Saudi Grand Mufti Al-Fawzan issued a religious mobilization statement calling defense of Saudi territory and the Holy Mosques "among the greatest religious duties."

He described the Houthis as "a band of evil" and "a plot of the enemies," called for their "complete defeat and eradication," and urged Coalition forces to "stand as one against this misguided sect."

He framed restoring Yemen's internationally recognized government as "among the most pressing obligations."

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

Until 28 February 2026, the Strait was open. The insecurity prevailing in the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of maritime navigation are the direct result of the aggressive actions of the United States and the Israeli regime.

You cannot bomb a country, threaten its annihilation, impose a maritime blockade and coercive measures, and expect the automatic restoration of security and navigation.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

From the podium of the General Assembly, the U.S. President, along with the criminal Prime Minister of Israel, attempted to distort the facts and reverse the roles of victim and aggressor.

The United States and the Israeli regime cannot whitewash their criminal acts against the people of Iran.

Elon Musk:

The Chinese AI models are generally outstanding, actually. You can see on the sort of intelligence rankings there, especially given the limited amount of compute that the Chinese AI companies have, the performance is excellent.

Probably China is doing by far the best in terms of performance per unit of compute. And as I've said publicly, you know, I think China's going to address the compute limitation faster than most people expect.

My rough guess would be that China addresses the compute constraints with lithography and chipmaking in about 2 or 3 years.

Elon Musk on China:

Any words I say do not do justice to the incredible majesty that is China. It’s awesome.

Elon Musk:

Xi seems like a great leader. Under his tenure China has prospered immensely.

If you visit China and you see the amount of progress that happens from one year to the next or even within a year, it's very visible. You can see the new buildings, the new infrastructure.

It's also obvious to see that just walking around the streets, the increased prosperity of the average Chinese citizen has increased tremendously.

Elon Musk:

My prediction is that there will be effectively universal high income. In fact, it’s not clear to me that money will even matter in the future.

Like if you scale the economy, the output of goods and services to a level much greater than could possibly be consumed by the number of humans on the planet, then you have an age of abundance.

That is difficult for us to wrap our minds around because our entire evolutionary history has been an evolution of constraints, of where we didn’t have enough food or we didn’t have enough heat.

Elon Musk on AI:

We don’t want to get complacent regarding the 10% probability of a bad outcome, so we need to — it’s important for us to pay close attention to AI safety.

But let me tell you about the 90% positive outcome. The 90% positive outcome is that everyone’s got robots that are their buddies.

And if you think of like Star Wars, where we had C-3PO and R2-D2, and they were friendly, helpful robots, well, wouldn’t it be great if everyone could have their own personal C-3PO, R2-D2, but even better than that?

Like more productive, that could take care of elderly parents, or be a good guardian and watch over the children, or be a teacher, like an individualized tutor to your child, and taking care of any jobs that you can think of. So that would be pretty cool.

Elon Musk:

What I’m trying to say is that I think that there will be a level of abundance that is more than anyone could possibly consume.

I mean, I think it’s going to get pretty wild where if you want a — if you want a castle, you know, the robots will build you a castle.

So it’s not like — it’s not as though the robots will be hoarded by a small number of people. It’s like actually the robots, I think, will be — they will saturate on human demand, meaning that they will do more than anything humans could possibly think of.

Mark Zuckerberg:

So many people talk about AI as if it’s this super scary thing… I think it should just be useful and fun.

Mark Zuckerberg:

I think you fast forward 5 years, like everyone is going to have an agent that like really intimately understands your goals and everything around you and can help you get stuff done.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang:

Today or soon we'll be able to know everything and do anything.

You give it a project, it comes back with a solution. You give it a task, it comes back and gets it done.

Abdul El-Sayed on America:

This is a country where there is no ethnic identity, there’s no religious identity, there is just a national identity.

And I didn’t appreciate it as much until I went to grad school in the UK, where I’d meet third generation Pakistani kids and I’d be like, "You’re British." They’re like, "I’m not British. I’m Pakistani." I was like, "Yes, but you’re British. You have a British citizenship." They’re like, "Yes, I’m a citizen of the United Kingdom, but I’m not British. I’m Pakistani."

And so America to me is the notion that we can come together around our differences to build something that’s greater than the sum of its parts because we believe in the process by which we do that thing.

It’s funny, you know, my dad, I don’t think he’s been to Egypt in like 20 years. And he still has an accent. He still looks the way he looks. And you watch him watch the Lions on Sunday and you’re like, that’s a full-blooded American.

Abdul El-Sayed on Palestine:

I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis.

I believe that it is up to a free Palestinian people and free Jewish Israeli people to decide how to maneuver the inconsistencies of that.

Abdul El-Sayed on Israel:

My foreign policy views are very simple. I just think we should be the first among equals to enforce international law.

I would argue that Israel is the greatest outlier when it comes to the behavior of the government of Israel relative to the approbation you would expect them to get versus what they actually get.

They've been able to sustain an apartheid system, which is the only thing you can call sustained nearly six decade long occupation of a people in Gaza and the West Bank.

They did a genocide in Gaza. They led us into a war. Benjamin Netanyahu came to the situation room, made the argument for a war. He finally had a dupe big enough who was willing to do it.

But think about war aims. We had no clear war aims for that war. Israel had clear war aims. And one of those big war aims seems to be setting up for the annexation of southern Lebanon.

And we do all of this and all of this has been done while our stated policy in the region is that we believe in a two-state solution, which is wild because we're aiding, arming, and abetting the very government that is attempting to foreclose on the possibility of a second state openly.

And so I'm just saying that we should treat Israel the way we treat any other country that did the same stuff.

Abdul El-Sayed on Israel-Palestine:

I understand on both sides of this debate, we're also dealing with a lot of trauma. A lot of trauma.

I understand that for a lot of Jewish Americans, there's the trauma of the Holocaust and the need to have a refuge. I understand that.

And I also understand that for a lot of Palestinian Americans and Palestinians everywhere, there's the trauma of the Nakba.

We've got to be able to create the circumstances within which both of these deeply traumatized people can have a conversation built on principle. But to me, the answer has to be principle. It has to be.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced a ban on online betting operations, less than two years after the industry was legalized.

The measure comes ahead of the October 4 first-round election, where Lula faces a tight race with right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.

The government says the ban addresses rising household debt linked to gambling, while Bolsonaro called it “populist” and politically motivated.

Licensed betting sites will be blocked from October 6, after users are allowed to withdraw remaining funds.

Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel visited Israel on September 26, 2023, warning that Hamas appeared to be preparing for a major attack. He urged Israel to ease tensions and warned: “If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to blow up in your faces.”

The warning did not include a specific date or details about the October 7 attack, and Israeli officials later disputed receiving any direct warning.

The report says multiple officials believed Kamel’s visit itself should have raised alarms, with one former Israeli official saying: “The messenger was the message.”

Source: The Atlantic

Bill Gates warned that AI could become powerful enough to create catastrophic risks, saying it could “drive events that… cause a billion deaths.”

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Gates said:

“Even though it's pretty hard to get to 100%, there's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.”

BIG: Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and told aides he expects bombing of Iran to resume after the November midterm elections, according to U.S. officials.

Iran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and restarted nuclear talks in exchange for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports and easing economic pressure.

Source: WSJ