The Rest of the World Report | October 1, 2026 — Morning Edition

Weekday morning and evening editions. Saturdays once. Good news on Sundays. All sources labeled. **PIKE SURVIVES LETHAL INJECTION** Christa Pike is in a Nashville hospital after Tennessee’s attempt to execute her failed Wednesday night. ROTWR covered her case in last night’s Evening Edition, when a court-ordered stay was still in place. Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, was convicted in 1996 of torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. The state began lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution around 7:46 p.m. The execution had already been delayed for hours by a last-minute stay from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court lifted that stay at Tennessee’s request. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, writing that the ruling “unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.” Pike’s federal public defenders told the Tennessee Supreme Court she had been given two syringes of pentobarbital by 8:26 p.m. and was still alive and snoring. Associated Press reporter Kim Chandler has covered many executions but never one in Tennessee. She said Pike “appeared noticeably awake as the execution began.” Witnesses described the viewing-room curtain opening and closing several times over more than an hour before media were told to leave. Pike was taken to a nearby hospital. Her lawyers said the state had failed to carry out a lawful execution “once again.” They pointed to difficult vein access, blown veins and degraded pentobarbital. The Tennessee Department of Correction said its staff followed state protocol. Gov. Bill Lee has paused all remaining Tennessee executions scheduled for 2026. He ordered a third-party review. It is the state’s second botched execution attempt this year. Death row inmate Tony Carruthers received a one-year reprieve in May. His execution team had spent more than an hour failing to establish an intravenous line. 🌍 **Translator’s Note:** ABC News Australia’s coverage treated Wednesday’s attempt less as an isolated failure than as confirmation of a pattern. It tied the attempt to Tennessee’s Carruthers reprieve in May. It also cited the Death Penalty Information Center’s finding that over a third of 2022’s execution attempts were “visibly problematic.” Where American outlets are tracking Pike’s case on its own, the Australian framing places it inside a recurring story about how U.S. executions actually go. 🇺🇸 **What American readers need to know:** Lethal injection has the highest botched-execution rate of any method the U.S. uses, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Tennessee has now failed twice this year to complete a scheduled execution. *Sources:* ABC News Australia *(witness accounts, hospitalization, Lee’s pause and review order, Carruthers comparison, DPIC statistic);* The Hill *(Supreme Court ruling, Sotomayor dissent);* The Hill *(public defenders’ motion, pentobarbital dosing timeline)* **JUDGE BLOCKS NEW YORK RENT LAW** A federal judge in Manhattan has blocked New York from enforcing its ban on algorithmic rent-pricing software, at least for now. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday in favor of RealPage, the pricing software company owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. RealPage argued the law violated its First Amendment rights by restricting what its software can tell landlords to charge. New York’s law barred landlords from using software that sets rents based on competitors’ pricing data. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it last October. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal sponsored it as a state senator. The state said the law would curb algorithmic price-fixing that was inflating rents in New York City. Caproni called it a “close call” but found RealPage was “marginally” likely to show the law unconstitutional. “There is nothing untoward about considering prices charged by competitors,” she wrote. New York Attorney General Letitia James had argued the law regulated conduct, not speech. RealPage sued two days after settling a separate case with the Justice Department. In that settlement, it agreed to stop using non-public competitor data to generate price recommendations. A 2024 Justice Department lawsuit against RealPage, since settled, detailed how that worked in practice. Landlords fed RealPage nonpublic data on their own rents and lease terms. RealPage’s software pooled that data across competitors to recommend higher prices. One RealPage executive told a landlord the data could mean “a $50 increase instead of a $10 increase for the day.” A landlord using the product called it “classic price fixing.” RealPage itself described the effect of its pricing products industry-wide as “a rising tide raises all ships.” 🇺🇸 **What American readers need to know:** RealPage’s pricing software is already the subject of that separate Justice Department antitrust settlement. Tenant advocates in dozens of cities blame it for driving up rents. New York was the first state to ban the practice outright. Tuesday’s ruling raises First Amendment questions for similar bans elsewhere. *Sources: Reuters, via* U.S. News & World Report *(ruling details, quotes from Caproni, Hoylman-Sigal and RealPage);* U.S. Department of Justice *(2024 antitrust complaint, pricing mechanism, internal quotes)* **GAZA** **105 BURIED, RECOVERED FROM 2023 STRIKE** Gaza’s Civil Defence began burying the remains of 105 people Thursday, nearly three years after an Israeli strike buried them in rubble. Israeli air strikes using at least 20 bombs leveled the seven-story Al Taj 3 building in Gaza City’s Yarmouk Square neighborhood on Oct. 25, 2023. The strikes also destroyed several nearby residential buildings. Recovery teams could not reach the bodies at the time, Civil Defence operations director Abdul al-Majdalawi said. He said the heavy machinery needed to do it was “directly and deliberately targeted.” The search for remains took 17 days and was coordinated with an Egyptian committee, the Civil Defence said. Families gathered in the devastated Al-Taj area to identify remains as rescue crews laid them in rows among the ruins. Fawaz Ziyara, a survivor and relative of victims, said around 300 people were killed when the block was struck. He said more bodies are still believed to be under the rubble. Coffins carrying the remains moved through Gaza City in a funeral procession Thursday. Families will bury them at Sheikh Radwan cemetery, northwest of the city, the General Directorate of Civil Defence said. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Khalili, reporting from Gaza City, called it the fifth-largest single recovery of remains since the war began in October 2023. Osama Sharaf said 37 members of his family were killed in the 2023 strike. Sixteen more of them were recovered Wednesday, he said, including his parents and all of his siblings. Taghreed Al-Hanawi’s daughter, a physician, was killed along with her husband and four children in the same strike. Al-Hanawi said the family had been “completely erased from the civil registry.” She said she was finally able to recover their remains and bury them with dignity. 🇺🇸 **What American readers need to know:** Families in Gaza are still recovering and identifying bodies from strikes nearly three years old. This is one of the largest single recoveries since the war began. *Sources:* Al Jazeera *(recovery operation, Al-Majdalawi and Sharaf quotes, Khalili reporting);* Anadolu Agency *(17-day search detail, Egyptian coordination, Ziyara and Al-Hanawi accounts)* **ISRAEL KILLS A 263RD JOURNALIST** Palestinian journalist Muhammad Abdel Aziz al-Najjar was among eight people killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza Wednesday, Gaza’s Government Media Office said. The office said al-Najjar was the 263rd journalist killed by Israel since October 2023. It did not give the location or circumstances of his death. Separately, an Israeli drone strike hit a passenger van in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, killing six people, according to witnesses and medical sources. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its crews took 13 wounded people to al-Quds Hospital. An Israeli strike on a residential apartment near al-Shifa Hospital killed at least one woman, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported. Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 1,431 Palestinians have been killed and 5,026 wounded since the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire took effect nearly a year ago. 🌍 **Translator’s Note:** Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Gaza City, said “everyone inside the strip is afraid to go to the supermarket.” She described daily life under a nominal ceasefire as “terrifying.” Al Jazeera’s coverage treats the “ceasefire” label itself, rather than any single strike, as the story. 🇺🇸 **What American readers need to know:** A ceasefire that is nearly a year old has not stopped near-daily Palestinian deaths in Gaza. A journalist’s death there rarely makes American headlines the way one elsewhere might. *Sources:* Al Jazeera *(casualty figures, journalist’s death, strike details, Khoudary quote)* **FORTUNE SUSPECT BOUND OVER FOR TRIAL** A Jackson, Mississippi judge found enough evidence Wednesday to send the murder case against Jarquez Ratliff toward a grand jury. The case concerns the death of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four found hanging from a tree on Road of Remembrance in Jackson on Aug. 3. Jackson Police say the hanging itself was staged. They say the actual killing stemmed from a drug dispute. Authorities describe Ratliff as an enforcer directed to kill Fortune after she was believed to have stolen drugs. Detective Samuel Dukes testified that he interviewed roughly 25 people during the investigation. A witness identified in court only as “Jane Doe” told him Ratliff said Fortune “fought hard” during the killing. Doe also said Ratliff tried to hand her Fortune’s purse afterward. Officers later found documents believed to be from that purse hidden in Ratliff’s closet, Dukes said. Those documents, along with a DNA sample taken from Ratliff, are still being tested. No date has been set for the grand jury to convene. Ratliff’s attorney, Toney Baldwin, pushed back hard on the timeline. Surveillance video shows Fortune alive on the morning of July 28. Her body was found hanging on Aug. 3. The state medical examiner’s office found she had only been dead two or three days when she was found, a gap of several days that Baldwin says investigators haven’t explained. Ratliff is one of three people charged in Fortune’s death; a co-defendant is held on a $5 million bond. 🇺🇸 **What American readers need to know:** Fortune’s death drew national attention over the possibility it was a lynching. Jackson Police say the hanging was staged to look like one. *Sources:* WLBT *(hearing testimony, timeline dispute, case background);* WJTV *(pending DNA and item testing)* **BRIEFS** Investigators in Senatobia, Mississippi have sent their findings on the fatal police shooting of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley to Attorney General Lynn Fitch. Fitch has given no public update since Sept. 18. No body-camera footage has been released. The toddler was shot in June as his mother’s car left a Walmart shoplifting stop. State investigators named Officer Hunter Foster as the subject of their investigation, in documents they released in error. He was placed on administrative leave the next day. *Source:* Mississippi Today/Verite News A Jackson County, Mississippi grand jury’s conclusion that Nolan Wells’ death was consistent with drowning hasn’t resolved the case for his family. The state medical examiner and an independent pathologist both still classify his cause and manner of death as undetermined. Both cite unexplained blunt-force injuries. Attorney Ben Crump is seeking a federal investigation. *Source:* Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder **NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION** 🇮🇷 Iran: 3,684 killed🇱🇧 Lebanon: 8,953 killed, 30,643 wounded🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded🇺🇸 US military: 23 killed, 861 wounded🇵🇸 Gaza: 74,105+ killed (total war), 1,431 killed / 5,026 wounded (since ceasefire)🇵🇸 West Bank: 322 killed (incl. 74 children), 5,927 wounded (incl. 946 children) since January 2025 🛢️Brent crude: $100.70/barrel — OilPrice.com⛽️U.S. average gas price: $4.41/gallon — AAA Sourcing note: HRANA (Iran); Lebanon MOPH; INSS (Israel); DCAS (US); OCHA (West Bank); gazacasualties.org (Gaza total); Al Jazeera (Gaza since ceasefire, updated this morning). Brent and gas updated this morning via OilPrice.com and AAA. “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789 *I will never put the news behind a paywall. 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