World
Brent crude touched $110 a barrel on Friday for the first time since 20 May, rising 3.7 percent as attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and continued strikes on Saudi and Russian energy sites kept supply tight. At least nine tankers and cargo ships have been attacked in the strait in a week, and crude exports through the waterway are running at about 70 percent of prewar levels. Traffic is shifting to alternative Gulf and Indian Ocean ports, with delays building at Indian gateways. Higher freight and insurance costs are feeding into fuel and food prices weeks before US midterm elections.
Bloomberg
Politics
White House press secretary Katie Zacharia is transitioning out of the job after less than a week, according to ABC News sources, and President Donald Trump publicly questioned whether she wanted to keep it. Trump said he had told her she did not have to take the role, adding: welcome to the world of Trump. Zacharia, who held her first briefing on Tuesday, came from Trump Media and had briefly worked at the Department of Homeland Security. Her exit leaves the White House press office without a regular on-camera spokesperson during a war, an energy price shock and a midterm election campaign.
AP
Business
US consumer prices rose 3.7 percent in September from a year earlier, the Labor Department said, up from 3.4 percent in August and above the 3.6 percent economists expected. Prices rose 0.6 percent on the month, the biggest gain in five months, while core inflation ran at 2.6 percent. Energy costs drove much of the increase as Brent crude touched $110 a barrel on attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. The report is the last full inflation snapshot before the midterm elections and complicates the Federal Reserve's next move.
AP
Technology
TSMC reported third-quarter revenue of US$46.72 billion, up 41.2 percent from a year earlier and above its own guidance, with net income of NT$763.06 billion, a sixth straight record quarter. High-performance computing, the bucket for AI accelerators, grew 22 percent from the previous quarter to 68 percent of revenue, while consumer electronics fell to 1 percent. Chief executive C.C. Wei said AI demand remains far above TSMC's ability to supply. The 2nm node is already 8 percent of wafer revenue, and the company guided fourth-quarter revenue to US$52.3-54.3 billion.
Reuters
Science
A RIKEN-led team reported single-qubit gate fidelities above 99.99 percent across a five-qubit silicon spin array, with some measurements near 99.999 percent, in a study published in Nature Physics. Crucially, the fidelities held while up to three qubits ran simultaneously on one shared microwave control line. The researchers traced crosstalk in the array and used tailored Kaiser-window pulses plus pairwise phase calibrations to suppress it. When all five qubits operated in parallel, fidelity stayed at the 99.9 percent fault-tolerant threshold or above. Silicon spin qubits can be made with standard CMOS chip tools.
Nature Physics
Sports
The WNBA Finals begin on Saturday at Chase Center in San Francisco, where the Golden State Valkyries host the Atlanta Dream in Game 1 of a best-of-seven series. Both teams swept their semifinals: Golden State beat the defending champion Las Vegas Aces 3-0, while Atlanta swept the New York Liberty to reach the Finals for the first time since 2013. The Valkyries went 32-12 in the regular season and won all three meetings with Atlanta. Games 3 and 4 move to State Farm Arena in Atlanta later this month.
ESPN
Health
About 11.4 million people developed dementia worldwide in 2023, and new global estimates project 24.7 million new cases a year by 2050, according to research led by UNSW Sydney's Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing and published in JAMA Neurology. Incidence was higher among women, at 10.6 cases per 1,000 person-years against 8.6 for men, and much higher in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers said population ageing means countries cannot simply wait for people to develop dementia and then respond, and called for earlier risk reduction, diagnosis and care.
JAMA Neurology
Environment
The 2026 El Nino has tied the all-time record for daily strength, with the Nino 3.4 anomaly reaching 3.07 degrees Celsius above average in October, and forecasts point to a monthly peak near 4.2 degrees in December. A coastally trapped Kelvin wave generated by the pattern is pushing sea levels about a foot above normal along Southern California and moving north, raising the risk of coastal flooding and erosion. Scientists say much of the global temperature effect will arrive in 2027, and Indonesia's fire emissions are on track to match this century's record.
Carbon Brief