IT experts rushed to update systems after a cybersecurity vulnerability was detected. Companies and government agencies globally are scrambling to patch security flaws in PHP, a programming language used by up to 70% of the world’s websites. The PHP Foundation issued emergency patches on Wednesday, which caused entities including Wikipedia, the European telecom giant Orange, and governments from Czechia to the United Kingdom to take some websites offline before hackers could seize control and steal sensitive data. Artificial intelligence and cybersecurity firms uncovered the flaws, which had existed for decades, illustrating both the power and dangers of AI to keep the internet safe.
Our coverage: Some AI safety advocates are calling for an AI kill switch. Would it work?

Canada and Turkey reached a new “strategic partnership.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a new “strategic partnership” on Thursday, signing agreements on defense, transportation, and energy, as well as launching free-trade talks. Mr. Carney’s first bilateral visit to Turkey comes as he seeks to reduce his country's reliance on the United States amid trade tensions. Canada lifted restrictions on weapons exports to Turkey in 2024, having imposed them over previous Turkish military actions. Amnesty International urged Mr. Carney to raise human rights concerns during the visit, but he did not publicly address the issue. – The Associated Press

Crowds gathered at a final pre-election rally of Serbia’s students. Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Serbia’s protesting students turned out for the final campaign rally ahead of the parliamentary election this weekend, in a mounting challenge to the Balkan country’s powerful strongman Aleksandar Vučić. Crowds streamed into Belgrade’s central Slavija square Thursday, also filling several blocks nearby. The crowds chanted “Victory” in a wave of optimism ahead the early vote that comes after almost two years of student-led protests against Mr. Vučić’s tight rule in the Balkan country. – AP

The State Department started evacuating nonessential staff from the U.S. Embassy and at consulates in Saudi Arabia. In a statement late Wednesday, the department cited attacks by Houthis in Yemen on “civilian airports and other critical infrastructure” in Saudi Arabia that “have the potential to escalate rapidly.” On Wednesday, a Houthi strike killed at least one person and shuttered the regional airport at Dammam, and another led to the deaths of four foreign workers at an Aramco oil field. Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil and gas company and the world’s largest petroleum company, evacuated its headquarters in the kingdom’s eastern Dhahran region on Thursday and ordered its employees to work from home.

– Compiled by Monitor writers around the world

International observers are unlikely to have a direct effect on how U.S. elections are run. But their presence can be steadying and their analysis can help voters understand what went right and how the country’s electoral system could improve.

As Donald Trump faces lame-duck status after the midterms – a period during which presidents have shifted attention to foreign policy – signs are mounting he could set free his inclination toward big powers and their leaders, starting with Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Israelis vote next week on a new prime minister, in an election that will have an impact not just in Israel but beyond. Still, whoever wins, wholesale Israeli policy changes appear unlikely in the short term.

Rising childcare costs directly impact American society. As prices climb, concerns about the cost of raising children will shape big choices for young Americans, from housing to jobs to family size and social values. 

Successive governments have struggled to help young Britons confront dwindling job opportunities, high property prices, and mounting student debt. So today’s 20-somethings are doing it for themselves, bringing in extra cash through inventive “side hustles” that are also changing how they think about work and careers.

Around the world, there’s a quiet, transformative protest taking place. It doesn’t involve politics or economics, a street presence or placards.

Rather, it’s about reviving the joy of reading – for connection and pleasure, and beyond academic learning. Communities, educators, parents, and students of all ages are embracing this approach. It’s an evolving response to concerns about poor reading abilities among children, as well as the decline in the share of people – young and old – who say they read for pleasure.

This month, Britain’s National Literacy Trust hosted a global event to get the most people reading in a 12-hour period. It was joined by thousands. A few weeks ago, North Carolina announced a campaign encouraging the state’s children to read 10 million books of their choice in 2027. And in early September, the Library of Congress gave one of its 2026 international awards to the Nal’ibali Trust in Cape Town, South Africa, which helps children and caregivers engage in the sheer delight of reading aloud and storytelling. Mini libraries and reading groups are popping up, from laundromats in Wyoming to “bazaars, temples and bus stops” in rural India, according to the online magazine Reasons To Be Cheerful.

Such initiatives speak to the innate human inclination to imagine and understand lives and worlds beyond one’s own. They are also expanding the concept of reading from being primarily a solitary pursuit to involving a wider family or community endeavor. Even formal school systems are making more space for the shared experience in approaches to teaching reading or literature. And they’re finding that, despite online distractions, young people are both eager and able to engage with longer narratives and deeper reflection.

“We live in the age of the reel, ... the clip ... the excerpt,” according to Walt Hunter, a humanities professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. As a result, “assignments have been abbreviated so dramatically ... [to] fewer than three books a year,” he wrote in The Atlantic this year. But recently, he shifted from this approach to one that allowed “tarrying” and “developing a relationship” with an author across several books.

To his surprise, students fully engaged with the more extensive reading. And, in doing so, Professor Hunter observed, they had also “taken back their lives, for an hour or two each day.”

Students are “tired of just reading excerpts,” a middle school principal told Chalkbeat, a nonprofit education site. “They’re begging their teachers. Can we just read a couple of chapters and read it straight through?”

In fact, according to two researchers, young people’s love of reading might be underestimated. Concern about this cohort, they wrote in The Conversation in August, should acknowledge how members of Generation Z consume literature, which is “multimodally – bouncing between print, e-book and audiobook.”

Compared with previous generations, “Gen Zers are more likely to experience reading as a social activity,” including through “silent reading parties,” where they find “community around books,” the researchers reported. And, they pointed out, the number of independent bookstores in the United States has risen by 70% over the past five years, and one national chain has planned to open 60 new stores in 2026.

According to Tom Bober, a school librarian in Clayton, Missouri, the pressure of state curricula and literacy mandates forces the question: “Can every child read?” What Mr. Bober prefers to ask, he told Education Week, is slightly different: “Does every child want to read?”

That’s a subtle yet meaningful distinction. And, with the help of creative initiatives and adaptations in communities and schools, the answer still appears to be yes.