President Trump unloaded on the Norwegian Nobel Committee after the 2026 Peace Prize went to South African judge and former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, calling the decision "an indelible stain on the country of Norway." Trump pointed to eight wars he says he's settled, with two more close to resolution, and dismissed Pillay at a New York rally as a "mystery person." Jewish advocacy groups and UN Watch piled on separately, accusing Pillay of a long record of anti-Israel bias.
A ShotSpotter alert on Perry Street in Erie brought officers to a scene that Gov. Josh Shapiro confirmed left nine people dead, including a 5-year-old boy and a girl not yet two. The suspected gunman, a 45-year-old man, was found dead upstairs from a self-inflicted gunshot wound with a .40-caliber handgun on him. Eight of the nine dead were related; Erie's police chief called it the worst thing he's seen in nearly thirty years on the job.
At least sixteen transportation companies have filed for bankruptcy in under a month as diesel sits around $6.32 a gallon, up more than 70 percent year over year after peaking at $6.53 in late September. Drivers say the math no longer works, and carriers are cutting routes outright. Regular gas hit a new 2026 national high above $4.17, nine days after the energy secretary suggested prices had likely peaked.
Officer Shane Seiber, 40, was shot three times and died in surgery after he and his partner were ambushed just past midnight responding to a report of a man with a gun. His partner was hit twelve times and is seriously wounded. The suspect fled, climbed a tree to hide, then came down and surrendered to SWAT; Seiber leaves behind a wife, a 7-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter.
King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was attacked for the second time in two days, injuring multiple people and prompting the U.S. Embassy to tell Americans to avoid the airport and surrounding area entirely. Iran-backed Houthis claimed Thursday's assault, which killed three Saudi citizens and damaged three aircraft. Trump said he will "make a decision" on whether the U.S. joins Saudi Arabia in striking the Houthis in Yemen.
A day after Trump announced a deal releasing millions of tons of Russian diesel into global markets, Zelenskyy blasted it as funding Moscow's weapons production. Trump fired back that it's "time for Ukraine to get a new president," one "who can make a deal." Meanwhile Russian strikes in Zaporizhzhia killed twelve people Saturday, per Zelenskyy.
The Pentagon officially revised the number of U.S. service members killed in the Middle East since the Iran war began to 21 — eleven hostile, ten non-hostile — up from nineteen previously reported. Eleven ships, mostly crude tankers, have been struck in or near the Strait of Hormuz this month alone. Trump said he's "about to settle, or win" the war and credited himself with keeping Iran from a nuclear weapon.
NASA is targeting Artemis IV in 2028 to put Americans near the lunar South Pole, with next year's Artemis III testing docking in Earth orbit first. But construction of a permanent outpost capable of supporting long stays isn't expected to begin until 2032 or later. NASA and the Department of Energy have signed an agreement to develop a lunar surface nuclear reactor, targeted for launch around 2030, to survive the two-week lunar night.
Researchers at the boat-shaped Durupınar formation in eastern Turkey have drilled more than sixty feet down and found no bedrock, which they say undercuts the theory that the structure is a natural rock feature. They pulled hundreds of soil samples, including deposits of rich black soil to be tested for organic content this winter at Ankara University. Earlier 2024 sampling found three times more organic matter and 38 percent more potassium inside the formation than outside.
Rhode Island investigators tailed 61-year-old William Morton to a Woonsocket theater in August, bought a ticket to the same Heart tribute band show, and waited. When Morton left early and abandoned a bottled water, a cold case investigator seized it — and the DNA matched evidence on the body of 22-year-old Hillary Hellewell, strangled in Newport in May 1985. Morton now faces a first-degree murder charge.
