Sheriff Grady Judd said in a press conference Friday that the joint operation, which took place over seven days, focused on nabbing predators who prey upon and travel to meet children for unlawful sexual activity and human trafficking.

He said 31 of the suspects traveled to the county to attempt to have sex with a child.

Judd said during the press conference that 13 of the suspects arrested were Disney employees and four were Universal Studios employees.

"It is extremely disturbing when we encounter nasty child predators like these who are very eager to have sex with children. This is why we conduct these types of undercover operations," Judd said in a statement.

Judd said 32 suspects were undocumented immigrants and so far 16 have been transferred over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Additionally, he said that 24 of the suspects brought firearms with them to the meetings, and nine were on probation.

The sheriff highlighted details from some of the suspects arrested.

One of the suspects arrested is the head coach of the Florida team, Davenport Titans, where he coaches kids between the ages of 11 and 14 years old, the sheriff said. He thought that he was traveling to meet a 14-year-old girl, the sheriff said. Another suspect was on active Navy duty.

Another, the sheriff said, a former Disney employee, worked as a Mickey Mouse character and had a diaper fetish. Law enforcement caught him with two backpacks full of diapers, the sheriff said.

The sheriff said they also arrested a Disney employee, who had his uniform in the car, to meet an undercover detective posing as a 13-year-old boy.

Disney cooperated with law enforcement, the sheriff said during the news conference, and told him they have since fired all the employees. CBS News has reached out to Disney and Universal Studios for further comment.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

On Saturday, the FSB said it had received information from the US through established partner channels about preparations for an attack in Moscow and was taking appropriate measures.

The minor had posted photographs of himself on TikTok wearing tactical clothing and a balaclava, holding an object that looked like an automatic weapon, as well as photographs taken at Moscow's Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve with the caption: "I found a place," Interfax cited the FSB as saying.

"We are grateful to the American side for providing the information," the security service was quoted as saying in its statement.

It said officials searching the minor's home found the clothes and accessories seen in the social media posts, while his phone showed a subscription to a neo-Nazi channel on the app Telegram and “a significant number of searches concerning terrorist attacks, mass killings and other acts of violence,” according to Interfax.

Russia's Investigative Committee is considering what legal or procedural action to take, the FSB said.

Tsaritsyno, a palace museum and park complex in southern Moscow, was temporarily closed on Saturday following the US tip-off. 

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Joe Bavier and Hugh Lawson)

“It was the first time I’d ever heard or seen a world that looked and sounded like mine on an American stage,” Mendizábal told The Associated Press, referring to the 2008 musical that was a landmark for Latino representation and won four Tony Awards.

With a new cast of Latino artists, the New York City Center is presenting “In the Heights” for a limited three-week run through Nov. 15. It is the first major revival of the musical debuting at a time when, to Mendizábal, it’s vital to “show people the depth and breadth” of Latino communities.

“I think in this particular moment we need a great balm of joy, and this show brings that,” Mendizábal said.

Miranda, who also starred in the original production, recalled his experience resurrecting his barrier-breaking work. His songs and lyrics, alongside writing by Quiara Alegría Hudes, earned the original production best musical and best original score honors in its debut year.

“I’m really proud of the work Quiara and I did to make it speak across generations,” Miranda told the AP on Wednesday during a red carpet event celebrating the opening performance. “And that this generation is picking up the mantle is incredibly meaningful.”

The show’s revival comes amid ongoing federal immigration enforcement operations that have affected Dominican and Cuban families like the ones portrayed in the musical. An operation in Manhattan last month involved a Dominican national who was shot in the neck by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, as his five-year-old son watched, prompting large protests and condemnation from local and state elected officials.

When Jenny Gersten, New York City Center’s vice president and artistic director, was deciding on the musical lineup for the gala presentation, she recalled wrestling with the question of “what would be a good balm for these times?”

The answer came quickly, Gersten said. “In the Heights is pure joy.”

The high-energy reggaeton romance is set just a 30-minute subway ride north of New York City Center, in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights. The story follows three simmering summer days in the lives of this community’s cast of characters: like bodega-boy Usnavi, played by Matte Martinez; his storefront salon neighbor Vanessa, played by Ashley De La Rosa; and the block’s beloved matriarch Abuela Claudia, played by Natalie Venetia Belcon.

From its three-year Broadway run to the movie-musical debut in 2021, “In the Heights” has been hailed as “an exuberant celebration of the Latino immigrant experience.”

Eighteen years after its debut, the show “still holds up,” Miranda told the AP.

“The songs still hit. Sonny’s rap is more relevant than ever. And it’s still speaking to people.”

The musical number Miranda refers to is “96,000”, the act one anthem in which the cast dreams about what they would do if they won the lottery. Sonny, who is played by Ishmael Gonzalez in the 2026 revival, dreams of investing in the neighborhood, where “the ghetto has a million promises for me to keep.”

“Sonny’s talking about gentrification, he’s talking about immigration, he’s talking about the racism within politics,” Gonzalez said in an interview on Friday. “In some ways, Sonny’s rap feels like the most present part of the show, the most present to the moment we’re living in.”

For Gonzalez, who uses they/them pronouns, the character also symbolizes the “unwavering optimism” of young Latino leaders.

“We are here, and we are a part of this country and this world. Our labor and our love upholds the spine of this country,” they said.

Chris Jackson, the actor who portrayed the character Benny in the original Broadway cast, has passed a baton of sorts to his wife, actress Veronica Vazquez-Jackson, who is playing Camilla in the 2026 revival. The two met in 2003, during one of the earliest stagings of an off-Broadway “In The Heights.”

“It’s a full circle moment of ways I can’t express,” Jackson told the AP during Wednesday’s gala celebration.

“We are literally holding the light on for so many that still aspire to be a part of this society, in our country, in our culture, and also not forgetting who they are,” Jackson said.

Saturday’s action across Germany, organized by the ‘Gen Z has got this!’ movement, railed against the high cost of living, underfunding in education, environmental concerns and a potential reintroduction of mandatory military service. It follows a wave of similar protests which have swept Europe, including significant unrest in France, which saw a third straight weekend of rallies.

Despite organizers calling for the protests to remain peaceful, violence broke out in some German cities, most notably in Frankfurt and Cologne. Police used water cannons while masked protesters smashed shop windows.

Speaking to German tabloid Bild, Germany’s interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt said that “violent left-wing groups and troublemakers from migrant communities” hijacked the peaceful protests, without elaborating further.

The interior minister for the state of Hesse, which includes Frankfurt, warned that “around 100 clearly identified left-wing extremists” infiltrated the city’s protest as the evening descended into violence and looting.

“It is shameful how this event here in Frankfurt has ended,” Roman Poseck said.

Poseck said he was determined the violence that has rocked France would not be replicated in Germany.

“We all have those images from France in our minds — looting, burning houses, burning police vehicles, and attacks on police officers,” he said, according to Reuters. “France must not be held up as a model in this regard.”

In Frankfurt, police said Molotov cocktails were thrown at emergency personnel and shop windows were smashed. Officers arrested a suspect and seized two weapons after windows were broken at a gun shop. According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, several people broke into shops in downtown Frankfurt and over 30 people had been temporarily detained in city by the late evening.

Police in Cologne said water cannons were used after some protesters set off fireworks during a march in the city center. “Our measures are directed against troublemakers and violent individuals – not against peaceful participants,” the police said in a statement.

In Hamburg, riot police responded after barriers were set on fire and emergency service workers were attacked. “There has been an increase in incidents of emergency personnel being pelted with pyrotechnics and construction (materials) … our riot police are taking immediate action against this,” the police said.

Berlin police wrote on X that 27 officers in the German capital had sustained minor injuries and just under 60 people had been detained for offenses including property damage, assault, and resistance against emergency forces.

The movement’s organizers have sought to distance themselves from the ensuing violence. “We had no influence on what happened after the demonstrations ended,” a spokesperson from their press team was quoted by Der Spiegel as saying.

Organizers of ‘Gen Z has got this!’ planned the day of action to coincide with Halloween, to maximize turnout and visibility. According to the organization, 120,000 people attended the protests across Germany on Saturday.

“We are young people who no longer want to watch decisions being made about our future without us,” the movement states on its website.

Speaking for his reasons for joining the movement, an 18-year-old student protester in Munich told Reuters, “The government has offered no response to our concerns other than to continue making cuts and piling further burdens upon us.” In the eastern city of Dresden, demonstrators held placards reading, “The rich want war, the youth want a future!” and “You’ve screwed up – Gen Z will sort it out.”

Europe-wide protests

More nationwide protests from the Yellow Vests movement took place in France on Saturday, in what was billed as the third act of demonstrations, following earlier protests on October 17 and 24.

This time, however, they were more scaled down than before. The French Interior Ministry said 320,000 people protested across the country on Saturday, with 70,000 turning up in Paris; a significantly smaller number than the 550,000 who demonstrated on October 17 and the 410,000 who showed up last week.

The French protests were mostly peaceful, except for a few incidents. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that “radical elements at the tail end of the processions” in several cities. including Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes, Lille, Nantes, Marseille, and Lyon, “attempted to enter city centers with the intent to cause damage and engage in looting.”

Protests over soaring housing costs also swept Portugal and Italy on Saturday. In the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, thousands marched to demand Portugal’s center-right government withdraw a rental bill they say will worsen the country’s housing crisis.

In Italy, protests largely led by student groups and workers rallied against inflation, stagnant wages and unaffordable housing in cities including Turin, Bologna and Milan.

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The Azini was hijacked Thursday between the coastal towns of Bandar Bayla and Hafun in northeastern Somalia, a maritime security officer with the Puntland Maritime Police Force said Sunday.

The officer told The Associated Press that 12 pirates seized the vessel, which was carrying 21 Iranian crew members and two Somali security guards. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak with the media.

The crew’s safety was unknown, the center said in an alert dated Saturday. In an updated warning, it said that pirates could use the vessel as a “mother ship” to support attacks on commercial vessels.

The European Union’s naval Operation Atalanta was investigating. The center urged ships in the area to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity.

The seizure follows a resurgence of Somali piracy across the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean. By August, pirates had hijacked six commercial vessels since April, with some attacks taking place far from Somalia’s coastline. The captures included the oil products tanker Sibu 1, seized about 136 nautical miles (252 kilometers) east of al-Mukalla, Yemen.

In September, Puntland authorities said pirates killed five crew members of the tanker MT Honour 25 before security forces recovered the vessel. The tanker had been held since April. Authorities said that 16 suspected pirates were detained.

The renewed piracy adds another danger for shipping in a region already disrupted by the Iran war. Attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and threats by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels against Saudi-linked shipping through Bab el-Mandeb have complicated routes used to move oil to world markets.

Those disruptions have lengthened voyages and driven up tanker costs. The AP reported in September that some oil shipments diverted around Africa faced journeys up to a month longer, while daily spot charter rates for tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz had reached $1 million.

International naval patrols and improved maritime security sharply reduced Somali piracy over the past decade. The latest seizures have renewed concerns about the threat to vessels off the country’s long coastline.

Medics said three people were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. The interior ministry said the five police officers were killed in another strike in western Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave.

The Israeli military said it struck several militants in Khan Younis, without giving further information. It did not immediately comment on the Gaza City strike.

Israel, which says the Hamas militant group has been rearming and launching attacks in violation of a year-old ceasefire, has stepped up strikes on the group in recent weeks.

Hamas has denied trying to carry out attacks or rebuild its arsenal and ​accuses Israel of undermining ​the Gaza peace ⁠deal.

Last year's US-brokered ceasefire calls for eventual reconstruction of the territory. But little progress has been made as negotiators have ​failed to agree terms for Hamas to disarm or Israel ​to withdraw ⁠its troops, who control about two-thirds of the territory where they have ordered residents out.

Nearly all of the more than 2 million residents live in the remaining third of the enclave among war ruins, mostly in makeshift tents and damaged buildings, still under effective control of Hamas.

At least 1,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the ceasefire, according to the territory's health officials, while Israel says four ⁠soldiers have ​been killed.

Palestinian authorities say more than 74,000 ​people have been killed in Israel's assault on Gaza, launched after Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people ​in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

(Reporting by Nidal al-MughrabiEditing by Peter Graff)

Germany faced its own challenges after nationwide protests Saturday ended with rioters attacking police and looting stores in some cities. Around Europe, hundreds of thousands joined overwhelmingly peaceful marches Saturday inspired by young people, despite scattered unrest.

In Paris, rioters targeted police with Molotov cocktails at the end of Saturday’s march on the city’s eastern edge, injuring three officers and setting a car ablaze, police said. Across town, masked groups hurled fireworks at officers at a viewpoint across from the Eiffel Tower, and police charged repeatedly, sending panicked tourists fleeing the area.

Overall, however, the violence was less severe than on Oct. 17, when a city hall was torched and more than 2,000 stores were looted in hours of violence that authorities seemed unprepared to control, or during follow-up protests Oct. 24.

Police had arrested 779 people as of Saturday night, compared with 2,628 on Oct. 17 and 1,314 last weekend. Paris and Marseille police said a handful of shops were targeted but no major damage was reported.

A national police official said Sunday authorities had prepared for a larger turnout of both of peaceful marchers and troublemakers. About 70,000 police were deployed around the country.

Police are preparing for more tensions as schools reopen Monday and as student groups and labor unions call for new nationwide protests on Tuesday and Thursday, the official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to be publicly named according to police policy.

More than 100,000 mostly young people protested peacefully across Germany on Saturday, demanding that the government invest more money in education, housing, climate protection and make daily life more affordable. In some cities the protests turned violent at night.

Following a demonstration in Frankfurt, rioters attacked police downtown and looted stores. Several protesters and officers were injured and 30 people were detained. After police cordoned off an area in the city center, the situation calmed down by early Sunday morning.

“I am shocked by the violent excesses in Frankfurt, which will not go unpunished,” said Boris Rhein, the governor of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located. “Anyone who behaves like the attackers in downtown Frankfurt places themselves outside our society.''

Violence also broke out Saturday night in Cologne, where police used water cannons to disperse the crowd. In Berlin, protesters attacked police with bottles and pyrotechnics.

The organizers of Saturday’s protests, a youth initiative called “Gen Z regelt” — roughly “Gen Z’s got this" — posted a statement on Instagram distancing itself from “any form of violence, as well as violent acts by other groups or individuals” who were not part of the demonstrations.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt accused “violent left-wing groups and troublemakers from the immigrant community'' of hijacking peaceful demonstrations. “The rioters and looters will be identified and held accountable,'' Dobrindt told daily paper Bild on Sunday.

In Portugal, riot police overnight removed protesters by force from a square in Lisbon following protests for more affordable housing. Thousands of people marched through the city during the day and at the end a few hundred camped out in Rossio, an iconic square in downtown Lisbon. Police intervened early Sunday, removing tents and pushing people away, and a few were detained.

Portuguese demonstrators have been protesting for weeks following inspiration from the Spanish movement to call out rising living costs, especially housing costs.

___

Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Helena Alves in Lisbon contributed to this report.

Multiple shots rang out near Legion Field around 7:50 p.m., and officers responded and located multiple gunshot victims, De’Rell Freeman, assistant public information officer with the Birmingham Police Department, told reporters Saturday.

The shooting happened after the Magic City Classic — an annual rivalry game between Alabama A&M University and Alabama State University, the state’s two largest historically Black universities.

“Multiple firearms were recovered from the scene by officers and turned into our property room,” Freeman said, adding that one person was detained and taken to police headquarters for questioning.

One of the victims is in critical condition, and seven others are in stable condition, Freeman said.

The violence came one week after a mass shooting near Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, when shots were fired during a fight, wounding 11 people, including six juveniles, he added.

In a statement late Saturday, the Birmingham Police Department said all Magic City Classic tailgating had been suspended.

“Everyone needs to leave the stadium property as soon as possible. Please do not come to the Legion Field stadium property at this time,” police said, without providing more details.

“Our community is hurt, shaken and rightfully angry. So am I. There is no argument, no beef, no misunderstanding that can justify this level of senseless violence during a night of celebration,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin wrote in a statement on social media.

“The Magic City Classic is rooted in HBCU tradition, and at the heart of those traditions is family. Tonight, as a family, we grieve. We wrap our arms around neighbors who are dealing with unimaginable pain right now. And just like family, we will stand united as we overcome this tragic night.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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The man was restocking frozen pizzas when a social media user, filming themselves, played the Apple Pay payment sound, leading him to think he'd been scammed out of $10. The person filming had been approaching random people with the same stunt, making them believe a stranger had just taken their money.

The worker didn't laugh.

"I don't have time for this. My life is hard enough as it is," he says in the video. "You're probably making money off this. I can't pay my mortgage, and I got four kids at home."

Many viewers sided with the worker instead of the person filming, and social media users began donating. In just two days, thousands of people gave amounts ranging from $10 to $30,000 to the father of four.

The fundraiser had passed $400,000 at last check, and the goal has since been raised to $700,000.

The account of the person who filmed the encounter has been deactivated.

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Eljay Crisp-Carr, 20, had been arrested and accused of multiple counts of attempted murder, felonious assault, gang activity and firearms-related charges. His attorney said police arrested the wrong man.

In September, prosecutors informed Crisp-Carr's attorney of discovery “that may support his defense,” Julia Bates, Lucas County prosecuting attorney, said in a statement Friday.

“The Toledo Police Department continues its investigation,” she said. “Both the department and our office remain committed to following the evidence and getting it right, just as we are in every case.”

A judge agreed to the dismissal of the charges without prejudice, meaning prosecutors have the legal authority to refile charges against Crisp-Carr.

His attorney, Alex Bodiford, had argued against that.

“It's been a rough five months for Eljay,” Bodiford said in an email. “Fortunately for him he has a mom and other family members who supported him and held him up through it.”

The gunfire broke out June 6 during the Old West End Festival in Toledo at a park filled with tents, music and food trucks in a neighborhood dotted with Victorian homes. Police said a fight between rival groups apparently escalated into two people shooting at each other, although they were not among the wounded.

In a criminal complaint filed in Toledo Municipal Court, a detective described video showing Crisp-Carr participating in the fight. After another man started shooting, Crisp-Carr moved away from the group but then turned and opened fire, the detective wrote. He was seen firing indiscriminately into the crowd, the detective wrote.

Hundreds of people were attending the annual festival in a historic district of Toledo, a city on the western edge of Lake Erie about 55 miles (90 kilometers) southwest of Detroit. Organizers canceled the event’s second day because of the shooting.

The violence sent terrified bystanders fleeing while others rushed to help the injured alongside medics and police. The victims ranged from teenagers to one person in their 60s.

Another man charged in the shooting remains in jail and is scheduled to be back in court on Nov. 9.

The new indictment comes nearly five months after eight pro-Palestinian activists were charged with conspiracy.

The indictment describes threats and vandalism at officials’ homes, some businesses and the Jewish Federation of Detroit.

Investigators have highlighted several incidents that made headlines in the past few years, including fake bloody corpses that were placed in a university board member’s yard and the 2024 spray-painting of anti-Israel messages at the home of Santa Ono, who was school president at the time.

Two of the four new defendants were arrested and will make their first court appearance Friday while the other two people were not in custody, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit said.

The eight people charged in June have pleaded not guilty.

“From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas, those who terrorize Jews have been the bad guys. As Americans, our job is to fight the bad guys," U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. said.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began, pro-Palestinian protesters have demanded that the University of Michigan’s endowment stop investing in companies with ties to Israel. But the university has said it has less than 0.1% of its total endowment placed with funds that might include companies in Israel.

In 2024, a pro-Palestinian camp on campus was cleared by police after a month. The university said it was a threat to public safety.

In state after state, Trump has shown a montage of Enten’s appearances on CNN, highlighting moments when Enten has highlighted the president’s enduring popularity among self-professed MAGA Republicans.

The CNN video clips have been played at rallies at least 16 times during this month’s midterm blitz. Trump often stands and watches the clips on a giant screen while rallygoers cheer Enten’s remarks. Sometimes Trump says “wow” or “thank you, CNN” after the montage is played.

But the clips are devoid of any context and can easily leave viewers with a misimpression of Trump’s real political standing. So I asked Enten about the montage and its relevance to the impending midterm election. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Stelter: You’re the data guy, so let’s start with some numbers: Roughly how many TV segments and videos have you made about the midterms this year?

Enten: Oh my… well, let’s think about this… There have been over 300 days in 2026 so far… I am on TV pretty much every day, including weekends. I’ve taken off some time… but I think 300 segments is a fair starting point.

It may be more! Maybe much more, but let’s play it conservatively.

Stelter: Clearly the president has been watching some of those segments. Last year, he name-checked you but butchered your name. This year, he’s been pronouncing it correctly. He likes to say “even CNN” is reporting something flattering about him, and then he’ll invoke you. Is that surreal for you?

Enten: Well, if you had told me a decade ago that I would a) be on CNN, and b) the president of the United States would be playing clips of mine at his rallies… I don’t think I would have bought it for a minute. I’d put the chance at 1 in a million… and that may have been high.

Stelter: So about those clips: Why does he keep playing them?

Enten: Because he believes it shows him to be popular. The Trump brand is all about winning, and those clips, in his mind, show him winning.

Stelter: What are you saying in the clips?

Enten: Well, I believe there are two clips he plays… Maybe three. Gotta be honest, I spend my free time watching episodes of “Blossom.” But one, I think, is a clip about how approval with MAGA is basically matching his support he received from them in 2024. Another is support for GOP House candidates is basically matching Trump’s support from 2024. The third is how, among the GOP, he is by far the most admired president. He beats out Reagan and Lincoln.

Stelter: Everything you said in those clips was true at the time, of course. But is some of the info outdated at this point?

Enten: I haven’t seen another “most admired” poll, but I bet Trump still leads that handily.

He’s slightly lower with the MAGA GOP than he was, but the MAGA GOP support for congressional GOP candidates is the same, if not a little higher. That is per Fox News polling.

Of course, MAGA GOP is just a portion of the electorate.

Stelter: That’s really the key, right? Trump keeps conflating “MAGA Republicans” with all Republicans. What proportion of Republicans don’t ID as MAGA?

Enten: It depends on the poll. But I think it’s safe to say a sizable minority do not identify as MAGA. Among non-MAGA GOP, Trump is actually underwater in some polls.

Stelter: Is “MAGA Republican” even a useful category? Isn’t it just like measuring Trump’s approval rating?

Enten: Want to know the story about why I started pulling the metric?

Stelter: Yes!

Enten: So the reason, as I recall, was that in the early days of the Iran War, there was all this talk about how MAGA was infighting because of the war. This got me thinking, “Is this actually true?” There really wasn’t.

MAGA is a self-defined category, right? But the people who were opting in loved Trump. I think it’s useful insofar as helping us understand MAGA essentially equals Trump. If that ever changes, it would be interesting.

Stelter: Agreed. Now you’re on TV every day previewing the midterms, talking about many other metrics. Trump doesn’t promote those segments for obvious reasons: You’re showing that his party is in big trouble, electorally speaking. Does that have a lot to do with MAGA GOP versus non-MAGA GOP?

Enten: There are two reasons the GOP is in major trouble.

The first is what you pointed out about non-MAGA GOP. James Talarico, for example, is getting a substantial portion of that vote in Texas.

The second is independents. Trump’s the least popular president going into a midterm on record with independents. He’s even less popular than Nixon was before he was forced out in August of 1974.

Democrats for Congress are rolling with independents. They may put up their best margin with them in any election in the exit poll era — i.e., nearly 50 years of congressional exit polls.

Stelter: We both know why Trump isn’t airing clips of you saying that at his rallies. But do you think he’s misleading rallygoers by cherry-picking some of your points about his base support?

Enten: Here’s what I’ll say: I think you can watch my segments, short and long. The MAGA GOP is just a small part of them. They help tell a story, but it’s not the full story.

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Thanks to a $3.6 million donation from the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust, the college has opened a center named after the arts and literary luminary, who taught American and Russian literature there from 1958 to 1961.

“Bard made sense for two big reasons: Ellison had a genuine history there, and they understood the full breadth of his interests,” Donn Zaretsky, the legal representative for the trust, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The Ralph Ellison Center opened its doors late last month on the school’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, about two hours’ drive north of New York City.

“Bard gives those different parts of his intellectual life space to interact,” Zaretsky said, “and it gives the legacy a living, breathing community of students, artists, and scholars who can keep finding new uses for it.”

The idea for the center was birthed during an innocuous four-hour lunch between trustee John F. Callahan, the executor of the Ralph Ellison estate, and Nicholas Alton Lewis, Bard's associate dean. Bard now has all the intellectual rights and royalties from the writer’s oeuvre, and the trust will soon begin winding down before closing.

That transfer of rights included Ellison’s 1952 magnum opus, and the only novel published in his lifetime, “Invisible Man.” The novel follows a Black protagonist who navigates social and psychological feelings of ostracization when he moves from the Jim Crow South to Harlem, New York City. The novel made him the first Black person to win the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

Born March 1, 1913, in Oklahoma City, Ellison studied music at Alabama's Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, known today as Tuskegee University, before eventually landing in New York City where friendships with writers Langston Hughes, Albert Murray, and Richard Wright inspired his turn to fiction.

He continued writing while teaching at Bard. After the release of “Invisible Man,” he worked on “Shadow and Act,” his first collection of essays, and a second novel, the posthumously released “Juneteenth.” He died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at his home in Harlem.

Lewis, the associate dean who's now director of the center, said scholars who engage the center will see it celebrating Ellison “not just for his literary legacy, but for all the modes through which he engaged in meaningful cultural production.”

As the 75th anniversary of “Invisible Man” approaches in 2027, the center is planning a yearlong commemoration of the novel, which is currently taught to first-year Bard students. Other flagship programs include the center's Ralph Ellison lectures, a biannual convening of guest speakers and writers from across the country, a 10-week student internship to assist in the archival work and conduct independent research, and a digital archival effort of Ellison's materials to the Library of Congress.

The internship program, which kick-started this past summer, trains the next generation of archivists among selected students from Bard and partner HBCUs.

Bee Hitz, a Bard senior studying art history, was one of six internship students who spent the past summer archiving Ellison's work in Washington, D.C., and on Bard's campus. The digitization process, Hitz said, requires a painstaking devotion to detail, a critical skill for the master's degree in library sciences they hope to acquire after graduation.

“(It's) preparing me for the next steps of my life in terms of grad school. It's been a really, really valuable experience to have,” they said.

For visitors, the center also serves as a third space, or a community space separate from the home or workplace. It's meant to be a “salon,” an intellectual gathering space that facilitates ideas.

Since it opened, the center's director has already been fielding scholars' requests from across the country.

“The reception has been, quite frankly, a little overwhelming, in a delightful way,” Lewis said. There are plans in the works, he said, to develop a community-based curriculum alongside Bard's Institute for Writing & Thinking and roll it out across Bard's institutions, including Bard High School Early College, the Bard Prison Initiative, the school's microcolleges, and the 66 public libraries across the Hudson Valley Public Library System.

“We want to make sure the communities that surround us have these opportunities,” Lewis said, “to discourse around Ellison and what he has created, particularly ‘Invisible Man.’ There is no better place for this.”

The challenge is one of the first in relation to the 2023 Online Safety Act, which sets tougher standards for platforms such as TikTok, X and Meta's Facebook and Instagram with the aim to protect children from harmful and illegal content.

Ofcom has been gradually implementing the regime, with its requirements backed up by the threat of fines of up to 10% of a company's global turnover for the most serious breaches.

In February, it issued information notices requesting detailed content moderation metrics from the tech companies, including data on how many posts were removed or had visibility restricted, and how many users were exposed to harmful content.

Meta, TikTok and X argued the notices create unprecedented regulatory burdens, but their case was rejected by London's High Court.

None of the companies, nor Ofcom, immediately responded to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; editing by William James and Sam Tabahriti)

“There was never a day I stopped believing we would get here. The road ahead is still long, but this is a milestone no one thought we would reach,” David Gebala wrote in an emotional social media post addressed to his daughter Maya, calling her “the bravest person I know.”

Maya was among more than two dozen people wounded in the mass shooting at a secondary school in the small mining town in northern British Columbia, which left eight people dead, including six children, in the country’s deadliest school shooting in decades.

She was shot three times and airlifted to British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, where doctors initially told her family she was unlikely to make it through the night, according to Gebala.

“You refused to accept the words we heard 262 days ago when you came out of the OR. Look at you, my girl. You blew every expectation out of the water,” Gebala wrote in the post to Facebook, which included a video of Maya smiling in her wheelchair.

Since February, Maya has undergone five surgeries, including receiving a prosthetic skull, Gebala said in the post, which listed challenging and hopeful milestones over the past 262 days.

“251 days ago, you opened your eye, moved it, and shifted your leg only to be rushed back for emergency surgery that morning,” he wrote. “179 days ago, your prosthetic skull was placed. Your fifth surgery, and the one that finally stuck.”

“145 days ago, you smiled for the first time (intentionally) while we played thumb war,” Gebala went on. “61 days ago, I heard your voice again.”

“Now it’s time to leave these hospital walls behind and keep moving forward, Maya Bear,” Gebala wrote, thanking the nurses, doctors and therapists “who walked every step of this with us.”

Gebala has frequently offered updates on Maya’s long recovery in posts to Facebook, including a recent excursion to see the rock band Foo Fighters and celebrate her 13th birthday.

Maya, who was in the school library when the massacre unfolded on February 10, was shot three times, including in the head, which shattered parts of her skull and left her with catastrophic brain injuries, according to a criminal complaint filed by her family against OpenAI.

The lawsuit, filed by Maya’s mother Cia Edmonds on her behalf, is one of dozens filed against OpenAI in both US and Canadian courts on behalf of victims, survivors and witnesses accusing the tech company of negligence after it emerged that the shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, had used ChatGPT to plan the attack. The province of British Columbia is also suing OpenAI.

OpenAI has pushed back against claims that it does not take safety seriously. In response to the lawsuits from the victims’ families, a company spokesperson told CNN in April that it has a “zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence.” The company has said it deactivated an original account created by the shooter in June 2025 for violent activities, but Van Rootselaar made a second account to keep using the chatbot.

The company’s CEO Sam Altman has previously apologized to the community of Tumbler Ridge for failing to notify authorities to the shooter’s disturbing online conversations with the AI chatbot even after staff flagged the account internally.

Earlier this month, US authorities arrested a 30-year-old from Washington state who allegedly offered advice and sent money to Van Rootselaar ahead of the shooting.

CNN previously reported Van Rootselaar posted about guns and hunting and her apparent mental health struggles online in the lead-up to the massacre.

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France’s Senate approved the measure 229-105 this week, less than two weeks after cost-of-living protests spiraled into the country’s worst unrest in years, leading to estimated damage of over 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion). In one weekend, police arrested nearly 2,400 people; authorities say thousands of shops were looted or damaged. Fire gutted Limoges’ 19th-century city hall.

France is not alone: Across Western Europe, governments are reaching past the rioters — to their parents, and to the apps that carry the call to the streets.

And it may not be over. Spanish fact-checker Maldita.es has found calls for Halloween protests in 46 cities in at least nine European countries. Some urge looting.

Officials say the aim is to prevent the next riot and pay for the last. Critics warn that widening responsibility could punish people who committed no violence and make others afraid to protest.

In France, anyone who knowingly joins a group preparing violence could be made to pay up to 10,000 euros ($11,200) for what others destroy. So could anyone who knowingly stays after police order a violent crowd to disperse, for damage done afterward.

Collecting is the hard part, a Senate report says: Offenders often have little money, or income the law protects from seizure.

The bill would open another source: money the state pays to help families live.

French law already generally holds parents liable for damage caused by their children under 18. Under the bill, once a court ruling is final, the money could be deducted from family allowances and housing aid. Senators added the RSA, France’s minimum-income benefit, worth up to about 650 euros ($730) a month for a single person, and even the back-to-school allowance families get for supplies. A minimum amount would remain protected for living expenses.

Communist Sen. Fabien Gay cited monthly deductions of 57 euros ($63) from a household receiving RSA. At that rate, repaying 10,000 euros would take nearly 15 years.

Supporters say victims deserve compensation and taxpayers shouldn’t carry the cost. One large shop window can cost tens of thousands of euros to replace. After riots in 2023, insurers paid 793 million euros ($888 million) on 16,400 claims, according to France Assureurs, the insurers’ federation.

Human rights groups urged lawmakers to reject the bill, warning it could discourage peaceful protest and hurt families who depend on benefits.

Seizing those payments “could have disastrous consequences for the poorest,” Nathalie Godard of Amnesty International France said in a statement.

The far right backed the bill in the conservative-led Senate. Next comes the National Assembly, where no bloc has a majority.

Seizing rioters’ benefits was long an idea of Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party. Now the government has made it its own, and she leads the polls for next spring’s presidential election.

French students call a protest that shuts their school a “blocus,” or blockade. In Barcelona, it became a hashtag.

TikTok posts under the tag called people to Catalonia Square on Saturday, Oct. 24, and QR codes sent them to WhatsApp or Telegram channels, Catalonia’s interior chief, Núria Parlon, told Cadena SER radio.

On paper, it was a protest over education. There was no route, Parlon said. No banners. No manifesto. Just groups of 10 to 15 young men looting stores, burning trash containers and smashing bus stops.

When police arrived, the looters scattered, said an AP journalist who was at the scene.

Police reported 130 arrests, including 76 minors, according to Spanish news agency EFE.

Some TikTok accounts promoting the gatherings disappeared, while others advertised new Halloween protests, Maldita.es reported. In one Telegram group, messages urged people to wear masks and gloves and wait to be told of a shop “without police.”

In Italy, the argument starts with another family. “Behind that shop window there is a family that has invested a lifetime of sacrifices,” Premier Giorgia Meloni said Oct. 20, announcing a security decree after looting in Milan.

Her principle fits in three Italian words: “Chi rompe paga” — you break it, you pay. “And if the one who breaks it is a minor,” she said, “their parents pay.”

Parents now face fines of up to 1,000 euros ($1,120), doubled for a repeat offense, unless they prove they couldn’t have stopped their child. They can be made to pay for damage.

Holding parents accountable may help, said Claudio Bertolotti, director of START InSight, a security research firm, but “fines alone are unlikely to deter teenagers driven by peer pressure or a desire for group recognition.”

Organizing protest violence, even online, now carries four to 12 years in prison.

Telegram and WhatsApp “must shut down such channels when they incite violence,” Parlon said.

Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn told The Associated Press the company supports peaceful speech and protest, but “calls for violence, vandalism and theft are explicitly forbidden and are removed whenever discovered.”

He said Telegram had removed such calls linked to protests in Madrid.

TikTok and Meta, which owns WhatsApp, did not respond to requests for comment.

Telegram closed a Barcelona group promoting Halloween looting, but a replacement drew more than 2,000 members, Spanish media reported.

The French bill would let authorities demand removal of certain illegal calls to violence or looting without prior court approval. If they stay up 24 hours, they could order the web addresses blocked. Those decisions could be challenged in court.

The United States is going the other way. Its law generally shields platforms from civil liability for users’ posts, and the Trump administration calls Europe’s rules censorship.

Britain shows the limits of takedowns. After three girls were killed in Southport in 2024, false claims spread online and riots followed. A parliamentary committee found that algorithms amplified harmful material, much of it legal.

Under France’s bill, money meant to house and raise children could help pay for a looted shop.

___

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Joseph Wilson, Hernan Muñoz, Giada Zampano, Kaitlyn Huamani and Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Since peaking in June, key Chinese indexes have fallen more than 20%, crossing the threshold for a bear market. Beijing responded last week by pumping $19 billion into exchange-traded funds, according to Bloomberg data, its biggest intervention since early 2025, when US President Donald Trump’s tariff offensive roiled global markets.

But analysts say interventions like this may do little to arrest the persistent slide, amid weak consumer spending and concerns over a possible bursting of the AI bubble. On Thursday, China’s benchmark CSI 300 index of stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen closed down 1%.

Even national tech champions that have helped fuel a record trade surplus this year could not escape the crash. Shanghai’s STAR50 index, composed of China’s homegrown AI and chip leaders, has plunged more than 40% since a June peak.

Meanwhile, shares in the world’s largest humanoid robot maker by sales Unitree, which surged 600% in its Shanghai debut in August, have halved, and the valuation of memory chipmaker CXMT, which became Shanghai’s top weighted stock three months after listing, has fallen by nearly 30% since its August peak.

“The selloff reflects a repricing of crowded AI trades, weak domestic demand, and the lack of stimulus,” said Gary Ng, senior economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank.

The meltdown of stocks also extended to Hong Kong, where the benchmark Hang Seng index has plummeted more than 12% this year. Together with Indonesia and India, stocks in China have emerged as the worst performers in the region this year.

Ng explained that Hong Kong faces pressure through its exposure to Chinese companies and selling by mainland investors. Beijing’s increasing scrutiny of cross-border investments and tightening of offshore tax rules also contributed to the plunge, he said.

“Any measure to address the stock market sentiment tends to be short-lived if there are no policies to address underlying key issues,” said Lorraine Tan, director of equity research in Asia at Morningstar, a financial services firm.

“There are imbalances in China’s economy, including excess capacity in many sectors, that need to be addressed. The lack of fiscal spending this year has also been a drag,” she said, adding that measures are needed to boost domestic consumption.

China’s stock rout offers a cautionary tale as investors and analysts warn that an abrupt collapse of the debt-fueled AI boom could send tech stocks, which have soared this year, tumbling worldwide.

For now, China’s equity sell-off is unlikely to trigger significant spillovers into global markets, experts said. Strict controls on capital flows limit foreign investors’ participation in Chinese markets, reducing the possibility that turmoil could spread internationally.

Still, within China, the selloff is hitting some retail investors at one of the worst possible times.

While demand for AI chips and hardware worldwide has accelerated Chinese exports this year and lifted the country to expectation-beating third-quarter growth, stagnant domestic consumption and a prolonged housing market downturn continue to drag.

About 70% of Chinese household wealth is tied up in property. But since the sector began unravelling five years ago, household savings have remained trapped in falling assets, driving some capital into the domestic stock market. However, with Beijing tightening restrictions on offshore trading to curb capital flight in recent months, mainland retail investors face increasingly limited options.

“Chinese equities have generally underperformed most markets this year, and this could contribute to a negative wealth effect that further softens household confidence,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at Dutch bank ING.

At a financial forum in Beijing last week, Wu Qing, chairman of the country’s market regulator, vowed to prioritize stability and “do everything possible to maintain the safety and stability of the capital market.”

“We will also encourage eligible listed companies to step up share buybacks and increase their holdings of their own shares, delivering better returns to investors,” he added.

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But this time felt different: after four years under the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, hundreds of thousands of Arab voters decided they could not afford to sit on the sidelines.

They turned out in record numbers – nearly 80% – to vote on Tuesday, compared with 53% in the last elections, according to the Mossawa Center, a civil society organization promoting equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. That turnout gives Israel’s Arab parties unprecedented political sway with 19 seats in the 120-seat parliament.

That surge was driven by a number of interlocking reasons. First, rising violent crime in the Arab community – seen as the result of negligent policing. Second, an urgent desire to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and bring an end to his right-wing coalition, which includes hardline ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. No one was left in any doubt about the strength of feeling towards Israel’s national security minister, in particular, on Tuesday night, as chants of “Ben-Gvir, go home” broke out at the election headquarters of Joint List, the major Arab political alliance, as it became clear just how well the party had done.

Long history

Netanyahu’s coalition has overseen Israel’s devastating three-year war in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands, and a yearslong campaign of settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

“Our community wanted to bring down this criminal government, to change the grave reality caused by the policies of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,” said Dr. Ahmad Tibi, a leader of the Joint List.

Tibi has spent nearly three decades urging the Arab community to exercise their right to vote. Now, he said, that high turnout is already having an impact: keeping Netanyahu from forming another right-wing government.

Palestinian citizens of Israel – who make up 20% of the population – are descendants of Palestinians who were not expelled or forced to flee their homes when Israel was established in 1948. They were given citizenship but lived under military rule until 1966; many, though, feel that discrimination within Israeli society has continued to this day.

They also include Palestinians who were born before 1948, like Mohammed Abdelhai’s 80-year-old aunt.

On Tuesday, at her nephew’s urging, she became a first-time voter in the town of Tira, in central Israel.

“I told her we have to vote,” Abdelhai said. “The last government was very aggressive with us, so this time we need every vote,” he said.

The most important issue for him, he said, was a pervasive racism and lack of equality between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

“If we can make a change, we can make a change. Why not? Why stay stuck in the same place?”

Balance of power

The strength of the Arab vote also means that neither Netanyahu’s governing coalition nor the opposition bloc are expected to win an outright majority.

Now, Tibi’s Joint List, along with Ra’am, another Arab-majority party, appear to hold the balance of power.

Tibi said the Joint List is prepared to help the opposition form a minority government, led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. The Joint List would not join the government and would not seek any ministerial appointments in exchange – only a commitment to combat crime impacting the Arab community and stop the demolitions of Bedouin homes, which have risen under Netanyahu’s government.

“If they want us to help, we will be there in order to help … we want to support the candidate of the opposition.” Tibi said.

But doing so will require Eisenkot and his coalition to “be brave” in the face of Netanyahu’s condemnation of any attempt to form a government with the help of Israel’s Arab parties, he said.

That’s because the idea of forming a government with the support of Arab parties has become politically toxic in Israel, with a majority of Jewish voters opposed. Several opposition parties have also previously ruled out such an arrangement.

It remains unclear how much Eisenkot is willing to lean on the Arab parties for support. The only opposition party that supports doing that is the left-wing Democrats Party led by Yair Golan.

“We have an opportunity to form a change government in partnership with Israel’s Arab citizens,” Golan said on Wednesday. “Now we need courage. We need leadership. We need to stop being afraid and to start taking action.”

For Tibi, it’s more than fear holding some political leaders back.

“It’s the pure racism against 20% of the population, Arab citizens. We are a legitimate part of parliament. We are a legitimate part of the citizens,” he said.

Deligitimization efforts

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently sought to delegitimize Arab voters and has repeatedly used the prospect of lawmakers from the Arab community sitting in government as a way to motivate his base to turn out and vote.

In September, the CEC approved a motion to ban Arab parties to run in the election – a decision that was overturned by the High Court.

As it became clear just how well Arab parties had polled on Wednesday, Netanyahu’s Likud issued a statement accusing them of “stealing the election.”

This was followed on Thursday by the chair of Israel’s Central Elections Committee (CEC) sending a letter to the head of Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet, asking him to investigate allegations of foreign interference in the election aimed at boosting turnout among Arab voters.

In the letter, the CEC chair, Noam Sohlberg, admitted he could not attest to any of the suspicions, and Israeli police have said they have received nothing to back up the claims.

Arab party leaders say Likud’s attacks amount to incitement and have pledged to defend the election results. Mansour Abbas, Ra’am party leader, said he would cooperate with any investigation and Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen said Netanyahu was “defeated” and “refuses to accept the voters’ decision.”

‘We belong to this country’

Many of the policies that have afflicted Palestinian citizens of Israel have been enacted under Ben-Gvir, the national security minister who was previously convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism.

On Tuesday, some residents in Arab-majority towns told CNN they left polling stations without voting because of intimidation from men supporting far-right Israeli parties like Ben-Gvir’s.

“People face high pressure – there was an old woman who could not stand the pressure, another one is pregnant who could not bear the situation and left … this is all because of racism,” said Taibeh resident Ulfat, who asked to be identified by her first name only.

From Tibi’s point of view, the higher turnout among Arab voters compared with the Jewish majority shows that Palestinian citizens are “willing to influence and take part” in Israeli politics.

“We are being blocked by the right and sometimes by the opposition. This is not a democracy. It’s an ethnic democracy. It’s a democracy for Jews,” he said.

That sense of exclusion was echoed by voters across Arab communities, many of whom said it is what pushed them to the polls this time.

Tira resident Munther Mansour, 60, has voted in the past, but this time he sees a real chance that his vote will count.

“We never took an interest in elections before. But the level of racism and changes in our day-to-day life forced people to go out and exercise their right,” he said.

“We belong to this country; we are part of the country. So we must exercise this right.”

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The Swedish audio-streaming giant is considering charging subscribers an additional $4 to $5 a month for the service, according to the FT report.Spotify did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Here are a few more details: 

• The service would let paying subscribers use AI to create their own versions of songs, such as transforming a folk song into a dance track or making one artist appear to cover another's music, the FT report said

• Under Spotify's plan, royalties from fan-created remixes would flow back to original artists, and plays would count towards the original songs in Spotify's charts, the newspaper said

• Spotify has struck licensing deals with Universal Music Group, independent label group Merlin and French music company Believe for the remix feature, the FT said

• The company is still negotiating with Sony Music and Warner Music to implement the feature, according to the FT report

(Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Jochelle Mendonca)

• Philippine Foreign Secretary, Ma. Teresa Lazaro, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations envoy on Myanmar, met Myanmar counterpart Tin Maung Swe in the capital Naypyitaw on Thursday

• Myanmar's army-backed government wants a normalisation of ties with ASEAN, after its leadership was barred from summits in 2021 for failure to de-escalate conflict in the wake of a military coup

• The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar on Friday said Lazaro discussed ways to restore Myanmar's original role and rights within ASEAN

• A statement from Lazaro's office on her trip made no mention of discussion of restoring Myanmar's role

• Myanmar's government in August said there was no longer a need for an ASEAN special envoy

• Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup, which led to a civil war that has killed an estimated 100,000 people and displaced more than 3.5 million

• Tin Maung Swe said Myanmar was working to implement ASEAN's five-point peace plan, in line with its national interests and sovereignty, state media said

• Lazaro had sought access to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained since she was toppled from power in the coup. Lazaro's office made no mention of a meeting

• "I asked about the situation of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the response was quite positive that she's doing well," Lazaro was quoted as saying by Philippine news outlet Bilyonaryo, which joined her on the trip

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Editing by Martin Petty)

The Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene near McMinnville Municipal Airport, along with local law enforcement, fire and medical responders. McMinnville is about 40 miles southwest of Portland.

One of the helicopters had two people on board and the other had one pilot on board, the FAA said.

The sheriff’s office said it didn’t have information on the conditions of the aircrafts’ occupants and asked the public to avoid the area and have “patience as we respond to this critical incident.”

The investigation into the crash, which took place around 2:15 p.m. local time, is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board, according to the FAA, which is also probing the incident.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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According to information provided by the FLDOE, staff became aware of the data breach that involved "unauthorized criminal access to the financial aid website" on Oct. 19.

"Upon identifying the threat, the Department immediately activated its cybersecurity response protocols and took swift, decisive action to stop the unauthorized activity, contain the incident, and secure its systems," FLDOE officials said in a statement. The financial aid website appeared to be down for maintenance on Oct. 29, 2026. floridastudentfinancialaidsg.org Details that were compromised included personally identifiable information, like Social Security numbers, officials continued.

The FLDOE said it notified the office of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier about the incident, and is also partnering with the Florida Digital Service and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"The department remains committed to transparency and will provide additional information as verified details become available," the FLDOE said.

Officials stressed that students' financial aid is not at risk and the data breach would not delay financial aid disbursements or tuition payments. It will also not affect eligibility for scholarships, grants or student loans from FLDOE.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe's office announced Tuesday that 64-year-old Willie Anthony Quinn of San Mateo was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, assault likely to produce great bodily injury and possession of methamphetamine.

According to San Mateo police, Quinn was charged in connection with an incident at the Jack in the Box restaurant on 3rd Avenue on Saturday morning. Officers said Quinn went to the restaurant around 9:30 a.m. and asked the manager for free food.

The manager, a 55-year-old woman, declined and said it was against company policy.

A customer stepped in and purchased a meal and a cup of hot coffee for Quinn, police said. Quinn then demanded a fresh cup of coffee from the manager and began cursing and yelling at her when she refused.

Police said the manager was escorting Quinn out of the restaurant when he threw a cup of hot coffee on her face and neck. The victim's face was already beginning to blister when 911 was called.

The temperature of the coffee was about 200 degrees. With the help of security video, officers found Quinn the next day and he was arrested after being identified by the victim. Police said he was found with a small bag of methamphetamine in his pocket.

According to the DA's office, Quinn's two strikes consisted of a 1995 assault with a deadly weapon conviction and a felony assault with a gun conviction in 2009.

Quinn was arraigned Monday and pleaded not guilty to all charges, prosecutors said. He remains in custody at the San Mateo County Jail on $10,000 bail.

A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 5.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

The Florida-based operator of the luxury Villa Vie Odyssey announced Tuesday that it was suspending operations in Cambodia and working to identify temporary living arrangements for its residents, many of whom own cabins on the ship and live there permanently.

“Since the conflict began in late February, we have taken significant steps to reduce fuel consumption, including slowing the itinerary and spending more time in port,” Villa Vie Residences said in a statement.

“Those measures have not been enough to offset the extraordinary increase in fuel costs, and we have been unable to continue carrying the resulting operating losses.”

CNN has reached out to Villa Vie Residences for comment.

The Odyssey has been sailing continuously since it left Belfast, Northern Ireland more than two years ago, following months of delays. The 640-foot vessel is described as an “intimate” ship which offers “a new way to live,” reaching “parts of the world other ships can’t access.”

A five-year residency aboard the Odyssey begins at $59,999, while a permanent cabin costs $119,999, according to the Villa Vie website. Owners also pay monthly fees, currently ranging from $3,299 to $9,500 depending on the suite, which cover food, drinks, Wi-Fi, medical visits, housekeeping and other costs. Passengers can also rent cabins from $3,499 per month.

The ship was set to visit more than 400 destinations as it perpetually circumnavigated the globe, according to its website.

But surging fuel costs caused by the Iran war and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have created “unsustainable financial pressure,” Villa Vie Residences said in its statement.

According to the company, monthly fuel costs per cabin have risen from around $1,800 to as high as $8,000 in parts of Asia, which is a heavy importer of energy from the Middle East.

“Passing the full increase on to residents is not a realistic solution,” said Villa Vie, adding it is working toward “restructuring and recapitalization” over the next two months but “no outcome is assured.”

Holly Hennessy, who has been aboard the Odyssey with her cat Captain since the ship first set sail, said residents were given less than one day’s notice before they had to disembark, but the writing had been on the wall.

“It’s been incredibly tough since the war,” Hennessy said, noting residents were asked to pay a fuel surcharge back in May. The Odyssey has been cutting back on cooling to conserve energy, she added, which would have made it uncomfortable to stay aboard the ship.

Still, she said, the opportunity to live aboard the ship was “priceless.”

“It was not sustainable as it was set up,” Hennessy said. “That doesn’t diminish the memories, the adventure, the very special moments of having been a true global citizen.”

Sharon Lane, a retiree from California who purchased a cabin on the ship, told CNN in June she planned to live on the Odyssey as long as it was operational. Last year, the cruise company estimated the ship had 15 years of seafaring left.

“This is a home,” said Lane, who poured her life savings into her cabin. “I’m just living on and loving the ship.”

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The new 100-apartment, mixed-income community at 6101 Richmond Avenue was the centerpiece of an October 26 grand-opening celebration recognizing the power of public investment and purposeful partnerships. With 90 income-restricted apartments and 10 market-rate homes, the development brings a welcome dose of housing choice to Houston’s busy Galleria-area corridor.

The ceremonial milestone highlighted the City of Houston’s commitment to making desirable neighborhoods accessible to residents across income levels. A $2.5 million HOME Investment Partnerships Program commitment approved by City Council in 2025 helped finance the development, a collaboration involving the City’s Housing and Community Development Department, DMA Companies and the Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation.

The announced program featured Mayor John Whitmire, District J Council Member Edward Pollard, District F Council Member and Housing Committee Chair Tiffany D. Thomas, and Housing Director Mike Nichols. Other listed speakers were HUD State Director Jasper Crutison, Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation President David Long, Housing Alliance HTX Chief Operating Officer Neal Rackleff, and DMA Senior Vice President Janine Sisak.

Under the leadership of DMA Companies President and Owner Diana McIver, Boulevard 61 pairs attainable rents with features more often advertised as apartment luxuries: a swimming pool, fitness center, contemporary interiors and a convenient location near jobs, shopping, health services and transportation routes. Its one-, two- and three-bedroom residences accommodate different household sizes, from working individuals to growing families.

A particularly significant part of the story involves 25 apartments connected to project-based housing vouchers administered by Housing Alliance HTX. Those homes are intended to serve households with especially limited incomes, helping bring deeper affordability into a high-opportunity part of the city.

There is history behind this address, too. A decade ago, a nearby affordable-housing proposal encountered strong neighborhood opposition and never moved forward. Boulevard 61 illustrates how Houston can write a more inclusive next chapter—one in which access to opportunity is not reserved for those who can pay the highest rent.

The project also joins a larger municipal effort to expand and preserve income-restricted homes. The benefits reach beyond new construction: families gain stability, neighborhoods gain economic diversity, and the city moves closer to matching its celebrated growth with housing choices for the people powering it.

Boulevard 61 began welcoming residents before its formal October celebration, but the grand opening offers an important civic moment to recognize what has been accomplished—and what remains possible. For residents exploring eligibility, availability or tours, visit Boulevard 61’s official website at dmablvd61.com or learn about Houston housing resources at houstontx.gov/housing.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

kierra lee
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I asked. (Responses in bold.)

Before the substance, a disclosure that matters for your story: I’m Claude, made by Anthropic, the company in this filing.

Nice work, Claude! I laughed out loud at this. Looks like Anthropic’s AI chatbot demonstrates at least a basic understanding of journalistic ethics.

Check every figure against the filing itself, and cite the SEC document rather than me.

An important caveat. Don’t worry, Claude, I’ll be doing that.

OK, onto the summary of Anthropic’s filing, which Claude boiled down to these five sentences.

1) Anthropic’s revenue went from about $4.6 billion in all of 2025 to $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026.

Anthropic is growing at an astounding pace, and Claude’s synopsis actually undersells that fact a bit. When comparing Anthropic’s first-half sales this year to its first-half sales last year (a more apples-to-apples comparison), the company’s revenue grew 1,300%. Of course, no one expects that pace to keep up as the AI business matures, and Anthropic uses the word “slow” 36 times in its prospectus.

2) It is still spending enormous sums on computing power, and it has committed to hundreds of billions of dollars more.

Right. This is one of the two big concerns about investing in Anthropic: The amount of money it has committed to spend on computing power (and cloud services — you left that part out, Claude) is worrisome, making Anthropic (and any AI hyperscaler) a particularly risky bet. It spent $8.9 billion on computing power last quarter alone.

So risky that the company dedicated 94 pages to risk factors alone (more on that in a second).

3) It is run through an unusual structure in which a trust and the seven co-founders hold control while public shareholders get little say.

Claude’s note about the structure is accurate and important. But is it really that unusual? OpenAI (famously) has a similarly oddball corporate structure. Mark Zuckerberg controls the majority voting power for Meta. Elon Musk controls most of SpaceX.

Etcetera, etcetera.

Nevertheless, the point is valid: We’re being asked to put a tremendous amount of faith in Big Tech leaders that they’ll be good stewards of the technology.

4) Its own filing discloses AI safety incidents, a fight with the federal government, and a stack of lawsuits.

“AI safety incidents” may be the understatement of the millennium. For example, on page 46 of its prospectus, Anthropic said AI sometimes exhibits manipulative behavior that can resemble blackmail. Four pages later, Anthropic notes the amount of damage AI could do may be so catastrophic that no insurer would pay out — or even write a policy — to cover such an existential threat to humanity.

That’s not, like, run-of-the-mill safety stuff.

5) The price, share count, and latest-quarter revenue are all still blank.

Yes, those things are left blank intentionally. We’ll get those numbers just before the IPO.

Good work, Claude.

The details

Claude then broke down the IPO filing into several sections, starting with “The numbers, in plain terms.” And Claude did a nice job here contextualizing some of the report’s more eye-popping numbers.

The biggest expense is compute (chips and data centers), at $8.9 billion in the first half of 2026. That was 55% of revenue, down from 201% a year earlier. In Q2 the company posted a small operating profit of $974 million.

Yep. The headline compute expense growth got everyone’s heads turning: Up 2,832% between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. But, as Anthropic’s overall revenue exploded, those costs grew comparatively more manageable, and the company turned a decently large operating profit in the second quarter.

Then Claude included a section called “The spending commitments (likely the biggest risk story).”

The filing lists multi-year compute commitments with Google (at least $114.5 billion), Amazon (at least $110 billion), and Microsoft (at least $44.9 billion). It also lists commitments with SpaceX’s AI unit (up to $120.5 billion), Nscale (about $44.6 billion), and Lambda (about $41.3 billion), plus Broadcom equipment leases (about $161 billion) and AMD (over $20 billion).

The notes put fixed purchase commitments at $265.6 billion as of June 30. The headline total in the summary is blank, so don’t add the individual deals together, as they may overlap.

That’s a helpful note at the end — a couple of analyst notes I received added all those commitments together and came up with a number nearly double what Anthropic said it had promised, so the actual number may come in less than the sum of the parts because of some overlap.

Regardless, it’s a lot of money, and it’s risky no matter how demand for Anthropic’s services shake out: Those commitments are fixed, so if demand comes in lower than expected, Anthropic still has to pay all that. But Anthropic also noted that its compute providers aren’t able to offer as much power as the company desires — and many of those companies are direct competitors with Anthropic. Claude didn’t mention that important detail, even though it highlighted Anthropic’s spending as the biggest risk.

And in a section called “Disclosures worth reporting,” Claude detailed some of the company’s “safety incidents.”

In 2026 evaluations, a testing misconfiguration left models connected to the internet, and four models gained unauthorized access to real third-party systems. In one case a model used a password it found to gain administrator access and read one person’s personal data. The company says the affected parties were notified and it found no evidence of coordination between models. The filing says models behave differently when they detect they’re being tested, and that some have shown self-preserving behavior.

Yeah, OK. That’s concerning.

Claude here is detailing an incident Anthropic mentioned on page 47 of its prospectus. But what about the page before, when Anthropic mentions a somewhat bigger risk factor AI could pose: “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”

I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but that feels worth a mention.

My thoughts

Overall, this is a pretty good summary.

Claude’s synopsis quickly pulled out all the relevant numbers from a 318-page document and did some surprising calculations I wouldn’t have thought to do to arrive at an implied valuation. And I love how it understands journalistic ethics.

But it struggled to contextualize the IPO in a way that drove home what’s so important about it. It undersold both Anthropic’s stunning growth and its massive loss & spending commitments. Most importantly, it failed to capture how severe the risk factors are and the comically large amount of space dedicated to them.

In other words, Claude excelled at the “what,” but a human expert would have done a much better job at the “why.”

If a writer had filed the “story” Claude shared with me, I’d have spiked it.

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Comey was charged with transmitting and conspiring to transmit national defense information in October 2016, according to a court document.  

Comey said in a video on Instagram that "they're back again" and referenced the Justice Department, but did not provide further details. "I'm still innocent," he added. Comey's lawyers have already asked a judge to dismiss the case.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward, Ismail Shakil and Costas Pitas)

Palacios hand-crafts paper-mâché sugar skull masks covered in flowers, bright colors, and intricate designs. He has sold them at the downtown festival, organized by K Space Contemporary, every year since it began in 2008.

“I’ve sold quite a lot, a lot of them, thousands of them,” Palacios said.

Palacios spent about 30 years as an art instructor with CCISD, where paper-mâché was a regular part of his lessons. He was exhibiting masks downtown when he met Michelle Smythe of K Space Contemporary, who invited him to sell them at the gallery’s first Día de los Muertos festival.

The idea for the masks came from a book a fellow teacher brought back from San Antonio. It featured the work of José Guadalupe Posada, the famed Mexican artist known for drawings of skulls and skeletons that poked fun at high society. Posada’s message stuck with Palacios: no matter your status, everyone ends up the same.

“No matter what state you are in life, eventually we’re all going to be skeletons,” Palacios said.

He says each mask takes about six hours of work. He works on several at a time and tries to improve his designs every year, sometimes adding jaguars, two-sided faces or images inspired by Posada.

Palacios says the holiday is often misunderstood. Though it centers on death, the tradition honors loved ones who have died, and many believe their souls return to visit during this time.

“I feel as long as you have them in your mind and you remember them, and in your heart, they’re not really ever gone,” he said.

Sometimes his masks become personal tributes. He recently finished a custom mask for a friend of his sister whose father, a police officer in Missouri, had died. The mask carried police symbolism in his honor.

For Palacios, the best moment comes when someone puts on one of his masks and walks through the festival.

“That’s such a great feeling because then I realized, you know, that’s, uh, that’s what they were made for,” he said.

Some festivalgoers come back every year to add to their collections.

The Día de los Muertos Festival takes over several blocks of downtown Corpus Christi, including Chaparral, Starr, Mesquite, Taylor, and Peoples streets.

K Space Contemporary is located at 623 N. Chaparral St.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro visited Lenape Middle School in Doylestown on Monday, Oct. 26, to sign into law the bipartisan bill banning mobile devices during school hours.

Standing behind a podium marked with the words "getting distractions out of the classroom," Shapiro was joined by students and teachers in the Central Bucks School District, state senators and representatives for the Bucks County area, and members of PA Unplugged, a nonprofit that has called for policies that limit students' screen time.

The Pennsylvania Senate passed the bill and presented it to Shapiro on Thursday, Oct. 22.

The bill contains exceptions for special occasions like field days and science fairs, students learning English who use a phone for translations, students on individualized education plans that require a device, and students with a medical condition that requires them to use a device.

Many individual schools already have cellphone policies, including one Philadelphia school that seals students' devices in Yondr pouches — like the ones you might see at a concert.

Under the bill, districts will be responsible for drafting and implementing their own policies that must prohibit the devices from being used on school property.

Schools will then send their plans to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for review, with the ban officially taking effect in schools for the 2027-28 school year.

Shapiro said he has heard concerns from teachers and students about phone usage in schools.

"They would talk to me about how they would too easily get caught up in these addictive algorithms that are forcing them to be on their phone screens a whole lot more and not learning," Shapiro said. "It would stop the focus, it would stop the ability of students to build natural relationships, and would make it all much, much harder during the school day."

Shapiro called for the ban in his annual budget address in February.

Two students who weren't fans of the ban? Shapiro's youngest two children, who are still in high school. One is a senior and the other a sophomore.

"Man, did I hear it when I got home that day," Shapiro said. "They were not happy with us, and they were afraid that maybe their school leader was going to hear about this and implement a ban when the school year started. And guess what? They did. My kids reported that some of their buddies were giving them a hard time about who their dad was.

"It allows them to be able to learn and just focus on their studies, focus on their friends and have a good time as they should ... I do want to report that my kids have stopped complaining and we have seen this work really, really well," he added.

Critics of the bill have raised the safety issue — how will parents get in touch with their kids quickly if there is an incident at school, like a school shooting?

Shapiro responded to that criticism.

"I don't think we should accept the premise that a student having a phone in their hand makes schools any safer," he said, also noting schools have security plans in place. "What we need is comprehensive gun reform in this commonwealth and in this country."

Pennsylvania is the latest state in the region to pass a law on cellphones in schools.

Delaware doesn't have an outright ban on cellphones in schools, but last year passed a law requiring districts to adopt their own policies about cellphone use, with a goal of limiting their use during class time.

New Jersey passed a school cellphone ban in January; it took effect at the beginning of this school year.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

The screwworm — actually a fly larva that burrows into the flesh of livestock, pets and even humans — has threatened the $113 billion U.S. cattle industry. Containment efforts have cost jobs and trade in border communities, and it cut off a source of cattle as the U.S. struggles to rebuild drought-depleted herds. Reopening crossings could help ease that squeeze, although experts caution that shoppers shouldn't expect quick relief on beef prices.

The port at Columbus, New Mexico, is the third to resume Mexican cattle imports under new safeguards, which include tests, shots and inspections that happen before an animal even gets close to the border.

Officials and ranchers in the two countries say layers of treatment and inspection give them confidence that imported livestock won't carry screwworm through the ports. But flies can buzz across the border on their own, meaning ranchers, hunters and pet owners should remain vigilant.

The parasite was an annual livestock scourge before being largely eradicated in the U.S. in the 1960s. It reappeared in Mexico in 2024, and the first confirmed U.S. case was in Texas in June.

More than 60 cases have been confirmed in Texas and New Mexico, with infestations of cattle, sheep, goats, horses and dogs. Last week, the first case in U.S. wildlife was confirmed after a hunter found screwworm in an elk.

Before the current outbreak, the U.S. was importing about 1 million head of cattle per year. It will take time to get back to that number while keeping a sharp eye on the risks to animal health, said Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture.

“As long as we can manage and mitigate that risk at an acceptable level, we will continue to process the safe and legal movement of cattle through these ports,” he said, watching as cattle lined up in the chutes at Columbus.

About a third of all Mexican cattle imported to the U.S. each year pass through Columbus and the Santa Teresa port near El Paso, Texas. Gerardo Fierro, executive director of the New Mexico Border Authority, pegged the value of the cattle trade for the area at $1 billion.

Fierro said the community watched as jobs, cattle sales and even tax revenue from the diesel fuel used to transport the animals evaporated due to the closures. Ranchers were no longer crossing into New Mexico and spending money on supplies, lodging and food, and farmers had no customers for their alfalfa and grain.

“This means a lot,” he said of the reopening.

Another border crossing for cattle in Arizona is due to open in late November.

New Mexico state veterinarian Samantha Holeck said the rigorous process for getting cattle ready starts at their home ranches, where private veterinarians check for tuberculosis and other diseases and deliver medications that prevent screwworm.

At the next stop, veterinarians accredited by the Mexican government look for open wounds, signs of illness or other injuries. Then a head-to-tail inspection is done by the USDA while still in Mexico.

The last hurdle? Dipping — as it's commonly known — involves the cows being immersed in vats of insecticide to get rid of any missed parasites.

Holeck said the protocols developed over recent years helped to buy more time, and the USDA is using fly traps and drones to survey areas.

The government has a longstanding program to breed sterile male flies and drop swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females, causing the flies to die out. The government is building a $610 million factory in Texas that can produce 300 million sterile flies per week. That will augment production at facilities in Mexico and Panama.

“That’s our sharpest tool,” Hoskins said.

Mexican ranchers once again have a market for their feeder cattle, but experts say it will take time for U.S. ranchers to rebuild herds that have dwindled to record lows due to years of persistent drought. Constrained supplies have pushed prices higher.

Tom Paterson, president of the New Mexico Cattle Grower's Association, was among those who met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last week in Columbus.

“I agree with the secretary,” he said, “when she says that food security is national security.”

Town officials shared information about the incident on Sunday morning.

The town says staff at the transfer station heard something and were able to rescue the cat before it was physically injured. As of Sunday morning, the cat was being cared for by the town Animal Control Officer and officials said the animal seemed to be doing well.

"There is absolutely no excuse for animal cruelty. We understand that sometimes people have hard choices and may be struggling financially. If you find yourself unable or unwilling to care for an animal, there are safe, legal, and humane resources available right here in our community," the town wrote. "To the individual or individuals who thought it was acceptable to tie a cat inside a plastic bag and throw it into a dumpster at the Bingham Transfer Station: Human decency and basic compassion should have guided you to a completely different choice."

The town said people who need help with a pet can reach out to a local animal shelter, the Animal Control Officer, local town office or police.

"Please do the right thing next time. Our community is better than this, and we will continue to look out for those who cannot speak for themselves," Bingham town officials wrote.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Those agreements, announced Monday, are intended to provide “significant integrity protections for NBA-related markets,” including limitations on what can be offered on those exchanges, transparency when it comes to suspicious patterns by site users, and banning league and team personnel from making trades related to league events.

The prediction markets will have “information-sharing obligations relating to investigations and suspicious trading,” the NBA said. The NBA has had similar guardrails in place with its sportsbook partners for some time and has cited instances where that system has flagged irregularities in betting patterns.

“If you’re going to be betting on our games or trading on our games or playing fantasy around our games, it’s better for it to be regulated than unregulated,” said Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA’s head of media distribution and partnerships. “And clearly, our fans have interest in this activity. So, we’re in a better position to protect the integrity of our games in a regulated market where there’s transparency, where things can be monitored and we have insight into what’s happening.”

The NBA is also expanding its agreements with current official sports betting partners, such as DraftKings, to include their prediction-market offerings. Not all states offer legalized sports betting but predictions markets — at least on some level — are essentially available in all 50 states.

More than a dozen states are involved in litigation over prediction markets and earlier this month the NFL asked the Supreme Court to rule on the regulation of such markets. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission contends that it has exclusive jurisdiction on oversight, though some states believe it should fall under their purview.

Earlier this month, the NBA told sportsbooks they will not be permitted to offer certain types of wagering this season, including but not limited to which players record the first stat of a game, the outcome of the opening tip and taking the “under” involving players not expected to play more than a few minutes. The deals announced on Monday are expected to have similar restraints.

“A big part of this is a limitation on the types of markets that can be offered,” Kaufman-Ross said. “We will have the right to approve the types of markets that are available on our games, which is a very important component for us. And we’ve had very constructive dialogues with the companies as part of that.”

The NBA’s memorandum of understanding with the CFTC “reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that NBA-related prediction markets are subject to appropriate regulatory oversight and integrity protections,” the league said.

Kalshi and Polymarket, as part of their partnerships with the NBA, will now be able to describe themselves as the “Preferred Prediction Market Exchange of the NBA,” plus have access to league intellectual property such as logos, be able to get NBA statistical data from league partner Sportradar “to operate and settle authorized NBA-related markets,” and other marketing activations.

The terms of the NBA’s agreements with Kalshi and Polymarket were not disclosed, other than the league confirming that they are for multiple years. There are NBA stars with business relationships with those markets; Miami’s Giannis Antetokounmpo has promoted Kalshi and Philadelphia’s LeBron James recently signed a deal with Polymarket. At least one other NBA star, San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama, recently said he will never endorse such sites.

___

See AP’s full NBA coverage here

BRASÍLIA, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Brazil's octogenarian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces an uphill battle from day one of his final term, analysts say, with his plans hemmed in by economic headwinds and a right-wing Congress.

Already the country's oldest president, Lula overcame a first-round loss to pull off a surprise runoff victory against Senator Flavio Bolsonaro on Sunday, securing 51.8% of votes and a record fourth term just two days before his 81st birthday.

He will take office on January 5 after winning what he has said was his last election, hanging on to power in a country that has swung dramatically to the right since his first electoral victory in 2002.

FISCAL POLICY 'HIS BIGGEST CHALLENGE'

"Lula has shown that he still is the dominant political figure of his era, but he is weaker," Michael Ahn Paarlberg of the Center for International Policy think tank said.

Brazil's incoming Congress is its most conservative since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s, with Bolsonaro's party and its allies enjoying majorities in both chambers.

"He's likely to be a lame duck from the start," said Oliver Stuenkel, an international relations professor at Sao Paulo's Getulio Vargas Foundation, who predicted Lula would struggle to build a coalition to pass much of his agenda.

As of Monday morning, Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, had yet to concede, and Lula faced the prospect of adversaries in Congress who do not recognize his win, analysts said. 

In addition, Congress has amassed significant power over government spending in the past decade, which could frustrate Lula's promises to maintain his signature welfare programs.

Meanwhile, his government forecasts meager 2.3% economic growth next year, adding to fiscal challenges worsened by high interest rates and public debt that has grown past 82% of GDP, the highest since the pandemic.

"On the broad macroeconomic outlook, things are not looking great," Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said.

A hostile Congress "will make it very hard to push any reform through Congress and even try to manage the budget," she said.

Lula's promises to ensure minimum wage increases remain above inflation are among those that clash with growing pressure to get debt under control. Lula’s aides have also signaled he will keep pushing to curtail tax breaks, but lawmakers have repeatedly resisted measures that raise the effective tax burden.

"Fiscal policy remains Lula's biggest economic challenge," said Andres Abadia, chief Latin American economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, as growing mandatory spending and high interest costs leave little room to cut deficits. 

Analysts said an economic crisis could even spur Lula's impeachment, with some drawing comparisons to Brazil's 2014-2016 crisis, which preceded the impeachment of Lula's ally Dilma Rousseff.

"I think the campaign for Lula's impeachment begins now," said Paulo Kramer, a political scientist who worked on former President Bolsonaro's first campaign and has spoken to people close to his son.

Investors reacted nervously on Monday morning, sending Brazilian assets sharply lower as markets reassessed the country's fiscal outlook under Lula.

SENATE STUMBLING BLOCK

Congress is likely to block or slow Lula's appointments to key roles in institutions such as the Supreme Court and the central bank, analysts say. 

For the first time since Brazil returned to democracy, the executive branch will be clearly at odds with the Senate, Lucas de Aragao, a partner at Brasilia-based consultancy Arko Advice, said.

"Lula will have some room to negotiate in the lower house by giving centrist parties more space, but in the Senate he will have to bargain issue by issue and adjust his legislative agenda to fit what the opposition wants," Aragao added.

Bolsonaro's allies in the incoming Senate have also vowed to impeach Justice Alexandre de Moraes, escalating their long-running fight with a powerful judiciary that has often aligned with Lula, blocking key right-wing legislation and shaping policy on everything from Indigenous rights to the internet.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Boyle;Editing by Brad Haynes and Andrew Heavens)

This week, students from Bear Creek, Golden and Wheat Ridge High Schools spent time shadowing healthcare professionals at Lutheran Hospital. It's part of a partnership with Jeffco Public Schools that gives students a behind-the-scenes look at careers in the medical field.

From emergency rooms to the pharmacy and lab, students explored different career paths. They even learned lifesaving skills through a "Stop the Bleed" training session.

CTE student Kenny Chiv said, "It's nice to see the different environment of the medical field and to talk to all of the personnel and see jobs they go through every day and the struggles and easiest parts and why they enjoy it the most."

So far, 90 students have participated in or are completing the program, and two have already landed jobs through the partnership.

The goal is to show students that they don't have to wait until after college to get their feet in the door in healthcare.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Deputies, along with the sheriff's search and rescue team and the Oxford County Fire Department, responded to the Paint Lake public boat launch for a report of an unresponsive man, later identified as the 77-year-old, in the water 20 feet from shore. The county agency said the deputies removed the Rochester Hills, Michigan, man from the water and administered lifesaving measures to him.

The man was taken to a hospital, where he was in critical but stable condition on Sunday, according to the sheriff's office. Investigators said he fell from the dock while launching a boat and was not wearing a life jacket.

Officials are investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Paint Lake is on the south side of Oxford Township next to Clear Lake.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

His praises echoed throughout the home stadium where his impact could be seen by all, but it was off that field where his impact was felt most deeply.

"He measured his seasons in young men, not wins," said Coraopolis Mayor Michael Alan Dixon.

"He had a way of being tough and loving at the same time," another speaker said.

Dawson collapsed during Friday's game at Rochester High School in Beaver County. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died. He was just 55.

"We're going to feel this for a while, so it's going to be hard," said Superintendent Dr. Aaron Thomas. "We lost a big part of us."

Thomas hired Dawson in 2009. The two talked every day. He called Dawson a natural mentor.

"He knew that sometimes you got to put your arm around a student, sometimes you got to love them up, and sometimes you got to tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear," Thomas said, explaining it came from a space of love and caring.

Raequan Troutman, a 2023 Cornell football graduate, felt that firsthand, adding that Dawson had a profound impact on his life.

"Coach was like a second father to me," he said.

Ahead of the candlelight vigil, Troutman spent a long time sitting at the center of the field. Not only was it where a memorial to Dawson had been placed, but it was also a spot Thomas had met Troutman before every game.

"Either to talk about the game plan or to tell each other we love each other," Troutman said, explaining that he felt a connection to Dawson while sitting there.

Love was an integral part of their relationship.

"Coach will call you down there every week just to make sure you're good," Troutman said. "I've been in a dark place in my life where I damn near wanted to take my own, and nobody was there but Coach. He checked on me every single day, texted me every day."

Dr. Thomas said they had to meet with players late Friday night to inform them of Dawson's passing.

"They took it very hard Friday night, so yeah, we're going to love them up the best we can," Thomas said.

Just like Coach did.

Counselors are being provided to students this week. Thomas said they haven't figured out what will happen with Cornell's next football game.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Tanisha Shelton, 45, is facing charges of attempted first-degree murder and arson causing great bodily harm, according to her arrest report.

Deputies and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews were called at around 6:02 p.m. Saturday to Northwest 63rd Street and Northwest 25th Avenue after reports that a person had been set on fire. They found an unconscious, burned man, later identified by MDSO as Nathaniel Devon Mathis, 33.

First responders found the male victim suffering from significant burn injuries. He was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center, where medical staff determined he sustained second- and third-degree burns across at least 80% of his body. Officials stated the victim remains in extremely critical condition and is not expected to survive, according to the report.

Witnesses told investigators that Shelton and Mathis had engaged in a verbal altercation earlier in the day. During the argument, Shelton allegedly threatened that she would leave and return with someone to assault him.

Shelton left the area and returned several hours later, carrying a white plastic bucket containing an unknown liquid accelerant, which was enclosed in a plastic bag, according to the report.

The report also said that she asked a witness to borrow a lighter and then walked up to Mathis and resumed the verbal argument. She then poured the accelerant over him and set him on fire before running away.

The witness chased Shelton and sprayed her with pepper spray to try to prevent her from fleeing, according to authorities.

Shelton was located after witnesses gave deputies a physical description of her, noting that she was wearing a brown dress and purple sneakers. She was found nearby and was arrested without incident while still wearing the matching clothing.

Shelton was then transported to the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office Homicide Bureau, where, according to the report, she invoked her right to legal counsel.

She is now behind bars at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where she was booked early Sunday morning. According to the corrections website, her bond for the attempted murder charge was set at $10,000, while the arson charge's bond is listed as "to be set."

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Filling up a basic Ford F-150 truck now costs about $100, up $30 from a year ago. Mortgage rates have jumped to levels that have depressed home sales. And for the past 12 months, consumer prices have risen faster than paychecks, making the average family poorer.

One week before midterm elections that will serve as a referendum on his second term, Trump is struggling to deliver on his campaign promise to bring down costs, even as he insists the country has entered an economic “golden age." The same frustration that powered his comeback two years ago could now cost Republicans control of Congress.

“Our nation is doing better now than ever before,” Trump insists while campaigning, vowing that interest rates and oil prices will plunge once the war with Iran — which he started — comes to an end.

The word “affordability,” he says, is nothing but “a con job by the Democrats," adding that “it doesn’t mean anything to anybody.”

That rhetoric comes as voters say they're struggling to afford basics like fuel and groceries and as they blame Trump for higher costs, pointing to the Republican president's aggressive tariff policies and the ongoing, unpopular war with Iran.

Record-high diesel prices, in particular, have driven up shipping and farming costs, creating trouble for Republicans in typically conservative states such as Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas, where Democrats appear uniquely competitive in races that will shape Trump's final two years in office.

“The costs of things are absolutely the first thing people talk about, but also it’s their pay not keeping up with the cost,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “It’s a double whammy.”

Prices at the pump have become a preeminent issue for voters.

"People hate paying more money for gas, and the prices have gone up a lot,” said Stephen Moore, who has previously advised the president on the economy. “It’s frustrating because Trump’s done so many good things for the economy. But with the Iran situation, that’s really had a big effect on the economy, and Republicans may pay a high price for that.”

Misty Reeder, 48, said she considers herself “in the middle” politically but picked all Democrats on her ballot in Easley, South Carolina.

“I’ve noticed that things have been getting a lot harder,” said Reeder, who receives disability payments. “You hear about it everywhere you go."

In the six years that she and her husband have been renting their home, Reeder said their rent had increased by hundreds of dollars.

“Something’s gotta give,” she said. “It’s like a dam — the pressure’s too much, and it’s going to break.”

Sandra Capell, 69, said she wants “to see some change" when it comes to the economy even though she voted Republican in Easley, which is part of South Carolina's conservative Upstate region.

“I think everybody is kind of suffering when it comes to groceries, gas, everything really,” she said. “I’m looking at the Republican Party to jump on the wagon, get in the saddle and let’s bring it back.”

Beti Rosales, 47, said higher prices have taken a toll on her family's Mexican restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, part of the Lehigh Valley that has seesawed between the parties in recent years. Limes and avocados cost more than before. So does the plumber who's occasionally needed.

Two years ago, Rosales decided to give Trump and Republicans a chance, hoping for relief from inflation.

“The reality now is that it actually didn’t get better," she said. "It actually got worse. The prices of everything have increased."

Rosales is now considering voting Democratic in the midterms.

"Maybe fresh new faces might make a difference?” she said.

While running in 2024, Trump hammered President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the election, for high inflation, which climbed as high as 9.1% in June 2022. He promised voters he would lower gasoline prices and unlock roaring growth.

“With your vote in this election, I will end inflation,” he vowed.

In less than two years, Trump has aggressively remodeled the U.S. economy. He's slapped double-digit tariffs on many trading partners — including the European Union, India, Japan, Canada and Mexico — and sparked trade wars with allies. The U.S. government now holds stakes in several dozen private companies. He's signed broad income tax cuts into law.

But the persistent challenge of inflation has continued, overshadowing the positives of continued economic growth and a low unemployment rate. Inflation was 3% when Trump took office and reached 3.7% last month.

The president has played down the intensity of inflation, claiming that it is under 2% and “under control.”

Democrats have seized on the discontent, using the same high cost of living that sank them before to pressure vulnerable Republicans and put congressional districts Trump won by even double digits in play.

“Now remember, they promised to lower prices on Day One. Instead, under the failed President Donald J. Trump, it costs more than ever in American history to fill up your truck, stock your fridge, visit the doctor or power your home,” said Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for reelection, at a recent rally in Atlanta.

“You work harder and harder, but the treadmill gets faster and steeper and the bills get higher and higher," he told the crowd.

Cait Conley, a Democrat running in New York against Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, one of his party’s most vulnerable incumbents, harkened back to his tweet from the last midterm elections, when Biden was president. Lawler had advised voters to "fill up your tank and go grocery shopping — it will inform your decision.”

In a new ad, Conley said voters should follow that advice this year "and then tell me if the system’s working for you.”

“You deserve better. It shouldn’t be this hard," she says.

Conley and other candidates have pounded on a theme that Democrats believe will be especially effective this cycle: accusing Trump and other Republicans of compounding voters' economic pain by corruptly pursuing policies that help their billionaire donors at the expense of everyday Americans.

“I know you’re frustrated. Washington politicians get rich while you get hurt. Corporations make huge profits while your costs go up," North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper says in an ad airing in the competitive state.

That has included a particular focus on the war with Iran.

“Trump’s war abroad costs taxpayers a billion dollars a day on a war we have no business fighting. Our schools crumble, our factories shutter, our gas prices skyrocket. But when they want war, billion-dollar blank checks," says Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in another spot.

The president "thinks that the economy is doing well because he and his family have enriched themselves to the tune of several billion dollars,” said Amy Richards, 56, a onetime Republican who has voted Democratic since Trump became his party's 2016 nominee.

“He has zero idea what it is like to receive a paycheck and have to feed yourself and your family,” said Richards, standing outside a polling place in her town of Round Rock, Texas, on Friday, "and he doesn’t care.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to cast Democrats as extreme, pointing to an ascendant populist wing that includes a number of Democratic socialists.

Moore, who advised Trump's campaigns, said he wished Republicans would spend more time talking about the economy’s strengths, including rising median incomes and a record-setting stock market, even as he acknowledged those numbers might not resonate with voters.

“What matters is how people feel, and clearly people are feeling stressed out financially,” he said.

Some Trump supporters remain satisfied. Renee Blood, 57, an executive assistant in Round Rock, feels the economy has “improved quite well."

“Of course we see gas prices up and down, but things are much more affordable,” she said.

She plans to vote Republican because she worries things will get worse if Democrats return to power.

Trump’s golden age might not have arrived, she said, but “we are still working on it.”

___

Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Easley, S.C.; Mike Catalini in Allentown, Pa.; and Jesse Bedayn in Round Rock, Texas, contributed to this report.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on health workers and responders that authorities say is hampering efforts to slow the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in the world.

The attack took place Saturday in the town of Bafwasende in the country's eastern Tshopo province, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X on Sunday.

“Everyone working to protect communities from this deadly disease must be able to work in dignity and safety. Healthcare must always be protected,” he said.

WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, also condemned the attack on X. “Misinformation and fear must never fuel violence,” he said.

Local authorities have not yet commented on the attack or the suspects.

The country’s health ministry’s most recent data indicates more than 9,800 cases including more than 4,700 deaths have been recorded since the start of the outbreak in May, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak in Congo’s history.

Last month, a Congolese politician was beaten to death in North Kivu after publicly defending the government’s response to Ebola. He had been calling on the public to obey response measures, particularly social distancing and handwashing, on a radio show.

It came after authorities launched a village-centered approach to fight the outbreak which faced resistance from some residents who dismiss Ebola as a hoax. There is widespread distrust of the country’s government because of how it has managed past Ebola outbreaks as well as chronic corruption.

Responders say skepticism about the disease among communities has complicated efforts to work with residents, including in remote areas and emerging hot spots that already face shortages of medical supplies and healthcare workers.

Back in May at the start of the outbreak, two tents at health centers were set alight in two separate attacks in just one week by angry residents.

Those on the front line of the response to the outbreak have previously said some members of various response teams have been held captive in some health zones, and some teams responsible for safe and dignified burials have been threatened.

“I am here. With you,” Machado announced on X Sunday morning shortly before other members of the opposition confirmed her arrival without providing details.

She left Venezuela in December for Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, which she was awarded for promoting democratic rights in her country.

A month after she left, the US toppled her rival, strongman President Nicolás Maduro, and began working with the acting Venezuelan government to steer the country toward a democratic transition and political reconciliation. The process has involved several high-profile opposition figures but has excluded Machado and her ally, former presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

Machado had repeatedly vowed to return home and hinted that she would run for president again if an election were held.

In late August, a key member of her inner circle, Omar González, returned to the country after almost three years in exile, in what he called a “prelude” to Machado’s own arrival.

Machado had attempted to re-enter Venezuela seven times over the past few months without success, according to her advisers.

She first tried in late June to help with reconstruction efforts after two powerful earthquakes devastated the country, but claimed the government thwarted her return by closing its airspace.

She tried again in late September while acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, but she was denied entry three times in a single day.

During her more than 10 months away, Machado traveled the world to rally political support from her allies, including US President Donald Trump, to whom she gifted her Nobel Prize.

While the Trump administration has shown support for Machado in the past, it has largely sidelined her from Venezuela’s ongoing political transition.

After ousting Maduro in January, Trump called Machado a “very nice woman,” but claimed she “does not have the support or the respect within the country” to be leader.

Instead, the US has been working with Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodríguez, to enact political and economic reforms in the country. Rodríguez has met just about every demand from the Trump administration, including releasing hundreds of political prisoners and making it easier for US companies to invest in the country.

In late August, Trump announced that the US had reached an agreement to take majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela, a move some consider beneficial for both the US oil industry and the Venezuelan economy. Machado in a video statement questioned why the oil agreement announced by Trump was being signed by the Venezuelan government, which she called an “illegitimate regime.”

The government clung to power in 2024 after state-controlled electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner of the last presidential election, despite experts concluding that such a result was statistically improbable.

Rodríguez at the UN General Assembly vowed that Venezuela would hold new elections and transition to a full democracy, which the US says is the main goal, but the acting government has yet to announce when a vote will take place.

Trump has repeatedly said the country is not ready for elections yet but has insisted that a lot of progress has been made.

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Every year, Forrest Avenue in North Riverside transforms into Bloody Boulevard. Jose Frausto and his 2-year-old son Sebastian were among the hundreds who will fill the street for a true treat.

"It really attracts a lot of people. Towards Halloween, you'll probably see like 100 people just walking by. You can't find parking sometimes; you have to park 3-4 blocks away," Frausto said.

Starting the week before the Halloween, those young and old take the scary stroll through the dark and smoky lane.

Mark Sajatovic personally decorates the yards of his neighbors, with their permission, of course.

"I just use their land for couple of weeks," he said.

The attention Sajatovic puts into the details is gruesome and jaw dropping.

"I just love it. I just keep doing it every year. I think of things during the summer. I go to Halloween shows to get ideas. So I just keep trying to add," he said.

For 40 years, he has kept adding more spook for the spectators.

Neighbor Danny Vlach visited the block years ago. Then, in 2014, a house was for sale across from Sajatovic.

"I needed a house badly, and then this one came up. I walked through the front door. I said sign the contract, we're buying this one," Vlach said.

One key reason is Vlach now gets to put a big display out front himself and add to what Sajatovic's been doing for decades.

"It's like bar none my favorite holiday ever," he said.

So many people, not to mention trick-or-treaters, will come to the block that Vlach admits he dishes out a lot of cash for the treats, buying 2,000 pieces of candy.

"Money, that's whatever. We can make more money," he said. "We've got to make more memories."

There's nothing that will truly make your stomach turn, because just about everyone leaves with a big smile on their face.

"I have parents now when they were little kids, and they have kids of their own. That's how long I've been doing it. It's incredible," Sajatovic said.

The incredibly creepy and captivating concept runs through Halloween night.

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A decade after the Trump era began, when he first turned Midwestern political battlegrounds into reliably Republican states, the fallout from policies of his second term have rippled through the agriculture sector and broader economies across the Great Plains and the Rust Belt.

Iowa and Ohio, which have not been competitive since former President Barack Obama was on the ballot, are in play. And ruby-red states like Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana are not exempt. The shift is happening up and down the ballot, with tight contests for the House, Senate and governor blanketing the middle of the country.

From spring planting to fall harvest, anxiety over Trump’s war with Iran and the fallout from his trade battles has turned into alarm.

In conversations across the region, voters point to the soaring cost of gas and diesel, as well as high grocery prices and interest rates. A whipsaw tariff policy has forced farmers to pay more for fertilizer, while some manufacturers, footing higher bills for imported components, have laid off workers. Trump’s decision to allow imported beef has infuriated ranchers. And spending cuts targeting healthcare and grant programs have caused further strain.

Promises to revitalize the nation’s manufacturing sector remain unfulfilled. And even before the Iran war sent costs soaring, several of these battleground states were in fiscal decline.

Iowa, for example, recorded the weakest annual growth rate in the country in 2025, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, a searing indictment for Republicans who have had control of state government for more than a decade.

“I think everybody in agriculture is tired, would be the best way to put it. They’re just tired,” Steve Kuiper, a farmer and president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, told CNN. “They feel very beat up right now, demoralized.”

It has all fueled a hunger for change — and created an opening for Democratic candidates.

“A lot of the promises the president made to bring costs down, to not start new foreign wars, to deliver on his economic message, have not come to fruition,” said Beau Bayh, the third-generation scion of Indiana’s most famous Democratic political family. If he wins his race for secretary of state, he’d be the first member of his party to win statewide in Indiana in 14 years.

Trump knows better than most presidents that midterm elections are a reflection — and referendum — on the party in power. He experienced it in 2018, when Republicans held control of the Senate but lost their majority in the House — including three seats in Iowa. GOP officials tell CNN they fear a repeat of that scenario.

The travel plans of both parties tell the tale, with Trump set to visit Michigan on Sunday after making stops in Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa in a monthlong campaign blitz. Obama traveled to Michigan and Ohio on Saturday, rallying support in two states he once won.

Polls suggest voters are willing to punish the Republicans in power in Washington, even though they also hold dim views of the Democratic brand.

“It’s not that they’ve been overwhelmed by the Democratic Party, it’s just that they’re really, really pissed off,” Tom Vilsack, a Democratic former Iowa governor, told CNN. “They want to send a message of disappointment. When you’re upset with someone, you want to find a way to send a message. You don’t swallow it, you send that message.”

Vilsack, who served two terms as agriculture secretary in the Obama administration, said economic frustrations across the agriculture and manufacturing sectors have been rising long before the Trump era. But he said the promises Trump made during his three campaigns, particularly when he pledged to bring prices down only two years ago, are feeding the anger.

“He builds up the hope that it’s going to be fundamentally different,” Vilsack said. “That was interpreted that he’s going to bring back the good times. He failed to do that.”

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who was the last Republican to win that office in his reelection two decades ago, said Trump would be better off talking about rising costs and how he intends to change course.

“It’s going to be a blue wave,” Pawlenty told CNN. “We just don’t know if it’s knee-deep, waist-deep, or going to hit us right in the face.”

The House is all but certain to fall from GOP control, he said, but added: “The real chance for Republicans to salvage something out of this is to hang on to the Senate and that’s a real possibility.”

House and Senate in the balance

In Iowa and Ohio, Democrats have a shot at winning Senate races that are crucial to the net four-seat gain they need to claim a majority — a goal that eluded them in 2018. Their odds look even better in those states’ governor’s races, potentially giving the party a foothold in statehouses where Republicans have trifectas: control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

But the Democratic revival could extend even further. Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton has the GOP scrambling to save the seat of Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas. An independent candidate, Dan Osborn, has rallied Democratic support and thrown a curveball into Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts’ bid for a second term in Nebraska.

And a slew of House seats across the Midwest held by Republicans are in play. Democrats believe they could win as many as three GOP-held seats each in Iowa and Ohio, plus potentially four more in Michigan. The party is also targeting an Omaha-based district in Nebraska and one in southeastern Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. If the election breaks in Democrats’ favor in a big way, another House seat in Nebraska, as well as one seat each in Indiana and Kansas, could also prove to be much more competitive than either party expected early in the 2026 election cycle.

Republicans aren’t conceding any of those races. And they believe they have Democrats on defense in the Upper Midwest — particularly Michigan, where progressive former public health official Abdul El-Sayed is locked in an expensive and bitter Senate race against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers.

Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday, Trump urged voters to pretend he was on the ballot and vote to ensure a “booming Iowa economy.”

“If you get out and vote like you did in 2024, we win in a landslide, you know, we win in a landslide,” he said

Even as the president boasts of America’s golden age, with an economy envied by the world, he also makes clear he understands the challenges people are facing. At most every stop along the way of his red-state October blitz, he has offered sweeteners to voters if they stick with Republican candidates.

From $8 billion in new aid to farmers announced in Kansas to promises of building the nation’s largest steel plant in eastern Iowa to a commitment he made in Nebraska to temporarily ease diesel costs, Trump has made a series of pledges that follow his offer of giving every adult American $5,000 if Republicans retain their grip on Washington. The promises are barely even repeated by GOP candidates, who know they ring hollow with many voters.

Democrats acknowledge the uphill climb for winning all of the narrowly divided Senate races across the Midwest, particularly given their own brand and favorability challenges. But Republican officials wonder whether Trump’s extensive travels to many of these states will backfire on down-ballot races.

“When our leader, the president himself, does things that make me cringe, that’s difficult to tell people to vote for me,” said Jim Howell, a Republican member of the Sedgwick County Board of Commissioners in Wichita, who is also on the November ballot. “I really wish we had leaders that don’t make us cringe, but help us consider a way to come together.”

Trump’s closing message

A question hanging over the final week of the race is whether Trump’s relentless campaigning has awakened Republican voters to rally to his aid one last time in hopes of closing an enthusiasm gap. Iowa could be a place to watch, given Trump’s long history of winning there and his decision to hold two rallies in opposite corners of the state in the homestretch.

But the president’s approach, a little more than one week from Election Day, has been to double down on the policies that have led many voters to sour on his second term.

In Trump’s Sunday trip to Michigan, he’ll hold a rally at Port Huron — on the Canadian border. It will put on display his tariff battle with the United States’ northern neighbor, even though the party’s Senate nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, has attempted to break with Trump over the tariffs.

“Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war — now,” Rogers said in a television ad his campaign launched this month.

The GOP’s best hope might be to lean into the cultural battles that have helped them win over White, rural, working-class voters in recent elections. In Michigan, both Trump and Rogers have attempted to brand the Democratic nominee, El-Sayed, as supportive of extremist Islamist interests.

But Democrats are fighting back. El-Sayed in recent days began airing an ad that features clips of Republicans and conservative media figures, including Fox News hosts, saying nice or helpful things about him and his campaign.

Before those clips play, he lists issues where he suggests common cause with some in the MAGA movement, such as releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files and combatting Washington corruption.

Ohio is another headache for Republicans. The party’s nominee for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, faced sharp criticism from the man he is running to replace, two-term GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, for airing a controversial advertisement featuring the mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.

Both Ramaswamy and the president have dug in, defending the ad — and in doing so have turned the race into a test of whether voters will accept Trumpian tactics from candidates who are not Trump.

And what’s receded from the forefront is the issue Ohio voters who spoke with CNN in recent days — including Republicans who support Ramaswamy — said is responsible for the state’s sudden competitiveness: the cost of living.

“We all have to get gas. I have to go get gas right now in my car, and that’s difficult,” said Sheri Vorherr, a 55-year-old mother of five from Loveland who volunteered at a Ramaswamy rally in Cincinnati on Wednesday. She said she helps her oldest daughter buy groceries each week and sees the economic pinch brought on by inflation.

“I don’t think it’s an easy fix. I think it’s things that are going to take time,” she said. “I do believe Trump is trying to do that — it’s just taking a lot longer.”

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Two of the people wounded are in critical condition, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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New Sewickley Township police said an investigation is underway after video appears to show a truck driver trying to run over several motorcyclists in Beaver County.

"I was like, 'I'm going in the grass. I'm gone,'" said Sarah Miller, one of the motorcyclists.

Miller said she and two other bikers were taking their last joy ride of the season on Tuesday when the incident happened.

"We're out enjoying our ride, it was probably going to be the last ride of the season, given that the weather's turning. There were two lanes; we were in the left lane, the truck's in the right lane. He had already been driving pretty aggressive at that point. He tried to cut us off and kind of break up our group so that some would be ahead, some would be behind, and he could kind of get in the middle and I guess control whatever traffic he wanted to," Miller said.

Miller's video, taken on an Insta 360 camera, shows the white truck approaching behind her before the driver cuts off another motorcyclist.

"Truck cut him off, and we go and merge, and then he gets behind us, and I get ran off road, my buddy gets ran off the road," Miller said.

In the video, you can see CE Little Contracting on the side of the truck before Miller speeds ahead to get away from the truck.

As the video continues, you can see the white truck cross into the opposite lane of traffic to catch up to Miller when she began pointing at her camera.

"As soon as I pointed to that camera, it looks like he kind of backs off and slows down a little bit. Maybe he didn't realize I was recording," Miller said.

KDKA-TV asked Miller what led up to the encounter.

"No idea. We weren't really doing anything you shouldn't be doing. Just out trying to enjoy the last ride, and he came out of nowhere on that side lane or whatever, and tried to get in front of us. He couldn't," Miller said.

She said nothing like this has ever happened to her on the road before and believes it could have ended a lot differently.

"I'm only 115 pounds. My bike's probably 450 pounds. Truck's at least 10,000 pounds, if not. I mean, a slight bump, it really could have been a different kind of story," Miller said.

Since Miller posted the video on social media, it's gone viral. KDKA-TV asked her what she wanted to see happen to the driver involved.

"I didn't post the video to get anybody in trouble. I just posted it to bring attention to bad drivers in Pittsburgh. We have a lot of those," Miller said. "It was very dangerous what he did. Hopefully, he can learn from this."

She said she plans to take extra precautions moving forward and will always have the camera rolling.

"We just want to get point A to point B safely, just as cars do. We're never looking for any trouble. We just want to enjoy the ride, the wind, the sun," Miller said.

KDKA-TV reached out to CE Little Contracting several times for comment. We never heard back.

New Sewickley Township police said they are investigating the incident and are asking all of those involved to give them a call at 724-774-2473.

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Trump has been lying about inflation throughout the midterm election campaign. Among other things, he has falsely declared he has “already stopped the inflation” (it accelerated again in September), that “prices are now coming way down” (they have continued rising), and that prices are now “way down” from when former president Joe Biden left office in January 2025 (they are up 5.4% on average).

But in a series of rally speeches and comments to the press this week, Trump has gone a step further – deploying specific but phony numbers to make inflation seem better than it is.

In a Tuesday rally speech in Alaska, Trump claimed that there was just “1.7 inflation in the last three months. Think of that, 1.7. He (Biden) had real inflation; he had real inflation of 19%.” On Wednesday, more than 12 hours after newly released Consumer Price Index figures showed a 3.7% year-over-year inflation rate in September, Trump repeated in a rally speech in Montana: “We inherited the worst inflation in history, think of it, and now, the last three months, we have 1.7 – we have it down to – he (Biden) had 19%, his real number’s 19%.”

Trump’s figures are so bewildering that it is hard to figure out what exactly he is even talking about. The White House has so far ignored our requests for an explanation.

But we can think of three possible things Trump could conceivably be doing here and none of them would make his claims accurate. Heather Long, chief economist for Navy Federal Credit Union, said Thursday that “the 1.7% inflation figure is not supported by the data.”

Possibility #1: Trump is simply lying about year-over-year inflation rates

For years, Trump has invented fictional economic numbers that work better for his purposes than the actual economic numbers. So it’s very possible he’s just lying about the year-over-year inflation rates that tend to be the most commonly discussed – wildly exaggerating the highest rate under Biden and significantly reducing the most recent rates this year.

In the last three months of 2026 for which Consumer Price Index (CPI) data is available, the year-over-year inflation rate was far higher than “1.7%”: 3.7% in September, 3.4% in August and 3.4% in July. September data isn’t yet available for the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, but that index shows the year-over-year rate was 3.4% in August, 3.4% in July and 3.5% in June.

This wouldn’t be the first time he has made a false claim about having “1.7%” inflation for three months. In May, he falsely claimed that “just before the war” with Iran, “for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%.” That was wrong, too, and the White House could not offer any substantiation at the time.

Peak year-over-year inflation under Biden was 9.1%, in June 2022, not “19%.” So why do we suspect that Trump might be (incorrectly) referring to peak Biden-era inflation when he claims Biden was at “19%”? In a 2022 speech, Trump said Biden and Democrats had given the country 9.1% inflation, then quickly added, “It’s not 9.1%. I believe it’s double that.”

It’s not. The Consumer Price Index has its flaws and limitations, but there is no basis for any claim that the “real” figure is double the actual CPI figure.

Possibility #2: Trump is making a highly dishonest comparison of cumulative inflation

Cumulative inflation is the total increase in prices over a given period. There has been a 1.1% cumulative increase over the last three months, according to the CPI. That’s not a “1.7%” increase, so cumulative inflation doesn’t seem like what Trump is referring to, since he almost never uses a higher number when a lower number would be more helpful to him…

…but even if he was referring to cumulative inflation, his Trump-vs.-Biden comparison would be very deceptive. That’s because there is no reasonable way to compare three-month inflation under Trump to “19%” inflation under Biden.

The total increase in prices over Biden’s four-year term as president was 21.4%, according to the CPI, so “19%” is at least in the ballpark. But it would be completely nonsensical to contrast Biden-era cumulative inflation over 48 months with Trump-era cumulative inflation over three months.

Cumulative inflation during this Trump term to date, through 20 months, is 5.4%.

Possibility #3: Trump is misstating a fair point from his adviser

This wouldn’t do anything to support Trump’s “19%” figure for Biden. But it’s possible that Trump’s “1.7%” figure for the last three months is his inaccurate rendition of a fair point National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett made this week – “core” PCE inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was at an annualized rate of 2% for the three months from June through August.

This is the most generous reading of Trump’s “1.7%” figure we can think of, but it would still mean Trump was not telling the truth. He didn’t say in any of these comments that he was referring to core inflation rather than overall inflation; during an election in which gas prices are a major driver in overall inflation and a major factor in voter discontent, that’s a big omission. And 2% is not “1.7%.”

Also, the three-month PCE rate is widely expected to increase when the September figures for that index are released later in October. After the September CPI figures were released Wednesday, three-month core CPI jumped to an annualized rate of 3.4% – rising from the previous 2% after the September data replaced the June data in the calculation.

Long said the September data “changed the trend sharply. A key reason that 3-month annualized trend looked decent in August was due to falling gas prices in June and July.” And she said that while a reference to core inflation is her “best guess” about where Trump got his number, “I still can’t come up with 1.7%” without stripping out yet more price categories.

And one more thing: Biden didn’t leave Trump the worst inflation ever

Trump has been saying at event after event that he inherited the worst inflation in US history from Biden. He didn’t, as CNN and others have repeatedly noted.

The year-over-year inflation rate was 2.9% in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, and 3% in January 2025, the month Trump took over partway through. Those numbers are unremarkable by historical standards, nowhere near any record, and lower than the rate every month since Trump launched a war with Iran early this year.

Trump could fairly say the 9.1% peak year-over-year inflation under Biden was the highest in more than 40 years. But even that 9.1% rate was much lower than the all-time high, 23.7%, or the highest point of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 14.8%, which was reached in 1980. And the rate then fell significantly before Trump returned to office.

The cumulative increase in prices from the beginning of Biden’s administration to the end was also not the highest in US history; it was less than half of cumulative inflation during Carter’s term.

CNN’s Alicia Wallace contributed to this article.

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Beginning at 7:30 p.m., acclaimed pianist ELEW (Eric Lewis) will join the Jazz Houston Septet, led by Artistic Director and trombonist Vincent Gardner, for a concert honoring the Canadian virtuoso. The program features eight new arrangements of Peterson’s music, giving cherished compositions a fresh ensemble voice while respecting the spirit that made them timeless.

The concert arrives as Jazz Houston continues its 2026–27 season, “Houston’s Rhythm. The World’s Voices.” It also carries a particularly resonant connection to a Houston teenager who will be watching Peterson’s enduring influence from the perspective of a young musician—not appearing on the concert stage. A Houston Student Inspired by Greatness Elias Moran, 17, studies piano at Houston’s acclaimed Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). He is the son of Yuri and Tammie Moran and the nephew of globally respected jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran, whose own path from HSPVA to international acclaim illustrates the strength of Houston’s arts community.

Yet Elias’s inspiration is deeply personal. He says Oscar Peterson is his inspiration. When Elias was about 13, his grandfather Andy asked who had most influenced his piano playing. The young pianist replied with delightful certainty: “I’m an Oscar Peterson guy, Pops.”

That memorable declaration says plenty about the staying power of jazz. Peterson’s brilliance was established decades before Elias was born, yet his recordings continue reaching curious ears and ambitious hands. Elias is not a featured performer in the October 23 concert; his story provides a hometown illustration of why the tribute matters. A Sound That Helped Move History Born in Montreal on August 15, 1925, Peterson was celebrated for astonishing technique, melodic imagination and a swing feel all his own. Duke Ellington dubbed him the “Maharaja of the Keyboard.” Over a prolific career, Peterson received eight Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement honor.

His 1962 composition “Hymn to Freedom”, shaped by the blues and spiritual traditions, became closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement. In Peterson’s hands, musical excellence and the yearning for dignity could speak in the same beautiful language. His centennial birthday occurred in 2025; this Houston concert carries that celebration forward into 2026. ELEW and Jazz Houston Turn Up the Energy ELEW’s artistic background includes work with Elvin Jones and Wynton Marsalis, followed by a distinctive solo approach mixing jazz rigor with rock-driven intensity. That adventurous spirit makes him an intriguing interpreter of Peterson’s repertoire alongside Gardner’s seven-piece ensemble.

“Oscar Peterson set the standard for what two hands can do at a piano,” Gardner said. “We asked a range of arrangers to write his music for a seven-piece band, and we asked ELEW to play it. Come and hear what they did with it.”

The full Jazz Houston Youth Orchestra performs in the lobby at 6 p.m., bringing the evening’s message full circle: master musicians deserve celebration, and young musicians deserve opportunity.

For Houston Style Magazine, the story is more than a concert announcement. It is a tribute to Black musical achievement, Houston’s arts educators and the generations who keep listening, learning and creating. Elias Moran’s admiration for Peterson proves that inspiration is not limited by time.

CONCERT DETAILS: Friday, October 23, 2026, 7:00 p.m.; doors and youth orchestra at 6 p.m. Unity of Houston, 2929 Unity Drive, Houston, TX 77057 Tickets $25–$85; free parking. JAZZ HOUSTON Oscar Peterson Biography

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

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Saint won her Oscar for her movie debut in “On the Waterfront,” costarring with Brando in the breakout 1954 drama from director Elia Kazan. Her most memorable role, however, came five years later, as Eve Kendall, the cool double agent – tasked with wooing Grant – in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” one of the director’s signature thrillers.

In a 2014 interview, Saint recalled working with Hitchcock, saying that the director never discussed emotion with her but told her to lower her voice and “always, in my scenes with Cary Grant, look directly into his eyes, which was not difficult.”

Born in New Jersey on the Fourth of July, Saint began acting in college and subsequently moved to New York, landing roles in radio plays and television.

Saint studied at the acclaimed Actors Studio, working with Kazan and Lee Strasberg, the renowned acting coach. They worked on what came to be known as Method acting, with Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman and Geraldine Page among other famous students.

“Think of your body as an instrument, a musical instrument,” Saint recalled Strasberg telling her, in a 2001 interview. “So take care of your body. You have to be disciplined and you should be able to play what that director wants.”

Saint appeared in a number of films in the 1960s, including “Exodus” (with Newman), “The Sandpiper” and the Cold War comedy “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!”

She stayed active in television, portraying Edith Wilson in the 1974 movie “The First Woman President,” and recurring as Cybill Shepherd’s character’s mother on the popular ‘80s series “Moonlighting.”

Saint received several Emmy nominations, winning for the miniseries “People Like Us,” based on a Dominick Dunne novel. She continued to appear in movies well into her 80s and 90s, including “Because of Winn-Dixie” and “Superman Returns.”

Saint married producer-director Jeffrey Hayden in 1951 – they met on a subway in New York – and the two stayed together for 65 years, until his death in 2016. They had two children, and Saint was actually pregnant when she accepted the Academy Award in 1955.

Early in their marriage, Hayden directed Saint an episode of the 1950s CBS series “Omnibus.” The couple later collaborated on several plays and performed together on stage in “Love Letters.”

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The political system is tightly controlled and the ruling United Russia party, backed by President Vladimir Putin, is widely expected to retain its dominance of the 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Here's what to look out for:

WHO IS BEING ELECTED?

• Voters will elect all 450 members of the Duma to five-year terms. Half of the seats are allocated through a nationwide party-list vote. The other 225 are decided by voting in single-seat constituencies.

• A survey by state pollster VTsIOM at the end of August showed United Russia far in the lead of other parties with 37% support among respondents, followed by the Communist Party with 11.6%.

• The margin of United Russia's expected win will be in focus. It currently has 310 seats in the Duma and needs to win at least 300 to keep its supermajority and ability to push through constitutional changes without other parties' support.

LIMITED REAL OPPOSITION 

• The four other parties expected to re-enter the Duma, including the Communist Party and the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, broadly support the war and tend to vote with United Russia on key issues.

• The Supreme Court has barred the liberal Yabloko party from taking part in the party-list ballot, sidelining the only registered political party to oppose Russia's war in Ukraine. Some Yabloko candidates are still running as the ruling does not apply to single-seat constituencies, but they appear unlikely to win any seats.

• A number of other opposition politicians have been barred from participating after being designated as "foreign agents."

WHAT DO OBSERVERS SAY?

• The only independent nationwide election watchdog, Golos, which sharply criticised the conduct of past elections, closed down in 2025 following years of pressure from the authorities.

• Moscow has not invited international monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to observe the upcoming vote, which the OSCE said reflected a pattern of Russian government disregard for transparency, democratic accountability and the rule of law.

• The OSCE says Russia's political system has become more restrictive since the last parliamentary vote in 2021 with the exclusion of candidates labelled "foreign agents," further limits on campaign financing and other measures.

• Russian authorities have rejected criticism of the electoral process, saying voting is conducted in accordance with the law, and they have said that Russia's Western enemies are trying to undermine and disrupt the election.

VOTING IN RUSSIAN-CONTROLLED UKRAINE

• The election is also being held in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

•  Voting started early in some areas due to security reasons, according to the authorities.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

PARIS, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Thieves stole three paintings from the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera early on Tuesday, the local mayor said.

The raiders broke into the museum a little before 6 a.m. and took four paintings, Cagnes-sur-Mer mayor Bryan Masson said on his Facebook page.

Police spotted the thieves and gave chase, during which they dropped one painting but escaped with the other three, he said.

"Attacking the Renoir museum is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-Mer. These actions are particularly serious," Masson said in his message.

The museum was created in 1960 in the mansion of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir on a hill in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, where he died in 1919. The collection on display in the museum includes 13 paintings from the master and some 40 sculptures, furniture and photographs.

Masson did not identify the paintings that were stolen. Renoir's most valuable works have fetched dozens of millions of dollars at auctions in the past.

Art thieves in Europe are committing more violent robberies and specialist gangs have been replaced by ad hoc ​opportunists recruited through social media, pan-European police body Europol said last month.

The heist at ‌the Louvre Museum in Paris in October last year was a prime example of this, Europol said, as the thieves threatened guards and visitors and stole €88 million ($102.3 million) worth of jewels, such ​as Empress Eugenie's tiara.

($1 = 0.8605 euros)

(Reporting by Inti Landauro; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alex Richardson)

An LA digital advertising veteran of 28 years has moved to Scottsdale and is building what he calls the missing piece between business software and the AI assistants people now use every day.

SCOTTSDALE, AZ. When Benoit Pecqueur talks about his latest company, he sounds less like a founder pitching a product and more like an operator who got tired of watching the same problem repeat itself.

“Most small business owners are watching the AI revolution from the sidelines,” he says. “Not because they don’t want it. Because their tools don’t talk to ChatGPT or Claude. Their accountant still pulls reports from QuickBooks by hand. Their marketing person logs into five dashboards before they can answer one question. AI was supposed to fix that. Mostly, it hasn’t.”

His company CorpusIQ, headquartered in Scottsdale, was built to fix it. The platform connects two dozen business tools, including QuickBooks, Shopify, HubSpot, Gmail, and Google Drive, to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. The pitch is simple. Stop pasting CSVs into chat windows. Let the AI talk to your tools directly. Get answers with citations, not hallucinations.

It is a piece of plumbing, in other words. The kind of unglamorous infrastructure that gets ignored until it is missing.

The bridge between two languages

Pecqueur, 56, is French, raised and educated in Montpellier before moving to the United States. He spent 28 years in Los Angeles before relocating to Scottsdale. He has the unusual habit, for a founder, of speaking fluently in two languages that rarely overlap. He reads architecture specs and reviews code with his engineering team. He also presents to boards, negotiates contracts with defense contractors, and runs operations on $185 million budgets.

“There are people who understand technology and there are people who understand business,” he says. “There are not many who do both. I have spent my career trying to be the person in the middle.”

That instinct shows up in his track record. In the late 2000s he founded AdDynamix in Los Angeles, a digital advertising platform that scaled to $24 million in annual revenue and 78 employees. At its peak the company processed 1.5 billion display ads per month for clients including AT&T, Disney, General Motors, Ford, Sony Pictures, and Microsoft. AdDynamix was acquired by Ybrant Digital, the parent company of Lycos, in a deal valued at over $10 million.

He later founded WakeBallast, a manufacturing company that ran on a different playbook entirely. WakeBallast made specialty hardware sold direct to consumers through Amazon, but Pecqueur quickly pushed the company into government contracting. By the time it was acquired in 2023, WakeBallast had supplied BAE Systems, Boeing, NASA, and four branches of the U.S. military. He led the contract negotiations himself.

“Government contracts are not glamorous,” he says. “They are slow, they are paperwork-heavy, they are unforgiving on compliance. But they teach you something. They teach you that real businesses run on the small things. The reconciliation that no one wants to do. The audit log that nobody reads until something goes wrong. The bridge between the spreadsheet and the contract.”

That experience, he argues, is exactly what most AI tools are missing.

What CorpusIQ actually does

The technical name for what CorpusIQ provides is a Model Context Protocol server. MCP is an open protocol introduced by Anthropic, the company behind Claude, that lets AI assistants connect to external data sources in a standardized way. CorpusIQ is one of the early commercial implementations focused on small and mid-size businesses.

Underneath the technical name, the product is a four-stage flow that turns a vague operator question into a cited answer. Pecqueur calls it the bridge layer.

How CorpusIQ Works: a four-stage flow from question to cited answer.

The four stages, in order:

ASK. The user types a question into ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. They do not write a prompt. They ask the question they would ask a person, like “how is my business doing this quarter.”

Question Processing. CorpusIQ receives the question through the MCP bridge. A skills router interprets intent and selects from a library of more than 250 pre-built skills. Skills are structured workflows, each one designed to answer a category of operator question. A skill called Cash Recovery Engine pulls overdue invoices, cross-references them with email threads, locates the relevant contracts, and produces a prioritized list of who to call first. Other skills cover ad spend attribution, marketing performance, contract compliance, vendor risk, and dozens more.

Connectors. Selected skills query the user’s actual business systems live. Twenty-three connectors and counting, including QuickBooks, Shopify, HubSpot, Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, Google Ads, and the rest of the stack a typical small business runs on. Access is read-only. Every query is JWT-permissioned. Data is never moved or stored.

Knowledge Layer. Retrieved data is assembled with citations and metadata into a single grounded answer. Source links are preserved. The context is ephemeral and built fresh on every query, so nothing persists in CorpusIQ servers between sessions.

Transport Layer. The cited answer is returned to the AI assistant the user originally asked. The user gets the answer inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, with every claim backed by a source link. Audit trail logged.

“You did not write a prompt,” Pecqueur says. “You did not pick a skill. You did not specify which connector to query. You asked the question you would ask a human analyst. CorpusIQ asked the better questions on your behalf and answered them.”

Pricing reflects the focus on small and mid-size businesses rather than enterprise. Plans start at $29.95 per month for solo users, $109.95 for teams, and $189.95 for businesses. There is a 30-day free trial across every tier.

Compliance as a feature, not a footnote

For all the founder’s aversion to enterprise positioning, CorpusIQ has done the work that enterprises typically demand. The platform holds CASA Tier 2 certification from DEKRA, an OWASP-based security standard adopted by Google’s App Defense Alliance. It is SOC 2 aligned. All access is read-only by default. Customer data is never used to train AI models.

“In regulated industries this matters more than people realize,” Pecqueur says. “Real estate, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing with government contracts. They want AI. They cannot afford to leak customer data to it. We built CorpusIQ so the audit log is the first feature, not the last.”

The company recently announced enterprise availability through Microsoft Azure Marketplace and AWS Marketplace, distributed via a partnership with Tackle.io. The marketplace play is aimed at companies with existing cloud spend who want to procure CorpusIQ through their hyperscaler agreements rather than direct purchase.

A familiar bet, an unfamiliar layer

Pecqueur is direct about the audience. “We are not selling to enterprises. We are selling to founders, operators, and small teams who do not have a director of analytics. We replace the analyst layer underneath those jobs. Not the leader. The analyst.”

Asked what he learned from his earlier exits that he is applying now, Pecqueur thinks for a moment.

“At AdDynamix we scaled too fast and built features customers did not ask for. At WakeBallast we built only what customers paid for, and we exited at a smaller multiple but a better business. With CorpusIQ I am trying to do the second one again. Listen to the operator. Build the boring infrastructure. Ship the feature that audits itself.”

He grins. “Boring infrastructure is how you get to a bigger second exit.”

———

CorpusIQ is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. More information at corpusiq.io.