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Today's edition brings rising tensions on the world stage, fresh legal battles in Washington, and some surprising developments in technology.

Wall Street is facing new uncertainty, while a major sports milestone and an unusual scientific decision offer plenty more to explore. From politics to discoveries that challenge what we thought we knew, there's a lot worth catching up on.

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Administration lawyers appear before a federal appeals court in Washington on Friday to argue that papers created in the White House belong to Donald Trump rather than to the American people. The Justice Department moved six months ago to invalidate the Presidential Records Act, a law on the books since 1978.

Presidents decided for themselves what to do with their papers for roughly two centuries until disputes with Richard Nixon brought Congress in, and every president since has complied until this year. A White House spokeswoman called the law unconstitutional. Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled against the administration earlier this year.

The Justice Department sued California election officials on Thursday and asked a judge to bar the state from counting next month's mail ballots from people the federal government has identified as likely noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed. The list holds 20,000 names.

The department says California officials failed to meet a 48-hour deadline to review the password-protected thumb drive carrying those names. The secretary of state says the government has offered no evidence for the claim, and the Los Angeles County registrar sued over it said his office cannot refuse to count ballots on unverified allegations.

Trump said on Thursday evening that Volodymyr Zelensky is "more difficult to deal with than [Russian President Vladimir] Putin" and called Ukraine's renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries a disgrace. Zelensky spent the day in Brussels holding back-to-back talks with European leaders ahead of a summit on funding for Ukraine.

Zelensky had paused those strikes for three days at Trump's request for an energy ceasefire before saying Thursday they would resume because Moscow never stopped. A Russian drone strike killed several people in Kharkiv overnight. Ukraine struck back, closing the airspace over Moscow for hours as Russia said it intercepted 644 drones across 26 regions.

Drones have struck at least seven cargo ships in Black Sea waters off NATO members Romania and Bulgaria this month, leaving two dead and at least 25 missing.

Thousands of French high school students have barricaded schools for over three weeks, with hundreds more protests set for Saturday, when unions and yellow vest figures are expected to join.

Israel's leading candidates, including Benjamin Netanyahu, say they won't govern with Arab-led parties after the Oct. 27 election, even if that means months of gridlock, sidelining Mansour Abbas's small party.

Nevada police have identified the man found in a Lake Mead barrel in 2022 as Edward "Buddy" Lelburian Jackson after DNA led them to family, but see no mob link.

Alex Murdaugh returns to a South Carolina courtroom Friday amid escalating disputes over retrial evidence, with an April trial set on charges of killing his wife and son in 2021.

President Trump's midterm campaign blitz reaches Georgia Friday with a Dalton rally alongside Mike Collins and Rick Jackson, who face Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms in a critical battleground.

Twenty of the most valuable AI and chip stocks have shed over $1 trillion this week, as Nvidia slipped 1.84% and Dell sank 6.8% amid credit stress at CoreWeave.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield slipped to 5.074% Friday as investors weighed hotter-than-expected inflation data, after wholesale prices jumped 6.3% annually in September against economists' expectations of 5.5%.

Goldman Sachs economists now expect a Fed pause in October after Kevin Warsh declined to prejudge meetings, as traders see a 72.3% chance of no change later this month.

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Tesla finally unveiled its next-generation Roadster at a SpaceX test site in Texas Thursday night, flipping it midair and hovering before landing, with production promised for 2028 and no price announced.

At least eight states are suing OpenAI over claims its chatbot preyed on teenagers and gave dangerous medical advice while the company says it has built in child protections.

Mosasaurs grew up to the size of a bus, and researchers have now modeled how fast the marine reptiles hunted by studying the snakes and lizards that outlived them.

Milwaukee is in its first World Series since 1982 after a 6-4 win in Los Angeles completed the sweep on Garrett Mitchell's sixth-inning homer and erased a four-run deficit.

Cleveland leads the ALCS 2-1 after holding Tampa Bay to three hits in a 3-2 win where the Guardians managed six of their own at home.

New Jersey beat the Rangers 7-1 by scoring four goals in the second period alone against a New York side that managed one all night.

Ja'Quan McMillian intercepted Sam Darnold in overtime, and Lutz kicked a 53-yard field goal, lifting Denver past Seattle 17-14 Thursday night even though Bo Nix threw for just 107 yards.

Kylie Minogue, Jonathan Groff and Catherine Tate have joined the "Bad Fairies" voice cast, Cynthia Erivo's animated musical comedy announced at her Hollywood Bowl show and opening May 27, 2027.

Nathan Fielder filmed Elizabeth Holmes before she went to prison for defrauding investors after the Theranos founder and her partner invited a film crew into their home.

Julie Orringer has written a new novel that one critic calls both heartbreaking and heartwarming as a love story turning on dementia and betrayal alongside sickness and loyalty.

What it is: Member states of the General Conference on Weights and Measures, the body that sets the world's measurement standards, voted on Thursday at a meeting outside Paris to abolish the leap second and replace it with a leap hour. The resolution passed by majority rather than unanimously. Canada backed it, and the metrologist who introduced it called the vote a decisive step for UTC. The director general of Canada's metrology research center said the decision would keep UTC relevant for centuries to come.

The detail: Coordinated Universal Time runs on atomic clocks, which keep near-perfect time, while solar time depends on how fast the Earth happens to be turning. Because the planet's rotation is uneven, timekeepers have slipped in an extra second roughly every eighteen months to hold the two together. Under the new rule, a correction arrives only once the two drift 3,600 seconds apart, which is unlikely to happen for thousands of years.

Why it matters: Those inserted seconds have disrupted computing systems and left clocks disagreeing on the day each one was applied, which is the practical reason timekeepers wanted out. Removing them takes that problem off the table for any system running today.

What to watch: The resolution abolishes the leap second immediately, so no further one will be added. Watch how the eventual leap hour gets handled, since nobody now working will be alive to run it, and whether the clocks and networks built in the meantime inherit any assumption about a second that no longer exists.

THE HIDDEN CONSTRAINT

Ask what limits AI, and most people say chips. The buildout says otherwise.

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Barn owls have nested in a Manhattan water tower in what one ecologist calls the first documented case in the borough in modern history as crowds gather nightly.

Hilary Swank announced a third pregnancy at 52 with a video of her family dancing in glowsticks and a caption saying the project releases in December.

Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan face off on sets inspired by vintage game shows in their "Expectations" remix video, with David Byrne hosting as Johnny Johnson on "Big Expectations."

Marie Antoinette is guillotined in Paris (1793) · John Brown raids the federal armory at Harpers Ferry (1859) · Kennedy is shown photographs of Soviet missiles in Cuba (1962) · Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise gloved fists in Mexico City (1968) · Karol Wojtyla is elected Pope John Paul II (1978)

"If I win, I am American, not a black American." — Tommie Smith, 1968

That's a wrap on today's headlines. Thanks for reading, and pass this edition along to someone who could use a quick catch-up.

—The Five Minute Daily Team