Oct 1, 2026
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military announced Wednesday that it completed the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group. The last U.S. troops left an air base in northern Iraq under a deal between Baghdad and Washington. The withdrawal, agreed on two years ago, comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war between the United States and Iran that has also sometimes spilled over into Iraq, with Iran-backed militias firing on U.S. troops and the U.S. striking the groups' strongholds. In recent years, Washington has appeared to seek to shift its focus from the Middle East toward Asia, but that shift has been inconsistent, with the Pentagon alternating between reducing its Mideast presence and then finding itself engaging in new conflicts — including the ongoing war in Iran. Baghdad touted the end of the U.S. mission as a sign of the country's increasing strength and sovereignty. The withdrawal was also celebrated by Iran-backed groups but raised concerns among some other Iraqis, particularly in the Kurdish region, where many fear a res
TEL AVIV, Israel — A pilot on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel stabbed another pilot Wednesday and then apparently tried to crash the jetliner carrying around 170 people, Israel's prime minister said. Passengers and crew subdued the attacker, and the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia. As some passengers screamed, the FlyDubai flight issued an emergency alert and abruptly descended thousands of feet (meters). Israel scrambled warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking. As a plane carrying passengers from the flight landed Wednesday evening in Israel, it was not clear what motivated the attack. Video footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Associated Press showed two men on the plane's floor, bloodied and wounded. Two people appeared to be providing medical treatment, while two others guarded the cockpit. “We are guarding the pilot,” one person said in Hebrew. In another video, passengers wept and cried out as the aircraft shook. Those who intervened “saved many lives and prevented a major disaster,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya
WASHINGTON — U.S. inflation increased less than expected in August and price pressures were more moderate in the prior month than previously reported, likely reducing the urgency for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates again in October. Another rate hike this year, however, remains on the table as the report from the Commerce Department on Wednesday showed consumer spending surging last month. The economy so far appears to be holding up despite headwinds from the US-Israeli war with Iran, which has raised energy prices, with diesel prices at record highs. Financial markets knocked down bets for a rate increase next month. "The less-than-feared price data for August may buy the Fed time to await more data and pass on October 28, but still-elevated inflation and a resilient consumer and economy point to another rate hike by year-end," said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index rose 0.3 percent last month after a downwardly revised 0.1 percent gain in July, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis s
The Nasdaq jumped more than 1 percent on Wednesday, leading gains among Wall Street's main indexes, as a softer-than-anticipated inflation reading buoyed hopes that the Federal Reserve might not hike rates as soon as next month. A Commerce Department report showed the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index stood at 3.4 percent on an annual basis in August against estimates of 3.7 percent, per economists polled by Reuters. Separately, second-quarter GDP data showed that the U.S. economy grew at a solid clip. "The PCE report today was under a microscope as participants try to get a handle on how aggressive the Fed needs to be with future rate increases," said Steve Wyett, chief investment strategist at BOK Financial. Traders now see a roughly 38 percent chance of an October hike, compared to a more than 50 percent chance seen one day prior, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. Barclays analysts also noted that recent methodology changes in calculating PCE by the Bureau of Economic Analysis also contributed to a lower reading. Most megacap and growth stocks ticked higher, with Am
BAGHDAD — Iraqis celebrated the departure of U.S. forces after more than two decades of war on Wednesday, though many feared that any security vacuum could increase the power of Iran-backed militias or provide an opening for the return of Islamic State. The withdrawal of the final troops, mainly from an airbase in Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, ended the biggest U.S. war of the century, which brought widespread devastation and chaos from which Iraq has yet to fully emerge. Iran, which has entrenched its influence in Iraq through allied armed groups and is determined to drive all U.S. forces out of the Middle East, views the U.S. pullout as a triumph for its "axis of resistance" of allied armed groups across the region. Iraqi troops paraded in vehicles through the streets of Baghdad and the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf to mark the pullout. The withdrawal "fills our hearts with joy," said Baghdad resident Ahmed Salah, who said he felt reborn at the age of 70. But he also said it was now time for powerful militia groups to surrender their weapons, "and let the government be th
BRUSSELS — Russia has warned NATO it would be ready to resort to nuclear weapons if the Western alliance attempted to cut off Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave that borders the Baltic Sea. In a document sent to NATO and seen by Reuters, Moscow accused the alliance of a "dangerous and reckless course" that entailed "high risks of the outbreak of a direct armed conflict". The document said this included the possibility of "Russian strikes against decision-making centers in the alliance's member states right from the outset". "Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, in order to defend its territory should NATO countries undertake any attempt aimed at isolating the Kaliningrad Region from the rest of the country," the diplomatic note said. The warning highlighted Moscow's urgent concern at what it has presented as a growing NATO threat to Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized Russian territory that is wedged between Poland and Lithuania and is slightly bigger than the US state of Connecticut. Russian Foreign Ministry sp
WASHINGTON — US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced the creation of a new military command that would be dedicated to building and providing autonomous and robotic capabilities across the US military. The command, which Hegseth said would be called "Autonomous Warfare Command," highlights the rapidly changing nature of warfare and the need to make progress on systems like drones and the use of artificial intelligence. Creating a new command is not common — the last one was US Space Command in 2019 — and the move reflects the Pentagon's push to shift from costly conventional weapons platforms to cheaper, AI-driven autonomous systems that have proved decisive in recent conflicts. Speaking in front of hundreds of junior officers and enlisted personnel at Quantico, Virginia, in a speech peppered with attacks on the media, Hegseth said the command would be led by a four-star officer. "The pace of war is changing faster than the process to support it," Hegseth said in a speech called the "State of the Force," in which he announced other changes, including the creation o
TEL AVIV, Israel — A copilot stabbed a captain in an apparent attempt to crash a jetliner as it was flying 174 people to Israel on Wednesday. But passengers burst into the cockpit and wrestled with the attacker even as the plane descended sharply, witnesses and Israel’s government said. The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The shaken passengers from the FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv landed Wednesday evening in Israel on another flight, as onlookers cheered. Israel's emergency services said they treated three passengers with minor injuries. It was not clear what motivated the attack, which led Israel to scramble warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking . In a CNN interview aired on Wednesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker was an Omani national and was being interrogated in Saudi Arabia, where he was arrested. Aviation experts were surprised the plane did not crash after a descent so extreme that most of the rudder was ripped off the tail. “We’re going to die,” passenger Naama Bershadski recalled thinking as
A second federal judge on Wednesday blocked an unprecedented $100,000 fee that US President Donald Trump has imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers. US District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, ruled that US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department failed to follow necessary rule-making processes before implementing Trump's fee. Gilliam, appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, granted a request by a coalition of unions, employers and nonprofits to block the agencies from implementing Trump's fee pending the outcome of a lawsuit they filed in October. The fee was temporarily blocked in June by a federal judge in Boston, ruling in a separate case brought by 20 states. A Boston-based appeals court in July declined to pause that decision. The Department of Homeland Security in August moved to adopt a permanent fee of about $103,000 that, when finalized, will likely be challenged in court. But that will involve different legal issues than lawsuits over the fee set by Trump. These suits have focused on the president's power
SAN FRANCISCO — Alphabet's Google on Wednesday announced a new top-tier artificial intelligence model to anchor its Gemini 4 generation of models in a fresh bid to catch up to rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI race. The new model, "Argon", is larger in size than Google's previous line of advanced "Pro" models, a company spokesperson said. "It's our most performant model yet built for complex workloads, and we see it comparable to frontier models like (OpenAI's) Astra and (Anthropic's) Opus on key coding and cyber benchmarks," the spokesperson said. Google said it was providing the model to select cybersecurity partners and was participating in the Trump administration's voluntary process for pre-release model access. It did not provide a timeline for the model's public release. The model posted better marks than Astra and Opus in terms of self-reported performance on several industry benchmarks, per a company press release. Still, Argon remained behind on certain other metrics, including two of the four coding-related benchmarks Google included in the release. Google no longer plans
BOSTON — More than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused nearly 1,000 children across three Massachusetts dioceses over decades, according to an investigative report the state's attorney general released on Wednesday. The report provided what Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell called the first full public accounting of the abuse and institutional failures that allowed it to proliferate for more than half a century at the Catholic dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester. Most of the abuse detailed in the report occurred before 2002, the year the clergy sex abuse scandal burst onto the international stage due to a Pulitzer Prize-winning report by the Boston Globe on how officials at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston routinely covered up sex abuse by priests. The state attorney general's investigation documented years of similar issues at the three dioceses in other parts of Massachusetts, which Campbell said knew children were being abused by priests and other clerics. "Too often they protected the reputation of the church rather than protecting children,"
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday reaffirms his commitment to lifting bilateral relations with China to a "new strategic level" in a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping marking China's National Day, Pyongyang's state media reported. In the letter for the 77th anniversary of the country's founding, Kim extended "the warmest congratulations and best wishes" to Xi and the Chinese people, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. Kim noted the two countries marked the 65th anniversary of their friendship treaty this year and are promoting exchanges "in all fields." "The history of the DPRK-China friendship, which was forged at the cost of blood and has been carried forward with genuine comradely friendship, can never be shaken no matter how the international situation may change," he wrote. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name. It is his country's "steadfast will" to "steadily develop the traditional relations of unity and cooperation" with China, he added. He also referred to his two recent summits with Xi. "I had meaningful meetin
