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The Pentagon has added two noncombat deaths to its public database of U.S. military deaths that have occurred amid the war with Iran, bringing the disclosed total of fatalities to 23.
Both deaths were airmen who died in nonhostile incidents, according to the Defense Department’s public casualty database. One death was the result of an illness, and the other was of unspecified causes and remains under investigation, the Air Force said.
The deaths were listed under the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, the Pentagon’s official record of all U.S. troops who have died or were wounded in wartime or other contingency operations.
The fatalities were added to DCAS in the category of Overseas Operations, a separate accounting of service members killed or wounded in the Middle East starting in July, amid the tenuous ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. Casualties until that point were recorded under Operation Epic Fury, the Trump administration’s name for the Iran war.
In all, there have been 11 deaths from enemy fire and 12 nonhostile deaths, according to DCAS. Six of those nonhostile deaths were the result of a refueling tanker that crashed in Iraq in March, killing all airmen aboard.
Another 865 troops have been wounded by enemy fire since the war began in late February, according to DCAS. Despite the euphemism “overseas operations” suggesting a lower threat than combat operations, more than half of the wounded were the result of attacks after the ceasefire, which produced rounds of retaliatory strikes on both sides.
Federal debt held by the public has surpassed the size of the U.S. economy for the first time since World War II, raising concerns about the country’s fiscal outlook as economists warn that some forces sustaining economic growth could begin to fade.
The debt-to-GDP ratio reached 100.3 percent in the 2026 fiscal year, which means the federal government owes more money than the country produces in goods and services over a year.
The milestone comes as the economy shows signs of resilience but faces growing risks. Consumer spending, a key engine of economic growth, has held up this year, in part buoyed by tax refunds and stock market gains that have benefited wealthier households. But economists expect spending to moderate in the months ahead as some of that support fades.
The economy grew at a 3.4 percent annual rate between July and September, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in September, though the increase essentially disappeared after adjusting for inflation.
Veronica Clark, an economist at Citi, said the boost from larger tax refunds earlier this year has likely faded.
Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at EY-Parthenon, expects spending to moderate in the fourth quarter as inflation and elevated interest rates squeeze household budgets.
Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, said she was “very worried” about the debt’s implications for long-term interest rates, which affect mortgage costs. If growth slows while borrowing costs remain elevated, households and businesses could face additional pressure, further complicating the country’s economic outlook.
Massive companies that oversee prescriptions for tens of millions of Americans will soon be required to provide detailed information on how much money they make from drugmakers, under a new regulation released Thursday by the Trump administration.
Under the Labor Department regulation, pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate prescription drug benefits for employers and workers on their plans, will have to disclose how much they pay for pharmaceuticals and how much they are paid by drug companies.
The policy is part of President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to “lower drug costs and increase transparency across the healthcare system,” the administration said.
“The Trump administration is ensuring no one in the healthcare industry can escape the competition that comes from complete price transparency,” Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said in a statement.
The rule will allow employers to “negotiate better deals and lower drug prices for the over 72 million Americans on self-insured group healthcare plans,” he said.
The regulation responds to criticism from advocates and lawmakers that pharmacy benefit managers exploit a lack of transparency to direct patients toward more expensive drugs.
But the rule also received pushback from large pharmacy benefit managers. The Cigna Group’s Express Scripts, CVS’s Caremark and UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx control roughly 80 percent of prescription drug claims in the United States, according to a 2026 report by the left-leaning economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative.
The rule takes effect in health care plans beginning in July.
Seabirds get jet-lagged just like humans — and it causes navigational errors in their foraging trips, according to a study published today in the journal Science.
Researchers who study bird navigation wanted to understand better how seabirds know where they are, and where they’re going, across vast distances. Birds generally use the Earth’s magnetic fields and the position of the sun when flying, which they use in combination with their natural circadian rhythm or internal clock to gauge time of day.
When birds fly east to west they “experience time shifts, potentially causing mismatches between their internal clock and local time,” the study said.
If the birds’ clocks are thrown off by jet lag, they can misjudge where they are and their intended destination, said Patrick Lewin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and co-author of the new study.
Lewin and his colleagues tracked the migratory seabird Manx shearwaters, which take long fishing trips to find food and then return to their nests, taking the most direct route possible.
“Shearwaters make it really easy for us,” Lewin said. “Because we know where their nests are, we know exactly where they’re aiming for. And so that means we can measure whether they’re going a little bit too far clockwise or a little too far anticlockwise and compare that to what we would expect if they’re using the sun as a compass and experiencing this time shift.”
Lewin said he hopes his research will help to better understand humans’ internal clocks, too.
“The way that our clocks work is very similar to how a bird’s clock works,” Lewin said. “It might be quite interesting to know how these animals are coping with frequently jet-lagging themselves.”
President Donald Trump will no longer travel to Kansas for a rally on Saturday as previously announced, instead holding a series of telerallies that day, according to four people with knowledge of his plans.
Trump was originally scheduled to visit Salina, Kansas, on Saturday, one of the final stops in his packed schedule of midterm rallies to boost Republican candidates. Republicans are worried about losing the seat, as incumbent GOP Sen. Roger Marshall is locked in a close race with his Democratic challenger and is trailing in some polls. Trump will instead hold a telerally for Marshall.
The GOP has been scrambling to drum up enthusiasm from its base as Trump and Republican candidates face poor approval ratings among swing voters. Campaigns were pressing for Trump to hold rallies in their states in the final stretch, said three of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss planning publicly, so the president’s team instead opted to schedule a number of telerallies.
Trump is still set to travel to Daytona Beach, Florida, on Friday, and to Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday. On Thursday, he traveled to Rock Hill, South Carolina. The trip to Kansas would have accounted for a substantial stretch of time in the final weekend before the elections, compared to holding virtual events for candidates in multiple states, said one person with knowledge of the change.
“President Trump will continue connecting directly with Americans nationwide through more than 20 telerallies before Election Day,” a White House official said in a statement to The Washington Post.
David Crowley, Milwaukee County executive, was always going to celebrate a Milwaukee Brewers World Series win.
But the Democratic nominee in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race may have another reason to celebrate the Brewers’ first World Series title: Academic research shows that incumbents, or the party in power, do better in elections when the local sports team is winning.
A 2010 study by Neil Malhotra at the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that when major college teams won games two weeks before an election, incumbents’ vote share in the county jumped by as much as 1.61 percent in gubernatorial, presidential and U.S. Senate elections. The study found that winning a championship so close to the election had an even stronger effect, boosting support by 2.3 to 2.42 percentage points more than when the team was losing.
Crowley is not an incumbent — Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is not running for a third term — but he is an extension of the party in power and Evers is arguably the most powerful figure behind the Crowley campaign. Crowley will face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany on Tuesday, with polls showing the Democrat with a slight advantage.
“When people’s teams win, they become happier and more satisfied with the status quo, and that mood carries into the polling booth,” Malhotra said of the study.
Crowley also played a central role in a 2023 dispute over the team’s future in Milwaukee, helping strike a deal to keep the team in its ballpark through 2050.
“This was a great investment,” he told WISN during the celebrations in Milwaukee after the victory. He added, “It’s an investment in the culture of who we are.”
White House border official Tom Homan told reporters on Thursday that a massive data breach at the Department of Homeland Security could put thousands of officers whose identities were made public at greater risk.
A “hacktivist” group on Wednesday published a searchable databaseof more than 41,000 names of DHS employees and contractors, including border and undercover agents.
The group said it wanted more oversight of the agency and its activities, which have faced public backlash since the launch of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown.
Homan said the Justice Department is investigating the data breach. He noted that threats against and attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have increased sharply since Trump began his second term.
“I want the American people to know that ICE agents are mothers and fathers, too. They have families, too.” Homan said during a Miami news conference. “They don’t hang their heart on a hook when they come into work. They got a difficult job, a dangerous job.”
If members of the public don’t like what ICE is doing, Homan said, they should contact U.S. lawmakers and ask them to change the immigration laws that officers are enforcing.
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