‘The Republican Party is starting to look pretty good,’ Trump told supporters as polls suggest a potential midterm blue wave
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At least nine people died and another 16 were injured this Saturday in Saudi attacks in the province of Taiz, in southwestern Yemen, Houthi media reported amid the military escalation with the coalition led by Saudi Arabia.
At Least 67 Dead in Yemen Due Saudi Attacks: At Least Nine Killed in Saudi Attack on Southwestern YemenThe Al Masirah television channel reported that “nine people – including women and children – have died and another 16 have been injured in a new atrocity committed by the coalition’s air force” led by Riyadh.
It accused the coalition of attacking “civilian homes” with four bombings in the Humayr al Jabal area, in the Maqbanah district, located in the northwest of Taiz province.
The channel added that “several civilians remain trapped under the rubble of their homes,” while rescue efforts are “being hampered.”
🇸🇦⚡️🇾🇪 ⚠️ Saudi attacks on Taiz's old airport after Yemeni forces made progress on various fronts in western Taiz. pic.twitter.com/6rnwgtJaZd
— #Inside_News (@insider_der) October 17, 2026
So far, the military coalition has not commented on the matter, and the attack could not be independently verified.
For its part, the Yemeni Army claimed to have launched 1,417 “precise and direct attacks in the last 24 hours, using combat aircraft, drones, field artillery and multiple rocket launch systems” against the Houthis, as part of the “Dawn of Yemen” counteroffensive.
Military spokesman Majid al Nuzaili stated in a statement that the operations resulted in approximately “800 casualties – among dead and injured, as well as the destruction or disabling of more than 190 vehicles.”
He assured that in Taiz the Armed Forces “heroically repelled successive waves of attacks, while combat aviation precisely struck the positions and reinforcements of the militias, inflicting serious losses in both personnel and equipment,” but maintained that these attacks “are strictly limited to legitimate military targets.”
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia announced this Saturday on his X account that they intercepted and destroyed four drones in the Riyadh, eastern and southern Saudi regions in recent hours, without specifying concrete points.
The Yemeni Army maintains its counteroffensive against the rebels, which has air cover from Saudi Arabia, a country that in turn is the target of Houthi attacks for its participation in the Yemeni war since 2015 at the head of a military coalition in support of the internationally recognized government.
At least 17 people were killed and two dozen more injured on Saturday in eastern India after a stampede that was likely caused by sudden rainfall during a Hindu religious gathering, officials said.
West Bengal’s Chief Minister Suvendhu Adhikari told reporters the fatalities included a seven-year-old girl, adding that 25 others were injured outside a pavilion “in a stampede” at the Hindu festival of Durga Puja in the city of Kolkata.
“Six bodies have so far been identified,” Adhikari said.
A senior police official at the scene told AFP an announcement caused “commotion” after it started raining at night and the “crowd waiting outside the pandal (pavilion) was pushing, pulling and rushing forward and fell on the ground, leading to the stampede”.
Deadly crowd incidents are a frequent occurrence at Indian mass events, such as religious festivals, due to poor management and safety lapses.
In August, a stampede at a Hindu temple in Bihar killed at least seven people and injured 19 others.
Last year, a stampede at India’s Kumbh Mela religious fair killed 30 people and injured several others, and 11 fans were crushed to death in Bengaluru during celebrations for the local cricket team’s first Indian Premier League title.
The same year, 36 people were killed after a stampede broke out at a campaign rally of a popular actor-turned-politician in southern Tamil Nadu state.
In 2024, 121 people were killed in northern Uttar Pradesh state during a Hindu religious gathering.
‘The living conditions in that trailer were horrific,’ said Jay Cook of the Licking County Sheriff’s Office
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Le Pen leads with 32-36%. France’s minorities are preparing their exit.
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According to an Ifop poll for the newspaper Marianne, nearly half of Muslims and Jews would consider leaving the country if Marine Le Pen were to emerge victorious in the presidential election next year. 20% of them would “certainly” do so.
Which candidate would cause you to leave France? This is one of the questions posed by the Ifop poll for Marianne, released on Thursday, October 15. The study reveals that a significant proportion of Muslims and Jews say they are prepared to leave the country if Marine Le Pen wins the 2027 presidential election.
Some 46% of that number are planning “leaving France to settle in another country,” while 20% say they will “certainly” take the plunge. More broadly, 40% of younger French people say they have made plans to leave. Among voters of La France Insoumise, the figure rises to 43%. Furthermore, 44% of Jewish citizens responded that they would consider leaving the country.
Marine Le Pen’s rise to power could create “significant obstacles” and generate “high levels of fear and insecurity,” Francois Kraus, director of the political division at Ifop, explained to journalists. More than eight out of ten Muslims fear an “increase in attacks and discrimination” against them. This concern is particularly relevant in the context of the National Rally’s plan to ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in public spaces. Confirmed at the end of August by MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the new measure would impose stiff fines on offenders and is expected to be included in Marine Le Pen’s platform for the 2027 presidential election. To circumvent the legal hurdles that such a ban might encounter, the presidential candidate is reportedly considering putting it to a referendum.
Meanwhile, only 27% of Muslim respondents would be willing to “conceal [their] religious affiliation on a daily basis,” for example, by ceasing to wear the headdress in public (18%). More broadly, 41% of those surveyed, regardless of their religion, would refuse to “respect laws” they consider “unjust.” This distrust affects three out of four Jean-Luc Melenchon voters and nearly half of civil servants (45%). According to the latest Ifop-Fiducial poll, Marine Le Pen maintains a significant lead in the first round. Depending on the scenario, the National Rally candidate is in first place with between 32% and 36% of the total vote.
While Le pen has remained antagonistic towards Islam in France, she has often cast herself as a protector of the Jewish people in the country.
In 2024, she remarked, “The best shield for French people of the Jewish faith is the National Rally. It is the only movement that has the will, the conviction and the means to fight Islamist fundamentalism, which is the major danger facing them.”
Yet, nearly as many Jews said they would leave the country under a Le Pen presidency as Muslims.
Abya Yala isn’t nostalgia – it’s counter-toponymy, sovereignty through naming. Empires die; names endure.
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A name imposed from outside
Every October 12, history once again becomes a battlefield. This year, the two events took place just a few days apart and a few thousand kilometers from one another. On one side, the White House, where on October 9, Donald Trump honored Christopher Columbus in front of a marble statue reassembled from fragments of the Baltimore monument that had fallen into the harbor in 2020, and signed a proclamation linking the 1492 voyage to the 1776 Declaration of Independence and promising that the explorer’s legacy will not be erased by “radical extremists.” On the other side were Indigenous organizations that for more than thirty years have rejected even the name of the continent, calling it Abya Yala.
The dispute over the continent’s name is a dispute over sovereignty, and the fact that it is resurfacing with such intensity in 2026 – while Washington is rewriting its relations with the Western Hemisphere in an openly hegemonic manner – is no mere coincidence of the calendar.
The name “America” originated in a cartographic workshop in the Vosges Mountains. In 1507, in Saint-Dié, Martin Waldseemüller printed a large wall map of the world and a brief accompanying treatise, proposing to name the new fourth part of the world after Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator who had argued that those lands were not Asia. On the map, the name appears in the southern part of the continent. Within a few decades, it came to apply to the entire continental landmass. None of the people who lived there were consulted.
In 1958, the Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman developed a thesis on this that retains its power to this day: America was not discovered, it was invented. Not in the trivial sense that it did not exist before, but in the sense that Europe constructed a new geographical and conceptual entity, placing it within its own image of the world and assigning it a role in its own universal history. The name was the first act of this construction. Before being conquered by force of arms, the continent was conquered on paper.
There is also a second appropriation, less discussed in Europe and deeply felt south of the Rio Grande. In common usage, “America” means the United States. The shift is not merely lexical. On December 2, 1823, James Monroe declared to Congress that the American continent was no longer to be considered open to European colonization: the phrase “America for Americans” already contained, in embryo, the idea that the Americans par excellence were those of Washington. Two centuries later, the same logic has led to pressure regarding the Panama Canal in 2025 and the military operation in Venezuela in January 2026. When an indigenous movement utters “Abya Yala,” it thus challenges two names at once: the one imposed by Europe and the one annexed by the United States.
The nomos of discovery
To understand why the word “discovery” is not neutral, we must turn to the law. Carl Schmitt, in a 1950 book that remains one of the foundational texts of legal geopolitics, argues that 1492 ushered in the first global nomos of the earth: an ordering of space based on the seizure of land. The European powers recognized one another as legal subjects and treated the New World as a free space, available for occupation. The papal bull Inter caetera of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 drew a line from pole to pole that divided the planet between Castile and Portugal. Those who lived on those lands did not participate in the division: they were its objects.
Schmitt describes this order with a jurist’s admiration for an effective legal construct, and his analysis must be read with that in mind. But the mechanism he identifies is real and has had a long institutional life. In 1823, the same year as the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case Johnson v. M’Intosh: Justice Marshall ruled that “discovery” conferred sovereign title to the land upon the European power – and later upon the United States as its successor – leaving the indigenous peoples with a mere right of occupation. The Doctrine of Discovery has remained part of American jurisprudence to this day. It was not until March 2023 that two Vatican departments issued a joint statement formally distancing themselves from it, acknowledging that 15th-century papal bulls were used to justify the expropriation of indigenous peoples.
The human cost of this system is measured in figures that remain uncertain, though their order of magnitude is not. A study published in 2019 in *Quaternary Science Reviews* estimated that between 1492 and 1600, the population of the Americas plummeted by about 90 percent, due to the combined effects of epidemics, war, forced labor, and social disintegration; the reforestation of abandoned lands was so extensive that it left a trace in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Tzvetan Todorov, in his book The Conquest of America, had already spoken of the greatest genocide in human history, questioning how knowledge of the other could coexist with its destruction. The “discovery,” in other words, was also the disappearance of most of those who were there.
What Abya Yala means
Abya Yala comes from the language of the Guna, the people who inhabit the Caribbean coast of Panama and certain areas of Colombia. In its form “Abiayala,” it is usually translated as “land in full maturity”; other renderings such as “living land” or “land of vital blood” are also in circulation. The transition from a local place name to a continental name is recent. According to the most widely cited accounts, it was the Bolivian Aymara leader Takir Mamani who proposed that indigenous peoples adopt this name in their documents, in place of that of the colonizers. The proposal took shape during the wave of protests that accompanied the 500th anniversary in 1992, when counter-celebrations marking “500 years of resistance” stood in opposition to the official commemorations. In the 2000s, the summit meetings of indigenous peoples across the continent permanently adopted it as part of their name.
The Guna’s choice is no accident. This is a people who, in 1925, rose up against the Panamanian state and eventually secured an autonomous comarca – now known as Guna Yala – with its own institutions and effective control over the territory: one of the most successful examples of indigenous self-governance on the continent. Borrowing their word means choosing as an emblem a concrete experience of territorial sovereignty, not mere nostalgia.
It should be noted that Abya Yala does not erase the plurality of local names: Anáhuac for the Nahua world of central Mexico, Tawantinsuyu for the political and territorial organization of the Incas, and Pindorama for the Tupi lands of present-day Brazil. Each of these names expresses a different cosmology of space. Abya Yala functions as common ground, a sort of federal name that does not replace the specific ones. This is an important detail, because it signals that the project is not the invention of a single, symmetrical indigenous identity mirroring the “American” one, but rather a coordination among diverse actors.
Cartography as an act of sovereignty
From a geopolitical perspective, naming is the first form of possession. This is well understood by states that rename gulfs and seas, contest place names on official maps, and impose transliterations in international institutions. The year 2025 provided a textbook example with the U.S. renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. In this context, Abya Yala is a counter-toponym: a name that does not seek to occupy school atlases, but rather to wrest from hegemonic power the monopoly on the description of space.
The Latin American decolonial school has given this insight a precise theoretical form. Aníbal Quijano has termed the structure that survives the end of formal colonialism “the coloniality of power”: a hierarchy of peoples, knowledge, and territories that continues to organize the international division of labor and the production of knowledge. Walter Mignolo has shown how “Latin America” itself is a designation that originated in the nineteenth century in French and Creole circles, with specific political functions. The year 1492 marks not only the beginning of the conquest of the Americas but also the birth of the world-system centered first on Europe and later on the Atlantic. Challenging the continent’s name therefore means challenging the founding date of the unipolar order, tracing it back to its very roots.
Here, the issue intersects with the debate on multipolarism. A multipolar order is not merely a different distribution of power among great states. It implies the recognition that there are multiple civilizations, each with its own concepts of space, law, and relationship to the land. The 2008 Constitution of Ecuador and the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia have translated some of these concepts into positive law: the former by recognizing rights inherent to nature, the Pacha Mama, and the latter by reestablishing the state as plurinational. These are imperfect experiments, but they represent the most serious attempt in the hemisphere to build a form of statehood that does not derive entirely from the European model.
Columbus, Italy, and two identity politics
For the Italian reader, the story takes an additional turn. Columbus Day did not originate as a celebration of conquest. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation came a year after the New Orleans lynching, in which eleven Italians were killed by a mob: the commemoration also served to offer the Italian-American community – which was facing discrimination at the time – a founding hero with whom to identify. Columbus thus became a tool for the integration of a minority that Anglo-Saxons considered little more than white.
Today, that history is being enlisted in a different battle. When Biden first proclaimed Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2021, and when Trump makes it the target of his own “Columbian restoration,” what is clashing are two identity politics within American society, each of which uses 1492 as a symbolic resource. Italian Americans find themselves serving as a shield for an operation that primarily concerns the definition of the U.S. nation and its relationship with the rest of the hemisphere.
Italy and Europe can avoid this dilemma. Remembering Columbus as a navigator, as a figure of Mediterranean and Genoese culture, and as a man of his time does not oblige one to subscribe to the “nomos” of discovery or the legal doctrine that derived from it. One can honor the sailor while rejecting the claim of ownership. Indeed, it is precisely from Europe that a gesture of historical maturity might emerge, similar to the one made by the Holy See in 2023: distinguishing the memory of the person from the legitimization of a spatial order that has produced expropriation and death on a continental scale.
October 12, 2026, revealed two opposing ways of approaching the same date. Washington used Columbus to reaffirm a narrative of national founding that, in foreign policy, translates into a renewed claim to guardianship over the hemisphere. Indigenous movements used Abya Yala to remind us that that hemisphere had names, political systems, and sovereignty before 1492 – and that it still retains some of them today.
There is no symmetry between the two positions. One has aircraft carriers, sanctions, and courts; the other has a word and territories to defend one by one, but the history of maps teaches us that names have a long life – longer than the empires that imposed them. “America” appeared on a map printed in a small town in the Vosges and ended up designating half the planet.
No one can say today what fate awaits Abya Yala, but the mere fact that millions of people refuse to call their land by another’s name already speaks volumes about the crisis of the order that name had ushered in.
Pakistan has extended its airspace ban for Indian aircraft for another month, until Nov 24, according to a Notice to Airmen (Notam) issued by the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA).
The previous extension of the ban was set to expire on Oct 24.
“Pakistan airspace not available for Indian registered aircraft and aircraft operated/owned or leased by Indian airlines/operators, including military flights,” the Notam said.
According to the notice, the extension came into effect at 7:45pm on Saturday and will remain until 04:59am on Nov 24, 2026.
The country’s airspace is divided into two flight information regions (FIRs) — Karachi and Lahore, according to a Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) document from 2022.
Saturday’s Notam applies to both the Karachi (OPKR) and Lahore (OPLR) FIRs.
India and Pakistan closed their airspaces to each other’s airlines in late April 2025, when tensions between them escalated in the wake of a deadly attack in India-occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
On April 24, Pakistan’s top brass had announced a series of measures, including the closure of its airspace to all India-owned or Indian-operated airlines with immediate effect, as it retaliated against New Delhi’s slew of aggressive measures against the country.
New Delhi, without evidence, had alleged that Islamabad backed the Pahalgam attack. However, Pakistan had strongly denied any involvement and offered a neutral probe. The nuclear powers had the fiercest air battle in May, in which Pakistan said it downed seven Indian fighter jets.
Since then, Pakistan has extended the airspace ban several times, forcing Indian carriers to use longer and costlier routes.
For Air India, the country’s only carrier with a major international network, fuel costs rose by as much as 29 per cent and journey times by up to three hours on some long-haul routes, according to a document submitted to Indian officials last October.
The airline, owned by Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, estimated the Pakistan airspace closure’s impact on its profit before tax at $455 million annually — a significant amount given its fiscal 2024-25 loss stood at $439m.
Police and protesters clashed violently in Paris and other French cities on Saturday on the sidelines of nationwide marches against soaring inflation, with one demonstrator’s hand blown off, multiple blazes set, and looters breaking into dozens of stores to strip them bare.
With just months to go before the two-round elections in April and May to choose Macron’s successor, the demonstrations follow weeks of high-school student blockades demanding better learning conditions.
Macron and his government were criticised by many of the demonstrators, who numbered 500,000 across the country, according to the CGT union. Authorities did not immediately give their estimate of the numbers.
Police used tear gas and water cannon against masked protesters in Paris and other cities who were throwing projectiles and aiming fireworks. Several parked cars were torched in the capital, and more than 130 arrests were made.
In the southern city of Saint-Etienne, a male protester had his hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade, a police source told AFP. His maiming came after a 15-year-old lost his hand on October 5 to a police stun grenade during another protest in the city of Lens.
The protests geared up with a handful of gatherings nationwide on Saturday morning, AFP reporters said.
In Lyon, protesters set ablaze a tourist office in the city centre, and smashed their way into town halls in the cities of Marseille and Lille, where they vandalised the premises before leaving.
Dozens of shops were looted, including many in Marseille, among them a Hermes boutique, an Apple store in Lille, several shops in Nice and at least one mobile phone outlet in Paris, AFP journalists saw.
A crowd of more than 300 protesters tried to move up Paris’s Champs-Elysees, home to flagship luxury stores. As police firing tear gas blocked their way, they yelled, “All cops are bastards”.
In the western city of Rennes, around 20 people set up a barricade using trash bins and large pallets on the outskirts of a shopping mall.
Christophe, a 47-year-old carpenter and former Yellow Vest protester who did not give his surname, said he was indignant after seeing what he viewed as police brutality against teenagers in recent weeks.
“We’ve reached the point where the repression is targeting our own children,” he told AFP.
The looting and confrontations with police were being carried out by masked youths on the sidelines of marches that were largely peaceful and which attracted people of all ages, including families with children.
Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire stressed that “the overwhelming majority of demonstrators” wanted to “march calmly”, but “acts of vandalism” were tarnishing their protest.
In Paris, tens of thousands marched across the east and north of the city in one major march, some shouting “Everyone hates the police” and “Macron, resign”.
One demonstrator, Jules Petrichor, 47, who had brought his son, said: “There was a good atmosphere and then suddenly they (the police) started gassing us, even though nothing was happening. Naturally that worsened things and the hot-heads got hot-headed.”
Another protester who gave his first name as Louis, 19, complained that police were trigger-happy any time there was a demonstration.
“We can’t protest any more, it’s frightening,” he said.
The country’s Yellow Vest movement, which eight years ago staged street protests against Macron’s government over planned fuel tax hikes, has called Saturday’s “yellow and youth” demonstrations. It has appealed to teachers and students, workers, pensioners and farmers to take part in the protests on the first day of half-term holidays.
The principal grievance was the cost of living — pushed up in part by the war in the Middle East — that has helped send inflation soaring in Europe as elsewhere.
But there were other issues too.
High school student Kamil Alahyan, 18, said he was protesting “for so many reasons — the elections coming up in 2027, politicians who lie, the ultra-rich who’ve been taking more and more wealth over the past 10 years”.
“For years we’ve had climate, economy and equality problems but the government is not doing anything about it,” said Agnes, a 50-year-old actor who did not give her second name.
Anae, a 24-year-old student who did not give her surname, said she was protesting because she did not have a “sustainable future”.
“Our planet’s burning. And we’ve got a government that doesn’t give a toss,” she said.
Opposition politicians vying to succeed Macron have seized upon the protests.
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who has sided with the police, said on X: “Looting, pillaging, attacking police — rioters have once again sullied the October 17 demonstrations over the cost of living.” She claimed that the protesters’ demands had been “hijacked by the far left”.
Her far-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon, insisted early Saturday that “everything is passing off peacefully”, while accusing television news of “flooding us with images of violence in dozens of cities”.
Several protesters sought to draw parallels with the French Revolution of 1789.
“It’s the Revolution — we’re taking the Bastille!” some shouted in Marseille during the forced entry of the mayor’s offices.
In the western city of La Rochelle, marchers streamed behind a placard reading: “Revolution or death.” And in the southern city of Montpellier, a giant blue sign reading “The people will win” was unfurled above a central square.
“The government is trembling and it’s right to tremble because when the French people are angry, they never let up,” Ryad Rani, the head of the LSU high school student representative body, told journalists in Paris.
Three men in Mexico received 158-year prison sentences Friday for the murders of Australian surfers Callum and Jake Robinson and their American friend Carter Redd Rhoad.
A federal judge in the town of Ensenada, Baja California sentenced Jesús Gerardo García, Irineo Francisco and Ángel Jesús each to 158 years and nine months in prison for murder, robbery with violence and vehicle theft with violence.
An accomplice of García's — Ary Gisell Silva Raya — was also convicted of aggravated robbery with violence and vehicle theft with violence and sentenced to 20 years in November after agreeing to an abbreviated trial.
AMERICANS WARNED POPULAR TRAVEL ROUTES THIS SUMMER COULD CARRY CRIME AND KIDNAPPING RISKS
García, Francisco and Jesús were convicted last week of killing the Robinson brothers and Rhoad, which authorities said was carried out in order to steal the tires from the deceased men's truck.
"The attackers pull out a gun they were carrying and kill the person who initially resisted the robbery, then on the other two," Baja California prosecutor María Elena Andrade said, according to a report from The Associated Press.
THREE WOMEN FOUND DEAD IN POPULAR AMERICAN TOURIST HOT SPOT AS LOCAL POLICE SEARCH FOR CLUES
Mexican authorities found the trio's bodies in a well in the state of Baja California in May 2024.
The three men traveled to Punta San José, about 50 miles from where their bodies were found in Ensenada, for a surfing trip in April 2024.
MEXICAN SPORTS JOURNALIST ROBBED AT GUNPOINT DURING LIVE REPORT
The parents of the Robinsons attended the sentencing, telling reporters the moment marked a significant conclusion to the tragic two years since their sons' deaths.
"Today’s guilty verdict is a significant moment in our long and painful journey to seek justice for our beautiful sons, Callum and Jake, and their friend Carter Rhoad, whose lives were so cruelly taken from them in 2024," Matin Robinson said.
POPULAR CRUISE LINE'S GIANT BEACH PARK BLOCKED BY MEXICO AFTER LOCAL BACKLASH ERUPTS
The deaths captured international attention and rocked the local economy, which authorities said was heavily reliant on tourism.
Antonio Otañez, president of the Baja California surfers association, said he was happy to see justice served but admitted the incident led to a "major drop" in tourism.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A former U.S. diplomat appeared in court in South Korea Friday facing charges of defamation against President Lee Jae Myung for comments made on American soil in a case that has left him stranded in the Asian country.
Morse Tan's troubles began after he delivered a talk in June 2025 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and responded to a question where he brought up the South Korean leader's alleged involvement in a crime as an adolescent.
Since visiting the country in May, Tan has not been allowed to leave due to the case against him, having been charged under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc., and the Criminal Act.
Tan issued his remarks about Lee’s alleged juvenile crimes at a National Press Club event titled: "Report on Election Fraud in the June 3 South Korean Presidential election." In response to a question about President Lee and other issues, Tan responded by citing allegations from a few years back that Lee was involved in a gang rape and murder when he was a teenager. He added that Lee, now 62, was sent to a juvenile detention center and did not complete junior high and high school.
SOUTH KOREAN PRESIDENT JUMPS TO INVEST IN MILITARY AFTER TRUMP CUTS JOINT EXERCISES
South Korean prosecutors say the criminal allegations against Lee are unsubstantiated, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. The outlet wrote that they said Lee had not "been prevented from attending middle or high school due to such a criminal record."
Another South Korean news outlet, KBS World reported that "the prosecution previously verified that there was no record of Lee’s being incarcerated at a juvenile detention center and concluded that the rumors about his incarceration were false."
Asia Business Daily reported that Tan's attorney said that "Even if jurisdiction is recognized, the statements did not present false information, and Tan was not aware that they were false," adding, "He had no intention to defame."
Tan told Fox News Digital on Friday that he "pleaded not guilty because I believe that Lee Jae Myung is guilty" during his hearing at the Seoul Central District Court.
Tan, who has taught constitutional law and served as the dean of Liberty University’s law school, told Fox News Digital his "protected speech is about as protected as it gets." He said South Korea’s prosecutor invoked "criminal defamation, a dubious category which does not exist in the U.S.," to prosecute him.
A spokesperson for the South Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. told Fox News Digital, "This case is being handled in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations, established principles and due process in the Republic of Korea and the restriction on departure is also imposed and reviewed accordingly."
Tan says he is disappointed that the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Michelle Steel, a former Republican congresswoman from California, has not publicly commented on Tan’s legal case — both Steel and Tan are Korean-Americans.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the case.
"The Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans," the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "Due to privacy and other considerations, we have nothing further to share at this time."
Tan said the case against him violated his due process rights, and the South Korean judicial system lacks jurisdiction to bring the case. He added that the second charge against him involves his July 2025 talk in South Korea, where he "raised some issues as questions" involving the president. "This is political lawfare. This is a persecution, not a prosecution," he said.
TRUMP SHOULD PRESS XI ON CHINA’S PERSECUTION OF BELIEVERS AT HOME AND ABROAD
Tan believes the motivation for seeking to criminalize his free speech stems from the South Korean government’s view of him as a "threat" and an outspoken critic of Lee’s alleged appeasement policy toward the North Korean communist regime.
"People consider me to be leading a movement against the communizing of South Korea," Tan said.
Tan accused the present government of being aligned with North Korean and Chinese communist regimes "against the U.S. and the Korean people."
Tan points to bias against him by South Korean authorities, who he says prohibited him from attending the funeral of his grandmother, while it allows South Korean prisoners to attend funerals for family members.
KBS World reported that the "Police, who had initially decided not to hand over Tan’s case to the prosecution, launched a reinvestigation at the prosecution’s request."
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National Review Online also reported that the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Cyber dismissed a complaint about Tan’s alleged defamatory statements in April 2026, declaring "no right to prosecute."
According to South Korean law, Tan could face a prison term if found guilty.
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‘They were going at it for hours,’ Smith said of Trump and Maher, who also dined together at the White House last year
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Here’s everything you need to know about the nationwide movement
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Founded less than a decade ago in 2017, US defense technology company Anduril has reached a roughly US$90 billion valuation in a recent employee tender offer, placing its private-market value in the same range as, or above, the public-market capitalizations of long-established defense firms such as Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
According to a Bloomberg report, Anduril Industries Inc. opened a tender offer allowing its employees in 16 countries to sell shares at a valuation of about US$94.80 each, with the total offer capped at about US$ 1.3 billion. The subscription period is open from October 13 to November 9.
Unlisted companies often offer employees and others a chance to cash out shares they hold through tender offers to retain talent.
Notably, in recent years, AI-focused, venture-backed startups increasingly use tender offers rather than public listings to give employees access to cash.
AI startups such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Clay, ElevenLabs, and Harvey have used employee tender offers to stay private longer while still offering cash incentives to retain talent.
Anduril’s tender offer will push the AI-focused defense company’s valuation to US$90 billion, up nearly 50 percent from its May valuation of US$60 billion.
Beneath this skyrocketing valuation lies the story of how the global defense market, and the U.S.’s famous defense-industrial complex in particular, has transformed beyond recognition in just a decade.
For generations, slow-moving, mammoth defense-industrial houses lobbied for lucrative Pentagon contracts and delivered hardware-centric defense platforms over decades-long procurement cycles.
This system created the U.S.’s distinct politico-military-industrial complex, dominated by legacy prime contractors, including the Big Five: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.
Today, however, venture-backed startups increasingly dominate the U.S. defense market, offering software-defined autonomous weapons systems with AI integration.
In this market, a defense product’s journey from concept to initial operational clearance (IOC) and front-line deployment takes years, sometimes even months, not decades.
For instance, the Zumwalt-class destroyers program traces back to the 1990s Surface Combatant for the 21st Century (SC-21) and DD-21 programs. Construction of the lead ship began around 2009; it was launched in 2013, commissioned in October 2016, and was finally accepted around 2020. The ships have since undergone multi-year modifications to carry hypersonic missiles.
Similarly, the B-2 Spirit program spanned two decades, from the 1970s to the 1990s; the F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) program also took nearly two decades, from early concept work in 1996 to Initial Operational Capability in 2015.
However, venture-backed firms such as Anduril, Shield AI, and Palantir focus on software platforms that can be updated iteratively, often paired with smaller or modular hardware, and use faster acquisition pathways.
For instance, Anduril was founded in 2017. It piloted its AI-powered Sentry surveillance towers on the U.S.-Mexico border around 2018, within a year of its founding, and later made them a program of record, deploying hundreds by the early 2020s.
Similarly, Shield AI was founded in 2015. The company reported deploying its AI autonomy software stack, AI Hivemind, for the first time around 2018, within three years. Hivemind has since operated on dozens of platforms, including drones, F-16s in tests, helicopters, and, more recently, maritime and space systems, in GPS-denied, contested environments.
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) programs of these defense AI startups are progressing much faster than the typical two-decade development cycle for traditional fighter aircraft.
For instance, Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury, a jet-powered, uncrewed autonomous combat aircraft with mission-autonomy software such as Hivemind and Anduril’s own Lattice, is already in testing.
The contrast is stark. While traditional defense platforms were hardware-centric, with development cycles spanning decades, these new software-centric Autonomous platforms emphasize rapid prototyping and continuous software updates, compressing development timelines to years, and even months.
Another advantage of these software-centric defense platforms is that their upgrades also take months, not years, enabling continuous updates.
The war in Ukraine has shown that the modern battlefield is changing every few months.
For instance, FPV drones first appeared in the war in Ukraine around May 2022; by September 2022, Kyiv had introduced maritime drones.
In 2024, Russia countered Ukraine’s Starlink-linked drones with its Fiber-optic drones, which were immune to jamming. By the end of 2024, these drones carried air-to-air missiles such as the R-73 and R-60. Ukraine also armed its naval drones with surface-to-air missiles.
By 2025, Ukraine had developed multiple drone interceptors that reversed the cost-benefit advantage drones had over traditional interceptor missiles.
Russia responded with jet-powered drones that can fly at 500-600 km per hour and is developing others that can exceed 800 km per hour.
This continuously evolving battlefield means traditional procurement cycles spanning decades no longer suit modern warfare, where systems become outdated within months.
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A hardware-centric approach can’t meet the demands of this evolving battlefield; therefore, the Pentagon increasingly prefers working directly with Silicon Valley-based AI defense firms.
Anduril’s US$ 90 billion valuation reflects this broader story. Anduril, however, is not the only AI defense firm cashing in on this trend.
Palantir, founded in 2003, is already worth nearly US$480 billion, more than any of the Big Five.
Palantir’s valuation is nearly seven times Northrop Grumman’s, more than five times General Dynamics’, nearly four times Lockheed Martin’s, three times Boeing’s, and nearly double RTX’s.
Similarly, Scale AI is worth US$29 billion, Shield AI around US$13 billion, and SandboxAQ and Applied Intuition around US$15 billion.
“Companies like SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril have been tapped for multi-billion-dollar contract awards from the Pentagon for communications, targeting, unpiloted vehicles, anti-drone defenses, and hypersonic weapons. The funds from these awards will flow to the companies over time, which should put them in the top ranks of Pentagon contractors by value of awards within the next several years,” a recent report from the Costs of War project said.
What sets Palantir and Anduril apart is that while most AI defense firms have only one product in their portfolios, such as autonomous aircraft, counter-drone systems, or data fusion software, these two firms are offering a range of products.
Anduril offers AI-powered software, autonomous drones, cruise missiles, drone interceptors, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), underwater drones, undersea sensor networks, autonomous rotorcraft, surface-to-air interceptor missiles, autonomous sensor towers for land, water, and sea, radars, infrared imaging, and more.
Earlier this month, Anduril won a contract worth up to US$2.9 billion with the U.S. Navy to boost submarine production. The company is also investing US$3.7 billion to scale a new shipyard in Maryland. The new facility will build components for the Virginia-class submarines.
Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey was also selected to lead “Project Meridian: The Future of Warfare,” a new 120-day initiative tasked with identifying the technologies and capabilities needed for future military dominance.
Anduril has also been selected to build the next generation of Army goggles, the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), which are “intended to give soldiers everything from night-vision capability to warnings of incoming airborne threats.”
However, Anduril’s most lucrative contract could be in border security technologies. The Big Beautiful bill commits over US$6 billion for various border security technologies. However, as Eurasian Times reported earlier, the bill’s conditions mean Anduril is the only firm that qualifies for these border surveillance tenders.
Anduril has also been called the Nvidia of the US defense market.
The sky-high valuation of Palantir and Anduril will also have a knock-on effect on other Silicon Valley-based AI-defense firms.
If these new tech defense firms maintain their growth momentum for another decade or so, then we might have to redefine the ‘Big Five’ of the US defense market.
The post The U.S. Defense Startup That Beat Northrop & General Dynamics: How Anduril Reached $90B Valuation in Less Than 10 Years appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
Officials at Norfolk International Airport only discovered the non-traveler access perk had been removed after passengers complained about missing online booking options
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Police in riot gear responded with tear gas, water canons and rubber bullets as student-led demonstrations turned violent
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Several hundred people protested in Kyiv this Saturday to demand the resignation of the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, due to criticism of his management and the alleged lack of preparedness of the city for winter.
European Union Leaders Pledge Continued Support for Ukraine: Protests Against Kyev Mayor Due Lack of Winter PreparationThe protest was organized by representatives of civil organizations, activists, and veterans who denounce systemic problems in the management of the Ukrainian capital, according to the public broadcaster Suspilne.
In their opinion, Klitschko has not ensured adequate preparation of the city for autumn and winter. In front of the State Administration building, protesters carried banners with slogans such as “Klitschko, resign!” or “Your inaction is costing Kyiv residents their lives!”.
But they also expressed their discontent over the increase in municipal public transport fares, the destruction of green areas and their transfer for urban development projects, as well as insufficient funding for the Ukrainian army from the municipal budget.
Ukrainians took to Kiev's City Hall in a massive protest, demanding Mayor Vitali Klitschko's resignation.
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Protesters chanted slogans such as “Kyiv without Klitschko” and “Shame!”, according to Suspilne, which also highlighted that some residents came to the protest to express their support for the mayor.
“Klitschko is our mayor” and “Hands off Klitschko,” read the banners of his supporters, according to the Interfax-Ukraine agency, which states that the protest, at its peak, gathered up to a thousand participants.
On the eve of the demonstration, Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) faction had asked residents of the capital to avoid mass gatherings this Saturday, citing the security situation and the threat of Russian attacks.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Sergei Koretsky, described the energy situation in Kyiv as “one of the most difficult” due to increasing Russian attacks. Mayor Vitali Klichkó had previously advised residents to evacuate temporarily.
President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the municipal authorities for their alleged ineffectiveness in protecting energy infrastructure, to which Klichko replied that air defense was not the city’s responsibility and that they could not prevent the effects of Russian attacks.
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