NEWS UPDATE

October 24, 2026

07:35 PM France Rises Up Again: Hundreds of Thousands Protest Macron as Soldiers Patrol the Streets of Paris

France is seeing another uprising against rising living costs and policies that are making everyday life unaffordable for more and more people. On Saturday, 410,000 people took to the streets, according to the Interior Ministry, while unions say the turnout was twice that number. In Paris alone, 110,000 people demonstrated largely peacefully, while the government mobilized 70,000 police officers and gendarmes and sent soldiers onto the Champs-Élysées. Stores were boarded up, the Louvre and other museums closed, and more than 20 subway stations shut down. Trash cans burned in Marseille, clashes broke out in Lyon, Bordeaux, and Grenoble, and police used tear gas elsewhere. By early afternoon, 135 people had been arrested, many following preemptive searches. The protests, which began with students several weeks ago, have now spread to Belgium and Italy. In Orléans, people also demonstrated against Marine Le Pen's far-right party. "We shed tears for shops, but not for people who are getting poorer all year long," said a 22-year-old student. Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced further resistance if President Macron refused to give ground. France has soldiers, water cannons, and armored police units. They won't do much to help its citizens pay their rising bills.

10:50 AM Americans Are Paying for Trump's Wars at the Grocery Store: Now Republicans May Be Facing the Bill

Donald Trump wanted to make America great again. Now Americans are paying for his foreign policy at the gas pump and the grocery store. 78 percent blame his policies for rising prices while their incomes fail to keep up. The war against Iran is driving up energy costs, and his tariffs are making goods more expensive. Trump, of all people, who promised to keep America out of new foreign wars, has been fighting a war for nearly 8 months that most Americans oppose. To bring down gas prices, he eased sanctions on Russian diesel and pressured Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries. Ahead of the November 3 congressional elections, he's promising not to launch another attack on Iran for now. His approval rating has fallen to 31 percent, and even Republican candidates are distancing themselves from him. Democrats could win control of the House of Representatives, and the Senate is up for grabs, too. But even a defeat for his party would hardly have to slow Trump down on foreign policy. Washington now faces an uncomfortable possibility: A president who can no longer run for reelection could become even more willing to throw his weight around overseas after losing his majority in Congress.

05:00 AM Hegseth Declares Chinese Cultural Institutes a Threat to America: The Pentagon Sees Propaganda and Mental Infiltration

The U.S. Department of Defense has officially designated Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes at American universities as a threat to national security. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claims that 80 Chinese propaganda cells have sprung up at 30 universities under different names and with new charters. Their mission, he says, is to steal intellectual property and infiltrate the minds of American students. In a video statement, Hegseth said the Pentagon had systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations over the past 2 months. Washington has accused Confucius Institutes of spreading Chinese government propaganda for years. Hegseth provided no evidence to support his latest accusations in his statement. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the Pentagon's imagination, language and cultural centers have become a national security issue, where simply having ties to China is enough to raise suspicions of political influence.

23. Oktober 2026

02:45 PM Espionage for Moscow: Ukrainian Suspected of Spying on Germany's Defense Industry and NATO Defenses

A Ukrainian citizen is being held in pretrial detention in Germany on suspicion of spying for Russia. The man, identified by investigators as Vadym Y., allegedly gathered information about German weapons production and military personnel. According to federal prosecutors, his targets also included military facilities involved in securing NATO's eastern flank. The suspect is believed to have been in contact with a Russian intelligence service through an intermediary since at least July 2025. In addition to publicly available information, he allegedly sought specific details from representatives of the European defense industry. Federal Criminal Police officers arrested him in Brandenburg, and a court ordered him held in pretrial detention on Friday. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned that Germany should expect more espionage cases of this kind

02:50 Uhr 240 Milliarden Dollar schwer und Angst vor 5 Prozent Steuer: Für Zuckerberg wird sogar die Aktienstruktur geändert

240 Milliarden Dollar Vermögen reichen Mark Zuckerberg offenbar nicht, um eine mögliche Steuerrechnung ohne Aufregung hinzunehmen. Kalifornien will im November über eine einmalige Vermögensteuer von 5 Prozent für Milliardäre abstimmen. Zuckerberg erwog deshalb, den Bundesstaat zu verlassen. Nun hat Meta mit seinem eigenen Vorstandschef eine Vereinbarung geschlossen: Neue Aktien ohne Stimmrecht sollen ihm ermöglichen, Milliarden für eine mögliche Steuerzahlung aufzubringen, während seine Kontrolle über das Unternehmen unangetastet bleibt. Dafür verpflichtet er sich, weitere 8 Jahre am Unternehmenssitz zu wohnen. Die Steuer wurde noch gar nicht beschlossen, doch für den Mann mit 240 Milliarden Dollar Vermögen wird bereits vorgesorgt. Andere Steuerzahler müssen ihre Rechnungen aus den Mitteln begleichen, die ihnen zur Verfügung stehen. Zuckerberg erhält dafür eine eigens vereinbarte Lösung seines Unternehmens. Wie weit der Einfluss eines Milliardärs reicht, zeigt sich manchmal besonders deutlich, wenn er gebeten werden könnte, einen Teil seines Vermögens abzugeben.

Midterms Topstory Trumpland USA

Trump Gets the Century as a Gift and Hands It Off to a Staffer

byTEAM KAIZEN BLOG

24. October 2026

batch_Kopie von Kopie von Kopie von kaizennewsday(835)

An honor is worth only as much as the freedom of the person giving it. On Thursday evening, October 22, a young man stood on the tarmac at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, and he hadn't brought that freedom with him in the first place. Joe Mitchell is 29 and wants a seat in Congress. He previously served in the Iowa state legislature, then worked in housing for the Trump administration. Now he's running in the state's 2nd Congressional District in northeastern Iowa. At the end of his speech, he held up a gold-framed certificate.

"Man of the Century." He had made up the award himself.

Beyond parody: Republican congressional candidate Joe Mitchell of Iowa presented Trump with the "Man of the Century" award last night and declared that Trump had "done more for humanity and for America than any other president ever."

Zach Lahn is the Republican candidate for governor of Iowa and is running in the November 3, 2026 election alongside Derek Wulf, the candidate for lieutenant governor.

Also read our latest article: His Own Parents Are Suing Him for $275,000, and Iowa Is Supposed to Make Him Lieutenant Governor

He even threw in the explanation, free of charge. Trump had never been given the Nobel Peace Prize, which was a disgrace, so Mitchell had simply invented a new award. This man had done more for humanity and America than any president before him. Nobody had kept the country safer. And because one superlative alone might get blown away in the Iowa wind, Mitchell tossed in another: the greatest president they'd ever had.

Trump accepted the certificate and handed it to a staffer. Then he simply kept talking. Never has an entire century changed hands so quickly.

Before that, Mitchell had worked his way through thanking Trump for everything he'd done in the capital. Washington was finally a respectable city again, Trump had cleaned it up. It was safe now, and clean to boot. Thank God he was building the ballroom, thank God those awful bike lanes were disappearing. Then came the joke that will be following him around for a long time: Nobody rode bicycles in Iowa. In Iowa, people rode Harleys, right?

Joe Mitchell: "Thank God you're building the ballroom. Thank God you're getting rid of those awful bike lanes. We don't ride bicycles in Iowa."

Every summer, Iowa hosts RAGBRAI, the oldest multiday bicycle ride in the world. No other ride is longer, and none is bigger. Tens of thousands of cyclists and spectators make their way from west to east across the state, passing through one small town after another. It's hard to pretend bicycles don't exist in a state you can ride across on two wheels. Incidentally, a Harley has only two wheels, too.

Lindsay James, his Democratic opponent, responded online. She serves in the state legislature, where Mitchell once sat, and works as a Presbyterian chaplain. She knew Joe had been spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago lately, she wrote, but back here in Iowa, people were pretty proud of their bikes. Maybe he should sign up to volunteer at RAGBRAI. On Friday, she followed up in a fundraising appeal. The award was a fake, nothing more than a photo op with Donald Trump. It showed where Mitchell's priorities lay: Big donors and national political heavyweights mattered more to him than families in northeastern Iowa.

Mitchell had word sent out Friday morning that some people had lost their sense of humor. Being lectured about humor by the guy with the gold frame has a certain charm of its own.

The seat is currently held by Republican Ashley Hinson, who has served 3 terms in the House and is now making a run for the Senate. Trump campaigned for Mitchell on the tarmac, and his party is determined to hold the district. Election analysts rate the race a toss-up, with one now giving the Democrat a slight edge. Plenty of Republicans are keeping their distance from Trump this fall. Mitchell ran toward him with open arms in one of the most hotly contested districts in the country.

As grotesque as our images, this time from Sioux City, may look, and as close to madness as that gold frame may shine, behind it lies a reality nobody is laughing about anymore. Under Trump, human rights are plunging into the abyss, and with them, the pillars that hold up a democracy are crumbling. Human rights know no borders. Stopping their decline is the work we do every single day, and we need your support to do it.

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Trump doesn't get the awards he covets. The others fall into his lap like autumn leaves. Hardly had he lost the 2020 election when the Republicans' Senate campaign committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, invented a "Champion of Freedom" award for him. When the Nobel Prize failed to materialize despite all his begging, world soccer's governing body, FIFA, cobbled together its own peace prize to make the president feel better.

Also read our latest articles: Investigative Report: A Bus to Mexico, a Lost Passport, and 427 Elderly People: How America Erases People From Their Own Lives

From the Kaizen Files: ICE Arrests Three Couples Outside an Elementary School in Los Angeles

Earlier this year, coal executives appeared before him alongside miners wearing hard hats and presented him with a trophy. It proclaimed him the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal. One month later, House Speaker Mike Johnson created the America First Award, another freshly invented honor. Trump became its first recipient and received a giant eagle statue.