Friday morning news: October 9, 2026

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Hurricane » Hurricane Isaias is expected to lash the Gulf Coast with powerful winds, driving rain, and dangerous storm surge today.

National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said he expects landfall somewhere along the north-central Gulf Coast late tonight into early Saturday morning.

BRENNAN: Uh, we are expecting Isaias to be a, a dangerous hurricane when it makes landfall. We have hurricane warnings in effect for portions of the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida Gulf Coast.

Officials in Alabama’s Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have urged visitors to leave. Nearby Foley warns bridges could close as early as noon today.

And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned:

DESANTIS: You are gonna see potential for storm surge all the way down the Florida Panhandle. You will start to see a risk of tornadoes prior to the eye of the storm, uh, reaching landfall.

Forecasters also warn of isolated rainfall totals reaching 15 inches in parts of northern Florida, threatening flash floods.

Work Visa fraud » The Trump administration is accusing Microsoft and Adobe, among others, of abusing foreign-worker programs. WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more from the nation’s capital.

HARRISON WATTERS: The PERM program, as it’s known, allows companies to put foreign workers on a pathway to permanent residency in the United States.

Vice President JD Vance says the program was designed to give companies access to foreign talent they can’t find in America, but he asserts that Microsoft and Adobe are using the program to cut costs.

VANCE: Microsoft laid off last year 6000, 6000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6300 H-1B visas and almost 3000 green cards. In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.

WATTERS: And Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling says those two tech giants can no longer use the PERM program.

SONDERLING: I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world…

WATTERS: Six other IT companies were on the list as well.

The Labor Department is also looking into alleged abuse in higher education related to visas and possible foreign influence in federally funded research.

For WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters, in Washington.

Russian strike kills at least 30 » A bloody day in Ukraine:

SOUND: [Aftermath of bus attack]

Rescue crews pick through debris after a Russian strike hitting two public buses in eastern Ukraine killed more than 30 people.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk reacted:

TURK: The scale and manner of these attacks, killing and injuring people on buses, at their homes and work in different areas of the country is reprehensible.

Meanwhile, Moscow is stepping up attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, with power outages worsening in Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly urged the United States Thursday to intensify economic pressure against Moscow.

ZELENSKYY: The Americans can do more. I think President Trump can do more. And he has, between us, has to do more, because of so many losses.

His comments came during a visit by the British foreign minister, who arrived in Kyiv to announce new sanctions against Russia.

New U.S. indictment charges Maduro w/ torture » Venezuela’s ousted dictator Nicolás Maduro is facing a new charge in U.S. federal court.

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald announced that his office in the Southern District of New York:

MCDONALD: …unsealed a superseding indictment charging Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores de Maduro, with a broad conspiracy to commit torture.

McDonald says the indictment charges that Maduro and other Venezuelan leaders worked to silence political opposition:

MCDONALD: Through murder and threats to murder victims’ families, electric shock, asphyxiation, starvation, beatings, and rape.

Prosecutors say Maduro approved torture methods, and his wife helped build the system used to crush dissent.

U.S. forces captured the couple in Venezuela in January. Both remain jailed in New York and have pleaded not guilty to the earlier drug charges.

The case is set for trial June first of next year.

Mifepristone update » Pro-life groups are accusing the FDA of dragging out its promised review of an abortion drug. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The Food and Drug Administration says its safety review of mifepristone will stretch into next year.

In a court filing Wednesday, officials said they expect to finish a safety study by mid-December and then publish a report on the findings by March.

Americans United for Life says President Trump’s administration promised the review more than a year ago, but has shown no public proof of any real progress.

The filing comes in Louisiana’s lawsuit challenging the FDA’s decision to allow the drug through the mail.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America wants the administration to immediately restore a safety rule requiring women to obtain the drug in person instead of waiting for the study to end.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

NASA crew-12 returns » Off the coast of Los Angeles Thursday:

AUDIO: Visual confirmation of splashdown. Dragon Freedom has returned home and Jessica, Jack, Sophie, and Andre- Copy, splashdown. On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home, Crew-12.

NASA says the four astronauts spent nearly eight months aboard the International Space Station.

Recovery crews hoisted their SpaceX capsule onto a ship. The two Americans, one French astronaut and one Russian emerged waving and pumping their fists.

NASA says the crew’s research helps prepare for future moon landings. And some of that work continues back on Earth.

Liz Warren is deputy chief scientist for NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program. She says their experiments include:

WARREN: And a study called Manual Piloting, uh, that evaluates astronaut performance during simulated lunar landings.

Researchers want to see how adjusting to gravity after floating in space affects an astronaut’s ability to steer and land a spacecraft.

NASA tests those skills with laptop simulations before, during, and after space missions to help future moon crews land safely.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, a remake of a classic Western. We’ll have a review. Plus, George Grant with Wordplay.

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