizmodo
Officials Plot to Have Trump Declare National Emergency in 2026, Raising Fears He May ‘Hijack’ the Next Election Common Dreams
Trump Says Tech Leaders Convinced Him to Call Off San Francisco ‘Surge’ NOTUS
Democrats en déshabillé
Voters Weigh In: From Waterville to Ogunquit, Mainers Are Standing By Graham Platner Drop Site
Healthcare?
‘It’s only gotten worse’: As ACA premiums are set to climb, some Americans opt to go uninsured NBC News
Police State Watch
VIDEO: FBI Agents Visit Anti-ICE Protester Ken Klippenstein
Accelerationists
Anti-Union, Pro-Israel Billionaires Are Behind Tim Walberg and His Show Trials Truthout
The Rise of the Thielverse and the Construction of the Surveillance State (w/ Whitney Webb) The Chris Hedges Report
Imperial Collapse Watch
This is the most damning graph I’ve seen in a while. What in the actual hell? They are installing nuclear at $2.50/W? https://t.co/Vyfneh71VP
— Craig Lawrence (@clawrence) October 23, 2025
Brave New World
Shield AI shows off not-at-all-terrifying autonomous VTOL combat drone The Register
Quadruped State of The Market – Unitree, Boston Dynamics, ANYbotics, DEEP Robotics, and The Rising Application Ecosystem Semi-Analysis
MAHA
Is Your Medication Made in a Contaminated Factory? The FDA Won’t Tell You. ProPublica
RFK Jr. May Encourage Eating More Saturated Fats. Experts Say He’s Missing the Point. MedPage Today
Sports Desk
How Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam That Rocked the NBA Wired
Antitrust
Warner Brothers Is For Sale (Again): Prepare For More Pointless, Disastrous Media Mergers TechDirt
AI
GenAI makes cyber fraud look more credible Economic Times
With new acquisition, OpenAI signals plans to integrate deeper into the OS Ars Technica
Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars CNBC
Zeitgeist Watch
The Goon Squad Harper’s. “Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation.”
The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds 404 Media
Blinded by the light: Tesla fixes glaringly bright Cybertruck headlights The Register
EVs are depreciating much faster than gas-powered cars Rest of World
Class Warfare
Rents for poorest tenants increased more than twice as much as rents for rich tenants since 2021 Private Equity Stakeholder Project
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
