NIGERIA - Donald Trump has threatened to send the US military into Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if the African country does not stem what he described as the killing of Christians by Islamists. Mr Trump said on Saturday that he had asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack, one day after warning that Christianity was “facing an existential threat in Nigeria”. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians.” He added that the Nigerian government “BETTER MOVE FAST!”

USA - This Right-wing populist opposition to the Jewish state is far different from the traditional, pro-Israel stance of Reagan Republicans and evangelicals like Mike Huckabee, who is now US ambassador to Israel. Still, support is waning even among evangelicals, especially younger ones. This shifting view on the Right was on display on Wednesday night at Ole Miss, where vice-president JD Vance spoke to a crowd, organised by Turning Point USA. After a short speech, Vance answered questions from students. Two posed questions hostile to Israel. Instead of pushing back, the vice-president largely seemed to endorse the students’ antagonism. That’s new for such a prominent voice in Republican politics.

USA - In the hours after the fatal shooting of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Dr Nicholas Kardaras held his weekly college class on the impact of digital media on mental health. “I walked into my classroom that afternoon and one of my students said, ‘Oh, Kirk was just shot, we think he might be dead’,” said Kardaras, a professor at Stony Brook University in New York and one of the country’s foremost addiction experts. “Then another one — who is getting their mental health degree — said, ‘Well, yeah, but he had it coming’.” He said that it was an example of the rise of extreme “binary thinking” among members of Gen Z — the type demonstrated by the suspects behind the assassinations of Kirk in September and United CEO Brian Thompson last year. Kardaras said many of his students were “lionising” Robinson and Mangione, laying out the argument that “sometimes violence is necessary for the greater good”. “This healthcare CEO represents this evil, greedy, corporate archetype, and whoever takes him out is a hero,” he said. “The same thing with Charlie Kirk, who they see as a hate speech villain and Nazi fascist who deserved everything he got.”

USA - US banks have borrowed $50 billion in emergency funds in the last 15 days. It’s happening quietly. You have to watch the numbers more than the headlines. The liquidity that once made the system feel invincible is slipping away. The US banking system’s reserves, a key factor in the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep unwinding its balance sheet, tumbled for the third straight week dropping to the lowest level in more than five years, just as the central bank said this week it will stop the runoff after stress signals in money markets intensified. Bank reserves fell by about $102 billion to $2.8 trillion in the week through October 29, according to Fed data released on Thursday. That’s the lowest level since September 2020 and the biggest decline in just over a month. $102 billion gone in a week. $2.8 trillion left. That’s not abundance. That’s the edge of scarcity.

GUYANA - A £52 million road through the Amazon jungle is being built using British aid that is intended to help the climate, The Telegraph can reveal. The road in Guyana goes nowhere other than a tiny village and has long been criticised by environmentalists. It is just one among hundreds of schemes funded by taxpayers through the International Climate Finance initiative (ICF). If completed, the highway to which the UK is contributing will end not in Brazil, but in a ghost town – the village of Mabura, a cluster of buildings with a population of 150, a motel, an empty bar and an ever-growing population of stray dogs and rusting cars. Why would Britain pay for a road to nowhere? “I think that’s where the money ran out,” one local said. Few will have heard of the ICF outside Westminster circles. It will be used to spend £11.6 billion in foreign aid by the end of this financial year. Projects funded by ICF money include a push to stop ocean plastic pollution in landlocked African countries, support for the Nigerian oil industry, and the distribution of free condoms in the Congo to try to stop deforestation by slowing population growth.

USA - US grocers and food companies ranging from Walmart to Smithfield Foods are bracing for a dip in November sales if federal food aid benefits lapse for the first time due to the ongoing government shutdown. The shutdown has imperiled next month’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which serves nearly 42 million people. Neither Congress nor the US Department of Agriculture has acted to fund the benefits beyond Saturday. The gap could mean an $8 billion revenue drop for grocers, declining sales for their suppliers and reduced hours for workers as it drives SNAP recipients to reduce spending, trade groups, companies and a union said this week.

USA - Some companies say they are restructuring. Others are swapping out humans for AI. While some analysts believe the job cuts are a sign of more bad things to come for the economy, others have taken cues from some of the top brands that say they are shifting toward automation and AI, rendering thousands of jobs useless, especially in the warehouse, sorting, and human resources sectors.

UK - Last night, King Charles sensationally stripped Andrew of his Prince title and is throwing him out of the Royal Lodge after paying 'a peppercorn rent' for decades - effectively banishing the disgraced ex-duke from royal life for good. Charles has been left 'consistently embarrassed' by his brother's actions, it was claimed by the King's former biographer and close confidant Jonathan Dimbleby. The broadcasting veteran was left in 'no doubt' that the monarch has been 'consistently embarrassed, frustrated by and angry about' his brother's behaviour, he told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. Today, the ex-Duke of York wakes up as commoner Andrew Mountbatten Windsor - and ministers have suggested that, as an 'ordinary member of the public', he could be less protected from, for example, demands to testify in the US. When contacted by the Daily Mail, the Metropolitan Police did not rule out a possible prosecution.

QATAR - Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, said on Wednesday that Hamas violated the terms of the Gaza ceasefire deal when it attacked a group of Israeli soldiers on Tuesday, killing one of them. “Yesterday’s event was honestly something that [was] very disappointing and frustrating for us to see that it’s happening, and we were trying to contain it, and we mobilized right away after this, and in full coordination with the United States, and we have seen that the US also is committed to the deal,” al-Thani said at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York City on Wednesday. The Qatari prime minister firmly stated that the attack was “a violation by the Palestinian party,” although he came up short of accusing Hamas by name.

SUDAN - The lack of moral indignation over Sudan compared to Israel is striking. This is what a genocide looks like. The city was encircled by an earthen wall, trapping 250,000 people inside. Women, children, the elderly. With the siege complete, the dull drone of bombers heralded a relentless aerial bombardment before the troops moved in through the smoke with blood in their nostrils. “We have witnessed many of our relatives being massacred,” one man told reporters after managing to flee from the hellscape. “They were gathered in one place and killed. Now we have no idea what has happened to those who are still alive.”

SUDAN - East African nation has been torn apart by rival generals who were once allies. The war in Sudan began in April 2023, when allies General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo turned on each other. They had seized power together in a 2021 coup that derailed Sudan’s fragile transition to democracy. Their alliance collapsed over a plan to hand power to civilians and merge the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with the national army. General Burhan, head of the army, pushed for rapid integration under army command. Lieutenant General Dagalo, known as Hemedti, resisted, fearing a loss of autonomy and control over his vast military and financial networks. What began as a power struggle between two generals has since spiralled into what the United Nations has called “the world’s largest humanitarian crisis”. The conflict has uprooted about 12 million people from their homes, killed more than 150,000, and triggered famine across several regions.

UK - The people who really run Britain have been named by former prime minister Liz Truss – and they are not elected politicians. Left-wing “incompetent technocrats” have governed the UK for 30 years while the Government chosen by voters has little real power, she said. The true masters include Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, London police chief Sir Mark Rowley and officials in the Treasury, she said. And Ms Truss said Home Office lawyers dictated immigration policy while a body called the Climate Change Committee, largely made up of academics, helped dictate energy policies.

USA - The physical silver market just flashed a red alert. As silver expert David Morgan revealed, a desperate shortage in London triggered a staggering 29 million ounce drain from COMEX vaults in a single month — one of the most acute stresses in years. While Morgan says the immediate "panic has subsided," he warns this was a critical lesson. The system runs on razor-thin inventories, a paper paradigm perpetually on the brink. The underlying issue of a "world running short of metal" remains completely unresolved. This was merely a preview. The day of reckoning, when the physical market finally seizes control from the paper manipulators, is not a question of if, but when. The squeeze was a tremor before the real earthquake.

USA - The phrase has echoed in schools across the country. From California to Maine, Montana to Texas, teachers have heard little else for months. Viral videos show wild celebrations among teenagers when the words are called out at fast food restaurants, sports arenas or in rap songs. In fact the term “six-seven” is devoid of any tangible meaning. But that has not stopped Dictionary.com from declaring the phrase its word of the year, in recognition of it being “part inside joke, part social signal and part performance”. Not everyone has been so enthusiastic about the phrase, which has been widely dismissed as “brain rot” or digital content deemed trivial and damaging to the mind.

ALASKA - A 5.4-magnitude earthquake struck the southern coast of Alaska hours after Air Force One stopped in nearby Anchorage to refuel. The quake struck about 110 miles south of the major city, which is home to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The US Geological Survey (USGS) rated the quake a V on its intensity scale, meaning the quake had moderate shaking with very light damage. Earthquakes are common in southern Alaska, which is located on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" — an active fault line known for seismic activity and volcanic eruptions that literally rings the Pacific Ocean.