It’s Thursday, October 29. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: A former NYPD detective on why New York City assaults are so high—and how to fix it. Coleman Hughes meets the Republican challenging Letitia James. Kara Kennedy on how parenting became the suffering Olympics. And much more.
But first: Americans are still behind bars in Russia. What is the government doing about it?
Last week, the U.S. government celebrated the release of Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher arrested in 2022 after Russian forces accused him of manning a Ukrainian military checkpoint. Once Hubbard was back in the United States, the State Department boasted that “there are currently no Americans determined to be wrongfully detained in Russia.”
But that’s not the whole story.
There are at least five Americans or American residents who are still in Russian prison today and whose advocates say were targeted for political reasons. Among those locked up are Chuck Zimmerman, a U.S. Navy veteran pulled over by the Russian Navy while sailing in international waters and charged with arms trafficking after disclosing that he had a weapon on his boat. Olga Jezler was sentenced to prison after traveling to Russia to care for her sister with breast cancer. Border agents allegedly discovered hashish oil in Jezler’s bag and charged her with drug trafficking. And then there is Aleksandr Antonov, who fled the Soviet Union in the 1990s, became a U.S. citizen, and was arrested in 2025 while on a business trip. He was crossing the border from Russia to Estonia when guards searched his phone and found pro-Ukraine messages. Antonov was charged with inciting terrorism and sentenced to time in a Russian gulag.
Why haven’t these people been declared “wrongfully detained,” a status that elevates their cases to the top levels of the U.S. government? And what, if anything, is the U.S. government doing to try to free them? I spoke to families, campaigners, and officials in search of answers to those questions.
—Frannie Block
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THE NEWS
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Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in Miami on Wednesday after fleeing Brazil to escape what he called “the politicization of the justice system.” He also claimed that he is the rightful president-elect despite losing to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The Trump administration plans to issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family.
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Asian Americans are 43 percent of Harvard University’s incoming freshman class, the highest percentage in more than a decade. The percentage of black freshmen fell for the third year in a row following the Supreme Court ruling overturning race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
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Two high-speed trains crashed into each other on a railway in central Spain on Wednesday, killing at least 68 people. Transport Minister Óscar Puente said the accident was caused by an “inexplicable” order from a rail control center, not train engineers.
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The Senate race in deep-red South Carolina is neck-and-neck, according to a new New York Times/Siena University poll. Republican Darline Graham, who was appointed to her brother Lindsey’s seat after his death in July, leads Democrat Annie Andrews by less than one percentage point. South Carolina last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1998.
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Iran rejected a new peace deal proposed through mediators from Qatar, calling the terms “unacceptable.” The war with Iran has cost at least $47.1 billion as of mid-October, up from about $37.5 billion in July.
