Top World News

First lady Melania Trump claimed she secured a “ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, but it covers only one occupied town, and neither country immediately confirmed it.The White House made the claim in a statement Friday, saying the first lady “successfully secured a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, localized to the city of Oleshky.” Melania Trump shared the statement on X.The statement said the ceasefire would begin Oct. 29, allowing humanitarian aid into Oleshky and preparing to evacuate civilians through a safe passageway.About 2,000 residents remain trapped in the Russian-occupied town in Ukraine’s Kherson region without enough food or medicine, the Kyiv Independent reported.“It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible,” Melania Trump said in the statement.The statement described her role as “Exclusive Intermediary” and said she and an unnamed representative worked directly with “Russian and Ukrainian leadership” to set the terms.Pope Leo XIV had been pushing for a truce in Oleshky, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 16 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Oct. 19 to seek a humanitarian ceasefire there, the Kyiv Independent reported.After the Oct. 16 call, the Kremlin said Putin “supported the Vatican’s intention” to help protect the town’s residents and organize supplies, America Magazine reported.Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said Russia had considered all of Kyiv’s earlier evacuation proposals.“We are now moving towards agreeing the final details on ensuring a ceasefire and evacuating everyone who wishes to leave, not just from Oleshky elsewhere, but directly to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government,” Lubinets said.“There are still some difficult issues, so to speak, but I hope that in the near future we will all see results from these negotiations,” he added.During a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg this week, Putin asked him to thank the first lady for leading mediation on Oleshky, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, according to the Russian state news agency TASS, the Daily Beast reported.The Daily Beast said it remains unclear what role the first lady has played in addressing the Oleshky crisis.Her husband, President Donald Trump, repeatedly said as a candidate that he would end the war within 24 hours, and in a September 2024 debate he said he would settle it before he even took office.“Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that,” Donald Trump said in a March 2025 TV interview, 54 days into his second term, according to the AP.On Oct. 11, Donald Trump posted that the two countries had agreed to an energy ceasefire, but Zelenskyy said the next day that Russia was still striking Ukraine’s energy facilities.“In the Kremlin, both President Putin and officials at other levels have repeatedly stated we do not want a ceasefire,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that week.Putin agreed Wednesday to resume three-way talks with the United States and Ukraine after Nov. 10, at Witkoff’s request, CNN noted.Hours later, Russia launched a massive missile attack on Kyiv, CNN reported.

Switzerland says patient is wife of Swiss diplomat and believed to have contracted virus while travelling in UgandaHealth officials across Africa are racing to determine how Nigeria’s first Ebola patient ⁠in more than a decade ⁠became infected, amid fears ​the outbreak could spread further after reaching a fourth African country.The Swiss foreign ministry said on Friday the patient in Nigeria, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, had not travelled to the Democratic Republic of ⁠Congo, where the outbreak was first detected in mid-May before spreading to Uganda, Kenya and now Nigeria. The woman was believed to have contracted Ebola while travelling with her husband in Uganda, the ministry added. Continue reading...

Following a wave of fierce backlash, President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that Ukraine’s access to SpaceX’s Starlink services had been fully restored — only to have that claim immediately undercut by a Ukrainian official, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported Friday.Last week, Ukraine’s ability to use Starlink services for combat drone missions was compromised after its access to the broadband internet service was restricted without warning. Some prominent Ukrainian figures suspected Trump was behind the move given the president’s growing frustrations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Subsequent reporting tied the newly imposed Starlink restrictions directly to the White House, and on Thursday, Trump neither confirmed nor denied the allegations that he had spoken to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk about restoring Ukraine’s access to Starlink.“I don't want to comment on it, you know, whether I called or whether somebody else called. Doesn't make any difference,” Trump told reporters. “The bottom line: He put it back.”And yet, despite Trump’s claim, a Ukrainian official disputed the president within a matter of hours.“A Ukrainian official tells me that Starlink and Starshield are still restricted in Ukraine despite Trump's claim that it is back up,” Ravid wrote in a post on X.????A Ukrainian official tells me that Starlink and Starshield are still restricted in Ukraine despite Trump's claim that it is back up— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) October 23, 2026

Several senior Trump administration officials expressed fears that the president’s next move may very well send the U.S. and global economies “further cratering,” Zeteo reported Friday.According to multiple reports citing Trump administration officials, the president appears poised to renew attacks on Iran in a matter of days. Earlier this month, the Pentagon instructed U.S. Central Command to finish preparations for resuming major combat operations, and on Thursday, The Atlantic reported that President Donald Trump was “considering” authorizing “several days of strikes.”Speaking on the condition of anonymity, several senior Trump administration officials warned that such a move could prove disastrous on multiple fronts.“Several senior officials I spoke to are (to put it mildly) massively skeptical that revving Trump’s war machine back up will bring about the (supposedly) intended result of forcing the Iranian government to make significant concessions and end the war in Trump’s favor,” Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng reported. “These officials also fear a further cratering of the U.S. and global economies, which have already suffered significantly during the oil crisis and other shockwaves caused by Trump’s war and Iran’s shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz. (This is to say nothing of the likelihood of a growing death toll in multiple nations, the danger to U.S. troops, and other inevitabilities if Trump keeps at it.)”Iranian officials have already made clear that a U.S. attack would be met with an immediate response, including the destruction of Middle East oil facilities, submarine communication cables and AI facilities and data centers in the region.“In the event of a war, cables, datacentres and artificial intelligence facilities could also be targeted. If the conflict breaks out again, we will have a broader plan,” said Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, according to Iranian state media.“There can be no arrangement in which Iran’s economic lifelines come under attack while the economic architecture enabling those attacks is considered untouched and immune.”

Secret accounts, alleged payments to shadowy figures, and spies watching his phone are among the bombshell claims about Jared Kushner in a new book excerpt published Thursday by Vanity Fair. First, journalist Matthew Cole alleged Gulf rulers supplied roughly $2 billion to accounts for Trump’s son-in-law, including $750 million in a charity account Kushner allegedly helped manage.Second, another $1 billion allegedly reached Israel’s central bank for his personal benefit, with Benjamin Netanyahu requiring advance notice of transactions.Third, Cole also recounts a source’s allegation that Kushner transferred money to “a warlord, a mercenary and a one-time hit man," according to the excerpt.The fourth claim revolves around a promise of influence. “Jared promised MBZ that he’d push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund,” another source said, referring to UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed.Fifth, Russian spies allegedly penetrated Kushner’s phone first. Dutch intelligence subsequently gained access and monitored his screen, the excerpt said, according to Vanity Fair.Sixth, Gulf leaders initially discussed a separate $10 billion fund to support Trump’s priorities, including his border wall and reelection. Finally, Cole writes that four senior Trump officials, including two national security advisers, knew of no presidential authorization for Kushner’s foreign-account access, Cole writes.According to Vanity Fair, Kushner’s counsel denied the alleged accounts and legal violations, saying his arrangements with foreign officials had Trump’s approval.

Observers were shocked Thursday after a new book excerpt detailed how foreign spies spent months peering into the phone of President Donald Trump's son-in-law.In an excerpt published by Vanity Fair from his upcoming book "Princes and Thieves," investigative reporter Matthew Cole lays out how Dutch military intelligence flipped a Russian GRU hacker in 2017 and used him to reach a Russian server holding screenshots from Jared Kushner's iPhone. By early 2018, according to Cole, the Dutch had cracked the device themselves and could watch Kushner's screen in real time.What they saw, Cole reports, was Kushner logging into a UAE bank account stocked with hundreds of millions of dollars routed through a bank in Azerbaijan. Cole's reporting alleges that the Saudi and Emirati royals ultimately put at least $2 billion into accounts tied to Kushner, including roughly $750 million at First Abu Dhabi Bank, where Kushner was allegedly a signatory on an account owned by an Emirati charity, and about $1 billion in Israel's Central Bank.A former Mueller prosecutor told Cole that Kushner may have run afoul of federal bribery and foreign agents laws if he promised anything in return. Kushner's lawyer denied any wrongdoing and insisted "there are no accounts and never were."Reaction online was swift."Every word of this is f------ insane," investigative journalist Scott Stedman fumed on X. "Kushner cannot be in charge of negotiations."Stedman followed up by arguing that, if the reporting holds, Cole "may have uncovered the biggest case of foreign bribery (MBZ and MBS of Kushner) in U.S. history."Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim marveled at the backstory. "Aside from the shocking substance of this story, what's amazing is how it was unearthed by Cole," he wrote.Former Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman summed up the chain of events, noting that Dutch cyberspies reverse-engineered a Russian hack to gain "unprecedented access to his world." He called it a "bananas story."National security journalist Zach Dorfman hailed it as "astounding reporting," while reporter Erin Banco kept it short. "This is wild," she posted.

Jared Kushner allegedly accessed a secret Gulf-funded bank account while Dutch spies watched his phone, and moved money to a warlord, a mercenary and a one-time hit man, according to an explosive new book.In an excerpt published Thursday by Vanity Fair, investigative journalist Matthew Cole wrote that Dutch military intelligence found screenshots of Kushner’s iPhone on a Russian military intelligence server, then exploited a flaw in the phone to watch his screen themselves starting in early 2018.They saw Kushner, then a senior adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump, log into a UAE bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars routed through Azerbaijan, according to “Princes and Thieves.” A source told Cole that Kushner appeared to transfer significant sums from the account to other individuals, including the warlord, mercenary and former hit man.Cole alleges the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE put at least $2 billion into at least two accounts for Kushner during Trump’s first term.“Jared promised MBZ that he’d push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund,” one source told Cole, referring to UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed.Kushner’s ties to Gulf money have drawn scrutiny before. After leaving the White House, his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, received a $2 billion investment from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a deal that has drawn scrutiny from ethics watchdogs.The book cites mostly unnamed sources. Kushner’s lawyer told Cole that Kushner broke no laws and had no connection to any UAE account, adding that there “are no accounts and never were.”Kushner himself blasted the book on X.“The allegations made by this author are completely insane, categorically false, and never happened,” he wrote.

‘Scapegoating non-permanent residents is not going to lower the cost of living,’ Vanesa Ortiz saysWhen Vanesa Ortiz came to Calgary from Mexico, she found herself in a city gripped by winter. Outside the airport, it was -15C (5F).“I would come to understand that this was not an extreme cold,” she said. “But in the moment it was terrifying.” Continue reading...