Social Security benefits will rise 3.6% in 2027, the Social Security Administration announced Wednesday. That’s the biggest cost-of-living adjustment since 2023, when payments jumped 8.7%, and a solid bump over the 2.8% beneficiaries got for 2026. For the average retired worker, it works out to roughly $75 more a month, reports PBS NewsHour.

Roughly 76 million beneficiaries will see the higher payments in January. However, the actual amount for any retiree enrolled in Medicare will vary. The Part B premium, which covers outpatient care, is usually deducted from Social Security benefits, changing net COLAs.

The trigger was September inflation data. The consumer price index rose 3.7% over 12 months, driven heavily by gasoline, while the CPI-W — the specific index used to set the COLA—rose 3.9%. If you're still in the workforce and earning well, note the other half of the equation: the taxable earnings cap climbs from $184,500 to $192,300, so the ceiling on what gets taxed just moved up with it.

Here’s the catch. Medicare Part B premiums are projected to hit $209.50 a month in 2027, up from $202.90, which eats into the raise before it lands. That’s a trustees’ projection, not a final number. And an AARP survey found 76% of respondents said a 3.5% adjustment wouldn’t keep pace with their actual costs—a verdict delivered before this one was even announced, which tells you how much faith is left in the formula.

Still, according to the Washington Post, the long-term outlook for the program, however, is troubled. Social Security comes from payroll taxes on current workers, and for decades, the program, created during the Great Depression, collected more money than it paid out. That excess created a trust fund that gave Social Security a cushion as it paid out benefits.

Ukrainian troops lost their satellite link mid-mission this week. SpaceX terminals started cutting out at speeds above 100 mph, and Ukrainian officials said a number of combat missions failed as a result. No warning, Kyiv said. The restrictions hit Starshield—the military version of Starlink that SpaceX builds but the U.S. government controls.

Mid-range strikes against Russian logistics went dark, and so did the drone interceptors Ukraine flies against jet-powered Shaheds. Those interception rates had already slid from above 90% to roughly 60%, Ars Technica reports. Connectivity was partially restored by Wednesday evening, but advisers to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the timing “cannot be a coincidence.” Elon Musk didn’t exactly deny it: “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

The outage landed alongside missed U.S. early warnings of Russian strikes that left 600,000 Ukrainians without power, and amid President Donald Trump's pressure on Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries. Whether intelligence sharing was actually cut is still murky—Trump denies it, Zelenskyy called one lapse a “technical glitch,” and Ukraine’s air force says it got warnings for three of four barrages. But a single company’s infrastructure settings reshaped a live battlefield overnight, and nobody outside that company can say for certain who flipped the switch.

We knew it wasn’t exactly going well for Earth. But now we know that seven of the 16 planetary “vital signs” tracked by an international team of scientists are now at record extremes, according to CBS News, which reported on the group’s annual State of the Climate paper published Wednesday in BioScience. Atmospheric carbon dioxide hit 428 parts per million. Ocean heat, Greenland and Antarctic ice loss and sea-level rise all set records.

The acceleration is the really troubling part. Warming ran about 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade from 1880 to 1970. Since 2010 it's 0.36—roughly seven times faster. July was the warmest month on record for the contiguous United States. Lead author Bill Ripple of Oregon State said a strengthening El Nino could push temperatures higher still.

What’s less settled: the reporting around this year’s assessment is inconsistent on which records belong to which year, and on whether coral reefs have already crossed a tipping point or are still approaching one. No outlet published the full list of 16. But the direction of travel, unfortunately, isn’t in dispute.