Category World News

In response to the recent government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has announced that it won’t release inflation data for the month of October.

Even now that government funding has been restored and normal operations have resumed, the bureau updated its website to state that some October data will no longer be available.

Due to a lapse in funding, BLS was unable to collect the October 2025 reference period survey data, according to a statement. BLS is unable to collect these data retroactively.

The Real Earnings summary and the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a report that is frequently used to determine inflation by determining how much money is spent on retail items, are among the data that have been cancelled.

The bureau stated that it would use “nonsurvey data sources” to make calculations for some reports, including the Consumer Price Index, that would be included in a upcoming November report.

On December 18, the November Consumer Price Index will be released later than anticipated.

The longest government shutdown in US history lasted for nearly 43 days.

After the US Congress missed a deadline to pass legislation to keep the government funded on September 30, it began on October 1.

Republicans had hoped to pass a resolution that would not alter the current spending levels. Democrats had argued that some US citizens were unable to access healthcare because of recent restrictions on government programs.

Additionally, they issued a warning that the Affordable Care Act’s insurance subsidies are scheduled to expire by the end of the fiscal year. They predicted that many Americans’ insurance premiums would rise without a further increase in those subsidies.

Republicans resisted engaging in negotiations until their continuing resolution was passed. Democrats feared that there would be no more opportunity to address healthcare spending before the year’s end if the continuing resolution was passed without making any changes.

As a result, there was a deadlock between the two parties. During the shutdown, non-essential government tasks were put on hold, and many federal employees were forced to work.

A breakthrough only started to emerge on November 10. A budget bill passed by seven Democrats and one independent late that night to pass the government funding bill through January 30.

The House of Representatives approved the bill on November 12th, 222 to 209. The legislation was signed into law on the same day as Donald Trump.

Trump had made an explicit effort to use the shutdown to obliterate federal programs that he thought would be beneficial to Democratic strongholds.

He also made an attempt to blame the political left for the government services’ lapse, even though he acknowledged the public’s outcry against Republicans after Democrats won crucial elections in November.

He stated at a breakfast for Republican senators on November 5 that “the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans” if you read the pollsters. That played a significant role, they said.

The shutdown had already caused a warning by the Trump administration in October that the month’s consumer price data would suffer.

Trump’s economic record was praised while a potential data collection error was slammed by Trump officials in a White House statement. Once more, they pointed fingers at the Democrats for any slowed economic growth.

The Democratic Shutdown, according to the statement, “risks grinding that progress to a halt.”

The White House has discovered that, for the first time in history, there won’t likely be an inflation release because surveyors can’t go there on the ground, putting the burden on policymakers and the markets for fear of an economic calamity.

The most recent consumer price index data since September revealed a 3.5% increase in inflation across all retail products over the previous 12-month period.

For food alone, inflation for that time period was thought to be 3.1%.

We ask whether the more media ownership will lead to a more restrictive narrative.

Central Bangladesh was struck by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake, which claimed the lives of at least nine people and injured more than 300 others. In a number of places, including Dhaka, the capital, buildings were damaged.

At least 67 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect last month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says.

Speaking during a news conference in Geneva on Friday, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said the death toll includes a baby girl who was killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday.

It also includes seven other children killed a day earlier, as Israel carried out a wave of attacks&nbsp, across the enclave.

“This is during an agreed ceasefire. The pattern is staggering”, Pires told reporters of the death toll since October 11, the first full day of the truce between Israel and Hamas.

“As we have repeated many times, these are not statistics: Each was a child with a family, a dream, a life – suddenly cut short by continued violence”.

Palestinian children have borne the brunt of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, with UNICEF estimating last month that 64, 000 children have been killed and injured in Israeli attacks since the war began in October 2023.

Save the Children reported this week that, in 2024, an average of 475 Palestinian children “suffered lifelong disabilities” each month as a result of the war, including traumatic brain injuries and burns.

Gaza has also become “home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history”, the humanitarian group said.

Meanwhile, Israel has been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, plunging the territory into a humanitarian crisis that led to several hunger-related deaths among children, who are especially vulnerable when food supplies run out.

‘ People screaming everywhere ‘

This week, the Israeli military carried out a series of air strikes across Gaza in response to what it said was an incident that saw its troops fired upon in Khan Younis in the south of the Strip.

Hamas rejected Israel’s claim, saying the latest strikes – which killed at least 32 Palestinians – were “a dangerous escalation” that demonstrates that the Israeli government wants “to resume the genocide” in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said on Friday that its teams in Gaza had treated several Palestinian women and children “with open fractures and gunshot wounds to their limbs and head” amid the wave of Israeli attacks.

Zaher, an MSF nurse working at a mobile clinic in Gaza City, said they treated a woman with a leg injury and a nine-year-old girl with a facial wound caused by Israeli quadcopter gunfire.

Mohammed Malaka, a patient at al-Shifa Hospital, also in Gaza City, said he heard the sounds of two incoming missiles before he lost consciousness.

“I opened my eyes and saw my father on the ground, and I saw my three brothers on the ground, covered in blood and dust was everywhere”, he told MSF.

“I could hear people screaming everywhere … the tents had become ashes, and people were lying on the ground everywhere”.

Palestinians in Gaza continue to struggle as a result of Israel’s continued restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid, including tents, to displaced families during the harsh winter months.

Many children are “sleeping in the open” and “trembling in fear while living in flooded, makeshift shelters,” according to UNICEF’s Pires.

He urged more assistance to be allowed into the area, noting that “the reality imposed on Gaza’s children remains brutally simple: There is no safe place for them and the world cannot continue to normalize their suffering.”

How “voluntary” was the Palestinians’ escape from Gaza when a charter flight made landfall in South Africa?