Five wounded in shooting near Hebron, two Hamas terrorists killed
Five people were wounded, two seriously, in a terrorist shooting attack near the Yehuda Junction in the Hebron area of Judea on Friday morning.
Two Arab terrorists who opened fire were killed, the Israel Defense Forces said. Large numbers of IDF troops were dispatched to the scene following initial reports of the shooting, setting up roadblocks and launching a manhunt for the assailants.
The attack came as the military went on heightened alert ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. The IDF has reinforced its forces in Judea and Samaria with an additional regular brigade as part of preparations for the election period.
Iranian lawmaker calls for nuclear response if US launches new attack
A senior Iranian lawmaker has urged the Islamic Republic’s leadership to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in response to a possible American military attack, amid escalating threats from Tehran against the United States and Israel.
Mohammad-Saleh Jokar, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Internal Affairs Committee, made the remarks Thursday, according to Iran International, calling for stronger deterrence measures should Washington launch another military operation.
Websites go offline after AI uncovers critical flaw in PHP code that powers up to 70% of sites worldwide
Government portals, hospital resources, and school websites went dark today after an Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher discovered a “critical security issue” in a programming language that provides the backbone for 70% of the world’s websites. The flaw could allow hackers to seize control of any web server. This would allow cybercriminals to run their own commands, known as a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability.
It’s essentially an unlocked door into a computer system. With their own code running on the servers, hackers can siphon personal data, passwords, or payment details, or leverage compromised sites to infect visitors’ devices. PHP was devised by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in the early 1990s and now underpins a swathe of the most popular websites worldwide, including Etsy, Wikipedia, and NASA.gov.
It’s also present in platforms like Magento and WordPress. The latter alone is estimated to power 40% of all websites on the internet. The Office for Budget Responsibility said it had followed guidance to take its website offline, “in view of the critical security issues affecting PHP”.
Ex-Pentagon Official Claims Recovered Aliens Caused Workers to Reportedly ‘Take Their Own Lives’
Former Pentagon UFO investigator Jay Stratton claims in his new memoir that people involved with alleged US recoveries of aliens and their technology suffered mental breakdowns and, in some cases, took their own lives. Stratton, the first director of the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, has also alleged that military contractors possess at least a dozen crashed spacecraft and have recovered non-human remains. BroBible reports the claims in connection with his memoir, Out of the Shadows.
He previously served as Chief of Air and Space Warfare for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has challenged Stratton to produce evidence. What Stratton Alleges About Recovered Aliens The memoir passage reproduced by BroBible attributes the reported harm to encounters with non-human intelligence and its technology, claiming they caused some people ‘to resign, suffer mental breakdowns, and in some cases take their own lives.
Multiple Christian Families in Bengal, India Allege Assault, Threats to Force Them to Renounce Faith
Christian families in West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district have accused a group of people of assaulting and threatening them to force them to renounce Christianity. Police have registered a case and deployed personnel in the area to prevent further incidents.
The families, who live in Chandrakona, alleged that nine members were assaulted and threatened on October 18 and 19. According to their police complaint, the group warned them of serious consequences if they refused to give up their Christian faith.
A senior police officer told the Press Trust of India (PTI) on Thursday that the families had been living in the area for around 30 years and had converted to Christianity approximately 18 months ago.
Hong Kong’s HSBC has launched its HKD stablecoin, RedCoin
HSBC has launched its first Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin, RedCoin, as the bank continues to expand its presence in the crypto and blockchain industry.
HSBC, one of Hong Kong’s three commercial banks authorized to issue HKD banknotes, announced that RedCoin (RCHKD) will be available on its PayMe platform starting Friday.
Users will be able to activate a stablecoin wallet in the app in the coming days to make peer-to-peer transfers and payments to over 100,000 merchants through PayMe, according to the statement.
“Money, assets and information are moving from traditional infrastructure to always-on, data-rich and increasingly programmable digital networks,” said Maggie Ng, chief executive officer for Hong Kong at HSBC.
Magnitude-7.0 earthquake strikes Tibet, killing 16
A magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Tibet late Thursday, killing at least 16 people, local authorities said Friday.
The temblor hit about 119 miles east-northeast of Nagqu, a city in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement.
Almost all coral reef ecosystems face risk of collapse in 50 years, study warns
The world’s coral reef ecosystems almost all face a high risk of collapse in the next 50 years, mostly due to warming oceans and heat waves, according to a global assessment released Thursday.
It’s the latest dose of bad news for coral reefs, which are critical sources for seafood and tourism and often serve as buffers from coastal erosion and storms. Sometimes dubbed “rainforests of the sea,” they have some of the world’s richest biodiversity. They support a quarter of marine species as well as coastal communities and businesses.
Some 96% of shallow-water reef systems are already critically endangered and could disappear by 2075, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced on the sidelines of a U.N. biodiversity conference in Albania.
Hurricane Vance to rapidly intensify into major hurricane while Typhoon Champi, one of 2026’s strongest storms, kills 1 and injures 171 as Taiwan shuts down
Vance strengthened into a hurricane early Friday, becoming the 13th hurricane in the Pacific Basin this season as it approaches Mexico next week. Hurricane Vance is now forecast to rapidly intensify into a major hurricane by Friday night, which would be the basin’s 10th Category 3 or stronger storm this year.
One person has died and 171 others have been injured as Typhoon Champi lashes Taiwan.
As of 4 a.m. ET Friday, Champi was about 210 miles northeast of Taiwan’s southern tip, moving slowly north-northeast at about 4 mph, according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration. It had sustained winds near 96 mph and gusts up to 119 mph. Forecasters said its effects could last nearly two days.
The storm, which is barreling across the western Pacific Ocean, is expected to brush past the island’s northeastern coast and gradually weaken as it approaches, passing northeastern Taiwan, turning north toward the Chinese coast and eventually moving into southern Japan, Reuters reported.