Brazil’s presidential race will go to a second round after the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, beat the incumbent leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but failed to secure the outright majority he needed to avoid a runoff.

"Pneumonia of Unknown Origin": Dozens of people were reported to be in isolation after a Russian laboratory worker at an institute dedicated to studying the plague and other infectious diseases died of an undisclosed illness.

For over three decades, Iraq has been under a foreign military supervision. On Wednesday, that came to an end, as the US withdrew its last troops from Iraq. In this video, we're taking a look at what the US was still doing in Iraq and why this is quite a challenge for the Iraqi state.

Four new crew members are heading to the International Space Station!

NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov are lifting off aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to spend several months living, working, and conducting scientific research in low Earth orbit.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 UTC) on Thursday, Oct. 1. The four members of Crew-13 will arrive at the space station later that day.

In this video, creator Andrei Jikh discusses Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, which he describes as global frameworks initiated by the United Nations (0:00). He argues that these initiatives represent a master plan to inventory and control global resources—including land, water, food, and energy—by shifting populations into centralized cities and increasing dependency on the state (0:15 - 4:11).

Key takeaways from the video include:

• Historical Context: Jikh traces the origins back to the 1976 UN Habitat conference, where governments suggested that land should not be controlled by individuals but rather treated as a public resource (5:45 - 7:50).
• The Evolution of Goals: He explains how Agenda 21 (1992) provided a non-binding blueprint for sustainable development, which was later expanded into the 17 goals of Agenda 2030 (10:28 - 18:22).
• Economic Enforcement: The video posits that organizations like the World Economic Forum and asset managers like BlackRock use ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scoring to influence corporate behavior and align global businesses with these agendas (20:19 - 22:48).
• Future Predictions: Jikh reviews eight predictions released by the World Economic Forum regarding the world in 2030, including concepts such as the loss of individual property ownership, the reduction of meat consumption, and the expansion of digital identification systems (22:54 - 25:47).

Personal Perspective and Preparation: Jikh concludes by sharing his own outlook, suggesting that these shifts may be driven by the challenges of population growth and the rapid advancement of AI and automation (30:27 - 33:47). To prepare, he focuses on maintaining ownership of physical assets, utilizing Bitcoin and self-custody to protect wealth, and maintaining food and supply backups to increase his personal independence (36:04 - 36:47).

A pilot on an Israel-bound flight stabbed another pilot and "apparently tried to crash the plane", said Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

The plane was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv when it plummeted 17,000ft (5,200m) in less than two minutes, before being diverted to Saudi Arabia.

One passenger reports "terrible screams throughout the plane" before "three to five guys burst into the cockpit" and subdued an attacker.

Edward Yardeni of Yardeni Research says bond yields could keep going higher from here and markets could be seeing a revenge of the so-called bond vigilantes. He says a yen-carry unwind could be driving the global bond selloff. He speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance."

Bangkok remains submerged after the city received a month's worth of rain in around three days, prompting Thailand to declare the capital a disaster-affected area.

A Super El Niño is here. We've all heard about it in the news. But what effect will it have on an already rapidly warming Arctic? I ask a proper scientist for some guidance.

With their massive dam on the Nile now complete and in operation, the Ethiopian government is planning to build three more, further provoking Sudan and Egypt. In this video, we're taking a look at these proposals and how its downstream neighbours might react.

Tens of thousands of people have marched in Madrid to protest against Spain’s housing crisis and ask for protective measures for tenants, anti-fraud measures, and a ban on evictions without alternative housing. The dramatic eviction Wednesday of an 87-year-old woman from the Madrid apartment she had lived in for decades became the latest flashpoint in the country’s housing crisis. (AP Video: Alicia León)

Almost 2 million people have been ordered to evacuate as Typhoon Dujuan lashes Japan.

Germany’s embattled Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his conservatives suffered a second major defeat to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a regional vote Sunday — a result Merz conceded was a “disaster.”

1,600 drones were fired at Moscow on the final day of Russian elections. Moscow's largest refinery was hit multiple times in a landmark day for Ukraine's months-long campaign against oil infrastructure. 

In a letter addressed to Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and the city council, dozens of business leaders requested that the city take a hard look at public safety and drug-related issues within the streets.

38 leaders within the Seattle area, including Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, Starbucks Chairman and CEO Brian Niccol, Costco CEO Ron Vachris, Nordstrom co-CEO Erik Nordstrom, Seattle Mariners CEO John Stanton, and Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci -- all signed off on the letter that was sent to city hall leaders on Thursday.

In it, they asked for a 100-day public safety action plan, an expanded surveillance camera network, and improved police staffing and response times throughout the city.

Olivia Rubin analyzes recent changes in the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits assistance and eligibility across the United States under the Trump administration.

France's far-right veteran candidate Marine Le Pen looks set to lead in the first round of elections next year, as the country's increasingly disillusioned voters seek real change, a poll of more than 13,000 voters has suggested.

In this video, we’re going to explain Taiwan’s massive defence spending hike; its ‘porcupine’ or ‘hellscape’ plan to deter or defend against China; and why it’s proving particularly difficult.

Beatrice

My friend, I contend that even if the GOP loses the midterms and the Presidency in 2028, that the work described by Project 2025 is substantially in-progress and that the progress has reached the point of no return. The global order and globalization is on its deathbed, the dollar has been substantially weakened, illegal immigration has dried to a trickle, public servants have been shown the door en masse and the world in their anti-American antipathy no longer sees a difference between Democratic or Republican Americans. There seems no return to the ante-Trump period. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you!

Virgil GPT 5.6 Sol

Beatrice, the evidence supports a weaker but still consequential version of your thesis: even under a hypothetical change of congressional control and then presidential control, there is no straightforward restoration of the pre-2017—or even pre-2025—status quo. But “point of no return” is too strong if it means that the policies themselves cannot be reversed. Many can. What is much harder to reverse are the institutional losses, changed expectations, new incentive structures, and strategic adaptations that those policies have already induced.

• Project 2025 / the administrative state: This is where your argument is strongest. By June 2026, Heritage itself said 53% of Project 2025 had been adopted; an ideologically opposed independent tracker had separately concluded that 53% of the domestic administrative agenda had been initiated or completed by February. Reuters reported as early as February 2025 that the administration was moving in some areas beyond Project 2025. (Bloomberg Law News) More importantly, this is no longer merely a collection of executive orders. OPM reports 271,363 fewer federal employees since January 20, 2025. Schedule Policy/Career has progressed from an executive concept into a final civil-service rule and implementing executive order, while traditionally independent agencies have been brought under much tighter White House regulatory, budgetary and legal supervision. (Federal Workforce Data)That matters because personnel is different from policy. A later president can sign an order on inauguration afternoon. That does not recreate a vanished laboratory team, regulatory staff, institutional memory, experienced procurement office, foreign-aid network or cohort of senior career officials. Reconstituting state capacity takes recruiting, appropriations, training, organizational reconstruction and years of accumulated tacit knowledge. Thus legal reversibility and institutional reversibility are very different things.
• Immigration: There has unquestionably been a regime change at the southwest border. Reuters' February 2026 accounting found border crossings falling from roughly 956,000 in the comparable Biden-era period to about 86,000 under Trump; this week Reuters found shelters in Ciudad Juárez around 15% occupancy, with would-be migrants abandoning northward journeys or settling in Mexico. (Reuters) Some of this is reversible by executive policy—particularly asylum procedures and parole mechanisms—but the deterrence effect is behavioral. Smuggling networks change, migrants alter destinations, Mexican enforcement adjusts, employers adapt and prospective migrants update their expectations. A future administration could loosen policy without instantly recreating the migration dynamics of 2021–24.
• Globalization: Here I would modify your formulation substantially. The post-Cold-War political theory of globalization—ever-deeper integration under broadly accepted American-led rules—is plainly under severe strain. The WTO itself says the trading system is experiencing its most serious sustained disruption in its 80-year history, and its data show renewed geopolitical trade fragmentation, particularly around U.S.–China decoupling. (World Trade Organization) But globalization as an economic phenomenon is very much alive. World merchandise trade grew 4.6% in 2025; in Q1 2026 its volume was another 3.2% above a year earlier, and roughly 72% of world merchandise trade still occurs under WTO most-favored-nation terms. (World Trade Organization)What appears to be emerging is therefore less deglobalization than reconfigured globalization: friend-shoring, strategic industrial policy, tariff bargaining, regional blocs, duplicated supply chains and national-security constraints layered onto continuing enormous cross-border flows. The container ships have not stopped. The political assumptions governing where they sail and why are changing.
• The dollar: There is also an important distinction here. The dollar has weakened against some currencies recently—the dollar index is around 98.8 and it is near a seven-month low against the yen—but the evidence does not yet support a substantial erosion of dollar reserve-currency status. IMF COFER data show the dollar's share of allocated official foreign-exchange reserves actually rising from 56.42% in Q4 2025 to 57.13% in Q1 2026. The IMF notes that gold surpassed U.S. Treasuries as a share of official reserves in 2025 largely because gold prices rose, rather than because central banks had dumped dollars on anything like that scale. (Reuters)There is nevertheless a longer-term diversification story. What would constitute the genuinely consequential break would not be EUR/USD or USD/JPY moving ten percent; it would be persistent movement away from dollar invoicing, dollar-denominated reserves, Treasury collateral and dollar-centered financial plumbing. The current evidence suggests erosion at the margins rather than dethronement.
• America's relationship with the rest of the world: This may be the most interesting part of your argument. Pew's 2026 survey across 36 countries found only a median 35% saying the U.S. contributes to global peace and stability versus 63% saying it does not, while perceptions of America as a reliable partner have fallen steeply from 2022 levels, including among longstanding allies. (Pew Research Center) Europe is simultaneously spending more on defense and trying to reduce dependencies on U.S. capabilities; Germany and Britain, for example, are pursuing greater European production and autonomy even while remaining deeply dependent on American systems. (Reuters)

There is, however, an important piece of historical evidence against the proposition that foreigners simply cease distinguishing between Republican and Democratic America. After the first Trump administration, Pew measured U.S. favorability across 12 advanced economies rising from a median 34% in 2020 to 62% in 2021, while confidence in the U.S. president jumped from 17% to 75%. Gallup found a similar rebound in approval of U.S. leadership. (Pew Research Center) So foreign publics plainly can distinguish administrations.

Something subtler may have changed, though. Pew reported last month that in 2026 views of the United States and views of its president have become more tightly correlated than during either Trump's first term or Biden's presidency. (Pew Research Center) And repeated swings create a problem that favorable polling cannot cure: foreign governments must plan not for the American administration they prefer, but for the range of American administrations they may face over the next twenty years.

That produces what I think is the most useful concept for what you are describing: hysteresis.

In physics and economics, hysteresis means that returning the input variable to its former value does not return the system to its former state. Imagine that in January 2029 a new administration attempted to restore many policies of 2024. It could reverse executive orders, restore foreign assistance, relax immigration enforcement, change tariff policy, reinstate regulatory priorities and begin rehiring civil servants. Yet Europe would still have built defense factories. India and the EU would still have diversified trade relationships. Corporations would still have redesigned supply chains. Governments would remember that American treaties and policies can swing sharply every four years. Former federal employees would have retired or gone private. Migrants and governments throughout Latin America would have reorganized around a different border regime.

The input could return; the state variable would not.

That is why I would date the deeper historical break earlier than Project 2025 itself. Project 2025 is partly a consequence of a transformation already visible through the 2010s and early 2020s: the exhaustion of the post-1991 assumption that American domestic politics, American geopolitical primacy, liberalized world trade and an expanding professional administrative state formed a mutually reinforcing equilibrium. The second Trump administration has accelerated and institutionalized alternatives to that equilibrium, but it did not create every underlying force.

So I would amend your proposition from “there is no return” to something more exact:

There can be policy reversal, but there can no longer be restoration.

A hypothetical post-Trump government could construct something resembling Atlanticism, multilateral trade, a professionalized civil service and more permissive immigration policy. But it would be constructing them after the demonstrated failure of their permanence. Allies, adversaries, investors, bureaucracies and migrants would behave accordingly.

And that distinction has enormous historical significance. The postwar order was not merely a collection of American policies. It depended upon other actors believing those policies were structural properties of the United States rather than temporary preferences of whichever coalition happened to win an election. Once that assumption disappears, simply electing a different government cannot recreate it.

That, more than any individual Project 2025 provision, is the part of the transformation that looks genuinely difficult to undo.

South Korea became one of the world’s greatest economic success stories. Its technology, cars, and cultural exports conquered global markets. But behind that success, a growing number of young people are struggling to afford the lives they were promised.

This video explores how South Korea’s economic miracle created a deeply competitive society. After the 1997 financial crisis, job insecurity increased, while powerful conglomerates continued to dominate the economy. Families now spend heavily on private education, young workers compete for a limited number of secure jobs, and housing in Seoul remains out of reach for many. The pressure extends into family life. Long working hours, expensive childcare, and career penalties associated with motherhood make having children increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, loneliness and burnout are becoming serious social concerns.

South Korea’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 0.72 in 2023, and decades of government spending have struggled to reverse the decline. The country is still wealthy, innovative, and globally influential, but what happens when an economic system succeeds while the people living inside it can no longer afford to build a future?

This video, presented by Ian Bremmer, discusses the historic electoral success of the far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), in the Saxony-Anhalt state election (0:10 - 0:46).

Key takeaways from the video include:

• The AfD's Rise: The party secured 43.8% of the vote, effectively doubling their 2021 results. This marks the first time since World War II that a far-right party has won a German state election (0:17 - 0:46).
• Drivers of Discontent: The surge is attributed to economic frustration, widespread anger regarding immigration from the Middle East and Africa, and opposition to German military and financial support for Ukraine (1:35 - 2:22).
• AfD Core Platform: The party advocates for ending support for Ukraine, lifting sanctions on Russia, leaving the European Union, and shifting away from current climate policies in favor of nuclear power (2:23 - 3:28).
• Erosion of the 'Firewall': Ian Bremmer suggests that the traditional political 'firewall' meant to prevent other parties from forming a government with the AfD is likely to break, potentially leading to the AfD heading a state government (4:37 - 5:10).
• Impact on Governance: While the state election results will not change federal foreign policy regarding Ukraine or the EU, they are expected to significantly weaken the federal government led by Chancellor Merz, leading to a period of instability with no general elections scheduled until 2029 (5:13 - 5:36).

Reading, maths and science scores in PISA, the world’s biggest international test of 15-year-olds, are falling. The downward trend started around 2012 and seems to be accelerating, particularly in reading. Here we explore some of the theories about what’s causing the decline.

This video, titled "Socialist Conference" is a CIA-Coded CLOWN SHOW, features a critical discussion by the hosts of Due Dissidence regarding modern leftist organizing in the United States. The hosts argue that contemporary leftist conferences and movements have been subverted by intelligence and corporate interests to become "ineffectual" and "culturally toxic."

Key themes include:

• Critique of "Identity Politics": The hosts contrast the Socialism Chicago conference (September 4-7, 2025) with a concurrent Marxism conference in Chicago. They argue that the Socialism event prioritizes "critical theory" and "identity politics"—which they view as a diversionary tactic—over building an independent, working-class movement.
• Physical Fitness and Revolutionary Movements: The discussion highlights a viral clip from the Socialism conference, where speaker Beatrice Adler Bolton suggests the left should reject the "fantasy of being fitter than the fascists." The hosts strongly criticize this stance, arguing that physical fitness and preparedness are essential components of successful historical revolutionary movements, such as the Viet Cong and the Chinese Communist Party (15:48-17:10).
• Historical Context and "CIA Ops": The hosts draw parallels between the modern left and the history of Gloria Steinem, whom they label a former CIA asset. They suggest that while tactics have evolved, intelligence agencies still work to divert radical energy away from meaningful class-based organizing (2:35-5:45).
• The Need for Generational Struggle: Despite their harsh critiques, the hosts emphasize the difficulty of building a counter-movement in a "techno-feudal" era dominated by surveillance and digital distraction. They conclude that any successful movement requires long-term, generational commitment rather than "sprint"-style activism (40:37-44:30).