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Trump Train Off Track: Donald Trump spent the better part of Wednesday and Thursday fighting off a series of allegations that he had sexually assaulted women over the course of his career. The New York Times kicked things off reporting that two women allege that Trump groped them in the past. Trump denied the allegations and his lawyers told the New York Times to remove the story. The Times refused, saying the story couldn’t do any more damage to Trump’s reputation. That kicked off a cascading series of allegations from People Magazine to the Palm Beach Post of Trump’s sexual behavior. Michelle Obama weighed in on the debate and attacked Trump for his behavior, without even having to use his name.

Despite all that, Trump managed to find time to call on Hillary Clinton to fire an aide involved in speaking rudely of conservative Catholics. According to the recent Wikileaks batch of leaked emails, Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri said some pretty disparaging stuff about the religion with a think tank fellow back in 2011. The pair hypothesized that Catholics “must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” Jenny is probably livin’ on a prayer.

And speaking of New Jersey rock anthems, “Bridgegate” returned to haunt New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. A judge signed a criminal summons accusing Bruce Springsteen’s Worst Fan of misconduct for his role in pissing off a lot of New Jersey commuters. Two of Christie’s aides are already on trial for allegedly closing part of the George Washington Bridge after Mark Sokolich, Mayor of the bridge-bordering Fort Lee, refused to endorse Governor Christie. The governor has long denied his involvement in the political pettiness, but now that’s for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office to decide. They’ll determine whether an indictment is next.

King Bhumibol of Thailand, the world’s longest reigning monarch, died on Thursday in a hospital in Bangkok. He was 88 and had been on the throne for 70 years. The Prime Minister declared a year of mourning for the beloved king who united an oft-divided country. The King’s son, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, will be the next king but has said he will wait until the appropriate time to take the throne. Most importantly, at least for our ethnocentric American readers, King Bhumibol was born in Massachusetts; he is the only monarch ever born in the United States. 

The Nigerian government negotiated the release of 21 girls more than two years after terrorist group and ISIS affiliate Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from their boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria. Boko Haram, which literally translates to “Western education is forbidden,” still holds ~200 of the girls. The group has had some organizational issues lately as ISIS appointed a new leader for the group but the old one kept showing up to work anyway. The government really doesn’t care how the org chart looks as long as it can free the remaining girls. 

You would think all the less-than-peaceful people who won the Nobel Peace Prize over the years would ruffle a few feathers, but nothing has caused outrage quite like a songwriter winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Ironically, reaction to Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize sounds similar to his music: whiny, hippy nonsense that no one should take too seriously. Fan or not, the Nobel Academy argued that Dylan’s “tremendous impact on popular music” is hard to ignore, even crediting him with “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” If this is the new trend in literature, a posthumous award for Bowie better be next.

UK: Since June’s Brexit vote, British applications for Irish citizenship have soared. More than 37,000 people in the UK have applied for Irish passports in the last three months, which is more cases than all of 2015.

Maldives: After the Commonwealth threatened possible suspension if the Maldives failed to “show progress on democracy,” the nation decided to withdraw from the Commonwealth instead. Highly suspicious.

Space: Thanks to new Hubble telescope images taken over 20 years, we have a better idea of just how many galaxies are out there. Turns out, there are more than two trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 more times than we thought. Far out. 

Michelle Obama gave a speech so powerful that even she got emotional.

Richard Nixon probably wouldn’t support Donald Trump. Here’s the evidence.

Seth Meyers took a closer look at leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

According to a new exposé in the New York Post, Saddam Hussein, the late – and, according to Donald Trump, “great” – dictator apparently had a secret detention chamber inside a mansion in the Upper East Side. Back when Hussein came to power in 1979, the bushy-tailed ingenue lived the American dream and found a cozy space inside the Mission of Iraq. Hussein used the space whenever he felt like torturing and questioning Iraqis in the area, or wanted to visit one of the several Zagat-rated restaurants in the neighborhood, or simply wanted to watch the leaves change colors in Central Park. Sure the room is windowless and presumably haunted by a lot of ghosts, but it’s prime real estate on 79th Street and 5th Avenue. It’s close to the museums, some of the best schools in the city and best of all: it’s across the street from former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s house! 

• There is a civil war going on in the Republican Party. Find out what’s behind it and how it might turn out. 
• Also, how different is the US election to the Brexit referendum?
• Will we ever break our addictions to our phones? 
• We warned you that 2016 was going to suck. And most of our predictions came true. 
• “If you’re not prepared to appreciate what you have in your glass, then I advise you to drink Coca-Cola.” Read Christopher Waltz’s 5 rules for drinking champagne. 
• China is drowning in public debt and it won’t end well for the rest of the world. 
• The New York Review of Books looks back at the Panama Papers.
• Fab.com was once valued at $1 billion. Then it sold for $15 million. Find out what lessons can be learned from the collapsed unicorn. 
• Hillary Clinton says she is “the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse.”
• A new magazine in Germany is reviving the relationship between the German and Yiddish languages.
• Did you know there is a war going on in Yemen? Here are 7 things you should know about the war in Yemen.
• The Financial Times has lunch with Oliver Stone about his career and his latest movie, Snowden (ironically, behind a paywall).
• Ever wonder what President Obama thinks about self-driving cars? He sat down with Wired to talk about it. And he penned his own essay about why now is the best time to be alive.
• What’s a late-night TV show to do when everything Trump says is so outrageous you don’t know if it’s real or not? Take a look at how some late-night shows are handling the presidential election. 
• “In 2012, roughly 16 million Adderall prescriptions were written for adults between ages 20 and 39.” Read about what it’s like to be a part of the Adderall Generation.
• A case for why the GOP should appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court before it’s too late. 
• If you’ve been following all of the election polls, you should read about the 19-year-old Illinois man who has been distorting national averages. 
• Check out these devastating photos of the effects of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti from the New York Times. 
• The Washington Post has an exceptional feature on border security, immigration, globalization and a new age of walls. 
• Presented without comment: The 7 Oddest Things Donald Trump Thinks