Update(1457ET): Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has alleged Hamas fighters attacked IDF troops despite an ongoing ceasefire. “Hamas will pay a heavy price for attacking soldiers in Gaza and for violating the agreement to return the bodies of the hostages,” Katz said as heavy bombardments in the Strip have been reported. He declared Hamas’ actions are “crossing of a bright red line, to which the [military] will respond with great force.”

Gaza’s civil defense agency has confirmed several airstrikes in a statement to Al Jazeera. Hamas is denying the accusations, in a statement saying “Israel must realize we are committed to the agreement, and they must stop falsely accusing us of violating it.” This as Al Jazeera writes, “For the past 30 minutes, there has been major activity in the air over Gaza’s skies, with drones hovering above.” A series of airstrikes have hit Gaza City in particular.

In response to these developments the US is insisting it believes the ceasefire will hold. “Despite the clashes today, the ceasefire agreement in Gaza will continue,” Vice President J.D. Vance said Tuesday afternoon.

Several strikes reported within the last hour by the Israeli Air Force against the area in and around Gaza City in Northern Gaza. pic.twitter.com/PWec6tZivl

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) October 28, 2025

* * *

“Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military echelon to carry out immediate and powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” a statement issued moments ago by the Prime Minister’s office indicates.

“Following security consultations, Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military to immediately carry out powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” a statement from his office says. Netanyahu has accused Hamas of committing a “clear violation” of the ceasefire deal.

Though the past over 2-weeks in which the Hamas ceasefire has held has witnessed intermittent flare-ups in fighting, this could be the big one which unravels the whole thing.

Less than an hour before the new strikes were ordered by Netanyahu, Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported, “Hamas violated the ceasefire by attacking IDF soldiers in Rafah, I’m told by an Israeli military official.”

And Al Jazeera says, “In a sign of the fragility of the ceasefire, Israeli troops were shot at in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday and returned fire, an unnamed Israeli military official told The Associated Press.”

• SHEKEL HITS SESSION LOW AS NETANYAHU INSTRUCTS ON GAZA STRIKES
• HAMAS SAYS POSTPONES TODAY’S HANDOVER OF ISRAELI HOSTAGE BODY

Expect the blame-game to begin, as IDF strikes resume in the Gaza Strip once again. Since the ceasefire has been on, however, some 100 Palestinians have died. Thirteen bodes of hostages remain in Gaza.

Axios reviews of the latest developments:

• The Trump administration has been focusing over the last several weeks on stabilizing the ceasefire and pressing both parties to avoid steps that could detonate it.
• As part of that mission, the White House sent several top officials to Israel and established a U.S. command center in Israel to oversee it and monitor the situation on the ground.
• But a deepening dispute over the return of deceased hostages by Hamas, and a firefight on Tuesday in the city of Rafah, intensified calls in Israel for military action. The strikes Netanyahu ordered could rupture the ceasefire altogether.

The question over the remaining deceased hostage bodies has renewed put pressure on the Netanyahu government to not move on to the second phase of ceasefire:

The families of Israeli hostages on Monday demanded that the next steps in the US-brokered Gaza peace plan be put on hold until Hamas returns the remaining bodies of dead captives.

“Hamas knows exactly where every one of the deceased hostages is held. Two weeks have passed since the deadline set in the agreement for the return of all 48 hostages, yet 13 remain in Hamas captivity,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

Further, the Israeli military has accused Hamas of staging a propaganda campaign which lies about efforts to recover slain hostages:

Hamas are lying about our hostages and here’s the proof:

Yesterday, Hamas terrorists were filmed removing body remains from a prepared structure and re-burying them nearby, before summoning Red Cross representatives to stage a false “discovery” for photographers.

Despite… pic.twitter.com/c9CkJo3msW

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 28, 2025

developing…

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

OpenAI must face allegations of copyright infringement made by authors in a consolidated class action lawsuit, District Judge Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in an Oct. 27 order.

In the June 13 consolidated complaint, the plaintiffs – writers who own copyrights for various books – accused OpenAI and Microsoft, which funds OpenAI, of having engaged in “flagrant and harmful infringements of their copyrights.”

“Defendants copied Plaintiffs’ works and then fed them into their ‘large language models’ or ‘LLMs,’ algorithms designed to generate human-like text responses to users’ prompts and queries. These algorithms are at the heart of Defendants’ massive commercial enterprise. And at the heart of these algorithms is systematic theft on a mass scale,” the lawsuit said.

OpenAI asked the court to dismiss the plaintiffs’ accusations of copyright infringement.

In the Oct. 27 order, Stein sided with the authors by denying the motion, observing that the allegations made by plaintiffs “satisfy the elements of a prima facie claim of infringement as to at least some outputs of ChatGPT.”

To train ChatGPT, OpenAI used datasets that included copyrighted words of the plaintiffs, the judge wrote. When prompted, ChatGPT can then generate accurate summaries of books authored by the plaintiffs.

In a court filing, OpenAI said plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege “substantial similarity” between their works and the content output by ChatGPT and that the complaint failed to cite even a single example of the alleged copyright infringement in ChatGPT’s outputs.

OpenAI argued that not all summaries of content qualify as infringement. For instance, summarizing the final chapter of “The Door” by Mary Roberts Rinehart as “the butler did it” cannot be considered as infringement of the author’s copyright, the company said.

Stein dismissed such arguments. For one, the complaint adequately alleges that OpenAI accessed plaintiffs’ works and the infringing outputs made by ChatGPT are based on the authors’ works, which satisfies the requirement of “actual copying,” he wrote.

Stein then detailed a ChatGPT summary of “A Game of Thrones,” the first book in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R. R. Martin. The AI summary described the setting, prologue, main plot points, and ending of the book.

“A more discerning observer could easily conclude that this detailed summary is substantially similar to Martin’s original work, including because the summary conveys the overall tone and feel of the original work by parroting the plot, characters, and themes of the original,” Stein wrote.

Martin is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Other plaintiffs include authors John Grisham and David Baldacci.

The Epoch Times reached out to OpenAI for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Authors Versus AI

The court ruling comes after AI company Anthropic, the maker of Claude AI, agreed to pay $1.5 billion over copyright infringement last month, according to a Sept. 5 post by law firm Banner Witcoff.

Anthropic was accused of using pirated copies of around 500,000 copyrighted works to train its AI, the post said. A court had previously issued a summary judgment on the issue, ruling that the use of pirated copies for training AIs does not qualify as “fair use.”

In a Sept. 25 statement, The Authors Guild, an advocacy group for published writers that is also a plaintiff in the OpenAI lawsuit, welcomed the preliminary approval of the Anthropic settlement.

“The settlement marks a milestone in authors’ fights against AI companies’ theft of their works. It sends a clear signal to AI companies that infringement of authors’ rights comes at a steep price and will undoubtedly push AI companies towards acquiring the books they want legally, through licensing,” the association said. “The case is also significant in that it serves as an example of how class actions can be a successful vehicle for seeking justice for mass copyright infringement.”

Multiple other legal battles have been waged by authors over the use of their works by tech companies for training artificial intelligence models.

On Oct. 15, two authors filed a lawsuit against cloud computing company Salesforce, alleging that the business “pirated hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books to develop its XGen series of large language models.”

A similar copyright infringement case filed by 13 authors against Meta went in the company’s favor in June.

The court ruling dismissed the plaintiffs’ argument that Meta copied their works to create a product that could flood the market with similar works, observing that the authors presented “no evidence about how the current or expected outputs from Meta’s models would dilute the market for their own works.”

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

The Democrats appear to be a never-ending source of pitiable entertainment these days. Last week, it was the pathetic “No Kings” (what some mischievous wag called “No Brains”) rallies across the country. Those 2,700 anti-Trump therapy sessions for aging, anencephalic boomers were funded to the tune of $294 million by such public-spirited individuals and entities as Arabella Advisors, the Tides Foundation, George Soros, and Warren Buffett. Such streams of cash funneled millions through dozens of left-leaning entities, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Sierra Club Foundation, the Democracy Forward Foundation, and other havens for the perpetually aggrieved.

It was a noisy but preposterous temper tantrum, full of sound and fury, signifying stupidity. The union of Kumbayah gestures with rage-filled pantomimes was both inadvertently comic and repellent, the odor of rotting pseudo-idealism wafting over the proceedings everywhere.

The insurmountable problem all of those protestors faced was the incontrovertible fact that Donald Trump is not a king. He is a duly elected president who handily won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. He campaigned precisely on the issues that the unhappy pot-bangers and sign-wavers bewailed: closing the border, expelling illegal migrants, dismantling the woke DEI apparat in academia and the federal government, and resuscitating and Americanizing the U.S. economy.

If Trump were a king, why would he not simply outlaw such puerile displays of maliciousness as the “No Kings” rallies? Why wouldn’t he simply decree the government open again? No, the whole thing was ridiculous. I doubt that even the participants could have taken their make-believe protests seriously. But they probably feel they have to do something to make themselves heard these days. In the face of the perpetual-motion machine that is Donald Trump, what is an underemployed Democrat to do?

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so the wokerati abhor an absence of outrage. It is an addiction, a sickness, a craving that cannot be denied. “Outrage or burst”: that’s their motto. So no sooner had the hangover of the “No Kings” fiasco begun to dissipate than a new draught was necessary. Trump supplied it with the news that he was going ahead with his plans to add a new ballroom—paid for with private funds—to the White House.

In fact, Trump has been promising to do just this—build a beautiful ballroom so that large gatherings at the White House would not have to be held under a tent—at least since 2016. But somebody in the Democrat Central Committee pretended to canvass the focus groups and decided that the engine of outrage could be primed with the Trump-is-desecrating-this-sacred-public-monument meme.

Again, the outpouring of manufactured outrage was both hilarious and pathetic. The people who suddenly became hypersensitive architectural preservationists had spent the last decade cheering on the people who tore down or desecrated important historical statues, smashed or ripped or sullied artworks, and substituted their noxious woke fantasies for the clear light of historical truth.

Such woke marauders also completely ignored the actual history of the White House and its many reconstructions, additions, renovations, and renewals. The comedy was endless. Hillary Clinton, who should know better than to wax moralistic about anything having to do with the White House, pretended to be outraged and posted, “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” To which the president replied, “I may name it the Monica Lewinsky ballroom.” Connoisseurs of the Clinton libido will savor the double entendre.

The great Scott Adams had fun with the charade. Everyone agrees that a ballroom at the White House is needed, he notes. But the Dems just demonstrated that they can get their base to go insane over anything.

“All they have to do is say it over and over.”

All of a sudden, “Trump is going to renovate the White House” becomes “Trump is going to destroy the White House.” 

One poor baby said, “It feels almost the same as when I saw the Pentagon damage on 9/11.” Yes, really. It is insane.

But Adams was loving it: “I think you should respect that the Democrats are willing to take on the challenge of living in a country where there is a building being renovated.”

Heroes!

The White House itself posted a helpful timeline of significant renovations and events at the residence through the years. By now, many readers will know that in 1902, Teddy Roosevelt added the West Wing to the White House. In 1909, William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and added the original Oval Office. In the 1930s and ’40s, FDR moved the Oval Office to its current location, built the East Wing, and added an indoor swimming pool. FDR’s successor, Harry S Truman, gutted and totally rebuilt the interior of the White House. Richard Nixon converted the White House swimming pool into the press briefing room and added a bowling alley. Barack Obama, though part of the witches’ chorus now, desecrated a tennis court to build a basketball court.

But that pedestrian inventory does not include some of the more piquant items that the White House included in its records. My favorites were the slides regarding the discovery of cocaine and the transgender day celebration at the White House.

And by the way, most renovations stuck taxpayers with the tab.  Trump’s new ballroom will cost the taxpayers nothing—zero, zilch, nada. It is entirely privately funded.

Among other things, this week’s Democrat exercise in feckless melodrama reminds us that all the political initiative now is with Donald Trump. It’s not just that the Democrats are wholly reactive, responding like Pavlov’s dog to any bell that Trump might ring. There is also the fact that Trump has consumed all the political oxygen available in the body politic. His MAGA agenda is shaping everything—from his peace initiatives on the world stage to his efforts at the border and with the economy and cultural fabric of the country.

 All the Democrats have now is the screech of Elizabeth Warren and her tribe, resounding like a gigantic set of fingernails drawn harshly across the blackboard of the nation’s attention. It is a horrible, disagreeable sound. No one heeds it. Everyone recoils from it. It’s not much, but it’s all the Democrats have now, a sort of endless reenactment of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” in lieu of any constructive action.

The US is prepared to roll back some tariffs on China if Beijing cracks down on the export of chemicals that produce fentanyl, under a trade framework that President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are set to discuss Thursday, the WSJ reported citing people familiar. 

According to the report, China is expected to commit to more controls on the export of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl. In return, the U.S. could cut its 20% fentanyl-related tariff on Chinese goods by as much as 10%, the people said.

If Trump lowers the fentanyl-tariff on Chinese goods to 10%, it would bring the average tariff on most Chinese imports, currently around 55%, to about 45%. That would put China’s average tariff rate closer to those of other trading partners, potentially reducing the price competitiveness of goods manufactured outside of China. Indicatively, goods from India and Brazil face 50% tariffs, and the Trump administration has said Chinese goods transshipped through Southeast Asian nations would face 40% tariffs, much higher than the 19%-20% rate for other goods from the region.

Bringing the total tariffs on China closer to the 40% levies threatened on Southeast Asian nations would reduce the incentive for Chinese firms to transship goods through those economies to the U.S., while potentially motivating more direct trade between China and the U.S.

The administration reached two trade agreements and two frameworks with Southeast Asian nations this week that included provisions to prevent China from exporting goods through their economies at below-market prices.

The U.S. and China are also expected to reduce port fees on each other’s ships, the report goes on.

Separately, China is also expected to commit to significant purchases of American soybeans, Bessent said in a CBS News interview on Sunday, potentially bringing relief to U.Sp. farmers hit hard by the loss of Chinese buyers this year.

If Beijing agrees, the framework would ease market-rattling tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. Earlier this month, China tightened controls on rare earths, a sector it dominates, potentially jolting global supply chains that rely on them to manufacture everything from electric vehicles to jet fighters. In turn Trump threatened another 100% tariffs on China. Now, under the new framework, the U.S. expects China to delay the new rare-earths rules.

“I believe that they are going to delay that for a year while they re-examine it,” Bessent said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday.

The expected deferral of China’s latest rare-earth controls means Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods by Nov. 1 is now “effectively off the table,” Bessent told CBS News.

There’s more: Chinese negotiators are also expecting the U.S. to freeze potential new policy actions deemed as harmful to China, such as controls on exports of products made with U.S. software. Bessent told CBS News on Sunday there have been no changes to U.S. export controls.

It is unclear how the framework would affect a different set of rare-earths restrictions that Beijing announced in April. The established licensing system suggests authorities could ramp up rare-earth restrictions again if the U.S. were to impose new trade policies deemed harmful to China.

Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang, a senior member of China’s trade delegation, said the two sides have reached “preliminary consensus” on issues including export controls, reciprocal tariffs, fentanyl-related tariffs, cooperation on fentanyl, an expansion of bilateral trade and port fees. Both sides will then go through domestic approval processes, he said.

“The current turbulences and twists and turns are the ones that we do not wish to see,” Li said.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel is set to travel to Beijing to discuss the fentanyl issue with Chinese authorities, said people familiar with the matter.

The expected agreements are subject to change and dependent on the meeting of the two leaders. Details are expected to be hammered out in subsequent negotiations.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

A depressing development in Hollywood, besides CGI and AI, is the rise of ‘two-screen viewing’, where scripts are simplified so audiences glued to their phones can follow the ‘plot’ in the background rather than being distracted by it: TV/movies are ‘product’ for those who don’t pay attention. One could argue the same with financial market media and ‘two-screen analysis’.

None are covering Islamist Sudanese paramilitaries advancing into the military’s last stronghold in Darfur: there are no assets there. But none are covering Russia’s test of a powerful new missile either, or Norway’s defence minister warning Moscow is concentrating its nuclear forces in the Arctic Circle in preparation “for war with NATO”, or Trump telling Putin the US has “the world’s greatest nuclear submarine stationed right off their shores.” They only notice the deals related to the above, such as Lukoil planning to sell its international assets following US sanctions. That’s being behind the curve, to use the language financial media purport to understand.

There are plenty of such deals – and sparse analysis of them. The UK just agreed an $11bn Eurofighter sale to Turkey when the Ministry of Defense is reportedly underfunded and planning cuts even as it’s told to rearm rapidly. Politico claims to have ‘Germany’s new €377bn military wish list’ to become the most powerful conventional military in Europe: it’s of course anchored in German industry, with the exception of a few key US systems, such as upgraded F-15s and 400 Tomahawk missiles. There are implications there for Europe in multiple dimensions.

The US losing a helicopter and fighter jet within 30 minutes in the South China Sea yesterday may have been down to “bad fuel”, according to Trump. If so, it’s an indictment of US Navy logistics. That’s why we are seeing US strategic deals with South Korea and Japan to build US ships in their shipyards; the US says Japan’s pledged $550bn FDI package will focus on infrastructure such as electricity and energy; and Trump and PM Takaichi will today talk trade and defence, which are increasingly the same thing.

On which note, Europe has also seen far-from-normal developments:

Former ECB President Draghi called for “pragmatic federalism” where clusters of EU countries agree to policies rather than one-size fits all. EC President Von der Leyen laid out green tech policies that imply massive use of economic statecraft: huge non-tariff barriers (“Made in Europe” for all state tenders); capital controls (screen FDI so it’s “in the EU’s interests”: and outbound FDI?); and tariffs and subsidies (support for key sectors – “You are critical to Europe’s future. and your future will be made in Europe. That is critical for us”). 

Both Macron and VdL threatened China with the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument over withholding rare earths, which would shatter EU-China trade and make the Nexperia crisis look like nothing, even as its China parent Wingtech declares a cash-flow risk and an EU car production shutdowns loom as chip supplies dry up, Covid-style.

The EU is to launch a “RESourceEU” plan before end-2025, on top of the EU Critical Minerals Act that has so far achieved little, to: diversify supply chains (to countries who already did deals with the US and China); boost domestic extraction and refining in the EU (which is highly polluting and uneconomic); scaling up recycling; and strengthening strategic reserves to guard against supply disruptions (so central planning and commodity buying as well as the need to set agreed market price ceilings and floors?).

Moreover, Politico also reports the ‘EU will move to take on Wall Street with major financial reform proposals’. These include amending the EU’s flagship financial market rules, MiFID and MiFIR; for clearinghouses (EMIR); investments (AIFMD/the UCITS Directive); central securities depositories (CSDR); crypto rules (MiCA); and the regulation of markets watchdog (ESMA). Moreover, the Commission is also planning to propose financial markets supervision moving from the national to EU level. As said here many times, geopolitics now drives market paradigm shifts.

In Latin America, Argentina’s markets rallied strongly over Milei’s political victory. Moreover, Brazil’s Lula stated he sees a “definitive solution’ with the US coming within days, and that Trump “guaranteed” him a trade deal: is it a coincidence that Lula also offered to help the US mediate with Venezuela? On that front, Venezuela is moving to cancel energy agreements with Trinidad after a US warship arrived at the neighbouring island nation, which analysts see hurts Venezuela more than Trinidad.

In North America, Canada’s PM Carney is now floating dropping the 100% tariff on Chinese EVs it had agreed in line with the US in return for lower tariffs on Canadian pork and canola into China. Now that there is no transshipment possible into the US due to its tariffs on Canada –could they now go higher in response?– that just implies more pressure on the Canadian auto industry already struggling with the loss of sales to the US and potential production shifts south of the border. One wonders if any analysis of the value-add of the agri vs auto industries is being done – is there an economic statecraft target in either direction, or is it just potentially-expensive ‘we have options, you know’ messaging to Trump?

In Asia, after Trump’s swirl of charm-offensive critical minerals deals and a Thailand-Cambodia peace treaty, China and ASEAN inked an upgraded free trade pact covering digital, green economies, and supply chain connectivity.

In the domestic political economy sphere, but with global implications, Australia’s largest aluminium smelter is in employee talks for potential closure: is the Aussie role in the new geopolitical geoeconomic order also just the old one – resources?

UK Chancellor Reeves reportedly faces another £20bn hit to UK public finances due to a downgrading of assumed UK productivity by the budget watchdog by 0.3 percentage points per annum.

The French parliament just voted to increase corporation tax from 33.8% to 35% next year, as the Socialist Party will reportedly wait until the end of the week to decide whether to topple the government over a wealth tax, which they want to see start at 3% of assets over €10m, not 2% on over €100m, as the government proposes.

Spain’s already-wobbly government lost a coalition partner, making the passage of any legislation more difficult; and

In the US, the Wall Street Journal says, ‘Amazon to Lay Off Up to 30,000 Corporate Workers’, and below it, ‘The Good Vibes Are Back on Wall Street’. In-between is a smaller headline stating that big firms think they can keep growing without hiring anyone.

Meanwhile, The Economist proclaims, ‘The end of the rip-off economy’ as “From finance and medicine to used cars, artificial intelligence is radically improving market efficiency.” Is that also twin-screen analysis, where a ‘Hollywood ending’ plot is shot-gunned into the eyes of those who might otherwise see a vastly more complex, nuanced, and perhaps even diametrically opposed picture?

“Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military echelon to carry out immediate and powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” a statement issued moments ago by the Prime Minister’s office indicates.

“Following security consultations, Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military to immediately carry out powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” a statement from his office says. Netanyahu has accused Hamas of committing a “clear violation” of the ceasefire deal.

Though the past over 2-weeks in which the Hamas ceasefire has held has witnessed intermittent flare-ups in fighting, this could be the big one which unravels the whole thing.

Less than an hour before the new strikes were ordered by Netanyahu, Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported, “Hamas violated the ceasefire by attacking IDF soldiers in Rafah, I’m told by an Israeli military official.”

And Al Jazeera says, “In a sign of the fragility of the ceasefire, Israeli troops were shot at in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday and returned fire, an unnamed Israeli military official told The Associated Press.”

• SHEKEL HITS SESSION LOW AS NETANYAHU INSTRUCTS ON GAZA STRIKES
• HAMAS SAYS POSTPONES TODAY’S HANDOVER OF ISRAELI HOSTAGE BODY

Expect the blame-game to begin, as IDF strikes resume in the Gaza Strip once again. Since the ceasefire has been on, however, some 100 Palestinians have died. Thirteen bodes of hostages remain in Gaza.

Axios reviews of the latest developments:

• The Trump administration has been focusing over the last several weeks on stabilizing the ceasefire and pressing both parties to avoid steps that could detonate it.
• As part of that mission, the White House sent several top officials to Israel and established a U.S. command center in Israel to oversee it and monitor the situation on the ground.
• But a deepening dispute over the return of deceased hostages by Hamas, and a firefight on Tuesday in the city of Rafah, intensified calls in Israel for military action. The strikes Netanyahu ordered could rupture the ceasefire altogether.

The question over the remaining deceased hostage bodies has renewed put pressure on the Netanyahu government to not move on to the second phase of ceasefire:

The families of Israeli hostages on Monday demanded that the next steps in the US-brokered Gaza peace plan be put on hold until Hamas returns the remaining bodies of dead captives.

“Hamas knows exactly where every one of the deceased hostages is held. Two weeks have passed since the deadline set in the agreement for the return of all 48 hostages, yet 13 remain in Hamas captivity,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

Further, the Israeli military has accused Hamas of staging a propaganda campaign which lies about efforts to recover slain hostages:

Hamas are lying about our hostages and here’s the proof:

Yesterday, Hamas terrorists were filmed removing body remains from a prepared structure and re-burying them nearby, before summoning Red Cross representatives to stage a false “discovery” for photographers.

Despite… pic.twitter.com/c9CkJo3msW

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 28, 2025

developing…

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins and leftist ‘Presidential historian’ Alexis Coe agreed Monday that talk of President Trump serving a third term is “a threat” and that it would be a “nightmare scenario”.

As we earlier highlighted, Trump responded to a reporter who asked about Steve Bannon’s remarks that there is a plan for Trump to run for a third term.

The President largely dismissed the notion, saying he wouldn’t run as Vice President and then have the new President step aside because the American people “wouldn’t like it.”

Trump did, however, say that he’d “love” to run again, and that was enough to send leftists into full on meltdown, as usual.

Coe, who writes for the New York Times, declared “it is important to remember the checks on executive power have happened over time, not as many as we should have had, and I say that as a presidential historian.”

“But I mean, calling in a third term is something that Washington in his farewell address would’ve called something different. He called it a despot, but you know, something like despots, dictator, monarch. That’s not going to poll well with focus groups,” Coe continued.

🚨 JUST IN: President Trump has CNN losing their MINDS after confirming he’d be eligible to serve a 3rd term as president – they’re now saying Trump is a “despot” and a “threat” to the nation

“We have to take this quite seriously! It’s a THREAT!” 😂

“There are nightmare… pic.twitter.com/RDTrpq5s1v

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 27, 2025

“And so I think calling it a third term is an interesting choice of words when combined, as Steve Bannon said the other day, words like providence,” Coe added.

Collins interjected, “Yeah, what is this sort of flirtation Trump has of a third term, coupled with what Steve Bannon is talking about in raising the idea, you know, maybe there are different ways?”

She continued, “what about an acolyte or a proxy, and Trump staying very involved as an ex-president who would be then, let’s be clear, well into his eighties. What is the precedent for that?”

Coe responded, “We have a president, and then that is supposed to be leader, that is the democratically elected leader of what now longest running republic in history of world. Perhaps the providence is that at 250 it’s no longer.”

She continued, “The president should not, you know, the Constitution is really clear. You’re elected, you can serve a certain amount of time and then no longer.”

“And I think there are as Bannon threatened, I would say like we do have to take this quite seriously. We should view it as a threat,” Coe asserted, adding “There are patterns and nightmare scenarios that we can imagine but what we do have to decide here as Americans no matter what party belong to is what kind of country do you have?”

They cried “dictator” when he fixed the border, “tyrant” when he fixed the economy, and now “despot” because he might fix America again. 😂 Keep crying, CNN.

— I HÆRTTΞ S-L4 (@IheartTesla) October 27, 2025

It’s amazing how hard they work to select a minute portion of what he said to go ballistic over. You know they watched the whole thing and know he said he wouldn’t do that. Gaslighting!

— Kathy (@MsIndyRay) October 27, 2025

I think they want a Trump third term more than maga. It’s all they talk about.

— Florida Man World Order 📛🪽⛱️ (@_kevin1984) October 27, 2025

LmaOOOOoO pic.twitter.com/WJomL0x23i

— ToniG19 (@toni_g19) October 27, 2025

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Microsoft and OpenAI signed a new, long-term, definitive agreement that opens the next chapter of their partnership, advancing their “vision to advance artificial intelligence responsibly” and “make its benefits broadly accessible.”

Under the new agreement, OpenAI’s recapitalization and formation of a public benefit corporation (PBC) means that Microsoft now holds a 27% stake, down from 32.5% in previous funding rounds. This stake is now valued at $135 billion. 

“The agreement preserves key elements that have fueled this successful partnership – meaning OpenAI remains Microsoft’s frontier model partner and Microsoft continues to have exclusive IP rights and Azure API exclusivity until Artificial General Intelligence (AGI),” Microsoft wrote in a press release. 

OpenAI plans to purchase an additional $250 billion in Azure services. Microsoft will have access to OpenAI’s models until 2032. However, the new agreement shows that Microsoft loses its exclusive right of first refusal as the compute provider for the chatbot-maker. 

Microsoft outlines the new framework governing its partnership with OpenAI:

• Once AGI is declared by OpenAI, that declaration will now be verified by an independent expert panel.

• Microsoft’s IP rights for both models and products are extended through 2032 and now include models post-AGI, with appropriate safety guardrails.

• Microsoft’s IP rights to research, defined as the confidential methods used in the development of models and systems, will remain until either the expert panel verifies AGI or through 2030, whichever is first. Research IP includes, for example, models intended for internal deployment or research only. Beyond that research IP does not include model architecture, model weights, inference code, finetuning code, and any IP related to data center hardware and software; and Microsoft retains these non-Research IP rights.

• Microsoft’s IP rights now exclude OpenAI’s consumer hardware.

• OpenAI can now jointly develop some products with third parties. API products developed with third parties will be exclusive to Azure. Non-API products may be served on any cloud provider.

• Microsoft can now independently pursue AGI alone or in partnership with third parties.

• If Microsoft uses OpenAI’s IP to develop AGI, prior to AGI being declared, the models will be subject to compute thresholds; those thresholds are significantly larger than the size of systems used to train leading models today. The revenue share agreement remains until the expert panel verifies AGI, though payments will be made over a longer period of time.

• OpenAI has contracted to purchase an incremental $250B of Azure services, and Microsoft will no longer have a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider.

• OpenAI can now provide API access to US government national security customers, regardless of the cloud provider.

• OpenAI is now able to release open weight models that meet requisite capability criteria.

Earlier.

ORACLE CEO: NOT CONCERNED ABOUT “AI BUBBLE”

well duh

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 28, 2025

However, according to The Information last week, Microsoft executives warned that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s AI infrastructure demands could create overcapacity risks in data centers. That report was followed by another that showed ChatGPT’s mobile app growth may already have peaked (read the report).

Also, Goldman’s James Schneider told clients, “The net impact of our model updates extends the duration of peak datacenter occupancy well into 2026 (from the end of 2025 previously). After this point, we forecast a modest, but gradual loosening of supply/demand balance in 2027…”

Don’t question the AI spending. 

A recent CNBC report put OpenAI’s valuation at around $500 billion. 

American Consumers’ confidence dipped to 94.6 in October (but beat expectations of 93.4) from an upwardly revised September print of 95.6.

A measure of expectations for the next six months fell in October to 71.5, the lowest since June, while a metric of present conditions increased.

Source: Bloomberg

This is the third straight monthly decline in confidence

“Consumer confidence moved sideways in October, only declining slightly from its upwardly revised September level,” said Stephanie Guichard, Senior Economist, Global Indicators at The Conference Board.

“Changes to the individual subcomponents were also limited and largely cancelled each other out. The Present Situation Index regained some strength after September’s drop. Consumers’ view of current business conditions inched upward, while their appraisal of current job availability improved for the first time since December 2024. On the other hand, all three components of the Expectations Index weakened somewhat. Consumers were a bit more pessimistic about future job availability and future business conditions while optimism about future income retreated slightly.”

Under the hood, The Conference Board survey shows the trend of a weaker labor market continues…

Source: Bloomberg

Among demographic groups, confidence declined for consumers under 35 years old and, to a lesser extent, among consumers over 55. Confidence improved for consumers aged 35 to 54.

By income, confidence fell for consumers making less than $75K a year, but improved for most of the income groups making more than $75K, with the largest increase among those earning over $200K.

Younger consumers and consumers earning over $75K have been the most optimistic overall.

By partisan affiliation, confidence improved among Independents, declined among Democrats, and was also slightly down among Republicans.

Finally, Guichard concluded:

“Consumers’ write-in responses were led by references to prices and inflation, which continued to be the main topic influencing consumers’ views of the economy. References to tariffs declined further this month but remained elevated.”

However, Consumer assessments of their Family’s Current Financial Situation improved in October after dropping in September.

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

A federal magistrate judge appointed during the Biden administration earlier this week released the anarchist accused of posting a bounty targeting Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

The judge, Douglas Micko, allowed Tyler Maxon Avalos to be released from a Minnesota federal prison as long as he does not travel outside the state and undergoes GPS monitoring. 

Avalos was arrested on Oct. 16 after allegedly posting a $45,000 bounty on Bondi, alongside an image of her with a target symbol over her head. 

Authorities were alerted to the threat on Oct. 9, describing it as a murder-for-hire scheme.

The post included the caption, “*cough cough* when they don’t serve us then what?” 

According to prosecutors, Avalos’s TikTok profile used an anarchist symbol in place of the letter “A” in “Wacko.” The page also featured a link to “An Anarchist FAQ Book,” according to Law and Order. 

An FBI affidavit detailed Avalos’s lengthy criminal record, including a 2022 felony stalking conviction and a 2016 felony third-degree domestic battery.  

He was also charged in April 2016 with misdemeanor domestic assault, which was later upgraded to felony domestic assault by strangulation. 

Under Micko’s order, Avalos must avoid alcohol, surrender any weapons, stay away from the internet and comply with a daily curfew while awaiting further court proceedings. 

Micko was appointed to the bench by the district judges of the District of Minnesota in April 2023, replacing Judge Kate Menendez, who was elevated to a higher district court position by President Joe Biden.