“Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own” was the maxim of 19th-century banker Nathan Rothschild. Not all investors share his appetite for risk, but most see gold as the ultimate safe haven and no more so than today, with the price of the precious metal soaring 50% this year, far outpacing returns from equities. In October, the gold value hit $4,380 an ounce, an all-time record. 

What’s driving the gold rush? 
The gold price increase has been largely driven by uncertainty, “whether that’s geopolitical” or “economic,” Ryan McIntyre, of investment management firm Sprott, said to The New York Times. Institutions are attracted to gold as a store of value in times of crisis, the latest of which include tariff wars and fears of an AI stock crash. 

Central banks, too, have increasingly sought protection “not against short-term meltdowns but longer-run changes,” said The Economist. According to the International Monetary Fund, central bank holdings of physical gold in emerging markets have risen 161% since 2006, with purchases going into overdrive in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both China and Russia have ramped up switching their official reserve assets out of currencies such as the dollar and into gold. The government shutdown also increased “long” positions held by hedge funds on gold futures, meaning that speculators are the “most likely drivers of recent price movements.”

What does it all mean? 
The rising price of gold is an indication of something big, according to Citadel CEO Ken Griffin. “That something is a loss of trust, first and foremost in U.S. treasuries but also in other G7 government bond markets,” said The Telegraph. 

Stress in the long-term bond markets and a devaluation of the dollar, which suffered its biggest decline in more than half a century this year, have unsettled investments usually seen as low risk. The “exploding gold prices” are a “warning sign,” said Paolo Pasquariello, a finance professor at the University of Michigan. It’s a “leading indicator of troublesome times ahead” for the U.S. economy.

U.S. Border Patrol may have more eyes on Americans than most people realize, especially on the nation’s roadways. The agency has been using a series of hidden cameras, equipped with license plate readers, to track vehicles. While this program was initially designed for crimes related to border crossings, it seems to have taken on a much broader role in recent years.

Flagging ‘suspicious’ driving patterns
The program uses a “network of cameras” that “scans and records vehicle license plate information,” according to an investigation by The Associated Press. An algorithm built into the cameras reportedly “flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took.” Federal agents may then share this information with local law enforcement.

Drivers can find themselves pulled over for “speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view,” with “no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar,” said the AP. The cameras capturing these license plates may be hidden in traffic cones and electrical boxes.

These cameras have been “deployed far beyond the agency's traditional 100-mile jurisdiction, including in major cities and metropolitan areas,” said Newsweek. While Border Patrol generally keeps to within 100 miles of the border, they are “legally permitted ‘to operate anywhere in the United States,’” said Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) in a statement.

‘Broader, quieter shift’
This program was reportedly started nearly a decade ago to counter crime on the U.S. border. But it has since undergone a “broader, quieter shift” into a more wide-scale program, and is now “something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation,” said NewsNation. Border Patrol will reportedly get more than $2.7 billion from the Trump administration to “build out border surveillance systems like the license plate reader network,” many of which incorporate artificial intelligence. Border Patrol has also allegedly gone to great lengths to keep details of the program under wraps, and has been “hiding any references to the program in court documents and police reports,” said The Hill.

The program is as “massive and invasive as it seems,” immigration attorney Robert Armstrong told NewsNation. The “actions that the CBP has been taking to hide this program speak for themselves, right?”

Displaced Palestinians wait for a food portion at Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Aid deliveries into Gaza are “still being held back by restrictions affecting visas and import approvals, too few crossing points” and other impediments, said the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA. 
Eyad Baba / AFP / Getty Images

The delights of the action movie continue to thrill audiences around the world, often transcending linguistic barriers with their sparring dialogue and universal themes of heroism, vengeance and justice. These are among our new quarter-century’s best action films set in the real world.

‘Oldboy’ (2003)
When businessman Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is released after 15 years of horrific, solitary and mysterious confinement in a greasy hotel room that drove him mad, he sets about exacting revenge on his tormentors. Director Park Chan-wook’s film is not for the squeamish and “features virtuoso direction and editing, mesmerising performances and a relentlessly creative exploration of the revenge motif,” said Liese Spencer at Sight and Sound. (Prime)

‘District B13 (2004)’
Remembered in part as the movie that introduced broad audiences to the jaw-dropping art of parkour, director Pierre Morel’s fast-paced thriller, produced by Luc Besson, is set in a near-future Paris. “District B13” succeeds as an action film in that it “features tremendous tricks that thrill not only because they’re fast and smart and acutely choreographed but also because they put real bodies at stake,” said Cynthia Fuchs at PopMatters. (Fubo)

‘Rebel Ridge’ (2024)
Perhaps the only action film ever to revolve around civil asset forfeiture, director Jeremy Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge” is an immensely satisfying cinematic parable. The film’s action sequences are “beautifully structured, always keeping us aware of the geography, akin to how a great Western uses a saloon or rooftops above a dusty road to put us in the heart of the combat,” said Brian Tallerico at Roger Ebert. (Netflix)