03 World

Blurb:

Already deadly as a tropical storm, Melissa rapidly intensified into a Category 3 hurricane late Saturday night, officially upgrading the system to major status to ratchet up forecasts for Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, with each nation potentially suffering life-threatening impacts. according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Over the next few days, Melissa is forecasted to continue rapid intensification into a massive Category 5 hurricane, per the NHC.

Blurb:

Lobbying in Washington is booming to record-high levels, and companies are rushing to hire Trump-allied firms in their efforts to influence the policy pronouncements spilling out of the White House. Overall, federal lobbying spending is up by 21% compared with last year, according to the Washington Post’s tally of expenditures through the third quarter of 2025. In the surge, the firm of Trump campaign fundraiser Brian Ballard has become the highest-paid lobbying shop, and other Trump-aligned firms are seeing an influx of clients as trade and tariff policies churn.

The pharmaceutical industry has juiced its lobbying spending: heavyweight PhRMA is certain to blow past its record high in lobbying spending set last year. The nearly $29.7 million the drugmakers’ group has spent through Q3 approaches the amount that it spent in all of 2024. Health industry lobbyists are weighing in on moves by the Trump administration and the GOP-led Congress to cut Medicaid funding and fire staffers in the overhaul of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Department of Health and Human Services.

Blurb:

U.S. states are warning food aid recipients their benefits may not be distributed beginning Saturday if the federal government shutdown stretches into its fourth week.

Warnings issued on at least two dozen state websites flag the potential for an unprecedented benefit gap in November for Americans who get aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, and the nearly seven million who receive aid from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

The shutdown, which began Oct. 1, is now the second-longest on record.

Blurb:

Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping while the pair are at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum later this week in South Korea.

The meeting will come seven months after then-foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly confirmed in March that four Canadians holding dual Chinese citizenship were given the death penalty in China.

At the time, Joly said the federal government “strongly condemns” the actions by China over what they called “drug-related crimes.”

Carney said he and Xi will discuss “a broad range of issues, both in terms of the commercial relationship as well as the evolution of the global system.”

The planned meeting comes on the heels of Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s visit to Beijing, where she met with her counterpart, Wang Yi.

Blurb:

How did a 34-year-old nobody climb to the edge of running America’s biggest city? These things don’t just happen, they are made to happen.

Zohran Mamdani is funded by a $2.9 million dollar network of George Soros and Islamic activists donors.

George Soros’ foundation funneled $37 million to left-wing groups that backed Zohran Mamdani’s run for New York City mayor. The Working Families Party and nine other progressive organizations that supported Mamdani all received substantial support from Soros-aligned nonprofits. While Mamdani campaigns against wealth and billionaires, critics say he is benefiting from the very system he denounces.

Blurb:

For years, Christians have been systemically persecuted in Nigeria, with Muslim terrorist groups and militias periodically raiding, raping, murdering, and enslaving Christian civilians in the northern part of the country.

According to a recent article in Catholic Vote, “[F]rom 2019 to 2023, a total of 55,910 people were killed,” and “21,621 people were abducted.” During this four-year timespan, Nigeria “saw an average of eight attacks per day involving killings and/or abductions.” This has continued to this day, with “more than 7,000 Christians killed in Nigeria during the first 220 days of 2025.”

Yet Christian leaders continue to bury their heads in the sand about this crisis. In a recent speech, Pope Leo XIV carried on the unimpressive legacy of his predecessor by directing his righteous ire on Western nations being too inhospitable to immigrants: “With the abuse of vulnerable migrants, we are witnessing, not the legitimate exercise of national sovereignty, but rather grave crimes committed or tolerated by the state.”

Blurb:

According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. military assets carried out three strikes on four vessels in the Pacific Ocean Monday, marking at least 13 strikes on 14 vessels since early September.

At least one person survived the latest attacks, he said.

“The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics,” according to Hegseth.

Eight men were killed in the first strike, another four men were killed in a second strike, and three more men were killed in a third strike, he said.

Blurb:

Twenty-three people have been arrested and two police officers injured during a second night of disorder outside a Dublin hotel housing asylum seekers.

Peaceful protests started near the the CityWest Hotel in Saggart, west Dublin, earlier this week over an alleged sexual assault of a young girl in the area, but by Tuesday they had turned violent.

Rioters threw bottles and bricks, and discharged fireworks at officers on Wednesday evening, according to the police.

Two officers were taken to hospital for treatment, with one struck on the head by a bottle and the other sustaining an injury to their arm and shoulder.

“The public disorder was predominantly carried out by young adult males and teenagers,” the police said in a statement.

Blurb:

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned Israel on Wednesday against annexing the West Bank, saying steps taken by parliament and settler violence threatened a Gaza deal.

Israeli lawmakers voted on Wednesday to advance two bills on annexing the occupied West Bank, barely a week after President Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that was retaliation for a Hamas attack.

“I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we can be supportive of right now,” Rubio said of annexation as he boarded his plane for a visit to Israel. Annexation moves are “threatening for the peace deal,” he told reporters.

Blurb:

SINGAPORE: Chinese state oil majors have suspended purchases of seaborne Russian oil after the United States imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Moscow’s two biggest oil companies, multiple trade sources said on Thursday (Oct 23).

The move comes as refiners in India, the largest buyer of seaborne Russian oil, are set to sharply cut their crude imports from Moscow to comply with the US sanctions imposed over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A sharp drop in oil demand from Russia’s two largest customers will put a strain on Moscow’s oil revenues and force the world’s top importers to seek alternative supplies and push up global prices.

Blurb:

It’s out with one dystopian tactic and on to the next for the British government’s ongoing assault on free speech.

London’s Metropolitan Police force told The Daily Mail on Monday that it is pulling back on investigating “non-crime hate incidents,” and instead will “focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations.” But after the U.K. government’s full-throated attack on free speech these last couple of years, it is going to take a lot more than words to restore trust. A good start would be dismantling other dystopian policies that seem to be a censorship crackdown waiting to happen, like its ever-expanding digital identification program.

Blurb:

Canada’s top constitutional freedom group warned that government officials have “relinquished” control over “future health crises” by accepting the terms of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) revised International Health Regulations (IHR).

The warning came in a report released by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF). The group said that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s acceptance earlier this year of the WHO’s globalist-minded “pandemic agreement” has “placed Canadian sovereignty on loan to an unelected international body.”

“By accepting the WHO’s revised IHR, the report explains, Canada has relinquished its own control over future health crises and instead has agreed to let the WHO determine when a ‘pandemic emergency’ exists and what Canada must do to respond to it, after which Canada must report back to the WHO,” the JCCF noted.