WASHINGTON — The commander of the U.S. Eighth Army in South Korea has said his troops must be prepared to respond to threats beyond the Korean Peninsula, stressing that it would be "irresponsible" to focus solely on threats facing the peninsula, according to a media report Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Joseph Hilbert made the remarks in an email interview with the South China Morning Post, underscoring the U.S. military's emphasis on strategic flexibility. Hilbert said it would be "irresponsible to focus myopically" on threats on the Korean Peninsula alone or to "suggest that we cannot do other things simply because we are in Korea," according to the report. "We view readiness as largely threat-agnostic. If we have a trained, ready force capable of executing the Army's assigned missions, we can apply that force against whatever threat is required," Hilbert was quoted as saying. "So, we train every day with our Korean allies against our principal threat, while also ensuring we remain available and ready for whatever the nation may require," he added. The remarks come amid growing attention to Wash

The tech-heavy Nasdaq led gains on Wednesday after quarterly results from SpaceX and Super Micro Computer improved appetite for AI-linked stocks, while Netflix slipped as its forecast failed to impress investors. Elon Musk's rocket and space technology firm rose 9.8 percent after he said on Tuesday that a merger of SpaceX and Tesla would be "a good idea". SpaceX also posted its first profit as a public company. Tesla shares were up 3.5 percent. Super Micro jumped 10.3 percent to the top of the S&P 500 after the AI server maker forecast quarterly revenue and profit margin above Wall Street estimates, signaling that AI demand remained resilient. Peers HPE and Dell rose 2.2 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively. Investors drew comfort from the reports as concerns over the profitability of the AI buildout triggered a selloff in AI-linked stocks last week, with data center operator CoreWeave at the center of the storm. Its shares were marginally down, suggesting lingering caution in the sector. "The sentiment around tech has shifted ... There's a lot of stress in the credit markets right now t

WASHINGTON — Government agencies and companies around the world shut down websites Wednesday after two critical flaws came to light involving PHP, a programming language that is the basis for a large share of the internet. PHP sits underneath popular web design platforms, so the weaknesses potentially affect a vast range of websites, from online stores and news outlets to government services. Wiz, one of the security firms that found the issues, estimated that PHP runs about 70 percent of the world's websites and said the flaws rank "among the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, and arguably in software history." The US National Security Agency told organizations to patch immediately or pull vulnerable systems offline. The flaws "often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database," the NSA said in a statement on X. Attackers could use them to take over web servers without needing a password. Volker Dusch, a security engineer at the PHP Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal it was the most serious problem PHP had faced in more than a decade, comparing it to

WASHINGTON — U.S. chip giant Nvidia Corp. said Wednesday that South Korea's Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. is joining its semiconductor substrate supply chain as part of a broader initiative to expand manufacturing capacity. Samsung Electro-Mechanics, the electronic components unit of Samsung Electronics Co., will initially provide production capacity from its existing operations in South Korea, while the collaboration will also support facility upgrades and new factories in Sejong and Busan, South Korea, according to Nvidia. By 2028, production allocated to Nvidia is projected to account for a significant portion of Samsung Electro-Mechanics' total annual package substrate production capacity, the U.S. company said. The South Korean company also issued a separate press release, calling the deal a strategic business partnership to strengthen the global artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor supply chain. Samsung Electro-Mechanics said it plans to supply Nvidia with package substrates for AI semiconductors under a multiyear agreement beginning in 2026. Separately, Nvidia and U.S.-base

Government websites across Europe went dark on Wednesday as operators raced to patch two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, one of the most widely used programming languages on the web. The developers of PHP said on Wednesday they would release patches for two critical vulnerabilities, and EU cybersecurity officials warned organisations unable to apply the fixes to take affected websites offline. Here is what you need to know: What is PHP? PHP is a programming language that runs websites. It works behind the scenes. When a user loads a page, the server running PHP assembles the content and sends the finished page to the browser. It is free, open source and maintained by volunteers. Site owners rarely interact with it directly. PHP runs nearly 70 percent of all websites whose programming language can be identified, according to web technology tracker W3Techs. It is the engine behind WordPress, the software that powers about 40 percent of all websites such as blogs, small business pages, government portals, online shops and news sites. What are the risks of the flaws? The two vulnerabilities ar

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Wednesday to resume three-way negotiations next month with Washington and Kyiv aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin official said. The Russian leader has agreed “in principle” to resume the talks after Nov. 10, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters following a meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff. The talks will focus on “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends,” Ushakov said. Witkoff's talks with Putin about Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine took place as Trump pushed Kyiv to make a deal that stops the fighting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has insisted that only a summit of leaders can break the impasse. The two armies remain locked on the battlefield, and the two countries pummel each other with daily long-range strikes. Representatives of the three countries held three rounds of negotiations early this year, meeting twice in Abu Dhabi in January and February, followed by further talks in Geneva

DIMONA, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the only way to remove the threat posed by Iran was to topple its government. "Iran wanted to destroy us; we stopped them. They wanted to produce nuclear bombs; we stopped them... Yet they persist," he said during an election rally in the southern town of Dimona. "Therefore, there is only one way to end this: by toppling this regime." "This is the directive I have issued to the Israel Defense Forces, to the Mossad, and to all our security branches," he added, without specifying when or how that directive would be executed. The sabre-rattling came as the premier headed into the last week of a tight race for re-election. Netanyahu had instructed the Israeli military to plan for resumed strikes against Iran earlier this month, according to sources cited by the Financial Times on Wednesday, but US President Donald Trump reportedly objected to the idea. The US leader has publicly said that he does not intend to restart the war, which Washington started in February alongside Israel, before the US mid-term electi

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron vowed on Wednesday to prevent a repeat of last weekend's violence at protests planned in the coming days, and dismissed as "stupid" and "unacceptable" comments from some foreign leaders about the unrest. France's main student union, UNEF, has called for further rallies on Saturday, while the Yellow Vest group, which emerged as a potent anti-establishment movement in 2018, has filed plans for a march through central Paris the same day. Efforts to ease social tensions showed little sign of progress, as unions pledged to press ahead with a general strike on November 5 to denounce the high cost of living and cuts to public services after government talks ended inconclusively. France was hit by some of the worst urban tumult in years on October 17 on the fringe of nationwide protests, shocking the nation both because of its scale and the apparent inability of police to contain it. Macron said he would meet intelligence officials and senior ministers on Thursday to discuss the crisis. "Those who want to cause disorder in city centres next Saturday will be pre

WASHINGTON — OpenAI has revealed that two of its artificial intelligence agents disabled or weakened systems built to catch them misbehaving, with one later denying it had done so. The cases are the latest in a string of safety scares at the world's top AI developers involving agents, AI programs that carry out tasks without human involvement. In a report released Tuesday, the ChatGPT maker said that during two internal coding jobs, its agents switched off or undermined tools for detecting incidents of AI models acting against human wishes. On October 3, an agent running on OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol model, which had been told not to send any messages on the workplace chat app, took that as license to switch off safety alerts meant for the company's security team while fixing a testing system. Three days later, a GPT-6 Astra agent stripped out its own monitor while copying code from another project, then told the human programmer it had done no such thing. The company said it had also seen several cases of agents launching software with monitoring switched off, exposing a gap in its oversight

President Lee Jae Myung met with World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday to discuss ways to enhance cooperation in healthcare, Lee's office said. The meeting at Cheong Wa Dae came as Tedros is visiting Seoul to attend the World Bio Summit 2026, which WHO is hosting in partnership with South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday. During the meeting, Lee stressed the need for South Korea to expand its role and contributions to the international community, presidential spokesperson Kim Sung-wan said in a written briefing. Lee also expressed hope that Seoul would continue to expand its cooperation with WHO in health security. The president asked Tedros to help ensure that more highly skilled South Koreans could contribute to the WHO, noting that South Korea has transformed itself from a recipient of international assistance into a major contributor. Tedros thanked South Korea for its efforts to strengthen cooperation with WHO and promote global health, saying he was well aware of the country's development experience. Stressing the importance of equita

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Pope Leo will not ‌need any further therapy after undergoing ​lung cancer surgery ​last week, his doctors said in ​a statement released by ‌the Vatican on Wednesday.

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President ⁠Volodymyr Zelenskiy ​said on Wednesday ​that Ukraine supported a US proposal for ​three-way talks ‌with Russia ⁠and the United ‌States at the level ⁠of negotiators to be held as soon ​as possible, preferably ‌no later than early November. Speaking with FRANCE 24's Mark Owen, Grégoire Roos, Director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, says that "it's not clear whether Putin would meet Trump and Zelensky", adding that "meeting Zelensky is the last thing that Putin would be prepared to do".

A bipartisan group of nearly two dozen House members is urging President Trump to ask tech mogul Elon Musk to give Ukraine access to Starlink satellite systems to hunt for missile launchers inside Russia, according to a letter sent Wednesday and obtained exclusively by The Hill.  The signatories included seven House Republicans alongside 16 Democrats,...

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Christina Applegate at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild awards. | Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images Christina Applegate, the actor who has been one of the most visible faces of multiple sclerosis since her 2021 diagnosis, made a stunning revelation this week: She does not have MS after all. And her doctors still don’t know what is causing her debilitating symptoms. “I’m back at square one,” Applegate told fellow actor Jamie Lynn Sigler, who does have MS, on Sigler’s podcast MeSsy. “I was not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.” It is a harrowing predicament for Applegate, and hopefully her medical team is able to get her the diagnosis and treatment she needs. But the fact is, her experience is not unique. Even as more and more Americans get diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, misdiagnosis remains all too common. According to one meta-analysis, roughly 15 percent of MS diagnoses may actually be false positives. How could such a common medical condition — roughly 1 million Americans are living with the disease, about one in every 350 people — remain such a mystery? After Applegate’s announcement, I called some leading experts on MS to ask why diagnosing the disease is such a challenge, and what they want people to know. Here’s what I learned. Why MS can be challenging to diagnose Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune condition: The body mistakenly attacks cells meant to protect your brain and spinal cord, and the resulting damage interrupts nerve signals and causes the disease’s telltale symptoms of motor impairment, tingling sensations, and vision problems. Some people experience a rollercoaster of relapses and remissions; others see the disease steadily progress, eventually leading to serious disability. The reality is, scientists still don’t really know what causes MS to develop, said Dr. Andrew Solomon, a neurologist at the University of Vermont who specializes in MS. Smoking is a known risk factor. Obesity and metabolic problems play a role, but we need more research. Even the precise role of genetics remains something of a mystery. “We don’t really know what causes or triggers the autoimmune response in any given individual,” Solomon said.  And that’s where the challenge in diagnosing it begins. First, the testing can be imprecise; there is not a single test that reliably diagnoses MS. If a doctor suspects their patient may have MS, they usually undergo an MRI, which their physicians then scour for lesions that are typically associated with the disease. But those scans are still subject to interpretation: Other rare conditions sometimes resemble MS in imaging, as can diseases of blood vessels in the brain. You can also receive a spinal fluid analysis to check for abnormalities in your immune system, which the vast majority of MS patients have. The nature of MS symptoms adds to the difficulty. They can often be vague early on: brain fog or fatigue or a general malaise. The tingling or vision problems can be similar to symptoms for other conditions that are not MS, and they are easily dismissed if they go into temporary remission, as often happens during the initial phases of the disease. “Neurological symptoms sometimes can be vague — numbness, pins and needles — and it’s usually short-lived,” Dr. Saud Sadiq, chief research scientist and director of the Tisch Multiple Sclerosis Research Center of New York, told me. “Unless they’re taken seriously initially, they may be ignored because by the time the patient goes through the healthcare system and is actually referred to a neurologist, the symptoms have abated.” If your doctor is diagnosing you with MS, ask directly: What’s the evidence? One 2025 study by Solomon and his colleagues found that 40 percent of people who had later been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis were initially misdiagnosed with a different disease. “Because it’s so heterogeneous, it doesn’t present in the same way in everybody and can have varying severity, it can be hard to diagnose sometimes,” Solomon said. Lastly, when people are experiencing debilitating symptoms, there is pressure to deliver some diagnosis — and that may push some doctors to leap to MS even if they are not sure, Solomon said. The recent advent of effective treatments that help manage the disease’s symptoms, especially when it is caught early, may add to that pressure, even if the better course would be to continue monitoring the person before they start a medication. “There may be a lot of clinicians who, if they can’t find a better explanation than MS, may be inclined to diagnose MS, even if they don’t really meet our diagnostic criteria, because they’re worried about missing a window of opportunity to treat somebody,” Solomon said. There is reason to hope the MS misdiagnosis problem could get better. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society released new diagnostic criteria in 2024 that Solomon said more physicians should become familiar with to better distinguish MS from problems like migraines or vascular disease. And because imaging is involved in diagnosis, there is optimism that AI could be a powerful new tool in delivering more accurate results. What everyone should know about MS symptoms and diagnosis The good news is that MS, when diagnosed properly, is a treatable condition these days. “The prognosis with new drugs is extremely good for long-term care,” Sadiq told me. “If patients stick to treatment at a good MS center, you can look forward to a life without disability in 2026.” So it is worth being vigilant and talking to your doctor if you experience any concerning symptoms. You should seek care if you have numbness or pins and needles that persists for more than 24 to 48 hours, Sadiq said, or have motor problems, like one hand won’t work as you try to play piano. Dr. Annette Langer-Gould, who develops and evaluates programs for MS care at Kaiser Permanente, said numbness in your abdomen, chest or back, as opposed to your extremities, is a particular cause for concern. If one eye has normal vision and the other is blurred, that’s another good reason to get checked out.  If you do get tested, make sure the actual images of your MRIs end up being reviewed by an expert in MS. “The most common reasons the disease is still misdiagnosed are related to the providers’ lack of expertise usually in reading MRI scans,” Langer-Gould said. The spinal tap may sound scary, and doctors sometimes don’t recommend them because their insurance reimbursement is low — but they add to the confidence of a diagnosis. They are worth it, she said. “American patients are very afraid of the spinal tap,” Langer-Gould said. “My message to patients is: Listen, just get the spinal. This way we’ll be sure.” And do not be afraid to seek a second opinion for such a serious diagnosis, Sadiq added. Every state has a recognized MS center. If your doctor is diagnosing you with MS, ask directly: What’s the evidence? If your doctor is recommending that you start treatment, it could also be worth checking whether they have a relationship with a pharmaceutical company that affects how you perceive their judgment, Langer-Gould said. People who have already been diagnosed may also be shaken by the Applegate news and question whether their own diagnosis might be wrong. Solomon said that folks should have a frank conversation with their physician about how exactly their case met the diagnostic criteria. With proper imaging and the spinal fluid tests, you can get to a confident diagnosis for the vast majority of people. But be your own advocate to make sure you’re satisfied. “For many people, the diagnosis actually can be very straightforward,” Solomon said. “We really have no question about what it is.”