Friends – Katharina Hofmann

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NEWS UPDATE

October 27, 2026

07:05 PM Ceasefire for a Starving Town: The Guns Fall Silent in Oleshky While Russia Keeps Bombing Kyiv

After more than 4 years of Russian occupation, a local ceasefire went into effect in the Ukrainian town of Oleshky on Tuesday at 3 AM, brokered by Melania Trump with the involvement of Pope Leo. The ceasefire is supposed to last until Sunday, allowing humanitarian aid to get in and residents to evacuate. Both sides said they were honoring it. Of the town's former population of 24,000, only a few thousand remain in the devastated town. Some survive on just a cup of rice or buckwheat a day. Drinking water and medicine are in short supply, while electricity and heating have largely collapsed. Roads littered with mines make even the search for food a matter of life and death. Before evacuations can begin, those roads first have to be cleared of mines. Many of the people left behind are sick or very elderly and can barely manage to leave their homes. Ukrainian politician David Arakhamia called it the biggest de-escalation since 2022. By Tuesday evening, no violations of the local ceasefire had been reported. Meanwhile, Russia launched another barrage of ballistic missiles at Kyiv. At least 1 person was killed, and the city's important Southern Bridge and a university campus were damaged. President Zelenskyy also reported attacks on energy facilities and infrastructure in 10 other regions. Moscow described its attacks as strikes against military targets. Negotiations in Abu Dhabi are expected to continue in early November. Russia is still demanding that Ukraine give up the remaining parts of Donetsk that are under Ukrainian control. For now, the people of Oleshky are simply hoping for food.

05:15 AM Microsoft Wants to Shed 60,000 Employees: Billions for Artificial Intelligence, Cuts for Workers

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees, more than a quarter of its global workforce of 223,000. While the tech giant plans to spend $175 billion on investments in 2026 alone, primarily on artificial intelligence, it is looking to cut personnel costs. Affected divisions include Windows, Xbox and Copilot, as well as the finance and human resources departments. Microsoft already cut 4,800 jobs in July, after previously offering buyouts to around 9,000 American employees. The new program is available to eligible employees in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India. Wall Street took the news in stride: Microsoft shares rose by around 1 percent on Monday.

October 26, 2026

07:12 PM No Nobel Peace Prize for Trump: Now He Calls Norway a “Shithole Country”

Donald Trump called Norway a “shithole country” at a campaign rally on October 25, 2026, in Port Huron, Michigan. The American president declared that he no longer wanted immigrants from Norway coming to the United States because the Norwegian Nobel Committee had denied him the Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier in October, Trump had already called the decision an “indelible stain” on Norway. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide reminded him that the Nobel Committee makes its decisions independently and that the Norwegian government has no influence over who receives the award. No actual change to U.S. immigration policy concerning Norwegians has been announced so far. Norway is among the wealthiest countries in the world, and its sovereign wealth fund generated a record profit equivalent to $184.3 billion in the first half of 2026 alone. Trump, who has already hurled similar insults at Haiti, Libya, and other countries, is now targeting the people of an allied European nation with his abuse because an independent committee refused to give him an award.

05.30 AM Trump Exploits September 11 to Incite Hatred Against Muslim Senate Candidate

At a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan, Donald Trump compared Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the terrorists behind the September 11, 2001, attacks. The president called him a jihadist and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, without providing any evidence. Trump declared that 25 years after the attacks, Michigan needed to stop such a man from entering the Senate. He also claimed that El-Sayed would be the only senator required to go through a metal detector before entering the Capitol. Shouts of “traitor” and “deport” rang out from the predominantly white crowd, even though El-Sayed was born in Michigan. His Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, had himself made unsubstantiated claims about ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, although he stopped short of calling El-Sayed a terrorist. El-Sayed called the questioning of his loyalty to America shameful and pointed to Trump's financial ties to Saudi interests and the $400 million jet from Qatar. Barack Obama had already condemned the attacks on Saturday as an attempt to portray El-Sayed as less American. On November 3, Michigan will decide a fiercely contested Senate seat, while Trump turns the memory of 9/11 into a political weapon against a Muslim American.

October 25, 2026

06:44 AM The Internet Runs on PHP, but There's Not Enough Money to Keep It Secure

Two serious security vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language have set off alarm bells around the world. On October 21, 2026, government websites in several European countries were temporarily knocked offline as operators rolled out security updates. PHP powers up to 70 percent of all websites, yet the nonprofit PHP Foundation has just 1 full-time employee and 14 mostly part-time contractors. Executive Director Elizabeth Barron says the foundation is chronically underfunded, even though companies and governments rely heavily on the software. Artificial intelligence helped uncover vulnerabilities that had existed for 10 years, but at the same time, it's driving nearly twice as many proposed code changes, all of which have to be reviewed by humans. Cloudflare recorded millions of attempted attacks, but so far there is no evidence of successful exploitation before the vulnerabilities were disclosed or on systems that had already been patched. A technological foundation of the global internet is being protected by an organization whose staffing barely reflects the importance of its work. What a strange time we're living in, when organizations responsible for keeping us safe online are struggling to survive, just like independent investigative journalism. Both do work that millions of people depend on, while the willingness to support them financially remains frighteningly low. Just how much their work is taken for granted usually becomes clear only when something breaks down.

@katharina-hofmann

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