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Livramento’s Recovery From Injury Taking Time, Medical Team Being Cautious
St James' Park officials are prioritizing long-term health over immediate availability, refusing to rush the versatile full-back through a rigorous rehabilitation process despite mounting pressure on defensive depth.
3 Takeaways as Amen Thompson scales Mount Wembanyama
The Houston forward's game-sealing block of Victor Wembanyama in the final second sent the Spurs to 0-2
Phibro Animal Health (PAHC) Stock May Still Offer Value At This Price
Phibro Animal Health has seen its share price move around in recent years, and that raises a straightforward question for investors who focus on fundamentals. Is the current US$38.80 price tag adequately supported by the earnings the company is generating today? Over the past 3 years the stock has delivered a very large gain of 284.1%, which puts real pressure on the question of whether current earnings can carry that kind of re-rating. The business model is tied closely to recurring demand...
Trail Blazers Start Season 2-0 After Win Over Kings
A lethal 44-point third quarter propelled Portland past Sacramento, proving this deep roster can overcome defensive lapses and halftime deficits to remain perfect in the Western Conference.
Blazers Look to Build on Opening Night
Fresh off a dominant rout of Phoenix, Damian Lillard and Ja Morant lead Portland into Sacramento to test their elite ball movement against a struggling Kings backcourt.
Science Hill finishes state runner-up in program's best season
MURFREESBORO — Consider the standard set for Science Hill's volleyball program. The Lady Hilltoppers' best season in program history ended with the team's deepest ever state tournament run.
Is the Kings’ Role for Murray Causing His Decline?
After a record-breaking rookie year, Keegan Murray’s plummeting efficiency and Sacramento’s roster instability spark trade rumors. Can the former top pick reclaim his shot amidst a chaotic rebuild?
Littler through as Van Gerwen suffers early Euros exit
World champion Luke Littler makes it through to the second round of the European Championship with a win over William O'Connor but Michael van Gerwen is knocked out of the tournament at the first-round stage.
ACLU of Indiana pauses new director’s start date, launches external review
After expressing his worry that incoming Executive Director Nikkita Oliver would fundamentally change how the ACLU of Indiana chooses cases, the organization's former director of philanthropy says he was fired
The Violent Cost of Being a Woman in Politics Spans Continents
Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world ... with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment. This week: —There is not (yet) the political will in the U.S. to talk about gender quotas ... but 35 nations in Europe have either been mandated or volunteered to implement them. —Weeks after the brutal rape of Arizona congressional candidate Bernadette Greene-Placentia, Australian independent member of Parliament Helen Haines is in hospital in a critical condition after she was struck by a car outside her office in what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said appears to have been "a deliberate act." —"Politicians are no longer treated like we’re human,” says Arizona state legislator Alma Hernandez, who is facing rising harassment and threats. —Federal agents searched the Washington-area home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a frequent critic of Republican President Donald Trump. —If elected governor of Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms would become the first Black woman governor in U.S. history. ... and more.
Case that ‘fundamentally transforms’ business suits hits top NC court
The North Carolina Supreme Court will take a case stemming from a 2024 aircraft accident in Arkansas. Critics argued that a lower court’s decision “fundamentally transforms” rules about which businesses can be sued in this state.
PhD Candidate Eva Leth Sørensen Publishes on Greenland’s Predicament in Global Politics at E-IR
PhD Candidate Eva Leth Sørensen has published a new article, titled “Greenland (Still) Between Empires: Continuing Imperial Sovereignty Games” at E-International Relations. Sørensen analyzes the recently renewed trilateral Arctic security agreement among the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland against the backdrop of Greenland's long history of colonization. She shows how continued Danish sovereignty over the island...
Jaguars Get Devastating Injury Update On Left Tackle Anton Harrison
Jacksonville Jaguars starting left tackle Anton Harrison will miss the remainder of the season after tearing a ligament in his right knee.
Kings C Sabonis Wants to Be Primary Offensive Initiator
The Sacramento Kings got great return games from Zach LaVine and Domantas Sabonis, which is a great sign of things to come. As the season progresses, Sabonis should be a primary option on the offensive end.
Pope hope, that’s entertainment, and getting ahead in the CIA
Happy Friday friends, I want to start by just breathing for all of us a big long collective sigh of relief at the news this week that the pope’s doctors have basically blown the all clear for Leo’s health. Going from knowing nothing to him declaring to the world he needed surgery, to a cancer diagnosis, to bouncing out of the hospital in barely even days, to ringing the bell in less than two weeks is whiplash inducing. But in the best possible way. We are living in a world in which the Roman pontiff, by dint of history, biography and circumstance, is once more at the epicenter of global affairs. Not just conversations about religion, or Christian and post-Christian values, but the bleeding edge of the most pressing issues of human affairs. Think I am exaggerating a touch? Consider the images of the crowds who greeted Leo in Paris just weeks ago, and juxtapose them with the absolute photo negative scenes unfolding there recently. Ask yourself how many world leaders are talking about AI right now and directly citing the pope as they do so. Try to name a country who has had as many top-ranked diplomats in and out of both Russia and Ukraine in the last three years as the Vatican has in the last three months. It has been fascinating to watch Leo XIV emerge as not just a kind of pop culture reference point or totem to be cited (Francis was often name-checked this way) but as a kinetic force in global conversation. Given the state of things, we need global figures of gravitas and values, even better if they have real wisdom behind what they are saying. So news of Leo’s illness was, it seemed to me, a tremor with potentially Richter Scale implications. That not only has the worst not come to pass but instead we’ve had the best of outcomes announced is something to really be grateful for. Humanity, it seems to me, is entering one of its irregular but cyclical phases where the pace of change — technological, social, and geopolitical — outstrips the ability of previously settled norms and received wisdom to cope. Such periods – and I think the first decades of the last century were a similar such time – throw into question the viability of all kinds of institutions. And many of ours have been straining to breaking point for a few years now. The papacy has the power and the potential to be a steadying pole in all of this. That’s my hope, anyway. It’s a lot to freight the office with, though it is arguably its ultimate purpose from its founding, to be a steadying rock on which all that matters can be anchored. It’s also, of course, an intolerable weight of responsibility to place on a single man. But I am encouraged to have hope in – and for – Leo. The apostle whom he succeeds, after all, was famously unequal to some moments, failed some tests of faith, and resiled from taking the road which led ultimately to the circus on Vatican hill. Human frailty and limitations, of health, of character, of temper, can open us to Christ, whose strength is greatest in our weakness, so St. Paul learned. That gives me hope, and I am sure it consoles Leo, too. And so I will continue to pray for him. Because we need apostles of rock right now. Here’s the news. Subscribe The News The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued yesterday a new document “Venite ad me: Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in an Epochal Change.” It’s not a short document, and it is at pains to stress this isn’t a doctrinal note from the dicastery, either. Rather, it brings together reflections on an important issue from the Church around the world. Some of it I actually found really rather powerful. It is, however, 25,000, which is a lot for a busy reader to get through on a weekday. So, you can read our busy reader’s summary right here. — News broke yesterday of an Oct. 22 meeting of U.S. bishops with President Donald Trump. The meeting was organized by an official at the Heritage Foundation, according to several sources close to the meeting. Video of several U.S. bishops praying in the Oval Office over President Trump was posted on social media Thursday afternoon, first by White House Communications Advisor Margo Martin, and then by the official twitter.com account of the Archdiocese of Denver. The meeting has drawn sharp criticism because of its proximity to the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, in which Democrats are widely expected to win control of the House of Representatives, while control of the Senate remains closely contested. Sources close to the bishops’ conference told The Pillar that some USCCB senior officials were surprised by the existence of the meeting when video of it first emerged online. And a source close to conference president Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City told The Pillar that the archbishop was “deeply frustrated” by the occasion of the meeting. An official conference spokesperson told The Pillar that the meeting was “not organized with or by the USCCB” and was “not affiliated with the conference.” You can read the whole story here. — The next National Eucharistic Congress will be held in Indianapolis in 2029, a return to the city that hosted the last gathering in 2024. You read it here first. By here, I don’t mean this newsletter, I mean at The Pillar. We broke the story this week. It’s a big deal, in as much as the last congress was a roaring success and the next installment has the potential to be a real focal point for evangelizing efforts in the coming years. Read all about it here. — As Pope Leo prepares for the longest trip of his pontificate, Church leaders in Uruguay say the pontiff will encounter a highly secularized culture, in a country with a very different Catholic history than many of its South American neighbors. The nation has not had a papal visit since 1988, and leaders who spoke with The Pillar say it has a dire need for evangelization, even amid the prospect of a small revival in faith. This is real reporting on the Church in the country, and frankly a story you simply are not going to be able to read anywhere else. Read the whole thing. — The Archdiocese of Detroit announced this week a plan that would see the vast majority of its parish priests reassigned next summer, amid a restructuring process expected to dramatically shrink the number of parishes in the archdiocese. Archbishop Edward Weisenburger said this week that the plan “asks much of our priests,” but is a “sacrifice they are making as brothers of one, unified presbyterate.” The thing is, as JD pointed out in an analysis yesterday, pastors of parishes have a legal right to stability in office, so the only way this kind of wholesale reassignment goes ahead is if all of the archdiocesan clergy agree to resign. That creates its own kind of legal issues, though, and re-raises longstanding questions about the effectiveness of canonical due process protections for priests when dealing with coercive exercises in authority. Read the whole thing here. — More than three months after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its decree declaring the excommunication of the leadership of the Society of St. Pius X, questions remain about the full effects of the society’s schism. Specifically, the DDF’s July claim that marriages witnessed and confessions heard by SSPX priests are now invalid remains contested — and it emerged this week it appears that the Vatican’s own legal experts don’t agree. You can read my whole analysis of the situation and what it means here. All I would add is that the DDF’s undeveloped, some would say unsubstantiated, claim about the invalidity of some SSPX sacraments came in their July Explanatory Note on the schismatic consecrations by the society that month. It touches directly on both papal acts of governance — indeed it purports to nullify them — and the most intimate pastoral encounters possible in a parish setting. If there is one aspect of the Francis-era style of governance I would like the curia to finally cut out, root and branch, it would be these attempts to try to effect extraordinarily sensitive legislative acts via a note. — At least a dozen French bishops have spoken out following an eruption of violence on the country’s streets Oct. 17. Not surprisingly, they unanimously condemned the violence, but the length and content of their interventions varied significantly. Several sought to distinguish between the actions of rioters and what they suggested were the legitimate concerns of peaceful young protesters. Many also evoked Pope Leo XIV’s Sept. 25-28 visit to France, suggesting it offered a powerful counter-image to the scenes of looting and destruction. A number of bishops also stressed their solidarity with law enforcement officials who struggled to contain the disorder, as well as the owners of the roughly 3,000 damaged or looted businesses. What’s the background to the nationwide unrest that the French media calls “les violences du 17 octobre”? And what exactly are the bishops saying? Read all about it here. — A Polish bishop called for the firm defense of unborn children as well as compassion for their mothers this week, as the lower house of Poland’s parliament passed two bills seeking to liberalize the country’s abortion laws. The bill on decriminalizing assistance in an abortion passed by 217 votes to 213, while the abortion in cases of fetal abnormality bill passed by 233 to 203, thanks to the government’s majority in the lower house. Both bills will now move to the Polish Senate, the upper house of parliament, where the ruling coalition has a larger majority. The fetal abnormality bill is symbolically significant because if it became law, it would effectively overturn a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that a 1993 law permitting abortion for a severe and irreversible disability or a life-threatening incurable disease was unconstitutional. Read the whole story here. Subscribe **[The St. Paul Center App | Bible Study On-The-Go Read and understand the Bible with St. Paul Center’s new app! With today’s leading Catholic Scripture scholars as your guides, the St. Paul Center app empowers you to read the Bible](https://stpaulcenter.com/app?utm_source=pillar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=applaunch)** from the heart of the Church. Download the app for free at either the Apple or the Google app stores. https://stpaulcenter.com/app That’s entertainment I have written before about my deep and sincere reservations about the celebrity exorcist subculture which has taken root in American Catholicism. And, because I am very ill at ease with the entire thing, I try to keep a weather eye on the phenomenon without being drawn into the kind of online back-and-forth which these figures sometimes generate. Earlier this week, JD noted that one such celebrity exorcist type, Fr. Chad Ripperger, has undertaken, on the request of his bishop, a year’s fast from interviews and public speaking. I’m sure that will be salutary for him, if for no other reason than that receiving with docility requests from one’s rightful ecclesiastical superiors always comes with graces. Then a second thing happened this week which caught my eye. Apparently, another fixture in the celebrity exorcist world, Fr. Carlos Martins, has initiated a lawsuit against two lay men — apparently associates of Rippenger, though I am unclear in what way, exactly — for allegedly defaming him and his ministry on a podcast. It seems the suit was initiated nearly a year ago and is now pending. At issue, I read, is that the two men described Martins on a podcast as “not who he says he is” with regard to his exorcism ministry and that he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” These statements Martins considers to be false and defamatory and, his suit claims, “directly affected the sale and reception of [his] The Exorcist Files book that was newly released at the time these episodes aired.” I don’t want to get too into the weeds of the details here, but a couple of things struck me about all this.
Far-right politician's historic election raises questions about Germany's future
Earlier this month, a far-right politician was elected speaker of a German regional parliament for the first time since the period of Nazi Germany.
A 'battle of the ages' in a California House race: Matsui, 82, faces a 41-year-old challenger
Rep. Doris Matsui fights for her political life in her first competitive reelection challenge from Sacramento City Council member Mai Vang
24-team playoff will ruin college football’s regular season
A 24-team tournament rewards college football’s biggest brands and gives programs such as Notre Dame little reason to schedule tougher games.
Arsenal women confirmed for new FIFA tournament starting in 2028
The 2028 tournament will bring together 19 clubs from around the world, with Arsenal qualifying through their Champions League success.Photo by Harry Murphy/Getty ImagesArsenal will take part in the f...
Preserve science-based wildlife management; ‘yes’ on Prop 137; CoCo for Colorado (Letters)
Voting “no” on Amendment 83 means preserving the flexibility to make wildlife management decisions based on the best available science, rather than permanently elevating one approach above all others in our state constitution.…
Ham: LaVine Hits ‘DeMar DeRozan Moment’ in Kings Tenure
Despite looming trade rumors, Zach LaVine is embracing a veteran leadership role in Sacramento, delivering efficient scoring while mentoring a young core during a pivotal contract year.
Downtown Sacramento businesses prepare for crowds ahead of Kings home opener
A new team store, Kings-themed drinks and game-day discounts are among the offerings available to fans near Golden 1 Center.
MU still discussing possible hotel, entertainment district and student housing to enhance game-day experience
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ) The University of Missouri is still exploring several commercial development options on university-owned property as it looks to enhance the game-day experience and provide more amenities for students, faculty and staff. UM System President Mun Choi said during a faculty council meeting on Thursday that the university is considering an entertainment district,
Stifel CEO Kruszewski talks sports and makes pitch for St. Louis’ future
The Stifel Charity Classic returned to Norwood Hills Country Club, with Stifel in its second year as title sponsor. The tournament is the opening playoff event on the PGA Tour Champions.
Nonprofits warn online sports betting initiatives put vulnerable Nebraskans at risk
The Open Door Mission hosted Gambling with the Good Life this morning to speak out against Initiatives 440 and 441, two measures that would amend the Nebraska Constitution to legalize online sports gambling.
10-year-old Central New York golfer has big dreams to play in college
Ali DeBlois, born into a golf family, qualified for a regional competition in her age group despite only starting tournaments recently.
Most AI chatbots stay in the political middle ground, with Grok being an exception
The 2026 election was the first parliamentary election in Sweden since AI chatbots became a serious part of everyday life—not least for young people and first-time voters. Today, it is possible to turn ...
Why we’re still so obsessed with Elizabeth Holmes
You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon Valley
Introspection required if EU Inc fails, says start-up lobbyist
European start-ups have a new voice in Brussels. Startups for Europe, created from the merger of lobby groups Allied for Startups and the European Startup Network, is hoping to harness the momentum behind EU-Inc, a campaign that united start-ups and investors behind demands for a new pan-European company regime.At a launch event for the new association in Brussels on October 1, the mood was remarkably upbeat compared to a typical Eurobubble gathering, more Silicon Valley than Schuman roundabout.When asked whether this reflects a feeling that Europe is on the right track, chief executive Serena Borbotti-Frison said it’s a “scary” moment as the continent looks to boost its competitiveness amid a new technological arms race.“What is at stake is quite intense, and the way we can answer is by delivering, but also with hope,” she told Science|Business. “It’s what our industry does. It’s not about identifying a pain point and then saying it’s too hard.”For many in the start-up community, that sense of hope is dwindling. In March, the European Commission presented its proposal for EU Inc, naming its initiative after the grassroots campaign.EU Inc was meant to be a gamechanger: the ability to incorporate within 48 hours for less than €100 and scale up across Europe; a harmonised stock option regime enabling start-ups to compete for talent; and simplified insolvency procedures for innovative start-ups to reduce the cost of failure.However, haggling by EU governments has raised concerns that EU Inc will be stripped of the very features, including stock option harmonisation, that are meant to make it attractive for companies.“I fear we are proving to ourselves that the model doesn’t work,” Borbotti-Frison said of the policymaking process. “Everyone agrees we should have EU Inc. Everyone agrees it’s hard to scale and we need to scale to answer the competitiveness [challenge], and still we cannot deliver? [. . .] What does that say about ourselves?”The Commission has made EU Inc a cornerstone of its single market reform, and has agreed with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to target an agreement by the end of 2026. However, several points are currently holding up an agreement, including national rules around employee participation in management decisions, and the provision that employee stock options always be taxed at the point of sale. Some EU governments have reportedly pushed back on the Commission’s choice of legal basis, contending that anything related to taxation requires unanimity in the Council.Trade unions have also protested against EU Inc, fearing it will be exploited by companies looking to undermine workers’ rights.“If this doesn’t work, it’s introspection time, on the way our institutions work, maybe the way our lobbies work, and maybe the way the cooperation between them works,” Borbotti-Frison said.“Is it in the national interest? Is it a gap between political will and technical ability to operate? Is it speed? I don't know, but something needs to be fixed.”Ahead of last week’s European Council meeting, EU-Inc campaigners tried a new strategy: appealing directly to EU presidents and prime ministers. In an open letter, they urged EU leaders to “step in and give your negotiating teams a clear mandate to change course and reverse their objections to the Commission’s original proposal.”Lessons from EU-IncLike its predecessors, Startups for Europe will represent national start-up associations, but it is also targeting investors. The founding sponsors are venture capital firm Atomico and EQT, the investor selected earlier this year to manage the €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund.It also wants to harness the knowledge and cross-border experience of European success stories. “Take the list of the 100 biggest unicorns in Europe. We are speaking to all of them,” Borbotti-Frison said. The association plans to publish a full list of supporters following the Slush tech conference in Helsinki in November.Andreas Klinger and Simon Schaefer, two key figures in the EU-Inc campaign, are both on the board of the new association, and Startups for Europe wants to take the lessons from their campaign.What was unprecedented about EU-Inc was “how rooted it was, and how strong it was in bringing everyone on board behind one clear pain point and solution to fix it,” Borbotti-Frison said. “This is an inspiration for us, and then we need to turn it into something more systematic, more bridged in Brussels, more connected to the policymaking game, and to scale it.”If it’s possible to unite such a broad coalition, it’s because the European start-up ecosystem is now mature, she said. “Maybe it was not ten years ago. Maybe it was not five years ago. But now, it’s mature to speak with one voice.”Open and liberal EuropeThe association plans to campaign on files related to three “pain points,” Borbotti-Frison said: “start and scale in Europe, fundraise and invest in Europe, and making Europe the most innovative continent.”As well as EU Inc, she cited public procurement, the EU’s simplification push, the Savings and Investments Union, and files related to AI adoption and technological sovereignty as priorities for the coming months.What these files have in common is that they relate not to subsidies but to the framework conditions influencing the availability of mostly private, or in the case of procurement, public, funding.Related articlesEmployee participation disagreement delays MEPs’ vote on EU IncCommission urges EU governments not to water down EU IncEU’s ‘ultra-fast’ €5B scale-up fund is set up to win, says its fund managerThe budget dispute over the next Horizon Europe programme will also impact start-ups, which are supported notably through the European Innovation Council. But EU innovation funding is a drop in the ocean compared to venture capital and public procurement budgets.“If competitiveness and innovation are a priority, then the [EU budget] should reflect it,” Borbotti-Frison said. However, she added that the main question is not how much public money is invested, but “how do we create the right conditions for the market to solve the problem?”The Scaleup Europe Fund mixes both approaches, using €1 billion in EU funding to crowd in private investors and address Europe’s lack of large-scale, late-stage growth funds. “It’s a proof of concept. Ideally, then the market will do it itself,” Borbotti-Frison said.Startups for Europe is also focused on bringing an alternative political narrative. Amid competing visions for open, global markets on the one side and a protectionist Europe on the other, it wants to offer “a third voice, to say we can be proudly European and build a strong continent in a liberal economy, open to the world, and global.”It can be tempting, when thinking about how Europe can better support innovation, to look across the Atlantic. But while it’s important to compare statistics to see where Europe needs to catch up, that’s where the comparison should stop, Borbotti-Frison said. “On everything else, we need to do it our own way. We don't have the same history. We don't have the same political model. We don't have the same way of life.”Many of the key files that could benefit the start-up community, including EU Inc and the Savings and Investments Union, rely on closer integration within Europe, making it easier to operate across borders.While the Commission has made deepening the single market a political priority, support at national level is more precarious. The coming months will see pivotal elections in Spain and France, while the German government has also been coming under pressure domestically. In each country, far-right parties have been gaining ground.When asked if she was concerned the political situation could jeopardise this progress, Borbotti-Frison responded: “Of course. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t.” However, she continues to believe that cooperation is the only way forward. “Doing it alone is not the solution. It’s also not who we are, it’s not the model we are building, and it’s not the scale we need.”
Washington Huskies Basketball 2026-27 Season Preview
The Washington Huskies have something to prove as they enter their third season in the Big Ten Conference. Not to mention, their head coach, Danny Sprinkle, is starting to reach a point where he could be on the hot seat very soon. Washington Basketball hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since 2019. That's a pretty …
Lavender Heights businesses form alliance to push for changes to Sacramento parking rules
Malik Monk ruled out of Kings' season-opener vs Clippers
Sacramento Kings guard Malik Monk injury status update vs. Los Angeles Clippers.
Will Kings Defeat Clippers, Improve Season Opener Record?
Forty-one years after a historic debut, injury-depleted rosters collide as Sacramento’s new-look trio aims to snap an opening-night skid against a short-handed Los Angeles squad.
Tigers qualify for states
by: Dom Gliozzi The 3A WPIAL Consolation match was more than a third-place battle, as the winner would advance to the PIAA State Tournament next week. With such high stakes on the line, third-seeded North Allegheny defeated fourth-seeded Upper St. Clair (at Sewickley Academy) on Wednesday afternoon by a 3-2 decision. The Tigers took the… More »
SonicFox Cancels Contract With Gaming Convention After Event Uses Likeness in AI-Generated Poster
Prolific fighting game player SonicFox has terminated their contract with a tournament in Norman, Oklahoma after organizers fed artwork of their mascot character into AI to generate a promotional poster for the event.
Van Orden discusses Second Amendment, fuel prices
LA CROSSE (WKBT) -- Rep. Derrick Van Orden joined the Wisconsin Firearms Owners Association to discuss the Second Amendment. He also addressed rising fuel prices ahead of the busy holiday
Constitutional Amendments Bring Polarizing Politics to The State
Partisan clashes have spawned votes on three proposed amendments to the Wisconsin constitution, prompting much debate over GOP and Democratic policies.
NWACC to build new trail, amenities
NorthWest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville received a $680,000 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to support the development of a campus bike loop and new recreational...
NWACC to build new trail, amenities
NorthWest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville received a $680,000 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to support the development of a campus bike loop and new recreational...
Kings’ Murray ‘Happy’ To Start the Season Healthy
After enduring a surgical recovery and a career-low 23 games last year, Sacramento’s vital X-factor returns to the hardwood aiming to reclaim his elite two-way form.
NYSPHSAA boys basketball championships returning to Glens Falls
Harding Mazzotti Arena will host the 2028-30 tournaments, as the tourney moves back from Binghamton.
Longtime California punk band's guitarist reveals ‘fairly serious' health issue, steps away from touring
The announcement comes less than three weeks after The Offspring played Sacramento's Aftershock festival, with several more shows still listed on the band's calendar.
Section V girls soccer tournament scores: Small school playoffs begin
Here are the latest scores, stats and recaps from the Section V girls soccer playoffs.
Summit in Samarkand, a boon for child wellbeing and health
Representatives from across the international community are meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to ensure that children everywhere can thrive in a world marred by war, climate chaos and other fundamental challenges.
Pulpit Politics: Johnson Amendment Rarely Enforced
The Johnson Amendment prohibits tax-exempt religious and charitable organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Some Oklahoma churches have found a loophole: partnerships with other organizations let them reveal political alignments.
Pulpit Politics: Johnson Amendment Rarely Enforced
Oklahoma religious leaders are navigating a murky legal landscape around the Johnson Amendment, which bars tax-exempt churches from endorsing candidates but is rarely enforced. With a recent Texas lawsuit failing and Congress considering changes, some pastors endorse candidates without consequences while others see political neutrality as a theological obligation, not just a legal one.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia: PSG forward set for surgery after rupturing ACL in Champions League win over Barcelona
Paris Saint-Germain winger Kvicha Kvaratskhelia is set to have surgery after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), the French club have confirmed.
Britain Politics
Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Ministers' Questions session in parliament in London, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Britain Politics
Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Ministers' Questions session in parliament in London, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
You are who you vote for: Identity politics in Texas midterms
While the campaigns in Texas have been focused fundamentally on the affordability crisis, the Texas Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico remains highly contested due to the engagement of identity politics from both candidates.
Science Hill advances as four local teams fall in state volleyball tournament
Five local teams began their bids for state volleyball titles Tuesday in Murfreesboro, with Science Hill earning a five-set win to advance to the Class 3-A semi
UC Davis Health introduces five-day accelerated treatment for severe depression
UC Davis Health has added an accelerated treatment approach for depression at its Advanced Psychiatric Therapeutics (APT) clinic in East Sacramento.
💪 Chivas beat Necaxa and snap at América's heels
Chivas de Guadalajara earned a valuable 1-0 win over Necaxa on Matchday 13 of the Liga MX Apertura 2026 tournament, a result that lifts them into second place in the overall standings. An own goal bre...
Sacramento news roundup: ICE incident, seized business and energy rank
From a congressman's call for ICE accountability to a State Bar raid that hauled off 14 boxes of files, here's what's driving Sacramento conversation.
State Volleyball Photo Gallery – Summit vs. Science Hill, Class AAA First Round
The Summit High School volleyball team suffered a 20-25, 25-27, 25-19, 25-21, 16-14 loss against Science Hill in the first round of the Class AAA state tournament on Tuesday, Oct.
John M. Williams on hunting rights, wolves and the urban-rural divide
Colorado hunter, angler and founder of Colorado Wolf Tracker, John M. Williams, joins The OpEdge to discuss Amendment 83, wolf reintroduction and the growing divide between urban and rural Colorado. Williams tells host and deputy opinion editor Antonio Olivero why he believes protecting hunting and fishing rights is essential to wildlife conservation, what he sees […]
Is This a Make-or-Break Year for Amy Williams?
Amy Williams has spent a decade at the helm of Nebraska women's basketball. Her teams have made the NCAA Tournament more often over the last five years, but she has only made the second round once.
Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
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Dear readers, As early voting begins, I wanted to share some news — and why it connects to the decisions we make at the ballot box. I’ve been selected for the inaugural cohort of the South Atlantic Climate Journalism Hub mentorship program, hosted by Covering Climate Now. I’m excited to join this group, learn from scientists and fellow journalists, and expand my science reporting. Science directly ties to governance. Local officials make decisions about where development goes, how infrastructure is maintained, what emergency preparations receive funding, and how communities rebuild after disasters. Understanding the evidence behind those decisions helps us evaluate whether our government is serving us well. Here in western North Carolina, those connections are all around us, in Lake Lure and beyond. Flood maps inform decisions about property and development. Engineering assessments help identify risks at dams and bridges. Rainfall forecasts guide emergency preparations. Geological information helps explain landslide hazards. Water testing gives communities information they need to assess conditions. Meteorologists’ knowledge and public perception of weather events shape public safety. Each involves scientific or technical knowledge. Each also raises questions about public responsibility: What did officials know? How did they use that information? What did they tell the public? What did taxpayers receive for their money? A study can identify a problem. Elected officials still have to decide what to do about it, how to pay for it, and how to explain their choices. Reporting should examine both the evidence and the response. That is where I want to strengthen my work. My reporting on Helene recovery, infrastructure, flooding, public safety, and public spending has repeatedly brought me to questions that require scientific expertise alongside public records. This mentorship may help me better understand the research, ask more precise questions, and explain the answers clearly. I also bring the perspective of someone living with these concerns. I live downstream of Lake Lure Dam, and landslides affected my property during Helene. Those experiences bring urgency to my questions. Careful reporting helps establish the answers. Readers deserve to know what the evidence shows, where uncertainty remains, and whether officials accurately describe the information guiding their decisions. You also deserve scrutiny of proposed solutions: what they cost, what they are expected to accomplish, and what risks remain. Access to that information matters. As a mostly deaf journalist who relies on written communication, I will continue pressing for written public warnings, records, and explanations that people can read and use in real time. As you consider the candidates seeking your vote, consider how they approach evidence, preparedness, and transparency. Do they support local journalism, even when it’s not parroting a press release? Do they explain weather events clearly in plain English and explain their decisions after them? Make supporting records available? Acknowledge uncertainty? Follow through when a report identifies a risk? Those are practical questions about governing. Thank you for supporting Cops & Congress and the work that makes these questions part of the public conversation. I’m grateful to David Dickson and the CC Now team for this opportunity, and I look forward to bringing what I learn back to you. Annie DanceEditor & Publisher, Cops & Congress — Learn more about this newsletter, ethics policy, how you can help shape this work, and support it. Follow on X and Facebook. Send constructive criticism, fan mail, and tips with public documents for future stories: CopsandCongress@gmail.com ICYMI: View the Cops & Congress archive — Annie Dance is the publisher of Cops & Congress, a newsletter that analyzes what happens when crime, courts, disaster, democracy, and small-town policies collide. Views expressed here are covered by the First Amendment. Dance has a Bachelor of Arts from Manhattan University in Communication with a focus in Journalism and Government. She has been a journalist for over 20 years. Share Upgrade now or give a gift subscription
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Luxury Entertainment Trends in 2026 That Are Redefining Travel
Luxury in 2026 is about more than five-star hotels and extravagant amenities. Discover how private escapes, immersive dining, wellness experiences and personalized hospitality are changing the way we travel.
Newcastle’s fundamental problems and how to fix them
Newcastle United have not started the season well and the boos that rang out after their home defeat by Aston Villa were an amalgamation of frustration and concern that has been building for weeks.
What Austin voters should know about Prop I and the other local propositions on the ballot
There are eight proposals on the Nov. 3 ballot that would amend the city of Austin’s charter. Here is what you need to know.
How Investors May Respond To Encompass Health (EHC) First Maine Hospital Opening
Encompass Health has opened Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Bangor, a 50 bed inpatient facility in Maine that delivers intensive therapy, frequent physician oversight and 24 hour nursing for patients recovering from complex conditions across a 54,000 square foot site with a wide range of on campus clinical amenities. This Bangor facility is Encompass Health's first wholly owned hospital in Maine. It adds owned capacity in a new state alongside its existing joint venture presence...
Her Health, Her Future holds rally in support of Amendment 3
Her Health, Her Future shares support of Amendment 3 in Jefferson City late Sunday afternoon.
Choose Your Own Doomsday: Select from These, Scientists Say
In one scenario based on a sci-fi movie, something called “The Shimmer is interfering with the fundamental patterns of life, redefining evolutionary code.”
Commentary: Mental health equity
Every year on Oct. 10, World Mental Health Day serves as a reminder that mental health is fundamental to our well-being. It shapes how we think, feel, connect with others, and navigate life’s...
Inside California Politics
(Inside California Politics) — This week on Inside California Politics, host Nikki Laurenzo speaks with State Senator Catherine Blakespear about Proposition 45, which would amend the California Env…
Killeen voters to decide on 8 charter amendments
Killeen voters will have the opportunity to consider eight proposed amendments to the City Charter during a special election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski says he will not overturn Zionism motion
The Green Party leader said, while he wanted to amend it, the motion would stand until 2028.
Winner and Loser of the Week in Florida politics
Jimmy Patronis fights Gulf drilling, Amendment 3 struggles and Matt Gaetz faces more accusations.
Reform politician says smart glasses helping him make speeches in Wales' parliament
Jason O'Connell sparked debate when he started wearing the glasses, which have an autocue feature.
Why Nancy Cartwright Says Science Has No Fundamental Laws
Nancy Cartwright argues science has no fundamental or universal laws, only local truths held together by nomological machines built for specific contexts.
$17 Million Golfer Withdraws From DP World India Championship After Health Scare
The 2026 DP World India Championship has brought several of golf’s leading international players to Delhi Golf Club. The October 15–18 event features a $4 million prize fund and a challenging course that has tested competitors throughout the opening rounds.Min Woo Lee arrived in India for his tournament debut, hoping to compete against a strong […] The post $17 Million Golfer Withdraws From DP World India Championship After Health Scare appeared first on HEAVY.
Can Sacramento become a chip hub? Business leaders make their pitch to global firms
Energized by a string of investments by semiconductor firms, business officials pitched the region to a group of global companies.
National Association of Realtors helps push Amendment 3 committee over $21M raised
Polls still show there is work to do to sell the proposal.
24-Team College Football Playoff Coming as Soon as 2027
The 12-team playoff era didn’t last long. After just three years, it seems all but official that the playoff will double in size to 24 teams making it feel much more like the NCAA basketball tournament than the original 4-team playoff that lasted from the 2014-2023 season. With the news, we explain the details and […]
Kings Conclude Preseason as Lone Winless Team in Road Loss
Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine couldn't overcome a rebounding deficit in San Antonio, leaving Sacramento to search for answers before their regular-season opener against the Clippers.
It’s Too Late for Small Fixes at Pepsi
The problem may be bigger than a few weak brands. Pepsi needs to stop tinkering and consider more fundamental changes.
Three takeaways from Spurs' 126-97 preseason rout of Sacramento
Dylan Harper scored 19 as the Spurs routed the Kings 126-97, finalized their starting lineup and emerged healthy ahead of Tuesday's season opener.
Scientists discover cell division does more than make new cells: It helps reshape tissues
Every time a tissue grows or renews itself, cells must divide inside an already crowded environment. That creates a fundamental problem that scientists have not fully understood: How does a tightly packed ...
Super Smash Bros. Player Mew2King Banned From Tournament After Bug Bites Spark Health Concerns
Professional Super Smash Bros. player Jason ‘Mew2King’ Zimmerman has been banned from a competitive tournament after posting photos of his concerning skin condition and complaining of a bug infestation in his home.
Super Smash Bros. Player Mew2King Banned From Tournament After Bug Bites Spark Health Concerns
Professional Super Smash Bros. player Jason ‘Mew2King’ Zimmerman has been banned from a competitive tournament after posting photos of his concerning skin condition and complaining of a bug infestation in his home.
Scientists find 'gemstones' in atmosphere of bizarre, scorching-hot 'marshmallow' exoplanet
"Planets are temperamental, their atmospheres complex and chaotic."