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Two trillion-dollar giants, one CEO, and now a very big question. Elon Musk says he is actively considering merging Tesla and SpaceX, the BBC reported. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said on Tuesday’s call about SpaceX’s quarterly results.

Musk said both companies have formed special committees of independent directors to study the idea. “The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there’s no guarantee that they will,” he said. “But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained.” He also warned, per NBC News, that “some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it.”

The size is BONKERS. The BBC puts Tesla at roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX at $2 trillion, which would make it one of the largest mergers in history. Musk calls himself a “conflicted party,” says he isn’t on either committee, and compared even talking about it to “tap dancing through a minefield.”

The hurdle: at least 50% of Tesla’s shareholders would need to approve, which Musk called “quite a high hurdle to achieve.” His pitch is chips, AI and software, plus Terafab, the chipmaking effort the two companies already share.

Wall Street liked the sound of it. SpaceX shares rose 8% after hours and Tesla gained 2%, per the BBC. SpaceX posted a $4.4 billion profit for the latest quarter, though it lost $1.1 billion over the first nine months of the year. Tesla reports its own results Wednesday. Grab the popcorn.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; NBC News

He’s coming home. Russia has released Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American and former teacher from Michigan, as President Vladimir Putin met US envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

Putin delivered the news right at the top of the meeting. “He is at Pulkovo Airport,” he told Witkoff in front of the cameras, Axios reported. President Trump then posted that Hubbard was “on his way back home” and that “there was no ‘swap’ necessary,” saying the release followed a request he “made directly” to Putin last week. Some earlier releases of Americans from Russia came through prisoner swaps.

Hubbard was captured by Russian forces in Izyum, Ukraine, shortly after the 2022 full-scale invasion. He was accused of serving in a defence unit there and was sentenced in 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony. The State Department had classified him as “wrongfully detained.” CBS News reported he had been in poor health and was expected to be flown to Texas for treatment.

And the politics? Witkoff gushed: “You are a humanitarian also sir, and I salute that.” He also asked Putin to consider renewing three-way peace talks with Ukraine and thanked him for a deal to import Russian diesel. Trump suggested that if sanctions had gone ahead, Hubbard talks “would have come to a complete and total halt.” AP noted the release comes as Trump has taken a series of actions meant to benefit Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote that “much depends on whether the American side can hear something new from Russia today – about peace, and not about continuing the war.” One man is free. The war grinds on into its fifth year.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; AP; Axios

Webmasters, put the coffee down. Organizations that run on the PHP programming language are being told to install a critical update TODAY or think about taking their websites offline, the BBC reported.

The PHP security team gave advance notice on Tuesday of a security release fixing two critical vulnerabilities, both rated 9.2 on the CVSS v4.0 scale, per PHP.net. The release was scheduled for Wednesday at 14:00 UTC (9am Central), and the team said it could ship earlier if details went public or attacks showed up in the wild.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre did not mince words: “Where immediate remediation is not feasible, organisations should consider taking the system offline until it can be fully mitigated,” it said in an alert. Its counterparts in the EU and Australia issued similar warnings. CERT-EU said the risk scores “indicate the potential for unauthenticated remote code execution,” meaning attackers could potentially install malware and take sites down.

Some aren’t waiting around. The Netherlands’ cyber-security agency says it is taking its own website offline, and the BBC reports the sites of a Dutch public health agency and the lower house of parliament went dark too. Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht said he was “seeing early attacks emerging.”

Why should YOU care? “PHP is everywhere. It quietly powers WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento sites, shared hosting platforms, control panels,” security firm Huntress said. CERT-EU said the flaws could affect every version back to PHP 5, which launched in 2004. Exact affected and fixed versions are due with the release, so check with your host. Yes, we’re looking at our own server too.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; UK NCSC; PHP.net; also reported by The Verge

This one is grim, and the world needs to look at it. Sudan’s army is accused of a wave of drone strikes that reportedly killed more than 300 people, including dozens travelling to a funeral, the BBC reported.

On Sunday evening in West Kordofan state, sources told the Sudan War Observatory, a conflict monitor, that 150 people were killed. A truck carrying about 200 mourners was hit as it arrived in the town of Al-Dabab. The group says 145 people died there and five more were killed when a funeral tent was hit, with another 150 injured. A market in Al-Mujlad was also bombed that evening, with the toll not yet known.

Then on Monday, drones hit Amiet Market near Abyei, the disputed border area that Sudan and South Sudan jointly administer. The region’s information minister, Yohana Akol Ngor, told AP and Reuters the death toll had risen from 73 to 153. “It is a horrible and shocking situation,” AP quoted him as saying. A military source told the BBC the army carried out the Abyei attack, calling the market a fuel supply site for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

And this: UN peacekeepers have been in Abyei since 2011, with more than 2,800 uniformed personnel deployed now. “Our area is a weapons-free zone under United Nations protection, yet it was targeted by drones,” one trader told the BBC. BBC Verify’s review of satellite images shows extensive burnt buildings in part of the market. South Sudan has summoned Sudan’s ambassador to protest.

The army hasn’t answered the West Kordofan allegations but says it does not attack civilians. Meanwhile the UN says 20 million people face acute hunger. The war has killed hundreds of thousands and driven more than 14 million from their homes, and drones from foreign suppliers keep pouring in despite a partial arms embargo.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

Somebody check the plug! Google Cloud says it has fixed an outage at its London cloud region that hit UK banks, businesses and even the courts on Tuesday, the BBC reported.

Google said the trouble came from a “power event” at a third-party facility in its europe-west2 region, inside one of its smaller data center zones, europe-west2-b. Earlier in the day, its status page described “elevated errors and intermittent network failures.” Google apologized and says it will publish an analysis of what went wrong.

The fallout was real. Revolut, Lloyds Bank and HSBC confirmed disruption after thousands of user complaints, and more than 1,500 reports about Revolut alone hit an outage tracker shortly after 8am UK time. Customers also flagged problems with Royal Mail, DPD and e-bike service Forest. HM Courts and Tribunals Service said the video platform used for remote hearings was affected.

One Revolut customer in Glasgow told the BBC she couldn’t pay for parking at a shopping center. A small veg-box business in Preston said it couldn’t download orders or book parcels, and lost sales while customers couldn’t reach its website. Revolut says services are fully restored and money and data “remained safe throughout.”

The timing is almost comical: the BBC notes it came exactly ONE YEAR after an AWS outage knocked more than 1,000 sites offline, UK banks included. “Google Cloud’s outage is a reminder of how deeply our economies depend on just a handful of cloud providers,” said Prof Feng Li of Bayes Business School. One power hiccup, and a chunk of the country can’t pay for parking. Resilient!

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; also reported by the Guardian

It only took about SIX YEARS. The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday signed off on the Boeing 737 Max 10, CNBC reported. It’s the largest jet in the Max family and the last one to win government approval.

The Max 10 was supposed to start flying in 2020. Then came extra scrutiny after the two Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, other safety problems, and required engineering changes, including to an anti-icing system for the engines. The green light also comes weeks after federal officials reviewed a navigation system glitch on the plane and decided it was not a safety-of-flight issue.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford: “The FAA’s decision follows a thorough review of the aircraft’s design and safety requirements. We will continue to hold Boeing to the highest safety standards.”

This is a BIG deal for Boeing’s wallet. CEO Kelly Ortberg said in September that Max 10 orders make up about 30% of the company’s backlog, and customers include Alaska, American, United and Delta. Airlines pay most of a jet’s price on delivery, which is why Boeing has been racing to ramp up production. It opened a fourth 737 Max line in Everett, Washington, in July.

How long was the wait? United CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC in August that the lie-flat seats the airline bought for the plane no longer make sense and are sitting in a warehouse. Don’t book your Max 10 seat yet, either: airlines can start flying certified planes soon, but working them into schedules can take months. The smaller Max 7 was approved in early August.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: CNBC

What happens in Vegas does NOT stay in Vegas when you grab the flamingo. A Canadian tourist, Mitchell Fairbarn, has been found guilty of animal cruelty after taking a Chilean flamingo named Peachy from its enclosure and bringing it back to his hotel room, the BBC reported.

It happened in March at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, which has a free walk-through wildlife habitat with a flock of Chilean flamingos. Trial videos showed a smiling Fairbarn carrying the bird by the neck as he rode a lift up to his room.

His defense? Booze. Fairbarn, 34, testified he’d downed 30 to 40 beers and thought it would be “funny.” FOX5 Las Vegas reported he called it a drunken “silly pranky joke” and denied any intent to hurt or kill the bird. His own lawyer, Josh Tomsheck, didn’t exactly sugarcoat it: “The truth is, Mitch was drunk. Mitch was stupid. He made bad decisions.”

The jury wasn’t laughing. Animal experts testified Peachy had feathers torn out and suffered blood loss. After hearing 14 witnesses and reviewing more than 112 pieces of evidence, jurors took about five hours to convict him on felony and misdemeanour animal abuse charges, the BBC reported. He faces nearly five years in prison, with sentencing set for Dec. 1, according to FOX5.

The good news: a state veterinarian said Peachy has largely recovered, though the bird now has a more anxious demeanour around humans. Can you blame it?

Sources: BBC — Tourist found guilty after stealing Las Vegas flamingo from enclosure (Oct. 20, 2026) · FOX5 Las Vegas — Man accused of stealing Las Vegas flamingo found guilty (Oct. 19, 2026)

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Japan just launched an interplanetary dirt heist. The Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) spacecraft blasted off on Japan’s flagship H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Centre at 4:41am local time, headed for Mars’s moon Phobos, the Guardian reported. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, declared success an hour later when the craft separated from the rocket’s upper stage.

The mission: land, grab some moondust, and bring it home. If it works, it will be the first time a sample has been returned from Mars or its moons for lab study on Earth, the BBC reported. The spacecraft is due at Phobos in August 2027, and the sample capsule is set to land in South Australia’s Woomera desert in 2031.

The haul is tiny: about 10 grams. “It’s worth every gram,” said Leicester University’s Dr Chrysa Avdellidou. Phobos is only about 20km across, a lumpy “space potato,” and nobody has ever landed a rover on a moon that small. First, a small French-German rover named Idefix scouts a landing site. Then the main lander drops in for a quick grab, spending only two hours drilling and vacuuming before launching back to space, the Guardian reported. The whole thing costs $578 million, with five space agencies on board.

The prize is a cosmic whodunit. Either Phobos and its sibling Deimos formed from debris after something slammed into Mars, or they’re wandering asteroids that Mars captured. “It should be pretty much immediately obvious,” said the Natural History Museum’s Prof Sara Russell. Bonus: because Phobos orbits so close to Mars, the sample “may actually contain grains of Mars as well.”

And here’s the jab: NASA’s Perseverance rover has been bagging Mars samples since 2021, but the NASA/ESA mission to bring them home has effectively been cancelled after Congress halted its funding, the BBC reported. China’s Tianwen-3 is aiming to launch around 2028 and could return Mars samples as early as 2031. The space race just got a new lane.

Sources: BBC — Mission blasts off for Mars to grab a piece of its moon (Oct. 19, 2026) · The Guardian — ‘Once-in-a-lifetime chance’: Japan launches historic mission to collect rocks from Mars’s moon Phobos (Oct. 20, 2026)

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

The breakup is OFF. Voters in oil-rich Alberta have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to start the process of leaving Canada, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

With more than 1.5 million votes counted, 76% backed staying in Canada and close to 24% backed starting down the road to separation, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta cited by the Guardian. Delays at roughly 100 of the province’s 1,400 polling stations pushed results back by more than two hours, but the trend was decisive.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, took a victory lap: “Albertans made a clear choice. They chose unity, to build together, and to take care of each other. Above all, Albertans chose Canada.” Premier Danielle Smith, who opposed the separatist push but called the vote anyway, posted that “Albertans have voted for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada.”

Technically, Monday’s ballot didn’t ask about independence itself. It asked whether the government should start the legal process for a binding separation referendum, the BBC reported. The vote was triggered by a grassroots petition with about 300,000 signatures. A judge blocked that petition for failing to consult First Nations, and Smith went ahead with the ballot anyway. A rival anti-separation petition topped 400,000 signatures.

The separatists are not going quietly. A pro-independence watch party attended by the BBC “packed up quickly.” But leader Jeffrey Rath called the vote a “first step,” and asked whether his side would keep pushing for votes until it wins, he said: “why not?” Another leader, Keith Wilson, told the Guardian that “at least a quarter of Albertans feel that Alberta needs to be treated better.” Separatist leaders also say they plan to push Smith out of her United Conservative Party leadership.

Translation: the province picked Canada by a mile, and the sore losers are already sharpening their pitchforks for round two. Elections Alberta says results on the nine other ballot questions, five of them on immigration, could take days.

Sources: The Guardian — Alberta voters reject plan for referendum to leave Canada (Oct. 20, 2026) · BBC — Alberta votes overwhelmingly to remain part of Canada, projections suggest (Oct. 20, 2026)

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Ninety years of mystery, one long boat ride, and… a log. Researchers who sailed to remote Nikumaroro in Kiribati to check a suspected piece of Amelia Earhart’s plane say the object is most likely a pile of washed-up trees, the BBC reported.

The so-called “Taraia Object” was first spotted on satellite imagery in 2020 sitting in a lagoon off the Taraia Peninsula, and Purdue University says it’s visible in photos going back to 1938. Some hoped it was a small aircraft resting in the shallows. Purdue’s verdict: “likely a collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula’s sandspit.”

So what about that famous metallic glint? Purdue says the fragment’s shiny surface came from a carbonate veneer, a coating of coral sand. Other items the team found were crusted the same way, the Guardian reported.

The 17-person expedition earned its disappointment. The trip took five days by sea, then rough weather stranded them on the ship for days. Once ashore they did four days of work, including metal detecting, and slept offshore partly because of giant land-dwelling coconut “robber crabs.” By the time they reached the spot, most of the debris had broken up and washed away, leaving one Y-shaped piece.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that smoking gun,” said Purdue’s Steve Schultz. Project director Rick Pettigrew isn’t quitting: “The island has been holding on to its secrets and it continues to do so.” Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished in 1937 trying to reach Howland Island, about 400 miles away.

Sources: BBC — Possible wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s plane likely to be trees, say researchers (Oct. 19, 2026) · The Guardian — Amelia Earhart researchers leave remote atoll empty-handed after ‘plane debris’ found to be a clump of trees (Oct. 19, 2026)

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.