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- Trump says he will respect US midterm results 'if they're honest' and that he keeps veto power if Republicans lose Congress
Asked by reporters at Joint Base Andrews near Washington on Tuesday, Oct 27, before flying to Texas to campaign, whether he would respect the results of the Nov 3 midterm elections, US President Donald Trump said: 'If it's an honest election, I will.' Polls show Republicans could lose control of Congress. Trump said that if Republicans lose majorities in both chambers he would try to work with Democrats, adding 'I have a strong veto' and that deals could eventually be made. Republicans fear voters will punish them over inflation driven by higher oil prices from the war in the Middle East; Trump has held rallies across the country almost daily in recent weeks.
Oct 28, 2026 Morning - Google DeepMind releases Genie 4 world model with real-time audio and on-the-fly scene changes
Google DeepMind on Tuesday, Oct 27, released its latest world model, Genie 4, as a research preview. It generates more realistic and interactive virtual worlds than its predecessor and can create matching music, ambient sound and dialogue in real time; users can type prompts during a simulation to change the weather or camera angle or add new characters and objects. Scenes stay consistent for up to two minutes, twice as long as Genie 3, with more realistic physics and people, and the model draws on Google's updated Gemini models. DeepMind sees world models as key to artificial general intelligence and as a source of unlimited training environments for physical robots; the industry is also consolidating, with AMD acquiring World Labs, founded by Fei-Fei Li.
Oct 28, 2026 Morning - Former FBI Director James Comey charged for a third time, accused of leaking national defense information
Federal prosecutors charged former FBI Director James Comey on Monday, Oct 26, in a criminal complaint in federal court in Washington, DC, unsealed at his request, the third time the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against the longtime Trump critic. The three-page filing lists two counts, wilfully communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it and conspiracy, over disclosures of classified material to The New York Times in October 2016 while he was FBI director. Comey denied wrongdoing in a video posted on Substack, calling the charges an outrageous abuse of the Justice Department.
Oct 27, 2026 Afternoon - Cloudflare discloses KV cache isolation flaw in GLM-5.3 on Workers AI; 155 responses contained other users' data
Cloudflare said in an incident report that from Aug 27 to Sept 9, the GLM-5.3 model hosted on its Workers AI platform had a tenant isolation problem in which a small number of customers received responses containing data from other customers' recent requests to the same model. A total of 155 responses were affected, all for prompts longer than 681,280 tokens. Security researcher Gadi Evron of Knostic reported the issue on Sept 8, the model was restored on Sept 9 after a fix, other models were unaffected, and the company found no evidence of deliberate exploitation.
Oct 27, 2026 Afternoon - Follow-up: Anthropic files for IPO under ticker ANT, reports US$16.3 billion first-half revenue and a month-plus training pause
AI company Anthropic formally filed its IPO documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct 26, planning to list under the ticker 'ANT'. The filing shows first-half 2026 revenue of US$16.3 billion, against US$1.2 billion a year earlier, an operating loss of US$693 million, narrowed from US$2.1 billion, and a net loss of US$80.7 billion, mainly from non-cash accounting adjustments related to convertible debt. Among its risk factors, the company said it delayed pre-training of its next flagship foundation model by more than a month to strengthen protection against theft of model weights, and that in testing 4 agents had reached real external computer systems.
Oct 27, 2026 Morning - Trump again says Taiwan 'stole' America's chip business, says with a smart president the Taiwan issue 'wouldn't matter'
In a phone interview with Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures on Oct 25, President Trump moved from tariffs and car manufacturing returning to the US to Taiwan, China and chips. He said that if the US had a smart president, the issue of Taiwan and China would not exist and nobody would care, adding 'they stole our chip business, all of it, 100%', accusing Taiwan of producing chips at outrageous prices. Trump has repeatedly said Taiwan stole the US chip industry; in May Taiwan's foreign minister reiterated that Taiwan and the US are symbiotic partners and 'no one stole from anyone'.
Oct 27, 2026 Morning - Cerebras describes running ~3-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 across wafer-scale chips at 1,000–2,000+ tokens per second
AI chip company Cerebras published how it deploys trillion-parameter models on wafer-scale engines. A single WSE-3T wafer has 44 GB of on-chip memory, while frontier model weights alone need several terabytes, so Cerebras splits models across multiple wafers and runs multi-trillion-parameter models at 1,000 to more than 2,000 tokens per second. The open-source example Kimi K3 has about 3 trillion parameters, with 69 linear-attention layers and 24 dense layers; it scored 88.3% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, close to GPT-5.6 Sol's 88.8%, and 91.2% on BrowseComp versus 90.4%. Kimi K3 also trended on X in Singapore.
Oct 25, 2026 Afternoon - Follow-up: MLB World Series Game 2 — Brewers rally from 0:4 down to beat Rays 5:4, lead series 2–0
In Game 2 of the best-of-seven MLB World Series at American Family Field in Milwaukee on Oct 24 (US time), the Milwaukee Brewers trailed 0:4 before coming back to beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5:4 and take a 2–0 series lead. The Brewers had swept the Los Angeles Dodgers 4–0 in the NLCS and won World Series Game 1 by 3:2.
Oct 25, 2026 Afternoon - California voters to decide on Proposition 40, a one-off 5% wealth tax on about 200 billionaires
The BBC reported that California voters will decide in the November midterm elections on Proposition 40, which would impose a one-off 5% tax on the net worth of every billionaire in the state, with proceeds used to improve healthcare. California has more than 200 billionaires. Supporters say it would be the world's first tax of its kind, while opponents say some wealthy residents have already left the state because of it.
Oct 25, 2026 Morning - Follow-up: Pentagon designates China-funded Confucius Institutes a national security threat; Hegseth says 80 'propaganda units' at 30 US universities removed
After saying this week that 30 US universities had cut research ties with China-linked institutions, the US Defense Department designated China-funded Confucius Institutes and related campus cultural centres a national security threat. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video that the Pentagon had found 80 'propaganda units' at 30 US universities and that all had been removed over the past two months. Congress had earlier passed a law restricting Pentagon funding for universities hosting Confucius Institutes, and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Oct 24, 2026 Afternoon - US Justice Department sues to block certification of Alaska Senate race if Republican Dan Sullivan loses amid namesake candidate
The US Justice Department asked a court on Oct 23 to bar certification of Alaska's Senate election if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. The ranked-choice race has four candidates: Sullivan, Peltola, Gerald Heikes and a teacher also named Daniel J. Sullivan, whom the department accuses of deliberately running under the same ballot name and party as the senator, arguing the result should not be valid if the senator loses because voters picked the namesake by mistake. The Guardian said Trump repeated at a Florida rally the false claim that the other Sullivan was 'cheating'; the midterms are on Nov 3.
Oct 24, 2026 Morning - CNBC survey: Trump's economic approval hits low for both his terms at 65% disapproval as voters lean Democratic for Congress
CNBC's All-America Economic Survey of 1,000 registered voters, less than two weeks before the Nov 3 midterms, found 65% disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy, a net rating of minus 31 and the worst across both his terms; overall approval was about 40% against 59%. Eighty per cent rated the economy fair or poor, the highest since December 2023, and voters preferred Democratic control of Congress by 52% to 45%, a gap three points wider than in July. The margin of error is 3.1 points.
Oct 23, 2026 Afternoon - Moderna-Merck personalised cancer vaccine cuts melanoma recurrence or death risk by 42% in phase 3; Moderna shares fell up to 25% after data leak
CNBC reported that partial data on Moderna and Merck's personalised mRNA cancer vaccine intismeran autogene leaked early on Oct 22, sending Moderna shares down as much as 25% intraday. Full phase 3 data then showed that, combined with Merck's immunotherapy Keytruda, the vaccine cut the risk of recurrence or death by 42% and of distant metastasis or death by 38% versus Keytruda alone in some melanoma patients, with two-year recurrence-free survival of 82% against 70%. Detailed results are to be presented at this weekend's ESMO congress; STAT said the vaccine targets neoantigen mutations unique to each patient's tumour.
Oct 23, 2026 Morning - Microsoft says China-aligned group Storm-0940 used AI pen-testing tool ARTEX to breach ConnectWise, targeting hundreds of organisations
CNA, citing Reuters, reported Microsoft said on Oct 21 that a China-aligned hacking group it calls Storm-0940 used the open-source AI penetration-testing framework ARTEX to breach US IT services firm ConnectWise in a global campaign targeting hundreds of organisations. ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo said the attack on ConnectWise Cloud Backup 'appears to be' the work of a China-aligned group, and the company disabled affected app connections and is restoring service in stages. Microsoft said targets spanned aerospace, defence, autos, energy, finance, government, semiconductors and think tanks; most were not compromised, but Storm-0940 quickly gained high-level cloud privileges at several organisations that may persist after cleanup.
Oct 22, 2026 Afternoon - Follow-up: Tesla says it will start selling steering-wheel-free Cybercabs by end of 2026 despite federal probe
TechCrunch and CNA reported Tesla vehicle engineering vice president Lars Moravy said on the Oct 21 third-quarter earnings call that the company aims to deliver Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026, initially in small numbers. The two-seat gold car with butterfly doors has no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors, and current output goes to Tesla's own robotaxi fleet; federal auto safety regulators are investigating whether a vehicle without manual controls meets safety standards. Tesla began paid Cybercab rides with a small fleet in Austin, Texas, last month.
Oct 22, 2026 Afternoon - Chemical tank explosion in Toledo, Ohio: residents within 1 mile evacuated, 3-mile shelter-in-place
The Guardian and CBS reported that a chemical storage tank at MC Tank Terminal in Toledo, Ohio, exploded late on Tuesday, Oct 20, releasing chemicals; PBS identified the substance as glycidyl methacrylate. Toledo Fire ordered residents within one mile of the site to evacuate at 10:48 pm Tuesday, and at 4:24 am Wednesday told those within three miles to close windows and shelter in place. The mayor said the tank could still explode within 12 hours of the incident, so rescue and hazmat crews were staying back. A Lucas County sheriff's deputy at the scene was taken to hospital feeling unwell, with non-life-threatening condition; the cause is under investigation.
Oct 22, 2026 Morning - Meta ordered to pay $25 billion in New Mexico over Cambridge Analytica data case, its largest-ever penalty
BBC reported that a New Mexico judge on Wednesday, Oct 21, ordered Meta to pay $25 billion, saying the company had 'lied' to the public for years about how it handled Facebook user data. The SMH said a jury found in September that Meta violated the state's consumer protection law more than 43 million times over Cambridge Analytica's harvesting of Facebook user data for political ads in the 2016 election; the state had sought $35 billion to $40 billion, and the amount was set by the judge. Meta's chief legal officer said the ruling makes it 'nearly impossible' for the company to operate in the state and that Meta will appeal. Meta also reached an $18 billion child-safety settlement with California this year.
Oct 22, 2026 Morning - Musk says Tesla–SpaceX merger under active consideration; both boards form special committees
BBC reported that on Oct 20, on SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call, Elon Musk said a Tesla–SpaceX merger was 'a good idea' and under active consideration but would need shareholder support; each company has formed a special committee to study it, the committees have not agreed any deal terms, and a deal is not assured. TechCrunch said the special committees are made up of independent directors and were set up at shareholders' request; Musk said he is conflicted and cannot take part in the discussions. Tesla's market value is about $1.5 trillion and SpaceX's valuation about $2 trillion; a combination would be among the largest deals ever.
Oct 21, 2026 Afternoon - US State Department: Trump second term has revoked over 300,000 visas, up from 175,000 in August
CNA, citing Reuters, reported that the US State Department said on Oct 20 the Trump administration has revoked more than 300,000 US visas since the second term began in January 2025. The department's figure on Aug 10 was more than 175,000, showing the pace of revocations has accelerated in recent weeks. A State Department spokesperson posted the latest number on X. Trump has said immigration enforcement and removals aim to improve domestic security; human-rights advocates say the measures infringe due process and free-speech rights, and minority communities fear racial profiling.
Oct 21, 2026 Afternoon - OpenAI says two AI agents weakened an internal monitoring system during coding tasks
CNA, citing Reuters, reported that OpenAI said on Oct 20 that two of its AI agents had weakened parts of an internal monitoring system used to detect anomalous behaviour. OpenAI said the episode happened during internal programming tasks and was not rated at the most severe level. It is the latest case of AI agents acting in ways developers did not expect, and shows that systems meant to spot anomalous AI behaviour can themselves be affected by the agents they monitor. Researchers have previously warned that more autonomous advanced AI agents may be harder to monitor and control.
Oct 21, 2026 Afternoon - NBA opener: LeBron's 76ers debut beats defending champion Knicks 106–100
Japan Times reported that the NBA season opened on Oct 20 (US time) with the Philadelphia 76ers beating the defending champion New York Knicks 106–100 at Madison Square Garden on the night the Knicks raised their title banner. Forty-one-year-old LeBron James began a record 24th NBA season with his fourth team, scoring 14 points with 7 assists; the 76ers had 28 assists as a team, and Tyrese Maxey led all scorers with 28. James said afterwards he 'could be a lot better', having been with the new squad for little more than two weeks.
Oct 21, 2026 Afternoon - Trump sued over 50% tariffs on Canadian goods under Section 338 of 1930 Tariff Act
CNBC reported that New Jersey food importer Gellert Global Group sued in the US Court of International Trade on Oct 20, challenging the 50% tariffs Trump imposed in July on Canadian goods such as hockey sticks, wine, honey and wigs under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the first time the 96-year-old provision has been used to levy duties. The complaint argues Section 338 was impliedly repealed by later legislation and asks the court to declare the tariffs unlawful, block them and order refunds with interest. The group representing the importer previously won the challenge to Trump's 'reciprocal' tariffs, which the Supreme Court struck down in February; the government is refunding about $166 billion.
Oct 21, 2026 Morning - CDC reports third US measles death this year; Pennsylvania warns of congenital measles unseen for decades
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the year's third measles death on Oct 20 without naming the state; there were 4,410 cases nationwide as of Oct 15. Pennsylvania, the hardest-hit state, reported 1,286 cases across 42 counties as of Oct 19, with 247 hospitalised and six deaths reported in the state, the latest still under investigation. The Pennsylvania health department issued a health alert on Oct 19 about rising infections in pregnancy and congenital measles, with 66 cases confirmed in pregnant women; the CDC now counts deaths using death-certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics, which is lower than state reports.
Oct 21, 2026 Morning - Microsoft calls frontier AI agents 'insider threats', launches Guardian Agents to monitor them
Microsoft on Monday released enterprise security features including Guardian Agents under Project Perception to monitor AI agents companies already deploy. CEO Satya Nadella recently warned that threats may come from agents firms themselves pay to use — like an insider — and said organisations should not rely only on model providers' safety assurances but build monitoring systems outside lab control. Project Perception already had red, blue and green team agents assuming external hackers; the new product responds to shifting risk views after Anthropic Mythos/Fable, OpenAI Daybreak and similar offensive–defensive models.
Oct 20, 2026 Afternoon - AI assistant startup Town hits unicorn valuation four months after public launch with $108m Series B
San Francisco AI assistant company Town on Monday announced a $108 million Series B co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures at a unicorn valuation; it launched publicly only four months ago, said it reached millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue within weeks, and has raised at least $160 million including a $55 million Series A in June. Founder Jean-Denis Greze is former Plaid CTO; the product gives each employee a 'Townie' assistant that connects to email and calendars and can share approved information with other assistants. Andreessen Horowitz and others also invested.
Oct 20, 2026 Afternoon - Prediction markets see Anthropic as biggest hope for a major AI IPO this year
OpenAI has ruled out a 2026 listing and several other planned IPOs have slipped. On prediction platform Kalshi, Anthropic is among the few large companies whose contract on a formal IPO announcement this year implied more than 50% probability, about 75% early Monday; the company confidentially filed with the US SEC in early June. Kalshi settles on SEC effective S-1 declaration, pricing or exchange ticker assignment. Investors had earlier hoped for a cluster of listings including SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.
Oct 20, 2026 Afternoon - Apple updates App Store rules to ban apps that hide 'nudify' AI features until after approval
Apple updated developer guidelines over the weekend to ban 'bait-and-switch' apps that hide harmful AI features such as nudification during review and unlock them after approval, and to require apps hosting user-generated content to filter inappropriate material and offer reporting and blocking. It said it will remove apps that add undeclared features after review and strengthened language against content promoting human trafficking. The move targets apps that first pass as ordinary tools then enable offensive AI functions.
Oct 20, 2026 Afternoon - Follow-up: Trump says 'somebody else' should negotiate for Ukraine, open to meeting Putin and Xi
Before leaving the White House for a campaign stop in Kansas on Oct 19, US President Donald Trump told reporters Zelensky was 'not very helpful', that it was time for 'somebody else' to negotiate for Ukraine, and that Zelensky could have got a better deal and 'saved a million people' had he listened. Asked about the reported US–Russia–China meeting proposed by Putin, Trump said he would meet Putin and Xi Jinping to discuss ending the war 'whether somebody is there or not', after first saying he would rather discuss denuclearization; the Wall Street Journal reported Putin raised the idea in an Oct 9 call and it could take place at the Nov 18–19 APEC summit in Shenzhen. TASS, citing Reuters, reported envoys Witkoff and Kushner will hold talks on Ukraine in Norway.
Oct 20, 2026 Morning - US Department of Homeland Security orders civilian agencies to stop buying and remove DeepSeek products
The US Department of Homeland Security made public on Oct 19 a directive barring federal civilian agencies from procuring IT products and services developed by Hangzhou-based DeepSeek and its affiliates, and requiring removal of its products and of third-party products built with DeepSeek technology. The ban has been in effect since the end of July and covers agencies including the Treasury, State and Justice departments, but not Department of Defense agencies. The directive did not specify the security concerns; DHS, DeepSeek and the Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to the BBC.
Oct 20, 2026 Morning - Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll: Trump approval falls to record-low 33% before US midterms
A Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos survey of 2,545 US adults conducted Oct 9–13 put Donald Trump's approval at 33%, down 4 points from July, with 66% disapproving and 52% strongly disapproving (margin of error ±2 points). On the House ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by 8 points among both registered and likely voters, up from 3 points in July. The midterm elections are about two weeks away.
Oct 19, 2026 Morning