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Dodgers, Brewers meet again in second straight NLCS

If the Dodgers are going get back to the World Series to finish off their third consecutive championship, they’ll have to travel the same path as in 2025 to complete their trek through the National League. The Dodgers will play the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS beginning Sunday night, October 11 at American Family Field […]

Oct 8 • 1:09 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

What's The Oldest Samsung Phone That Still Gets Software Support?

Buying a new phone is an investment, so you'll want one that lasts a while, but does your old Samsung still have some life or is it out of support?

Oct 7 • 11:17 PM EDT • Technology • bgr.com

Walmart’s Open Call event hosts 125 prospective suppliers

They came from 35 states and Puerto Rico, and filed into Sam Walton Hall on Walmart’s home office campus in Bentonville on Wednesday (Oct. 7). The hopeful suppliers toted luggage...

Oct 7 • 9:05 PM EDT • Business • talkbusiness.net

Microsoft Launches $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra to Take on MacBook Pro

Microsoft today announced launch timing and pricing for the Surface Laptop Ultra that it unveiled earlier this year. The 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra is priced starting at $2,599, undercutting Apple's $2,999 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it targets the same creator and developer market. Microsoft says it is built for "demanding creative, software development, AI, engineering, and 3D workloads".

Oct 7 • 8:45 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Trump hit with second lawsuit over taxpayer-funded political propaganda ads

The lawsuit came the same day the Democratic National Committee (DNC) filed a separate challenge in Washington, D.C., seeking to stop the administration from using federal funds for the ad campaign.

Oct 7 • 8:31 PM EDT • Politics • democracydocket.com

Samsung Q3 profit jumps nearly nine-fold as AI memory boom lifts chip earnings

Samsung Electronics on Thursday projected a nearly nine-fold jump in third-quarter ​operating profit from a year earlier, beating analysts' estimates as booming demand ‌for artificial intelligence chips drove strong memory earnings.

Oct 7 • 6:48 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com

Who Won August and September: Original Films or Franchises?

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) I just heard someone say that if you’re reading a pundit or data analyst, and they don’t tell you that they got anything wrong, they’re not a pundit but an “influencer”. I agree with that. You have to tell your audience when you get things wrong, or they won’t (or shouldn’t) trust you as much. Today, we’ve got another edition of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. In general, I’m patting myself on the back (and patting very hard) about a few things like IP at the box office, LIV golf, horror films, crowdfunding movies, superheroes, and old people going to the theaters. That said, I also made a couple of data mistakes on the streaming bubble popping and HBO’s datecdotes, so I’m not perfect. But first, I need your feedback... Subscribe Follow-Ups: What Should We Call Mid-Budget Movies Which Aren’t Cinematic Enough for Theaters But Are Too Expensive to Make Money on Streaming? After I asked for feedback on what we should call straight-to-streaming films that are too big to pencil out on streaming but not really big enough to resonate in theaters, I got some great suggestions from you all, including... “Moldilocks” from John Aboud “Little Big Indie” from Travis Frick1 “Midflicks” from Jonathan Funke. “Extra-Medium” from Jona Nwuke. (Read the explanation in the footnote.) Between these and Brandon Katz—who suggested “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”—we’ve got some excellent suggestions. And they’re better than my suggestion, the “Streaming Budget Dead Zone”, so let’s take a poll! The winning entry becomes the new term. Loading... RIGHT: LIV Golf is Fully Bankrupt…Is Anyone Else Next? A few years ago, I was always a bit perplexed at all the articles I’d read praising LIV Golf and their strategy to disrupt the PGA. LIV Golf, a brand new professional golf league, offered PGA stars ten times what they made on the PGA Tour to join their new league. And folks praised this strategy for its initial “success” in that a lot of big names did indeed leave the PGA. Yeah, of course the players came over. LIV Golf paid them so, so, so much more! But LIV Golf hadn’t discovered a way to increase potential revenue. So think about this in basic business terms… They paid much more in costs… …but had no real way to increase revenue. That’s not a strategy! That’s deficit financing. It won’t work unless you bankrupt the competition (and then turn around and pay those same golfers much, much less). It’s not a sustainable strategy and only lasts as long as the company/person/nation backing it decides they’re cool with losing money. For LIV Golf, that meant Middle East oil wealth, in particular Saudi Arabian money. Clearly, the current Iran War has hurt Middle East finances, so they need to trim their more exorbitant spending. And LIV Golf was part of that trimming. This should be a major warning for others. TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports, just got a $1 billion valuation, despite TGL’s (the indoor golf league) horrible TV viewership of less than half a million viewers per match. Unrivaled, the women’s basketball league, just secured a $650 valuation, despite its horrible TV viewership and a new rival (Project B) entering the scene next year. To relate this to streaming, Hollywood should ask which streamers may have wealthy patrons funding their losses. (Let’s be clear: Google, Amazon and Apple.) Could those patrons lose their appetite? For Amazon, probably not. But Apple has a new boss, so maybe! WRONG: My Analysis of the Streaming Bubble Was Missing a Week I’m going to be congratulating myself a lot today, but I make mistakes too, like this data goof. When I last compiled the data on the decline in TV shows, I was missing one week at the end of June. If you look at the first image, you can see that one week was mislabelled as “July”. Mainly, this image got updated to show a 27% decline, not 29%: This change doesn’t really impact the overall analysis, but it is two percent better. By the way, through the third quarter, the decline increased and it’s now a 30% decrease since 2022. (I’ll write/visualize this in an upcoming article.) But I want you to trust me and my data. Especially these days, when many people are using LLMs that I know are inserting faulty data into their charts, I want to keep earning my audience’s faith. So that’s the accurate data. RIGHT: IP Remains Very, Very Popular In July, I wrote a giant (and I mean giant) article on Backrooms, Obsession, and the box office, going over what we know, what we don’t know about what works in theaters, looking at YouTubers, IP, the horror genre, comic book movies, and a whole lot more. The month of August really tested a lot of my theses and, being honest, mostly supported my arguments. Let’s start with IP. Looking at 8-Aug (the weekend after Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out) to 18-Sep (the weekend that Resident Evil came out, which I think provides a nice bookend to this time period), there were seven films based on pre-existing IP: Resident Evil (2026) ($126 million) Practical Magic 2 ($65 million) _Insidious: Out of the Furthe_r ($65 million) Coyote Vs. Acme ($59 million) Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ($53 million) Tony ($15 million) Super Troopers 3 ($7 million) Compare those to the notable original films from the past month—I actually could have included more movies, but here are just thirteen, bringing us to an even twenty films—including.... The End of Oak Street ($54 million) Buddy ($26 million) Mutiny ($15 million) By Any Means ($15 million) The Dog Stars ($14 million) Runner ($14 million) One Night Only ($11 million) Hope ($8 million) Spa Weekend ($7 million) The Uprising ($6 million) Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ($6 million) Onslaught ($3 million) Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ($2.8 million) Here’s that in chart form: Five of the top six films in this time period were all based on IP. I made a big chart of films that grossed over $200 million at the box office before Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey hit theaters. Let’s update that chart! By the way, if you want to see how I categorized each film—so another bar chart—here it is: I know that many of my fellow critics/pundits/analysts dislike films based on IP and how Hollywood is making so many of them. And I’m sympathetic to this point of view. As I’ve written many, many times before, you need a balance between existing franchises, new IP, and original films. And Hollywood clearly needs to make more films like Resident Evil (a well-made film from a visionary director) and fewer Practical Magic 2’s (which didn’t get critical or customer buzz). But at some point, critics and pundits need to contend with what audiences are telling them: Movie-goers aren’t showing up to original films. Audiences are speaking with their dollars, telling you they want more IP and franchises. You can try to convince studio heads to make fewer IP-based films and franchises, but the data and numbers aren’t there. Instead, critics need to work harder to convince audiences to show up for original films. Aim your ire/concern at the average person, not studio heads.2 Because they’re just making the films that audiences are telling them to make. WRONG: Original Horror Films Didn’t Break Out I’ll be honest, even though I wrote an article casting some skepticism on the horror genre in July, if you asked me to make a prediction, I would have predicted that, in August, a new, original horror film would have blown up. No, seriously, I just assumed that Obsession and Backrooms presaged a change in audience behavior. But none of the buzzy new original horror films from August—Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Onslaught (not an action film in spite of the ads), The End of Oak Street, Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man, or _Buddy—_broke out. To be clear, exactly one of those films (Buddy) had good “ROI”, but again—I try to be specific in my language—none were “popular” in any broad sense of the word. None of them will be “saving” movies theaters like Backrooms or _Obsession_helped save the summer. The new Insidious film and Resident Evil, both based on IP, were far and away the biggest horror films since July. (We’ll see if this changes in October/Halloween season.) RIGHT: Stay Skeptical about Crowdfunding... I’ve long been skeptical about crowd-investing platforms as one of Hollywood’s saviors, mainly because there’s so much hype/buzz. People need to stay more skeptical about more things, explaining both the potential upside but also the downsides. In particular, the media often hypes crowdfunding at the start and never checks in on the actual results after they’ve come in later. And August gave us our first update! _Ice Cream Man—_directed by Eli Roth—grossed $6 million off of a $5.5 million budget. This is a production of The Horror Section, which was one of the first “crowd investing” studios with 2,400 investors, which means that 2,400 investors probably lost money. They certainly aren’t getting as great of returns as if they had just invested their dollars in the stock market. Hopefully Stiletto (Tagline: “Someone’s Going to Make it Rain Blood!”) does better next month. WRONG: Another Data Goof Here’s another data error. When the first episode of House of the Dragon came out, HBO put out that it had 21.5 million viewers in the first three days, and I read that to mean in the US…but no, it was global. So my US-only datecdotes charts shouldn’t have included it. We never got US-only numbers for the first episode, but for the final episode, HBO put out that it had 11 million US viewers. (And that global dropped to 21 million viewers.) Here’s the updated chart (which I’ve since used in the Streaming Ratings Report): Still, this show is absolutely huge. RIGHT: Superhero Films Remain Very, Very Popular After Supergirl flopped, I read a few takes that “comic book movies are going the way of the Western”. Post-Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that take didn’t age well. To be fair, I have a very nuanced take on the superhero genre right now; it’s down right now, for a lot of reasons. But it’s not “dead”. Maybe _Spider-_Man is just a really popular character? I saw that take, and it’s a fair counter-argument. (But pundits arguing that superhero movies were dead should have mentioned this $1.5 billion counter-argument…) But is it just Spider-Man? The next Avengers film already has $50 million in pre-sales (and I was skeptical that that film would do well) and the Avengers: End Game re-release topped the box office two weekends ago (over three original films). And I wouldn’t bet against Batman or Superman. So maybe it’s just Spider-Man, Batman, Superman and the Avengers. Oh, and Deadpool, of course. And Black Panther. And Wolverine. And probably the X-Men. Plus a well-made Wonder Woman or the Hulk film could break out. But that’s it! It’s just those ten characters/teams. Oh, what’s that? Lanterns is also doing well on HBO? (See previous section…) To be fair, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the argument that more popular characters—like Spider-Man and Batman—anchor more popular films. In fact, I made that exact argument three years ago when I first wrote about the “Marvel-cession”. In many ways, you can blame The Guardians of the Galaxy for fooling Marvel Studios (and the rest of us) into believing that any character could pop. It turns out, the list of iconic characters is probably smaller than most people think. But it’s probably too early to say that superhero films and comic book movies are dead unless “death” means a slight decline over a longtime. RIGHT: Who Killed Theaters? Old People I get frustrated whenever I see headlines or analysis about how young people are “returning” to theaters. As I’ve detailed(for years), young people have always powered the US box office, despite narratives about “kids these days” and their “phones”. Really, what’s changed post-2020/pandemic is that old people aren’t going to the movies nearly as much. This summer, I saw a movie (from an older director) in a theater near a retirement community, and multiple older people at the theater were talking about how this was their first time seeing a movie in years. I dislike personal anecdotes, so YouGov can fill in the data, best summarized by this headline: “Who killed movie theaters? Not the youths”. According to them, 64% of people aged 18-29 have seen a movie in the last year, but only 30% of 65-and-older. 20% of 18-29 have seen a movie in theaters in the last week and 42% in the last month. Here’s the polling data: Most concerning? Many Americans (17%) think theaters are a worse or much worse experience than watching films at home. Slight WRONG: Hadestown Opens Big A live theater capture of the Broadway musical, Hadestown, made $20 million at the US box office, which begs the question: was I wrong to be skeptical about musicals a few years ago? Yes and no. On the one hand, $20 million is a far cry from being “popular”, so yeah, the genre isn’t that popular overall and Hadestown is one of the more popular musicals from recent years (i.e. the “Taylor Swift Data Fallacy” in action). On the other, I doubt filming this cost all that much, and I don’t think that they spent much on marketing, so this is a good source of ancillary revenue. Smaller Updates WRONG: As I mentioned in a Streaming Ratings Report, I underestimated the budget for Enola Holmes 3. It probably cost more like $50 million, if not more. But... I’m not sure that it really matters? At sub-10 million hours, prices have to come down to make this work. WRONG: Netflix is giving Ink a 27-day in theaters! To quote the kids/YouTubers these days, let’s go! Now I might actually have a chance to see Danny Boyle’s latest in theaters. I’d complained about this in a “Coming Soon” section, but I was heartened to read that Netflix is giving multiple films longer theatrical windows this year. RIGHT: Netflix is sending 4-5 films per year to theaters. Netflix is slowly but surely sending more and more films to theaters, as I cautiously predicted earlier this year. For now, it’s just three big films and a number of awards contenders, but still, this is great news. And they’ll be releasing box office grosses! Just this week, Ted Sarandos confirmed that KPop Demon Hunters 2 will come to theaters (and my guess is it performs in the box office top ten at a minimum). WRONG: Angel has 3 million subscribers! How do I know this? Well, they told Deadline, who reported it. I marked this as “wrong”, since they’ve doubled their subscribers in one year but, you know, they don’t really have a hit film to speak of and they’re still losing money. WRONG: Furious was only renewed for one more season. I accidentally wrote “two more seasons” in my latest “Renewals, Cancellations, Un-Orders and Removals Update”. RIGHT: House of David is ending with its third season. In July, Prime Video renewed House of David for a third season, as I just wrote in my latest “Renewals and Cancellations” report. Well, now it’s ending after that third season. Why? As I’ve been writing, its viewership wasn’t great. I got feedback that this show didn’t cost very much, but it cost enough that its limited viewership didn’t save it. WRONG: Adults was a Hulu original! So I missed Adults when it first came out last year; I saw that it aired on FX and just assumed that it was a linear-first program. Turns out, it aired three episodes on FX, but binge-released the rest of its episodes the next day on Hulu. Huh. So I should have covered it last year! But I just wrote about it. 1 “When I was a kid in the 90s, if you wore a t-shirt to school that wasn’t too big and also wasn’t too small, but somehow didn’t quite fit, we’d say you were wearing an “extra-medium” shirt.” 2 As always, a huge exception is Disney, which barely makes anything original anymore.

Oct 7 • 6:41 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

How a Chicago educator uses food to teach science thanks to Pilot Light, a local chef-led nonprofit

The goal was to conduct a sensory exploration of honey samples native to Illinois, while hitting a core standard of food education: Food connects us and the food and the environment are interconnected.

Oct 7 • 5:23 PM EDT • Science • baltimoresun.com

Scientists discover the genetic secrets that may have helped Jonathan the tortoise live to 194 years old

DNA samples from Jonathan the 194-year-old tortoise reveal gene variants and epigenetic changes that could contribute to his remarkable lifespan.

Oct 7 • 3:05 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com

Scientists uncover how the world's smallest flowering plant became so tiny

A new study has revealed how some plants pack the same structures as larger species into a tiny space, making them promising candidates for future crops.

Oct 7 • 2:20 PM EDT • Science • phys.org

Samsung backtracks on SmartTag 3 Android support — still locked to Galaxy phones

After earlier this week claiming that its new SmartTag 3 would support non-Galaxy Android phones, Samsung says that won't happen, after all.

Oct 7 • 1:37 PM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com

Amazon US Prime Deals: the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is 30% off

Despite the recent price hike that put the base model at $1,400 MSRP, you can still get an S26 Ultra under $1,000. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra launched at...

Oct 7 • 12:01 PM EDT • Technology • gsmarena.com

Prime Day Offers Best TV Prices of the Year From Samsung, Sony, and More

Prime Big Deal Days is in full swing this week, offering massive savings on everything from AirPods to MacBook Pro and much more. We've been keeping an eye on these Apple-related Prime Day discounts all week, but now we're also tracking great sales on other categories, including TVs. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Oct 7 • 10:06 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Chase for Business Expands Its Integrated Digital Experience with Chase Payroll, Powered by Gusto

NEW YORK, October 07, 2026--Small business owners increasingly want the tools they use to run their businesses to work together and be managed in one place. In recent Chase research, 89% of business owners said they would find it valuable to manage payroll within the same platform they use for business banking and payments, highlighting growing demand for a more connected business experience. Additionally, 37% said meeting payroll put pressure on cash flow over the last six months, underscoring

Oct 7 • 9:00 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Apple Reportedly Waiting on Samsung for Ultimate Bezel-Free iPhone Display

Apple is waiting on Samsung to perfect a next-generation OLED display technology that wraps almost vertically around a phone and essentially makes the sides themselves part of the screen, claims a Chinese leaker. Xiaomi's 2021 concept phone – bearing a striking resemblance to Samsung's rumored technology According to the Weibo-based leaker Instant Digital, the technology is internally described by Samsung as a "full-surround, full-screen display".

Oct 7 • 8:20 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

The people of UTC: Get to know Center for Wellbeing Director Lucy White

Lucy White is back at the UTC with a new role and the same goal of helping students take care of themselves. White, the new director of the Center for Wellbeing, previously worked at UTC in 2022 as assistant director for education and suicide prevention. After the grant-funded position ended, she spent three and a half years at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center counseling medical students and residents.

Oct 7 • 8:03 AM EDT • Health • blog.utc.edu

Blog: Largest 2D Map of the Universe Helps Scientists Discover New Cosmic Magnifying Glasses The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are helping scientists compile a growing sample of confirmed gravitational lenses

Largest 2D Map of the Universe Helps Scientists Discover New Cosmic Magnifying Glasses

Oct 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • noirlab.edu

The same union supporting a billionaire tax wants voters to limit clinic spending. Here’s what to know about Prop. 44

Prop. 44 would require clinics to spend more money on patient care, but clinics say the measure will bankrupt them.

Oct 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • calmatters.org

Heatstroke ruined his health. Years before, it took the life of another farm worker at the same company

A farm labor contractor exposed laborers on H-2A agricultural visas to heat-related health hazards, but the contractor is still bringing hundreds of migrant farm workers to North Carolina

Oct 7 • 7:00 AM EDT • Health • theguardian.com

I need advice on being a better Tampa Bay sports fan

New quarterback, same problems as Bucs lose to Packers to fall to 0-4 | Oct. 5 Trying to be betterDear Tampa Bay fans, I need advice from people who understand the joy and occasional emotional damage of Tampa Bay sports.

Oct 7 • 5:15 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Walter

Imagine how rare it must be for two teams in the same city to have both won the Champions League. In 2023, Manchester joined Milano in that exclusive group. AC Milan won the European Cup in 1963, with...

Oct 7 • 2:28 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Samsung 9100 Pro SSDs are on sale at Amazon, 1TB drive is back near its launch price

The 9100 Pro comes in four capacities: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. The 1TB model is currently $206, about 39% below its regular list price of $339....

Oct 6 • 6:40 PM EDT • Technology • techspot.com

The 2026 Big Ten College Football Playoff Picture: Week 6

The contenders and fringe contenders are beginning to show themselves in the Big Ten. At the same time, six programs have been eliminated from contention.

Oct 6 • 3:48 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Compass’ PHS, Jancula teams double up on SaMo-Palisades connection

Two Compass teams said they’ve created a “supergroup” with the aim of seizing on business moving between Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades. PHS, which counts nine people, is led by Hathorn, along with Charles Pence and Loraine Silver. The group generated about $218 million in sales over the past year, with a focus on North Santa Monica, according to Compass. The group will be working with Ryan Jancula’s namesake team, which is made up of 13 people that had sales volume of $300 million in the past 12 months, Compass said. Jancula, who is from the Palisades, and his […]

Oct 6 • 3:00 PM EDT • Business • therealdeal.com

Cherokee Nation Among Eight Communities to Receive Millions to Expand Mental Health, Substance Use Treatment Services, Housing Support

The Cherokee Nation is among eight sites in the country to receive the federal STREETS grant through the new Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Support (STREETS) program from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), STREETS will provide $96 million […]

Oct 6 • 2:53 PM EDT • Health • nativenewsonline.net

Nobel prize in physics 2026: high energy cosmic neutrinos

Second up for the 2026 Nobel Prizes was the award for physics. And this year it went to just one scientist, Francis Halzen. The Belgian physicist won the prize based on his work on the IceCube detector that observes ghostly particles called neutrinos. Science editor Ian Sample tells host Madeleine Finlay how Halzen came up with the brilliant idea to use sensors buried in the ice to detect these extraterrestrial particles.

Oct 6 • 2:44 PM EDT • Science • theguardian.com

Samuels Group acquires Creative Business Interiors

As part of the acquisition, Creative Business Interiors and Samuels Group Furniture Solutions will come together as one furniture organization operating under the Creative Business Interiors name.

Oct 6 • 2:00 PM EDT • Business • wausaupilotandreview.com

Samsung starts rolling out Android 17 for Galaxy S24 and older foldables

As its rollout expands, Samsung is now bringing its Android 17-based One UI 9 update to the Galaxy S24 series...

Oct 6 • 1:55 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com

Googlebook "Better Together" phone features don't work with Samsung at launch

Googlebooks require Android 17, but Samsung's Android 17 phones won't work yet.

Oct 6 • 12:15 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com

Texas state sales tax revenue surges 11.5% in September on strong business spending

Sparked by strong business spending, Texas state sales tax revenue reached $4.4 billion in September, marking an 11.5% increase compared with the same month last year, Comptroller Don Huffines announced last week.

Oct 6 • 12:01 PM EDT • Business • fox26houston.com

Most Americans support switch to Medicare for all health insurance

Medicare is the US government program that provides health coverage to about 70 million people aged 65 and older or with disabilities.

Oct 6 • 10:24 AM EDT • Health • detroitnews.com

Googlebook’s Android-integrated features won’t work with Samsung phones at launch

Googlebook is here with Android integration as its main pitch, but Samsung users are left out at launch as Galaxy devices aren't supported yet

Oct 6 • 10:15 AM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com

Brazil: Lessons from a Disaster

By Antonio Martins (Outras Palavras) Defeats become deeper and more prolonged when we misunderstand what caused them, avoid correcting course, and embrace “solutions” that only compound our mistakes. Lula’s government and the Brazilian left suffered a disaster in Sunday’s election. Contrary to every poll, the president finished the first round 2.2 million votes behind Flávio Bolsonaro—and, more significantly, 3.4 million votes below his total four years ago, when the machinery of the state was working against him and in favor of his opponent. His vote share declined in 98 percent of Brazil’s municipalities. The PL, the main party of the far right, elected 121 deputies and 28 senators, becoming the largest caucus in both houses of Congress. The parties aligned with the Centrão—Brazil’s bloc of transactional center-right parties—were somewhat diminished, but will still hold roughly 250 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 35 in the Senate. That will make it easier to assemble the majorities needed to amend the Constitution or impeach Supreme Federal Court justices. If elected, Flávio Bolsonaro could appoint four members of the Court, substantially altering its internal balance of power. What produced these results? How can the far right be prevented from consolidating them into a prolonged political hegemony? And what is the essential change of direction the left now needs? Explaining the Disaster Across the commercial media and the exuberant chaos of digital platforms, interpretations are multiplying. Some focus on specific episodes: Lula’s absence from the Globo debate, his very close relationship with Alexandre de Moraes, or his emphasis on issues supposedly remote from most people’s everyday concerns, such as rare earth minerals. Among the more systemic interpretations, three seem especially questionable. One argues that the principal defeat was not the left’s, since its congressional representation declined only slightly. The decisive movement captured at the ballot box, according to this view, was a shift within the right itself—from the more moderate and transactional forces of the Centrão toward the more ideological and radicalized forces of the PL and Novo. A second interpretation holds that the nature of electoral and political processes has changed. The material interests and aspirations of society, it argues, no longer play the central role they once did; they have given way to forms of subjective self-identification that the left has yet to understand. And a third concludes that, because of these two developments, we should expect a political winter: a prolonged period in which the far right and the broader right dominate Brazilian political life. There are important elements in all three interpretations. The problem lies in what they deny or leave out: Lula’s third government was a small-bore government. It offered the majorities that elected it neither a clearly better life nor reasons to believe again in politics and its power to transform society. These failures flowed from two fatal accommodations, which I will examine below. As a result, the government suffered a slow but steady erosion of support. And, as has happened in so many Western countries, it gave the far right the opportunity to present itself as anti-system and to benefit from popular frustration and distress. The interpretation that emphasizes the migration of votes from the center-right and traditional right toward the far right has been advanced, among others, by the courageous journalist Leonardo Sakamoto. In his UOL column on Monday, October 5, he highlights the miserable behavior of the traditional conservative parties. Over the past four years, they repeatedly joined forces with the “neo”-fascists, helping to “normalize” them—a criticism that could equally be directed at almost the entire corporate media. Believing they could use the far right as a stepping stone, they instead ended up partly devoured by it. This was especially true in the Senate, where the PL’s gain of 13 senators and Novo’s gain of two came at the expense of the PSD, which lost nine; the MDB, which lost two; the PSDB, which lost two; and the PP, which lost one. Sakamoto’s observation is accurate and necessary, but it leaves uncomfortable questions unanswered. Why did the erosion of the Centrão benefit the far right rather than, for example, producing growth for the left—as has happened so many times before, both in Brazil and elsewhere? The answer is not difficult. Throughout its four years in office, Lula’s third government was almost invariably associated with the Centrão. Here lies its first accommodation: accepting the limits imposed by conservative institutions; avoiding, as much as possible, any attempt to strain those limits through popular pressure; and believing only in the modest changes that could be squeezed through openings in Congress. The failure of the campaign to end the six-day workweek is emblematic. Lula could have electrified the presidential race by pairing it with a popular campaign for passage of the measure. Instead, he chose to place his hopes in the hands of Senate president Rodrigo Alcolumbre. He generated no mass mobilization, did not force his opponents onto an uncomfortable defensive, and won no victory. In September 2025, the government squandered the greatest of its many opportunities to shake up conservative power in Congress. Popular opposition to the so-called Shielding Amendment—which, if approved, would have restricted criminal proceedings against members of Congress—brought crowds into the streets, mobilized primarily by artists and social movements. This opened the possibility for a broader political education: a campaign that could begin exposing the limits and dysfunctions of Brazil’s political system while putting Bolsonaro’s movement on the defensive for its predictable support of political privilege. The amendment was defeated. But the executive branch then backed away from the fight. It remained associated with an institutional world widely seen as corrupt, elitist, and indifferent to ordinary people’s struggles. In doing so, it forfeited its credibility as a vehicle for the protest vote. On Sunday, it reaped the bitter fruits. Are We Doomed? Taking a different approach from Sakamoto, the philosopher Moysés Pinto Neto and other writers have drawn attention, in their first analyses of October 4, to the fragmentation of the public sphere produced by Big Tech platforms. Through their algorithms, these platforms present each person with a different view of social reality. As a consequence, it becomes much harder to identify common material problems and demands—for example, the fight for labor rights or for a properly funded public health system. Voters no longer embrace such demands, these authors argue, because they no longer see themselves as part of a collective. Instead, they tend to value the identities assigned to them by neoliberal subjectivity—the role of the entrepreneur, for example. On this interpretation, the left’s possible error lies in clinging to outdated illusions. Moysés’s warning is highly relevant and resonates with arguments such as Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s “Apocalyptic Fascism and the Billionaires’ Bet.” Unlike a century ago, the far right no longer promises a radiant future. It concentrates instead on resentment—especially that of young men. “They belong to a generation that fears it may never own a home, but compensates with the pleasure it gets from constantly provoking progressives online. Convinced their future has been stolen, they share memes romanticizing historical authoritarian regimes,” the authors write. But Moysés seems to confuse this danger with inevitability. He fails to see that the left’s answer cannot be adaptation. On the contrary, it must strengthen the possibility of politics as collective action. Nor does he recognize that precisely such a reversal is already becoming possible in some of the most promising mobilizations of the twenty-first century: the election, at the end of 2025, of the young Muslim Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, on a platform centered on the intensely material fight for an affordable city; the Left Party’s victory in Berlin two weeks ago, built around the demand to expropriate private real-estate corporations; and the very recent wave of demonstrations in Spain—including an occupation of Madrid’s Puerta del Sol—in which tens of thousands of young people mobilized by the Tenants’ Union have demanded limits on rents. By putting itself in the straitjacket of the “fiscal framework” in the first months of 2022, Lula’s third government adopted the second fatal accommodation of its term. Faced with conservative institutions and a country devastated by four years of Bolsonaro, increased public investment was the government’s remaining weapon for offering a more dignified life to the majority and forging an anti-conservative pact with them. The same state that disburses 1 trillion reais a year to enrich a small class of rentiers could instead spend money to extend the Family Health Strategy to every Brazilian, at a cost of 30 billion reais; provide full-day public schooling and childcare to all adolescents and children—and, especially, relief to their mothers; achieve universal sanitation while cleaning up polluted urban rivers; multiply metro systems; begin transforming the urban peripheries; and undertake many other urgently needed projects. In April 2023, an article in Outras Palavras warned that the fiscal framework could “shrink the Lula government and preserve the forces that condemn the country to inequality and regression.” A year later, another article showed that restraints on public spending were strangling policies vital to ordinary people and undermining the president’s popularity. In November 2024 came a reality check, in the form of the government’s humiliating defeat in the municipal elections. Even then, the fiscal lock was neither removed nor loosened. On the contrary: throughout the government’s four years, fiscal restraint remained central to its political narrative. The administration proudly proclaimed that it had “put the state’s accounts in order,” without grasping either how misleading that phrase was—given the payment of 1 trillion reais in interest—or how badly the message was hurting it politically. Lula finally woke up in September 2026. The increase in Bolsa Família benefits, after four years of being frozen; the announcement that anti-obesity drugs would be offered through Brazil’s public health system; and the ban on online betting showed that the state has the power to act decisively on behalf of the majority when those in government are willing to confront obstacles. The huge marches that closed the campaign in Fortaleza, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo on the eve of October 4 showed how such initiatives can mobilize activists and the broader public. But it was too late—and too little to change the outcome of the first round. History has not ended The possibility of a turnaround in the three weeks leading up to November 25 cannot be ruled out. It will not be simple or easy. Lula must not only make up a deficit of 2.2 million votes; he must also offset the movement of voters who backed other right-wing candidates in the first round, most of whom are likely to move toward Flávio Bolsonaro. Pulling that off will require a broad, grassroots effort to win over voters, potentially reinforced by new initiatives from Lula. The coming hours and days will be decisive. If Bolsonaro’s movement also wins the presidency, the result will create a high-risk situation for Brazilian sovereignty and democracy. The enormous challenges posed by such an outcome would require the left to reexamine, in depth and with a genuine willingness to engage in self-criticism, its political projects—or its lack of them—and its practices. But would that mean we are condemned to the long winter of far-right hegemony that some analyses are beginning to forecast? It is far too early to say, suggests a recent text by Álvaro García Linera, the thinker who served as vice president of Bolivia under Evo Morales. His central hypothesis is that this political current will prove short-lived. At a moment when the entire world is once again talking about sovereignty and protecting national economies, the far right offers a stale, recolonizing neoliberalism. Its submission to the United States is as blatant and pathetic as Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro’s overtures to Donald Trump. Its project amounts to something like every man for himself: greater inequality, capitalism without limits, devastation, and supremacism. Will it work? In the United States, just two years into his second term, Trump himself is reaching record levels of unpopularity and may be on the verge of losing Republican control of both the House and Senate in November. Every new beginning is difficult. Whatever the outcome of the second round, the defeats of October 4 show how profoundly the Brazilian left will have to rethink and rebuild. But just as it would be foolish to underestimate the seriousness of its mistakes, it would be equally foolish to conclude that rebuilding a political project is no longer possible. History has not ended. The times are moving faster than ever. Originally published in Portuguese by Outras Palavras. English translation by Eric Blanc; I’ve added the subtitles. More We can’t stop the far right at home or abroad without a revitalized labor movement, which is yet another reason why you should become a sustaining supporter of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) — one of US labor’s pivotal bright spots. Relatedly, Jacobin published a short piece of mine reflecting on a decade of Bernie Sanders inspiring a whole new generation of young worker organizers.

Oct 6 • 10:08 AM EDT • Politics • laborpolitics.com

MyVisito Expands Digital Business Cards From Contact Sharing to Bookings, Sales and Connections

One shareable digital card brings professional presence, bookings, sales, events and ongoing connections together, with no app required for the recipient.DOVER, DE / ACCESS Newswire / October 6, 2026 / today announced an expansion of its digital business card platform beyond contact sharing, bringing professional presence, bookings, sales, events and ongoing connections into the same shareable card.

Oct 6 • 9:00 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

We Found the 145 Best Prime Day Tech Deals From Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung, Sony, and More

Amazon's Big Deal Days is happening right now, and here at PCMag Deals, we're tracking down the very best tech deals on top-rated products with the deepest discounts just for you.

Oct 6 • 8:58 AM EDT • Technology • pcmag.com

Elon Musk, Sam Altman and the 'deeply frightening' film 'Artificial'

NEW YORK ‒ Elon Musk is getting the Hollywood treatment.

Oct 6 • 8:24 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com

Goodbye joint replacements? Stanford scientists found a way to regrow cartilage and stop arthritis

Scientists have found a surprising way to regrow damaged knee cartilage by blocking a protein that becomes more abundant with age. In old mice, the treatment restored naturally lost cartilage and also helped prevent osteoarthritis after ACL-like knee injuries, while human cartilage taken from knee replacement patients began producing new, functional joint cartilage after exposure to the same inhibitor.

Oct 6 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Mizzou expands support for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship applicants

Oct. 6, 2026Photo by Sam Cox The University of Missouri Office of Global and National […]

Oct 6 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • showme.missouri.edu

American Journal Of Public Health Study Examines Political Differences In Perceptions Of Vaccine Safety And Effectiveness

Vaccine perceptions can influence acceptance and uptake. Dr. Dror Walter, with the Department of Communication at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and colleagues examined these perceptions using data from a national probability sample of 1,763 US adults surveyed in November 2024.

Oct 6 • 7:22 AM EDT • Health • news-medical.net

Samuel Alito's gift to Democrats

The justice's refusal to retire deprives Donald Trump of a Supreme Court vacancy ahead of likely blue midterm wave

Oct 6 • 6:30 AM EDT • Business • salon.com

Second high school football coach dies unexpectedly at same school

The 31-year-old died last month.

Oct 6 • 6:02 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Deion Sanders created Prime Time so he could get paid. Why deny college athletes the same chance?

The Hall of Famer says his successful college career helped him and his family thrive. Now he appears to be backing legislation that would help others

Oct 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • theguardian.com

Missouri’s 6th Congressional district: What to know about the candidates running in November

A Democrat, a Republican and a Libertarian are running to fill the seat vacated by the retiring Sam Graves, which covers most of the upper portion of Missouri.

Oct 6 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • kcur.org

Science Just Revealed the Worst Way to Eat a Meal (And You Probably Do It Every Day)

Eating the exact same meal alone is less healthy than eating it with other people, new research warns.

Oct 6 • 4:00 AM EDT • Science • inc.com

Banijay Entertainment confirms structure for Americas

Banijay Entertainment has confirmed its newly combined structure across the Americas

Oct 6 • 3:32 AM EDT • Entertainment • televisual.com

Zac Robinson’s Offense Fails Tampa Bay Once Again

It was the same story on a different day for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs fell to the Green Bay Packers 17-14 on Sunday, marking. the 10th consecutive one-score game the Bucs have played in, and they’ve lost eight of those games. Tampa Bay is now 0-4 for the first time since 2013, when …

Oct 5 • 10:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Legends Radio spotlights JB Berkow’s lifelong art passion

JB Berkow is the founder of Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts in Lake Worth Beach. LEGENDS RADIO / COURTESY PHOTO This week's Legends Radio Local Artist Spotlight shines on accomplished artist and passionate advocate for the arts, JB Berkow. For more than five decades, JB Berkow has dedicated her life not only to creating art but also to making sure art has a place to thrive. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country in galleries, museums, and universities, and is held in permanent collections, including the Vatican’s Contemporary Art Collection in Italy, Boston University, and Palm Beach International Airport. Her passion for supporting other artists began early. At age 26, Berkow founded Touchstone Gallery in Washington, D.C., which became a highly successful cooperative gallery. She later brought that same entrepreneurial spirit to South Florida, founding Frenchman’s Art Gallery and Studios in Juno Beach in 1995. She opened Rosetta Stone Fine Art Gallery in 2003. In 2015, JB took her commitment to arts education even further by founding the nonprofit Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts. The 15,000-square-foot facility in Lake Worth Beach is home to Florida’s largest publicly accessible glassblowing hot shop and offers instruction in glassblowing, fusing, flameworking, and glass casting. The center also provides free classes to approximately 1,000 underserved children and young adults with disabilities each year. Its “Fragments Reimagined” art therapy program for veterans with PTSD recently received a $100,000 Impact 100 grant. In addition to her work as an artist and advocate, Berkow has authored four books, including Shades of Love and What They Didn’t Teach You in Art School. For JB, art has always been about more than creating something beautiful. It’s about opening doors, inspiring others, and making creativity an important part of life.That is why JB Berkow is in this week’s Legends Radio Local Artist Spotlight.

Oct 5 • 5:15 PM EDT • Entertainment • floridaweekly.com

Samsung rolling out Android 17 for more Galaxy devices in the US

Samsung’s Android 17 rollout is speeding up, with more last-gen Galaxy devices now getting One UI 9 updates in the...

Oct 5 • 4:05 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com

Samsung's Galaxy SmartTag 3 works with way more Android phones than anyone realized

No longer exclusive to Galaxy and iOS devices.

Oct 5 • 3:54 PM EDT • Technology • androidpolice.com

Massachusetts Governor Urges No Vote on Cannabis Prohibition Measure

Gov. Maura Healey said she opposes Question 8, a ballot measure that aims to wipe out the state’s adult-use legalization laws.

Oct 5 • 2:01 PM EDT • Business • cannabisbusinesstimes.com

Sphere Entertainment Sinks 12% on Analyst Downgrade: Demand “Softening Faster Than Expected”

Sphere’s own ticket-sales milestones show the same slowdown the analyst sees

Oct 5 • 1:44 PM EDT • Entertainment • tikr.com

Banijay Entertainment Consolidates U.S. Operations to 'Banijay America' Under CEO Ben Samek

Banijay Entertainment Oct. 5 announced it is consolidating its U.S. operations under a new moniker, Banijay America, under the direction of CEO Ben Samek, who reports to Jane Turton, deputy CEO of Banijay Entertainment. The company is restructuring its operational footprint to centralize leadership and operational support while keeping its individual production labels creatively independent. … Continue reading "Banijay Entertainment Consolidates U.S. Operations to ‘Banijay America’ Under CEO Ben Samek"

Oct 5 • 1:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • mediaplaynews.com

G-Shock's Most Expensive Watch Ever Gets a Way More Affordable Everyday Edition

While sharing the same inspiration and iconic square case, this new edition costs over 99 percent less, making it far more accessible.

Oct 5 • 1:19 PM EDT • Technology • gearpatrol.com

NWA C-Suite: Sam Sicard

Since taking the helm at the age of 35, Sicard has grown assets from $1.5 billion to $3.5 billion. He has also expanded the company’s footprint into eastern and southwestern...

Oct 5 • 1:00 PM EDT • Business • talkbusiness.net

Banijay America Confirms Ben Samek as CEO, Post-Merger With All3Media

Banijay America has confirmed its new structure post-merger with All3Media, as Ben Samek will serve as CEO of the combined company.

Oct 5 • 12:40 PM EDT • Entertainment • variety.com

Banijay Entertainment Unites US Operations With Banijay America Following All3Media Merger

Ben Samek will serve as the CEO of this division, which will now house Turnkey Studio Services

Oct 5 • 12:34 PM EDT • Entertainment • sg.news.yahoo.com

Celebrity birthdays for the week of Oct. 11-17 include Cardi B and Dominic West

Celebrities having birthdays during the week of Oct. 11-17 include rapper Cardi B, “The X-Files” creator Chris Carter and “The Wire” actor Dominic West. Rapper Eminem turns 54, singer Sammy...

Oct 5 • 11:28 AM EDT • Entertainment • newstimes.com

2026 Outstanding Women in Business

The 18th annual Outstanding Women in Business awards recognize a dozen well-accomplished professionals from across the region and in many industries who go above and beyond. The committee selected the winners from more than 80 nominations, all of whom were worthy. The criteria evaluated each nominee’s professional achievements, community impact, ability to break the glass ceiling and mentorship of other professionals, particularly women. In addition to profiling these women in the following pages, the Worcester Business Journal will celebrate this year’s Outstanding Women in Business at a special luncheon on Oct. 28 at the College of the Holy Cross. To join the celebration of these exceptional women, visit WBJournal.com and register. – Mark Conti, editor This Year’s Judges Worcester Business Journal considered 54 Central Massachusetts professionals for the 2026 Outstanding Women in Business awards, based on 83 nominations. These nominees were independently evaluated by two volunteer judges, who scored each on their professional achievements, community contribution and mentorship of young professionals. Samantha P. McDonald is a partner at Bowditch. She is an experienced, client-focused real estate lawyer, concentrating on business and real estate property law. She has been recognized as a WBJ Power 100 in the Class of 2026 and a “Top Women of Law” in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. Dr. Kavita Babu is chief medical officer and vice president of medical affairs at Heywood Healthcare, where she provides strategic and clinical leadership to advance high-quality, patient-centered care across the organization. She is also a member of the WBJ Outstanding Women in Business Class of 2025.

Oct 5 • 9:24 AM EDT • Business • wbjournal.com

Samsung One UI 9 Rollout: These Galaxy Phones Are Getting Android 17

Samsung’s One UI 9 rollout is expanding. See which Galaxy phones are getting Android 17, which devices are next, and how to check for the update.

Oct 5 • 8:07 AM EDT • Technology • techrepublic.com

Galaxy S27 Ultra colors leak, and Samsung could be breaking up with purple

Leaked Galaxy S27 Ultra colors suggest Samsung is retiring Deep Purple for another, surprising shade of color.

Oct 5 • 7:53 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com

Galaxy S25’s stable One UI 9.0 update reaches the USA

Last week, Samsung released the stable version of One UI 9.0 (Android 17) to the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, the brand made it a

Oct 5 • 7:05 AM EDT • Technology • sammobile.com

THIS WEEK: “Sick of It! Fix Health Care Now” Bus Tour Kicks Off With Stops in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH-02), PA Lt. Gov. Austin Davis Will Headline “Sick of It! Fix Health Care Now” Events in Five States Watch All Bus Tour Stops Live Here. Washington,...

Oct 5 • 7:00 AM EDT • Health • protectourcare.org

“We’re in the entertainment business. If someone uses Suno to write a lyric, it’s not a high crime or misdemeanour”: Joe Bonamassa has sympathy for up-and-coming artists using AI to get an edge

But AI ‘artists’ shouldn’t be in the same chart as humans, he says

Oct 5 • 6:59 AM EDT • Entertainment • musicradar.com

'Clearly not working': Sam Altman hits AI industry over political spending

In a wide-ranging interview, the OpenAI CEO criticized the flood of AI dollars swamping the midterm elections and suggested a new liability framework is needed for autonomous hacks.

Oct 5 • 6:56 AM EDT • Politics • yahoo.com

‘Clearly not working’: Sam Altman hits AI industry over political spending

In a wide-ranging interview, the OpenAI CEO criticized the flood of AI dollars swamping the midterm elections and suggested a new liability framework is needed for autonomous hacks.

Oct 5 • 6:56 AM EDT • Politics • politico.com

Yale School of Medicine On the Science of Childhood Anxiety, Say, Anxiety Disorders Are the Most Common Mental Health Challenges In Youth

Credit: Matt Bradbury October 5, 2026 - By Isabella Backman - Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health challenges in youth. Left untreated, they can disrupt the lives of both children and their families. The good news is that with intervention, most children will overcome these conditions. Across Yale School of Medicine, scientists are working to understand anxiety at every level, from common anxious behaviors to molecular biomarkers in the brain. They are using their findings to develop and disseminate new evidence-based treatments for childhood anxiety. Today, the go-to treatment for childhood anxiety disorders is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This is a form of psychotherapy that teaches children skills for confronting anxious thoughts and helps them practice managing situations that cause anxiety. While it is the gold-standard treatment backed by considerable scientific evidence, up to 50% of children will not see sufficient benefit from CBT alone. Wendy Silverman, PhD, Alfred A. Messer Professor in the Child Study Center, co-directs the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program alongside Eli Lebowitz, PhD, associate professor in the Child Study Center. One of their main interests is learning how to improve outcomes beyond CBT. “We’re developing cutting-edge, research-based knowledge that can reduce the suffering that anxiety causes children and their families,” says Silverman. Changing parent behavior YSM experts are investigating how to improve CBT outcomes for children by involving the parents. Silverman’s research has uncovered two main components of parent intervention that improve childhood anxiety: not enabling children to completely avoid the things that make them anxious and taking steps to enhance their autonomy. Parents may unintentionally reinforce their child’s anxiety by allowing them to avoid what makes them anxious. They also may unintentionally limit the children’s sense of autonomy by being overly intrusive. “One of the things that we take pride in is that we’ve focused on trying to understand what parents need to do, and to test our ideas and see if changing the parents’ behaviors is enhancing the effects of CBT,” Silverman says. “Our findings thus far suggest that they do." As much as CBT can be helpful, it can also be challenging to get one’s child to do the necessary steps for CBT to work. This is one important reason why Lebowitz created a novel intervention program for parents named Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE). Existing intervention programs often teach parents to act as therapists for their child, such as training them on how to practice breathing exercises. “It makes sense, but this doesn’t work very well in practice,” says Lebowitz. “And part of the reason, I think, is that it’s not easy to get your kid to do things, especially if they’re not excited about doing it.” SPACE is unique because it focuses entirely on parent involvement and changing parental behavior—children are not involved in the sessions. For example, parents learn how to use supportive messages that convey confidence that their child can tolerate and manage distress. “It might sound like a parent saying to a child, ‘I get that this is really hard for you, but I know that you can handle it,’” Lebowitz says. The program also works with parents to identify the ways in which they are accommodating anxious behaviors. “We’ll pick one thing that parents are doing that is an accommodation and help them make a detailed plan for how they’re going to change that,” Lebowitz explains. Treating Anxiety in Children and Adolescents Much of the existing research on SPACE has focused on parents of children under age 14. Ongoing studies are now exploring its use with parents of older teens. “Both anxiety and accommodation can interfere with normative developmental shifts during the teen years, including increased autonomy and individuation from parents,” says Rebecca Etkin, PhD, associate research scientist in the Child Study Center. “In this sense, SPACE may be particularly well-suited for anxious teens and their parents. We want to see whether it is effective during this distinct developmental window.” Unfortunately, many families in need of CBT face barriers, including limited availability of services and geographic constraints. One way to improve access is digital interventions. Silverman and her team are developing an evidence-based digitized intervention program for parents that they can access directly from their computer or smart phone. “The work we’re doing will be one of the very few parent interventions that is digitized and importantly tested for effectiveness,” she says. Creating interventions for anxiety-related challenges Silverman and Lebowitz recently received a generous gift to develop and test other interventions that help parents reduce other child anxiety-related behavioral and emotional difficulties, such as restrictive eating and unexplained somatic symptoms. One of these projects in particular focuses on understanding the risks of social media and its potential benefits, including offering a sense of connection. “A lot of research has focused on the idea that social media is harmful and the less of it the better,” says Lebowitz. “But we actually see is that this is not quite right—there are negatives, but there are also positives. So, we’re trying to get a little bit more nuanced of a picture.” The team is working with teens with social anxiety and their parents over an extended period to better understand their social media habits and how their anxiety levels affect engagement with different platforms. The teens will answer questions sent to an app on their phones about mood and social media usage in an effort to capture emotional responses as they unfold. “We hope to develop interventions that can help make the best of social media while protecting against the more problematic effects,” Lebowitz says. The brain’s role in anxiety Researchers are also testing therapies to address anxiety at the neurological and molecular levels. In collaboration with Dylan Gee, PhD, professor of psychology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Hilary Blumberg, MD, John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine, Lebowitz and Silverman are using brain imaging to identify changes in a child’s brain before and after parents enroll in SPACE. In one study, children viewed anxiety-inducing images while undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); the researchers conducted scans with and without the children’s parents nearby. Before SPACE, children’s brains were better able to activate the regulatory circuitry needed to turn off an anxious response when their parents were nearby. But after SPACE, children could activate this circuitry even without the parent around. “As parents work on gradually reducing some of their accommodations, you can see a child get better at regulating their own fear system in the brain,” Lebowitz says. “It’s remarkable.” Research into the molecular underpinnings of anxiety can also inform new childhood anxiety treatments. In a recent study, Lebowitz, Silverman, and Flora Vaccarino, MD, Harris Professor in the Child Study Center, discovered that a protein known as fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) could be protective from the toxic effects of stress. FGF2 levels in children and their parents were linked to the children’s risk of developing anxiety and depression, the study showed. The findings could help explain why some children who are exposed to early life trauma such as poverty or abuse are more prone to developing mental health disorders. And FGF2 could be a target for treatment. “This is very novel because it starts to give a clue to what is the molecular chain that connects those lived experiences to the actual psychological outcomes,” Lebowitz says. New ways to study and treat childhood anxiety Michael Crowley, PhD, associate professor in the Child Study Center, collaborates with Silverman and Lebowitz to study the role that attention plays in development and maintenance of childhood anxiety. There is a large body of research that shows that anxious children, like anxious adults, are prone to focus on threatening stimuli such as angry faces compared with neutral faces. This has led to innovative interventions that involve attention retraining. The idea is that if experts train children to look away from threatening stimuli, it may reduce their anxiety—especially children with social anxiety who are most prone to attend to threats. The researchers have just completed a clinical trial for attention retraining with 10- to 14-year-olds with social anxiety disorders and are currently analyzing the findings. Besides this innovative attention retraining research, as Crowly notes, “I like to design tasks that are engaging to kids,” Crowley says. “My goal is to assess something without the kids knowing what we are assessing.” With this goal in mind, Crowley has created a virtual game, named Boom, to study threat processing in children with anxiety disorders. The game is similar to that of hot potato—the child and three digital players take turns virtually passing a ball to each other’s gloves. At some point, the ball turns into a bomb, and as the bomb lands in each player’s glove, the outline of the glove turns yellow. The goal is to avoid having the bomb go off in your glove. What isn’t obvious is that the game is designed to measure different types of threatening stimuli, both ambiguous and direct. In the game, the direct threat occurs as the bomb is traveling towards your glove. The ambiguous threat is the yellow outlined glove as it is unknown where the bomb will travel next. While children play the game, Crowley’s team measures their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). The researchers have discovered that in kids with anxiety, the brain reacts more strongly to ambiguous threats than it does in their peers, but less strongly to direct threats. They believe that the initial abnormally large brain response to not knowing where the bomb is going impairs the brain's ability to properly respond when the threat is actually traveling the child’s way. “The brains of children with anxiety are unable to differentiate between threats you need to do something about and those that are not your problem.” Michael Crowley, PhD, develops innovative games for studying anxiety in children and adolescents.Credit: Matt Bradbury Based on these insights, Crowley hopes to study whether interventions like attention training could restore appropriate threat processing. Crowley’s team is also working on a test called the Balloon Risk Avoidance Task, which evaluates risk-taking and avoidance behaviors. It features a digital balloon that is full of air and about to burst. Kids have six seconds to let air out of the balloon. The more air they let out, the less risk they face that the balloon will pop. But at the same time, the balloon becomes less valuable as it deflates. “The more air you keep in the balloon, the more points you get,” Crowley explains. So far, the researchers have found that when the balloons pop unexpectedly, teens with social anxiety show distinct brain responses. Studying these responses can help psychologists understand the underlying pathways driving the various manifestations of anxiety. The genetics of anxiety When Thomas Fernandez, MD, associate professor in the Child Study Center and of psychiatry, was still in training, there was a lot of excitement about understanding the genetics associated with autism spectrum disorder. Since then, scientists have identified around 250 genes associated with autism. The genetic contribution to anxiety disorders, on the other hand, has historically received less attention. Anxiety is less heritable than autism, but the genetic contribution for anxiety disorders that emerge in childhood may be higher than for anxiety disorders overall. While scientists estimate the heritability of anxiety disorders in general to be around 30% to 50%, some studies suggest higher heritability for certain childhood-onset anxiety presentations. “I saw firsthand how researchers in the field went about finding vulnerability genes for autism,” Fernandez says. “So, we’re using a very similar playbook for childhood anxiety.” “I saw firsthand how researchers in the field went about finding vulnerability genes for autism. So, we’re using a very similar playbook for childhood anxiety.” Thomas Fernandez, MD Associate Professor In the Child Study Center and in Psychiatry Now, Fernandez and Emily Olfson, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Child Study Center, are studying children and their parents to identify genetic changes that are present in the child but not the parents, known as “de novo mutations.” “All of us have some de novo mutations—maybe about 50 to 100 sprinkled throughout the genome,” Olfson says. “But when they occur within the coding regions of genes, they can be really disruptive.” Previous research shows that people with autism have higher rates of damaging de novo mutations than the general population. In 2022, Olfson, Lebowitz, Silverman, and Fernandez published a study on 68 children and their families that found that children with anxiety had similarly high levels of these mutations. Studying de novo mutations can help point the researchers to where they should be looking for genes associated with anxiety. “The end game is using the genes to steer us toward the right part of biology that we can then target to come up with better treatments,” Fernandez says. Building on those findings, the team is now studying more families to better understand how these de novo mutations, along with other genetic and environmental factors, shape pediatric anxiety disorders. They recently received a National Institutes of Health grant to enroll 750 new families over the next five years. Olfson is the principal investigator, with co-investigators Lebowitz, Fernandez, Silverman, and Shuangge Steven Ma, PhD, department chair and professor of biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health. Neurodevelopment, Risk Genes, and Mental Health Conditions - The Olfson Lab Joel Gelernter, MD, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, is interested in how different anxiety disorders differ genomically. “We are studying social phobia, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, working to understand why people differ in their risk to these specific anxiety disorders and evaluating various risk factors,” he says. Gelernter was recently involved in one of the largest studies to date of the genomics underlying anxiety disorder. The study included around 122,000 people with anxiety disorders and around 730,000 without. It found that some genetic differences associated with anxiety were linked to signaling that helps reduce overactivity in the nervous system. Many anxiety medications available today work by targeting this process. “It’s nice when the biology that you get out of a large genome-wide study ratifies things that we already know because that can help increase confidence in further findings from the study,” Gelernter says. Uncovering the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders John Krystal, MD, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and chair of the Department of Psychiatry, is interested in the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), of which anxiety is a major symptom. In the late 1980s, Krystal’s team discovered that the drug yohimbine activated symptoms in patients with PTSD. “This was the first time we could link a specific biological mechanism to the symptoms of PTSD,” Krystal says. At the time, he adds, this finding was highly controversial. “A lot of people felt that PTSD was a purely psychological syndrome that didn’t have an underlying biology.” Since then, Krystal has dived deep into understanding the neurobiology of PTSD to learn how to better treat it. His team is evaluating the use of ketamine and psychedelics. These would be among the first treatments to be developed specifically for PTSD. They may also be applicable for other disorders including anxiety disorders, Krystal adds. An important gap in PTSD treatment is the absence of biological tests that inform how to best help patients manage their PTSD symptoms. A doctor doesn’t diagnose cancer based on how they feel. Rather, they use tests of the biology of the cancer to determine the best course of treatment. “And we can’t do that in any psychiatric disorder other than Alzheimer’s disease,” Krystal says. “But now we are building a foundation for this approach to the treatment of anxiety disorders for the first time.” Source: Yale School of Medicine

Oct 5 • 6:44 AM EDT • Science • goldrushcam.com

Deebo Samuel states 49ers ‘handled business' for Dre Greenlaw in win vs. Broncos

Oct 5 • 3:58 AM EDT • Business • sports.yahoo.com

Deebo Samuel snags TD

San Francisco 49ers WR Deebo Samuel finds the end zone

Oct 4 • 11:34 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Patriots’ HC Raves About Drake Maye Compared to Josh Allen

The New England Patriots needed a response after a lopsided loss. Head coach Mike Vrabel received one from his quarterback against a division heavyweight. New England stunned the previously unbeaten Buffalo Bills 29-26 on Sunday, Oct. 4, and Vrabel placed Drake Maye in the same conversation as reigning NFL MVP Josh Allen afterward. “Gets us […] The post Patriots’ HC Raves About Drake Maye Compared to Josh Allen appeared first on HEAVY.

Oct 4 • 7:44 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Taylor Farms and Mexico’s Health Ministry Now Make the Same Cyclospora Argument. The Produce Industry’s Own Association, FDA and CDC Rejected It in September. Here Is a Specific Request to Eight People Before the Industry Meets in Orlando.

I spent four hours Sunday morning taking the deposition of an expert retained by the defense in the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak of November 2024 – the one

Oct 4 • 7:07 PM EDT • Health • marlerblog.com

Sam's Club exec breaks down changing fresh-food shopping habits

Sam's Club Chief Merchandising Officer Myron Frazier told FOX Business that members still want value, but increasingly want fresh food delivered, available for curbside pickup or designed to make mealtime easier.

Oct 4 • 6:56 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

OpenAI's Altman says AI benefits warrant accepting some risks

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said the benefits of artificial intelligence justify accepting some risks and argued the technology should remain broadly accessible to the public

Oct 4 • 6:35 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com

At Trump’s Rallies, a Familiar Mix of Rituals and a Plea to ‘Please Pretend’

President Trump is doggedly lending his support to Republican candidates facing a rough midterm season. He is the same campaigner he has always been, but his crowds have changed.

Oct 4 • 5:53 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Sam Altman says AI's benefits outweigh 'some bad things happening'

Sam Altman said he does not accept "the really catastrophic risks" of AI, believing that people will do "more good stuff than bad stuff."

Oct 4 • 5:01 PM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Adams Family Health Center to celebrate 10th anniversary

ADAMS — Samaritan’s Adams Family Health Center will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a public event from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 10881 U.S. Route 11.

Oct 4 • 4:29 PM EDT • Health • nny360.com

$3.3M National Institutes of Health grant funds UH study of microplastics, infant brain development

Researchers will measure exposure through maternal blood, examine fetal brain development through ultrasound and collect cord blood and placenta samples. Infants will be assessed at 2, 6 and 12 months for neurological function, motor development, language skills and cognition.

Oct 4 • 4:00 PM EDT • Health • mauinow.com

SMU Is Winning Ugly at the Right Time

The Mustangs have not looked like the same offense they were early in the season, but a 4-1 record and a favorable ACC picture have kept them firmly in contention.

Oct 4 • 2:37 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Samuel Alito says that political attacks aimed at Supreme Court can be "quite damaging"

Oct 4 • 1:44 PM EDT • Politics • yahoo.com

Biljana Plavsic, a Former Bosnian Serb Political Leader, Has Died

Biljana Plavsic, a Bosnian Serb, pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity. She later recanted and said she “would do the same again.”

Oct 4 • 1:25 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Talking Science Fest

John Mercure speaks with Sam Mulrooney to talk about the Science Festival and what to expect there.

Oct 4 • 12:55 PM EDT • Science • wtmj.com

New England Nation: Keys to the Game Patriots at Bills

New England Nation host Sam Knox and analyst Andy Gresh discusses the three keys to the game for the Patriots to get their first road win of the season in Buffalo.

Oct 4 • 12:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Congressman Sam Liccardo urges U.S.-China cooperation on AI safety

Representative Sam Liccardo is advocating for Congress to take action on artificial intelligence safety, emphasizing the need for international collaboration with China to address critical risks and establish verification mechanisms.

Oct 4 • 11:25 AM EDT • Politics • kcra.com

Sam LaPorta, Lions end contract talks: report

Contract talks between the Detroit Lions and tight end Sam LaPorta have stalled, leaving his future uncertain.

Oct 4 • 10:27 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra: (Slightly) faster charging and potentially fewer camera artifacts

While industry insiders are currently focused on the starting mass production of some Galaxy S27 series components like the Exynos 2700, leakers are sharing more details about battery and camera improvements that could matter to end users.

Oct 4 • 9:28 AM EDT • Technology • notebookcheck.net

Lions, Sam LaPorta reportedly end contract extension talks

The Lions and Sam LaPorta reportedly failed to reach an agreement on a new deal, leaving the tight end’s future in Detroit uncertain.

Oct 4 • 9:16 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Detroit Lions, TE Sam LaPorta stop contract talks: report

Sam LaPorta and the Detroit Lions won’t be reaching an agreement on a new contract anytime soon.

Oct 4 • 9:12 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

How Americans’ Financial Health Is Faring In The “K-Shaped” Economy

Hey all, Jason here. Money20/20 is still two weeks away, but I’ve already started packing (not procrastinating for once!). My calendar is already filling up with various sessions I want to catch, meetings, and of course happy hours, dinners, and other side events. If you’ll be in Vegas and want to catch up, let me know by replying to this email, and we can try to find a time amidst the chaos of the Venetian. A big if not totally unexpected piece of news dropped on Friday: the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group that represents smaller U.S. banks, filed a lawsuit against the OCC and Comptroller Jonathan Gould, arguing that the regulator’s move to grant trust bank charters to firms seeking to use them to conduct substantial non-fiduciary activities exceeds the authorities granted to the OCC by Congress. I haven’t had time to fully digest the legal filing or speak to folks in my network about it, but you can expect to see coverage and analysis on it in next week’s newsletter. Subscribe or Support by Upgrading The NerdCon agenda just dropped. It’s stacked. Partner content: Nubank built an AI-first bank. Chime built its own banking core. Figure and Valon are rebuilding the mortgage stack. At NerdCon, you’ll hear from the people behind those bets: what they chose, what they learned, and what they’re still figuring out. The agenda is live, with leaders from Nubank, Chime, OpenAI, Remitly, Mercury, Figure, Valon and more. Follow the mainstage conversations, bring the problem your team is wrestling with to a hands-on workshop, or pull up a chair at a roundtable. Pick your quests. Meet us in San Diego, November 18–20. Fintech Business Weekly readers save 20% with code FBW20. Explore the Agenda Things To Know & Other Good Reads Federal Reserve Board finalizes changes to enhance the transparency and public accountability of its stress test and reduce volatility in its stress test-related capital requirements (Federal Reserve Board of Governors) FDIC Announces Conclusion of Independent Monitorship (FDIC) Modernizing Financial Regulation: Initial Observations from eSLR (Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman) The Data Version of Godzilla versus Kong: FRED Takes on AI (Fed Governor Christopher Waller) Financing the AI buildout (Brookings) Q3’26: Rules for Banks but Not for Crypto (Fintech Takes Banking) The Inevitability of Local Stablecoins (Lombard Notes) Delusions of AI Governance: The Human-in-the-Loop Comfort Blanket (Fintech Snark Tank) Stripe agrees to acquire Parafin to expand revenue opportunities for platforms and help small businesses grow (Stripe) Listen: Fighting Fraud in the Age of AI, with SEON’s Tamas Kadar (Fintech Business Weekly) How Americans’ Financial Health Is Faring In The “K-Shaped” Economy If there is one overarching theme across the economy and politics in the U.S. at the moment, it’s “affordability.” The term is vague enough to encompass a panoply of factors shaping Americans’ day-to-day lives: rising costs for the hallmarks of being “middle class,” including healthcare, housing, childcare, and education, inflation and rising interest rates, and a job market with the specter of AI hovering over it. At the same time, policy shifts under the Trump administration have resulted in reduced subsidies to those who get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and new restrictions on qualifying for Medicaid and SNAP, the impacts of which have yet to be fully felt. These factors are contributing to declining consumer confidence and general dissatisfaction with the economy, despite continuing GDP growth and stock market records. This divergence is encapsulated in the idea of the “K-shaped” economy, in which a small proportion of Americans have seen their wealth balloon, while the majority of American households struggle to preserve the lifestyle they have. Perhaps the greatest determinant of which branch of the “K” a household is on is whether their wealth and income are primarily derived from employment vs. from assets. Nearly two decades of low interest rates and, more recently, elevated rates of inflation have benefited asset owners, while those whose income is primarily or solely derived from labor have largely seen real purchasing power stagnate or decline. This is reflected in recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that labor share of U.S. GDP — the fraction of economic output that accrues to workers as compensation in exchange for their labor — dropped to just 52.8% in Q2 2026, the lowest since the BLS began keeping records. In 1947, approximately 2/3rds of economic output accrued to workers; even as recently as 2001, labor’s share of GDP was 64.1%. Against this backdrop, we’ve seen the rise of more credit and credit-like products: cash advance apps, “no-fee” overdraft, earned wage access, and buy now pay later, which are often used as small-dollar short-term borrowing mechanisms to meet immediate consumption needs or pay other bills (eg utilities, cell phone, other debt payments). With the markers of a middle class existence and, increasingly, basic financial stability seemingly out of reach for many, it should be no surprise there’s been an increase in “financial nihilism,” something industry peers like Alex Johnson and Frank Rotman have discussed and analyzed the roots of. The explosion of gambling and gambling-adjacent products and services — often marketed under the guise of being an “investment” — is inextricably intertwined with the rise of financial nihilism. Crypto, sports betting, and, more recently, prediction markets offer an escape or even hope of sorts, like a contemporary, digital version of a scratch-off lottery ticket, while leaving the overwhelming number of people who use such products worse off. Share of Households That Are Financially “Vulnerable” Ticks Up The Financial Health Network’s 2026 Financial Health Pulse® report adds context on how American households are faring. (I linked to this report in last week’s newsletter, but wanted to take time to further unpack the data in the report this week.) The Financial Health Network publishes the report annually, providing insight into how Americans’ financial circumstances are changing over time. The 2026 report is derived from a survey fielded in April and May 2026. The report leverages survey responses to assess indicators of financial health across spending, saving, borrowing, and planning/protecting and to determine a zero to 100 “FinHealth” score. Those with scores between 0 and 39 are considered “Financially Vulnerable,” consumers with scores ranging between 40 and 79 are defined as “Financially Coping,” and those with scores of 80 to 100 are “Financially Healthy.” The report found that moderate improvements in 2025 were reversed, with the share of respondents considered financially “vulnerable” rebounding to 17%. The longitudinal data reflect the impact of pandemic-era programs, like expanded unemployment, cash stimulus payments, and pauses of federal student loan payments. The positive impacts of those programs, as reflected in the Financial Health Pulse reports, had largely disappeared by 2023. While pandemic-era inflation — to be fair, in part caused by the various support and stimulus measures — had come down from as high as 9% in 2022, it has rebounded since the start of Trump’s second term, with tariffs and energy market disruptions owing to the war in Iran pushing prices back up. Specific indicators in the survey that deteriorated from 2025 to 2026 include the share of respondents spending less than their income over the past 12 months, the share paying all bills on time over the past 12 months, the share that have a manageable amount or no debt, the share that are “moderately” or “very” confident their insurance is adequate to cover them in an emergency, and the share that “somewhat” or “strongly” agree that their household plans ahead financially. Unsurprisingly, lower- and moderate-income households are more likely to struggle to pay their bills on time and have any funds leftover to save. The share of low-income households whose income exceeded their spending dropped from 35% in 2025 to 31% in 2026, while the share of upper-income households whose income exceeded expenses remained unchanged at 63%. Households with student loans or revolving credit card debt reported having “a bit more” or “far more” debt than was manageable at rates far higher than those not carrying these types of debts. The share of those with student loan debt indicating their debt load was too high to manage increased from 50% in 2025 to 55% in 2026, while the share of those with revolving credit card debt saying the same ticked up from 51% in 2025 to 54% in 2026. Households that had student loans were markedly more likely to be financially “coping” or “vulnerable” vs. those without student loans. In 2026, 27% of households with student loans were considered financially vulnerable, a jump of 6% points vs. 2025. Households without student loans saw just a 1% point increase (not statistically significant) in those considered financially vulnerable. Households’ perception of the affordability of categories of goods and services paints a stark picture, with less than one-fourth considering higher education affordable, about a third deeming childcare affordable, and less than half viewing healthcare as affordable. Fintech Business Weekly is made possible by the generous support of paying subscribers — bringing you independent analysis of banking, fintech, and crypto without fear or favor. You can support my work by becoming a paying subscriber if you aren’t already. Paying subscribers enjoy: access to the entire archive of nearly six years of newsletters extended versions of the weekly newsletter, with additional content and analysis and (for founding member tier) quarterly personal 1:1 fintech Q&A / strategy calls with me, tapping into my unparalleled knowledge of the intersection of banking and fintech and experience working in the sector, including helping to launch Goldman Sachs’ retail bank Marcus Support Fintech Business Weekly You can also support Fintech Business Weekly by sponsoring a newsletter or podcast, putting you in front of 93,000+ of the most influential decision makers in banking, fintech, and crypto. Learn more about sponsor opportunities or request a media kit by dropping me an email. Democratic Senate Report Highlights How Iran Uses Tether to Evade U.S. Sanctions Iran uses stablecoins, specifically Tether, to evade sanctions, fund regional proxies, and to purchase military drones, a report released last week by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations says. The report was authored by committee ranking member Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and the minority staff. Crypto and stablecoin proponents will often push back on criticism that criminals make use of these assets by arguing that, on an absolute dollar basis, far more illicit funds flow through traditional banking systems and payment rails than via crypto and stablecoins. And while that is likely true, it elides the reality presented in news story after news story: whether state actors — Russia, Iran, North Korea — or criminal groups, those looking to engage in illicit transactions increasingly favor stablecoins and, specifically, Tether (USDT). The report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released last week adds context to how Iran uses Tether has a lynchpin in its shadow banking system. The report analyzed 846 wallets that have been sanctioned or targeted for seizure, finding that 84% of them transacted exclusively or primarily in Tether. The ability to create near limitless, anonymous wallets and to move funds effectively instantaneously and irreversibly have made crypto a favored financial mechanism for bad actors. Stablecoins solved key drawbacks of bitcoin, namely, the original cryptocurrency’s highly volatile value in dollars. And while Tether (the company) has the technical ability to “freeze” or destroy funds, the company is often limited and reactive in its approach to doing so, the Senate report argues. Tether, which is nominally based in crypto-friendly El Salvador, “has stated that its compliance with OFAC sanctions is ‘voluntary’ and that it follows ‘OFAC guidelines,’” the Senate report says. Owing to these favorable attributes, Tether “became a primary cryptocurrency for Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis beginning in 2023 and has expanded in scale since,” according to the report. Tether’s role in Iran’s shadow banking system, the report says, is enhanced by crypto exchanges like Bybit, Kyrrex, OKX, Gate, and Binance, and through “over the counter” exchanges and hawala networks. The consequences of these financial flows aren’t hypothetical. The Senate report links Tether as a funds transfer mechanism to Iranian proxies in the region, including Hizballah, the Houthis, and Hamas. Tether has also been used to make payments to secure components necessary to manufacture drones, the report says. The report concludes by arguing that “[s]tablecoin issuers with a significant nexus to the United States, particularly those that offer dollar-denominated stablecoins, should be subject to American sanctions law rather than being allowed to hide behind foreign jurisdictions.” Stablecoin issuers like Tether must be held accountable for repeated failures to prevent illicit finance and sanctions violations by law enforcement, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and OFAC, the report argues. [Paying Subscriber Exclusive] OUSD Goes Live, Make Your Own Neobank, U.S. Sanctions Russia’s A7 Network As “Transnational Criminal Organization” OpenUSD, the stablecoin issued by the Open Standard consortium that includes Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, core providers, crypto firms, and numerous banks, went live last week. Social commerce platform Whop raised eyebrows in fintech by offering creators on its platform the ability to launch their own neobanks, which the company describes as “great businesses that are easy to run,” in just 15 minutes. And OFAC and FinCEN target Russia’s “shadow banking” A7 Network — more on these stories after the paywall.

Oct 4 • 8:59 AM EDT • Health • fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com

Customizing your Samsung Galaxy phone is a bit easier with One UI 9

One UI 9 is rolling out to newer Samsung Galaxy devices, and it unlocks lots of new customization features, particularly in Good Lock and Home Up.

Oct 4 • 8:45 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Sheldon Creed Leaving Haas Despite Leading Championship Standings

Sheldon Creed is leaving Haas for Sam Hunt Racing in 2027. Even as the O'Reilly Series points leader, business realities are forcing him out of his current seat.

Oct 4 • 8:10 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Your Samsung Gallery app finally syncs with Google Photos — how to set it up right now

Samsung Gallery has moved on from OneDrive to Google Photos. Here's how to set it up to keep your photos backed up.

Oct 4 • 6:30 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com

After a month with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, every other Android phone feels wrong

I've used the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 for a month, and switching to any other Android phone now feels wrong.

Oct 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Technology • androidauthority.com

Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday, 10/3/26

Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, JeremyBloom…

Oct 4 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • dailykos.com

Nebraska volleyball notches its 12th sweep of the season against Maryland

Over a thousand miles away from Lincoln, the No. 1 Husker volleyball team beat the Maryland Terrapins in their home arena in three sets (25-13, 25-20, 25-15) on Saturday, the same day as Nebraska’s football team beat Maryland 49-23. Sophomore setter Campbell Flynn started the game for senior Bergen Reilly for precautionary reasons, following an ankle sprain during the match against Penn State.

Oct 3 • 10:55 PM EDT • Sports • dailynebraskan.com

A forgotten 30-year forest experiment just delivered a huge surprise

A 30-year forestry experiment in Australia found that heavily thinned mountain ash forests grew unusually large trees while recovering enough carbon to match or exceed untouched areas. The results suggest carefully managed thinning could support timber production, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage at the same time.

Oct 3 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com