World
At least 39 people died when a boat carrying migrants toward Europe sank off Senegal, according to authorities and rescue teams. The vessel was on the Atlantic route that leads to Spain's Canary Islands, one of the deadliest sea crossings in the world. Rescue workers pulled bodies from the water while search efforts continued. The sinking adds to a rising toll on a route where overloaded wooden fishing boats frequently break down or capsize far from land. Rights groups have long warned that the crossing offers few chances of rescue once a boat loses power or drifts off course. Officials did not say how many people were aboard or how many survivors were found.
BBC News
Politics
Republican Representative Thomas Massie moved on Monday to force a House vote on articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing that the Pentagon chief violated the Constitution through his handling of the war with Iran. The vote must be held by Wednesday under House rules. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said he is a hard yes, while the Pentagon dismissed the effort as a phony investigation. The attempt is expected to fail in the Republican-led chamber, but it forces the party to take a public position on Hegseth weeks after sweeping midterm losses. The resolution is privileged, which means leaders cannot bury it in committee.
AP News
Business
US consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, more than economists expected, marking a third straight month of firm increases. The reading complicates the Federal Reserve's path as officials weigh whether to raise interest rates again in December. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed back to 5% after the data, and traders moved to price in the possibility of a larger-than-usual rate increase. Retail sales also rose, suggesting households are still spending. Gasoline prices fell below $4 a gallon for the first time since July, offering some relief, while food and shelter costs continued to push the index higher. Core services inflation, the category the Fed watches most closely, showed little improvement.
CNBC
Technology
Google announced two new systems in its eighth-generation Tensor Processing Unit lineup, the TPU 8tx and TPU 8i Max, both due to be available next year. The 8tx uses hardware-level confidential computing so customer data and model weights stay isolated while a model runs, and pairs TPU 8t silicon with AMD's fifth-generation EPYC processors. The 8i Max packs two TPU 8i chips into one package, doubling compute, on-chip SRAM and high-bandwidth memory throughput in the same rack footprint. Google says nearly 100 customers use its TPUs, and the launch widens its challenge to Nvidia in AI accelerators. Both systems are due on the market next year, and neither is an entirely new silicon design.
Bloomberg
Science
Physicists with the LHCb collaboration at CERN reported evidence for a particle decay that occurs roughly once in 10 billion decays, ending a search that began more than four decades ago. The result involves a beauty particle and agrees with predictions from the Standard Model, the framework that describes known particles and forces. Because such rare processes are sensitive to unknown particles, the measurement places new constraints on theories that go beyond the Standard Model. The collaboration said the finding does not point to new physics, but it sharpens the limits on what kinds of new physics can exist. More data from coming upgrades will be needed to confirm the observation and tighten the limits further.
CERN
Sports
The College Football Playoff will expand from 12 to 24 teams starting with the 2027 season under a five-year agreement with ESPN worth nearly $1.7 billion. The CFP management committee approved the change unanimously. The new format includes the four ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC champions, the highest-ranked team from the Group of Five conferences and 19 at-large teams. Sixteen playoff games will be played on campus. The deal keeps ESPN as the broadcast partner and eliminates the Power Four conference championship games, a change that had been a sticking point in negotiations. Sixteen of the games will be played on campus rather than at neutral sites.
ESPN
Health
The US Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID-19 vaccines for the 2026-27 season, with four products cleared: Pfizer-BioNTech's Comirnaty, Moderna's Spikevax and mNEXSPIKE, and Novavax's Nuvaxovid. The new formulas target XFG, a variant in the JN.1 lineage that advisers recommended in May. The vaccines are approved for adults 65 and older and for younger people with conditions that raise the risk of severe illness. Pfizer said shipping would begin immediately. The CDC said its existing recommendations for the 2026-27 respiratory season remain in effect while legal questions about federal guidance are unresolved. Pfizer said it would begin shipping doses immediately, with other makers following in the coming weeks.
FDA
Environment
Climate forecasters expect the El Niño that developed in the Pacific this year to become the strongest on record, with NOAA putting 75% odds that the October-to-December index reaches a level unmatched since 1950. Sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region were about 2C above average by mid-September and are forecast to peak near 3.4C above average. The event is unfolding on an already hot planet: Copernicus recorded the highest average sea surface temperature between 60N and 60S in August. Scientists expect record global heat in 2027 and shifts in rainfall, drought and hurricane patterns. Forecasters expect a wetter winter in California and a quieter Atlantic hurricane season.
NOAA