FIVE MINUTE DAILY

The week opens with voters reshaping political contests, markets responding to easing inflation fears, and Washington confronting new questions about technology and government power. Elsewhere, a medical breakthrough earns science’s biggest honor, playoff races tighten and an unusual Olympic mascot makes its debut.

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Federal agents arrested Wanying "Heather" Zhang at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday as she prepared to board a flight to Shanghai. The 34-year-old real estate agent from Irvine, California, is charged with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, according to a federal complaint.

The complaint says Zhang traveled to Seattle in September 2025 and filmed Ting-Yu Lai, son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, with his wife and child outside their home, texting a handler on WeChat: "I am videorecording." An FBI agent said the material could provide leverage over Taiwan's president.

The United States has withdrawn all its bombers from RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire airbase at the center of a counter-terrorism investigation. A Pentagon official confirmed on Sunday that the aircraft, thought to number about a dozen B-1s, had returned to their home stations in America.

A new threat prompted the move, according to reports in the US. It follows a major incident on September 27, when police were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near the base. Five men were arrested on suspicion of terror offenses and released on bail, as was a sixth, a UK-Iranian national.

President Trump has unveiled a task force on artificial intelligence, to be led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton. Writing on Sunday, Trump said the "Super Intelligence Force" would keep the United States leading the technology's development and coordinate the government's engagement with the public.

The name follows an executive order he signed on September 29, renaming AI as Super Intelligence, after saying the word artificial made it sound fake. Clayton will sit alongside three other appointees, and the panel comes after Trump said he would create a board to oversee AI safety.

Flávio Bolsonaro won Brazil's first round, taking 47% to President Lula da Silva's 45% and forcing a runoff on 25 October with almost all votes counted.

Spain's prime minister called an early election, Pedro Sánchez setting a 29 November vote after opposition parties blocked two decrees aimed at curbing evictions.

Thousands marched on Islamabad demanding Imran Khan's release, with the jailed former prime minister's family saying he has lost most vision in his right eye.

Six people are presumed dead after a medical transport plane vanished off Nantucket; the Coast Guard ended its search on Sunday evening.

A 12-year-old girl was killed in Baltimore, caught in crossfire between two men who police say were arguing over a parking space beside a children's football game.

Two died, and dozens were hurt in Georgia; gunfire erupted at a homecoming block party in Vienna that injured nearly three dozen people early Sunday.

Home improvement stocks are lagging, with mortgage rates near 5% deterring owners and a third of projects delayed or canceled, analysts at Citi said.

World shares rose as inflation fears eased, Tokyo's Nikkei climbing 2.4% and London's FTSE 0.5% while oil prices fell ahead of a busy week of US data.

US e-commerce is growing by nearly 10%, with Carvana up 52% and Walmart up 25% last quarter, while Amazon holds 42.9% of the market.

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Nearly 200 people in Siberia's Irkutsk region are under medical observation after an anti-plague institute employee died, though Russia's health watchdog says testing has found no linked microorganisms.

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for optogenetics, which can switch individual nerve cells on or off in living brains.

SpaceX is becoming SpaceXSI, Elon Musk saying he will drop AI for SI and posting that there would be "no more AI".

New England beat Buffalo 29-26, the Patriots handing the Bills their first loss of the season to climb level at 2-2 behind them in the AFC East.

Carolina upset Detroit 32-26, the Panthers holding on at home to leave the Lions at 2-2 a quarter of the way through the season.

Atlanta evened its division series, beating the Dodgers 3-2 in Game 2 in Los Angeles to send the NLDS back tied at one apiece.

Milwaukee moved within a win, edging San Diego 4-3 to take a 2-0 lead and put the Padres one defeat from the end of their season.

Springsteen headlined a protest festival, joining Joan Baez, Dave Grohl and Run-DMC at a sold-out Merriweather Post Pavilion to push midterm turnout.

Meryl Streep will voice Aslan, and conservative Christian commentators are objecting to a woman playing the lion widely read as Christ in Gerwig's Narnia.

"Verity" opened at No. 1, taking $32.6 million while Tom Cruise's "Digger" handed Warner Bros. one of its worst debuts on the eve of its merger.

What it is: The Trump administration has proposed rewriting Head Start's federal discipline rules, dropping guidelines that ban expulsion and allow suspension only as a last resort in the preschool program. Under the change, providers serving nearly 700,000 mostly low-income children would set their own discipline policies by following state and local licensing requirements instead of federal rules.

The detail: An Arizona State University analysis found that in 70% of states, Head Start students would have fewer guardrails if the rule passes, since state protections vary widely. Federal data from 2023-24 shows that gap clearly, with South Carolina suspending 604 public preschoolers a total of 1,181 times, while Minnesota reported zero preschoolers suspended that same year.

Why it matters: For many families, Head Start is their last remaining preschool option, and advocates warn that children removed from classrooms could leave parents scrambling to find alternative care. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said the proposal would give programs more flexibility and would not force them to change disciplinary practices that already work well.

What to watch: The public comment period on the proposed rule runs through Tuesday, Oct. 6, giving parents, teachers and advocates a final chance to weigh in before regulators review the feedback. Watch, too, whether states without their own preschool discipline laws move to write them, since the new rule would leave those decisions to state and local licensing.

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Four Cambridge students punted more than 200 miles from Oxford to Cambridge over 11 days, raising over £10,000 for charity, though one fell into the Oxford Canal on day one.

A replica Oval Office went gold, a museum up Pennsylvania Avenue recreating Trump's second-term flourishes down to each wall appliqué, gilded frames included.

Brisbane's 2032 Olympics unveiled its emblem, a pink cockatoo that beat the koala and bin chicken, days after officials held a hasty news conference to explain an early leak.

Chester A. Arthur is born in Fairfield, Vermont (1829) · A World Series game is broadcast on radio for the first time (1921) · Harry Truman delivers the first televised address from the White House (1947) · "Dr. No," the first James Bond film, premieres in London (1962) · "Monty Python's Flying Circus" debuts on British television (1969) · Steve Jobs dies in Palo Alto (2011)

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish." — Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address, 2005

That’s it for today. Come back tomorrow for another five-minute look at what’s happening around the world.

—The Five Minute Daily Team