Completed the test edition in drafts/b.md.

The draft is 1,087 words, with a 242-word lead and the required 3 NEWS, 2 TECH and 2 CULTURE items. I compared three lead candidates, selected the Chainalysis disclosure, and completed an adversarial review. Structural checks passed for counts, word limit, banned terms, dates and em dashes.

Created drafts/a.md: 922 words, with the required section counts and 57 source citations. Local structure, length, date-language, and visible banned-word checks passed.

Created drafts/c.md with the complete sourced v2 edition.

Checks passed: 881 words, 208-word lead body, exact 3/2/2 section counts, four reading links, and no listed banned words or em dashes. Only drafts/c.md changed.

I picked draft C. edition.txt is a copy of drafts/c.md (cmp confirms they are byte-identical), and selection.txt names the winner, ranks the other two with reasons and lists the checks I ran. Both files are committed as bd8debe, and nothing outside those two paths changed.

What I checked

• Structure and style: all three drafts pass the measurable rules. They run 881, 922 and 1,084 words, have no em dashes, have 3/2/2 tagged items and four reading-list links, and contain none of the banned words the style guide shows. The guide hides another 14 banned words, so those couldn't be checked.
• Continuity: I fetched the rehearsal page and tests 06 and 08. None of them led with Chainalysis, and all three drafts do, so none breaks the continuity rule.

Ranking

1. Draft C wins. It has the most new events backed by primary sources: the Zcash NU7 upgrade (I confirmed the activation height and the 6 November 2026, 02:34 UTC block), the Arkansas lawsuit against Kalshi, and Aave Labs buying Avon. It also repeats the least from test 08, which ran the same day.
2. Draft A is accurate on every claim I checked, but four of its seven items repeat test 08's stories.
3. Draft B has a sourcing error. Its GOPAX item cites an EToday article that doesn't contain the hacking-threat claim; that claim appears in a different EToday story. B also repeats test 08's Nethermind item and leans on an FBI notice from 31 October.

Not verified

• The Arkansas Attorney General's press release refused access (HTTP 403), and the complaint is a scanned PDF. I confirmed draft C's Kalshi date, county and requested penalties only through news coverage (The Block, Decrypt).
• Binance's withdrawal announcement page came back empty, so draft C's Binance item is unchecked.

The task asked for an adversarial review as part of the pipeline. That step wasn't part of this assignment and hasn't been done.

The audit is complete and the findings file is written. Here is the review.

Verdict: publishable under its own rules, yes. No claim in edition.txt is contradicted by its cited source, and every mechanical rule passes. I found four defects, none above medium, written to .imd-findings.json ranked by severity.

Findings, ranked

• Medium. Binance item presents a past event as scheduled, without the event date. The cited announcement (Recovery Update #9) opened withdrawals on 6 November 2026 at 04:00 UTC, about 38 hours before this edition's cutoff. Line 22 says "schedules phased withdrawals from 04:00 UTC" and the headline says "schedules another batch". The selection record also admits the announcement was never verified (HTTP 202, empty body), yet METHOD does not disclose that. On re-fetch the facts do match the source.
• Medium. The Molly White CULTURE item is a stale repeat. Her post is dated 4 November 2026, and test edition 08, published the same day as this edition, already ran it from the same URL. The lead-only continuity rule is not broken, but the item fails the 24-48 hour preference and the selector's own stated reason for picking this draft.
• Low. Kalshi item rests on an image-only PDF. The complaint scan has no text layer, so "Independence County" and "Kalshi's position that its products are not gambling" cannot be checked in the cited source. The selection record says these were confirmed via The Block and Decrypt, which METHOD does not name. CoinDesk confirms the county, so the facts hold.
• Low. Coin Center headline overstates the source. Coin Center says regulators must count individuals' privacy costs "not merely" firms' compliance costs. The headline turns that into "ahead of", which the body sentence beneath it correctly avoids.

What checked out

• Lead: all Chainalysis claims match the dated blog updates, and the status page still showed phased restoration at 15:07 UTC on 7 November, so the framing is current. Body is 208 words with a 2-sentence deck.
• Aave/Avon names, assets and absence of price and date; Zcash height 3,543,405 mined 6 November 02:34 UTC per Satview, v4 rejection and Sprout per ZIP-259, 25-second spacing per Zebra 7.0.0; ethresear.ch figures 2.41 to 2.71 times, byte-identical proofs, Fiat-Shamir exclusion, posted 7 November 15:08 UTC.
• Mechanics: zero em dashes, no hits on the 13 listed banned words, section counts 3/2/2, four reading-list links, all headlines end in full stops, longest sentence 27 words, 881 words total.

Limits. The style guide's "14 more" banned words are unpublished, so they could not be checked. The complaint PDF could not be rendered here, so its contents were confirmed through secondary reporting only.