Today's News

Plus: 🗳️ Early voting numbers | Monday, October 26, 2026

1 big thing: Understanding early voting turnout

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

In-person early voting turnout in several large Texas counties —including Dallas County — is surpassing turnout during the first week of voting in 2018, when the state last saw a high-profile Senate race.

Why it matters: It's hard to draw hints from early voting as to which way the election will tilt.

• Polls have suggested close statewide races, starting with the race for U.S. Senate between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton, and for governor, pitting Republican incumbent Greg Abbott against Democrat Gina Hinojosa.

Flashback: Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz defeated Democrat Beto O'Rourke by 2.6 percentage points in 2018, the closest a Democrat has come to winning a statewide election since the 1990s.

• O'Rourke appeared to benefit from unusually high turnout for a Texas midterm election.

State of play: Democratic enthusiasm suggested by polling is showing up at the ballot box in some key counties, according to voting data collected by the Texas Secretary of State's Office.

• Turnout in Dallas (23%) and Travis (25%) counties, with rich troves of Democratic votes, is outpacing turnout in key counties with a history of voting Republican, including Montgomery (18%), outside Houston, and two counties where President Trump is scheduled to appear tomorrow: Nueces (18%) and Lubbock (20%).

• Turnout in Harris and Bexar counties was 20% and 17% respectively.

Caveat: The state's figures might not be fully updated in some cases.

What they're saying: If turnout in Republican counties lags turnout in Democratic strongholds by midweek, "then that's where the warning bells will be going off within the Abbott campaign in particular," Mark Jones, political science professor at Rice University, tells Axios.

The intrigue: Tarrant County, a battleground in recent elections and a key county once again, has seen high turnout (24%) so far.

• Jon Taylor, political science department chair at UT San Antonio, tells Axios if the county goes blue, it would be "all over for Republicans."

The bottom line: "You're seeing a lot of enthusiasm among Democrats," Taylor says. "But at the same time … there's a lot of unknowns here."

Races followed. Issues explained. Facts checked.

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2. Airlines chase travelers with deeper pockets

By Natalie Chandler

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

North Texans feeling lighter in the wallet after flying out of DFW Airport shouldn't expect airfares to come back down anytime soon.

Why it matters: Airlines across the nation are adjusting to rising fuel prices by hiking fares and offering fewer economy seats. Even if that leads to fewer tickets sold, airline executives are betting on passengers who don't mind paying more.

Zoom in: Fort Worth-based American Airlines reported third-quarter revenue of $16.3 billion, a 19.3% increase from last year.

• American had an adjusted net loss of $182 million, noting a fuel bill that was nearly 70% higher.

• Dallas-based Southwest, which dropped its free checked bags and open seating policies in January, welcomed more passengers than expected in the third quarter even as fares rose 26.9% to an average of $232.

• Southwest cut its profit forecasts for the fourth quarter, citing rising fuel costs.

The big picture: American CEO Robert Isom said the fuel price spike "has just been a catalyst to allow us to realize that there is value" in the strong demand from customers willing to pay more.

• American said in August it would add premium seats and restore ‌seat-back entertainment screens on some jets.

• Southwest is offering new lounges and credit card perks, high-speed connectivity across its fleet and new international routes.

• "Things that are important to all customers — but certainly important to our business customers — will continue to come online at a very rapid pace in 2027," Southwest CEO Robert Jordan said on Thursday's earnings call.

3. Burnt ends: Bite-sized news bits

Burnt ends are the secret sauce to this newsletter. Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios

🎵 The Granada Theater in Lower Greenville is closing after 80 years. (Dallas Observer)

😩 Traffic tops North Texans' complaints, according to a new survey. (DMN)

🎤 Miranda Lambert will perform during halftime of the Cowboys' Thanksgiving game at AT&T Stadium. (Billboard)

🐾 North Texas startup Warhound, partnering with Dallas-based biosciences firm Colossal, has raised $200 million to genetically modify military dogs. (WFAA)

⭐️ The Cowboys cheerleaders have unionized in a longstanding push for better wages and benefits. (The 19th)

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4. 📸 Photo to go: Flying taxis to Dallas

By Natalie Chandler

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

California-based Archer Aviation has announced plans for an air taxi network linking airports in Dallas, Austin and Houston to business hubs.

Why it matters: The company says its all-electric aircraft could replace 60- to 90-minute drives with 10- to 20-minute flights, offering travelers a way to bypass traffic.

Zoom in: The planned network in North Texas will connect airports — DFW Airport, Love Field, Addison Airport, Arlington Municipal Airport, Meacham International Airport and Fort Worth Alliance Airport — with major business hubs like the Dallas Star in Frisco Station.

What's next: Archer, which has not announced launch dates or ticket prices, plans to operate in Texas through a federal electric aircraft pilot program. The company has also struck a deal with Boeing.

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🏈 Plus: NFL's French connection | Monday, October 26, 2026

1 big thing: What's next for Axios

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei lays out his latest thinking on how media is changing — and how Axios is adapting:

Media is changing at AI speed: the open web deteriorating, search shriveling, LLMs rising, hyper-personalization surging, old revenue models breaking.

• AI threatens to finish what the algorithms started: wholly upending journalism as we know it. The only certainty: What follows will be as different as the pre- and post-digital eras.
• After studying and experimenting with AI for the past two years, we're placing a series of big bets on how serious journalism can flourish in an AI world.

💡 The big idea: We believe the value of verified, reported, distinctive truth and curated human connection will spike. The yearning for human connection, and demand for human expertise, will only increase.

🖼️ The big picture: At Axios, we're doing what we did a decade ago when we launched, and two decades ago at Politico: building for the direction that technology and the world are headed.

• We're sharing our thesis — and our plans — to help spark deeper industrywide debate about preserving the best of media in what's to come. Some parts are controversial or based on our own assumptions. We welcome the pushback.

What's next: We assume Einstein-level intelligence will be available on all topics to all people. We envision media consumption shifting to new AI platforms and devices that know us as intimately as we know ourselves. Our lives and minds will be curated beyond imagination. Our knowledge, habits, tastes and work will fully fuse into our screens, or pins, or bracelets.

The biggest threat in this coming reality: Who needs "news" from journalists when their AI tells them what they need to know, when they want to know it?

• Indeed, we assume passive news consumers will find AI curation fully satiating, much like they did scrolling. So general, indistinctive news withers.
• But for serious news consumers — those who routinely seek out high-quality information about their world, passions and community — the demand for human-vetted and human-verified content will surge.
• This holds true for both the consumer and for businesses: They'll need insight beyond what everyone else gets from the machines alone, as well as verified news — and human audiences. They'll demand more than AI can give them.

🔎 What this looks like for Axios

1. Harnessing AI to save local journalism and serve communities. Adding to the power of the 100+ Axios Local journalists coast to coast, we'll soon unveil an Axios Local "Super System" that uses AI to track government action, community data and coming events. This will give local reporters more time for local reporting. We hope the Super System will allow us to hire journalists in hundreds, even thousands, of communities and revitalize a dying industry. This will be among the most consequential examples of using AI to create journalism jobs and do public good at scale. It's as big as the original Axios, and a great example of AI's upside.
2. Jumping ahead of AI curation. We're launching specific products based not just on topics but also job titles. We're starting at the top with new verticals for CEOs, CMOs, CCOs, COOs, CFOs and other C-suite executives. All jobs are changing faster than anyone can process. So understanding AI and news through this lens will be vital. Among the most common components of an AI prompt is stating what you do. So our products are designed for today and the coming LLM shift. We'll also keep expanding into new niches, like future-focused space defense, all written by journalists with deep subject matter expertise.
3. Shifting beyond the open web. Search is dying and bots are polluting the web. So we've created a new business line, Axios Direct, to sell clean, real-time feeds of our vetted news and information to businesses and others. Companies are building their own LLMs and pay to ingest truly great reporting, opening a new revenue stream that incentivizes quality. We want to help clean up the information ecosystem: Third-party data shows the Axios format and expert-first approach help us overperform in AI results. And we're working with organizations to restructure their own content in more LLM-friendly ways to reduce misinformation about their work and products in AI.
4. Accelerating human connection. We believe we're on the verge of a renaissance in human connection: The better AI gets, the more people will crave and pursue in-person connection. So we're vastly expanding our global, national and local events, and experimenting with hosting dinners and meet-ups in communities big and small. The Axios Social Club recently brought together more than 1,300 readers in 40 Axios Local markets for dinner with their neighbors. That's the power of Axios in real life.

What won't change: Journalism is only valuable when it's trusted, useful and illuminating. Only reporters can get people to share or leak information, fully understand the nuance of sources and stories, demand accountability, and offer deep analysis based on both data and person-to-person interactions.

• We have a responsibility, even a moral obligation, to protect and expand this vital reporting. A world changing at AI speed demands this.
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👀 Do you have relatives, friends, coworkers who'd enjoy Axios AM? Shoot me their email addresses and I'll invite them to join. Just hit "reply," or write me: mike@axios.com.

2. 🤖 Prepping for cyber doomsday

First three items on the British government's National Resilience Checklist. Screenshot: GOV.UK

The governments of the U.S. and Britain are suddenly making old-school preparations for the possibility of a cyber-triggered long-term blackout:

• The Pentagon is "preparing U.S. military bases to keep operating for at least 90 days without outside support as it prepares for the possibility of a major war that could cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains and threaten critical infrastructure on American soil," Fox News Digital reports. Under a broader military initiative called FORTRESS, "every major military installation in the continental United States would be expected to sustain essential operations independently for at least 90 days, including access to electricity, water, fuel and communications."
• The British government urged the public to keep three days of emergency supplies at home, including water and canned goods ("tinned" for the Brits). The "Be Ready" campaign was triggered by the PHP software vulnerability exposed last week, plus a record-setting summer of heat, drought and wildfires.

😬 Between the lines: If you marinate online, you're being barraged with warnings of a cyber-induced Black October.

• Mike Cernovich, an influential pro-Trump voice on X, posted yesterday: "Something is coming. You can sense it."

3. ⚠️ Campaign collateral damage: Grieving families

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

The 2026 midterms have taken a deeply personal turn as campaigns use other people's family tragedies as political ammunition — sometimes over the objections of those families, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Why it matters: Some attack ads feature photographs of murdered children and anguished 911 calls, forcing grieving families to relive their worst moments.

Georgia governor's race: Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson used images of murdered 8-year-old Secoriea Turner and her mother's anguished 911 call to attack Democratic rival Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta's former mayor.

• Turner's family demanded the ads come down, accusing the campaign of exploiting their grief without permission.

Ohio governor's race: Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign is spending $4 million on an ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.

• In the ad, Donna Arthur calls her daughter a liar and disputes her account of childhood homelessness.
• Acton says her late stepfather — who was married to her mother until his death — sexually abused her as a child, and she hasn't spoken to her mother in decades.

Ohio Senate race: A Republican attack ad against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown featured images of a couple and their 1-year-old son killed in a highway crash to blame Brown's immigration policies. The victims' family demanded its removal.

• Keep reading.

4. 🗳️ Early '28 contenders

Chart: The New York Times

Democrats' 2028 race is wide open: Kamala Harris leads with just 12% of primary voters, and 45% didn't name a favorite, a New York Times/Siena telephone poll of Democratic primary voters found.

• Republican primary voters are coalescing around either Vice President Vance (33%) or Secretary of State Marco Rubio (23%).
• 8% of Republicans named Trump himself, even though he's ineligible.

Keep reading (gift link) ... Explore the data.

5. 🇮🇱 Scoop: Bibi begs Trump for more support

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opponent Gadi Eisenkot campaign ahead of tomorrow's Israeli elections. Photos: Getty Images

Axios' Barak Ravid writes from Tel Aviv:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — fighting for political survival in tomorrow's elections — has pleaded with President Trump in recent days to show more public support for his campaign, according to a U.S. source with knowledge and an Israeli source briefed on the matter.

• Why it matters: The U.S. source said the White House sees Netanyahu's aggressive lobbying as a "sign of desperation" and an indication that the Israeli leader thinks he's trailing.

👀 Behind the scenes: The U.S. source said Netanyahu spoke with Trump twice in the last three days and asked him to double down on his Truth Social post last week endorsing him.

• The source said Netanyahu even suggested language for additional statements of support.
• An Israeli source briefed on Netanyahu's efforts said the Israeli prime minister proposed that Trump hold calls with Israeli reporters to express further support.
• Last night, Trump issued another statement endorsing Netanyahu and calling on Israelis to vote for him, mainly because of his hawkish position on Iran.

🧮 State of play: Three major Israeli television networks released their final pre-election polls Friday, all showing Netanyahu's coalition falling well short of a parliamentary majority.

6. 🇧🇷 Brazil election shocker: Lula the survivor

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addresses supporters last night during a victory celebration on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, Brazil. Photo: Natacha Pisarenko/AP

Ending a string of conservative victories in Latin America, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist critic of President Trump, pulled off a stunning comeback to cling to power over right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro.

• Bolsonaro, the son of imprisoned ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, refused to concede and said he'll ask to have the result annulled.

Why it matters: Lula's victory (52%) is a blow to Brazil's right-wing populist movement and preserves a major counterweight to Trump's influence in Latin America, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes.

🔭 Zoom in: Brazil's electoral court announced that Lula, who turns 81 tomorrow, held an unassailable lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over opponent Bolsonaro.

• Go deeper.

7. 💰 Big Tech legal bills pile up

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

A tidal wave of litigation is catching up to Meta, leading to $42 billion in recent penalties and settlements. It's a powerful reminder to AI companies that they could face a reckoning in court even when regulation lags, Axios AI & tech managing editor Bradley Olson writes.

• Why it matters: AI companies are racing to build better models and autonomous agents, but they don't enjoy the same legal protections that shielded web platforms for decades. Meta's big bills offer a preview of potential legal exposure.

After a $25 billion penalty in a New Mexico data privacy case this past week, Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said: "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online."

• Keep reading.

8. 🏈 1 fun thing: NFL's French connection

A custom-built Arc de Triomphe entrance portal for player introductions at yesterday's Steelers-Saints game at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis near Paris. Photo: Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images

The French gave us the Statue of Liberty, crème brûlée and haute couture. Now we're giving them NFL football, Bill Kole (your Axios AM copy editor) writes from his base in Paris.

• Why it matters: The NFL has held games in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the U.K. — and yesterday's showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints was the league's first in France as it seeks to grow international interest.

Security was tight for the sold-out game (final score: Steelers 16, Saints 10) at the 80,000-seat Stade de France, but it was a welcome distraction after weeks of violent protests and widespread social unrest across France.

⚜️ The backstory: New Orleans, established by the French in 1718 and rich in French architecture, food and culture, was the sentimental favorite.

💭 Bill's thought bubble: I'm a lifelong New England Patriots fan — I grew up in Foxborough, Mass., home to Gillette Stadium — so I had no skin in this game.

• 🌭 The food at the Stade de France was predictably fab, though — even Le Hot-Dog.

More on the game.

Banks are being turned upside down by AI agents...

October 26, 2026

Happy Sports Equinox! It’s a magical Monday when the US’ four major sports leagues—MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL—all have games.

What about a Sports Solstice, when none of the major leagues play games? The next one will take place on July 12, 2027. And what about the next day when no one will talk about the Knicks employee ring thing? That will probably never, ever occur.

—Brendan Cosgrove, Holly Van Leuven, Neal Freyman

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

• Banks planning for AI potentially and unintentionally messing up their systems
• Lula winning Brazil’s runoff election
• Starlink restoring Ukraine’s broadband service

Markets: Year-to-Date

• Markets: Spooky season and earnings season both kick into high gear this week, plus the Fed will announce an interest rate decision on Wednesday.
• Stock spotlight: The iPhone Duo just hit the market, but Apple’s keeping its pedal to the metal, with plans to unveil its first touch-screen MacBook Pro on Wednesday. The company is up more than 28% year to date.

money loses sleep

Banks are trying to account for potential AI disaster

John W. Banagan/Getty Images

Institutions that chain pens to desks don’t like to live on the wild side. That’s why banks are gaming out an odd scenario: What if people let AI agents bank for them, expecting them to do the right things on their behalf, and they…don’t?

Bracing for impact

Axios reported on Thursday that major US banks have noticed an increase in unauthorized third-party AI agents accessing customer accounts. And while that sounds like a whole lot of hacking going on, generally speaking, the uptick was more a result of people giving bank account access to AI agents, like Meta’s Muse app or OpenAI’s Dots. But that still poses threats:

• Most banks’ rules require humans to log in to their own accounts, and those rules are being broken.
• AI agents can present security risks, especially if they’ve been granted access to transfer funds.
• In some cases, they may stray from human instructions, and banks can’t necessarily undo what an AI agent does. If an unauthorized purchase is made, it may not be clear who will be held legally liable.

Banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, and Morgan Stanley have taken steps to restrict third-party AI agents from accessing their systems, Axios reported. Some have moved toward granting agents read-only access, meaning humans need to actually approve transactions—a move recommended by White House AI czar David Sacks.

(Not) Rogue ones: Banks are quick to point out that these AI agent problems are very different from the AI agent problem that busted onto the scene this past summer, when a swarm of rogue bots broke out of their OpenAI sandbox and hacked into open-source platform Hugging Face. Those bots didn’t have permission and broke in.

Breaking the bank: However, financial institutions are also preparing for the possibility that frontier AI systems could expose cybersecurity vulnerabilities that hackers exploit before they’re patched. Some hackers have already been able to infiltrate major international institutions using AI tools, prompting stress tests at places like the Bank of England.—BC

World

Tour de headlines

Lula, center, speaks after the runoff election result. Miguel Schincariol/Getty Images

🇧🇷 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential election in runoff. Better known as “Lula,” Brazil’s incumbent president won a fourth (nonconsecutive) term after defeating Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in a runoff, garnering 51.8% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 48.2%, according to the country’s Superior Electoral Court. Lula’s victory marks the first time that a candidate has won a runoff after losing a first-round vote since Brazil returned to direct presidential elections in 1989. Lula first served as president from 2003–2007, then from 2007–2011, before returning to office in 2023. Last night, Bolsonaro called for the election results to be annulled.

🇻🇪 María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela after months in exile. Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for promoting democracy for Venezuelans, left her country clandestinely last December and returned for the first time yesterday. While the New York Times reported that the Trump administration did not support her return to Venezuela in the past, it chose not to intervene this time. Machado, who gave Trump her Nobel Prize medal, has also called for Venezuela to have new elections by July 2027 in the wake of the US’ removal of Nicolás Maduro in January. The United States currently supports Delcy Rodríguez, the interim leader it installed after Maduro’s capture, although Machado has expressed interest in running for president.

🎸 Group that holds rights to Elvis’s music sues Anthropic. Cue “Don’t Be Cruel.” Or actually, maybe not. Authentic Brands Group filed a lawsuit against Anthropic on Friday, accusing the AI company of infringing copyrights to 274 Elvis Presley songs without permission in order to train its Claude models, and alleging that the company’s AI generated copyright-infringing versions of his songs. The lawsuit says that Anthropic “built its entire business model on infringing copyrights at an unfathomable scale.” The plaintiffs include other entities that own rights to Presley’s music. Anthropic said in response, “We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully.”—HVL

disputed terms

Ukraine’s Starlink is restored, but murkiness remains

A Starlink terminal in Ukraine. Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

Over the weekend, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company’s Starlink commercial civilian broadband service was restored to its pre-disruption speeds in Ukraine, confirming the company caused the slowdown following more than a week of speculation.

Ukraine also said the service was restored, but that seems to be all that the two are on the same page about:

• In an X post, Musk wrote, “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”
• Serhiy Beskrestnov, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, disputed the CEO’s allegations. “Starlink does not work over Russian territory. So we PHYSICALLY CANNOT USE COMMERCIAL STARLINK for deep strikes and mid-range strikes,” he wrote.

Cause for confusion

In addition to Starlink, SpaceX also offers Starshield, a military-grade service for defense applications. But Musk once again insisted this weekend that the Starshield disruptions Ukraine experienced (as opposed to the Starlink disruptions) came not from him, but from the US government.

Zoom out: CNBC commentators wrote, “No matter what really transpired with Starlink’s suspension of service to Ukraine, Musk may now face customers diversifying away from total reliance on SpaceX as his ultimate reckoning.”—HVL

calendar

The week ahead

Yes, eyebrows are a costume. Anadolu/Getty Images

Ready, steady, go? The Fed will meet tomorrow and Wednesday to discuss whether to hold its benchmark interest rate steady or hike it for a second straight month. Inflation is higher than policymakers prefer, and this Thursday’s personal consumption expenditures report is expected to show that price increases accelerated last month, so a rate hike isn’t out of the question. But most analysts expect the central bank to leave rates unchanged on Wednesday, then hike them at the next meeting in December.

Earnings season churns on: About one-third of the S&P 500 will report earnings this week, but a lot of the focus will be trained on whether AI hyperscalers are living up to the hype. Alphabet and Microsoft will deliver results on Wednesday, followed by Amazon on Thursday. Chipmakers Intel and Sandisk will also report on Thursday. Outside of the tech sector, Visa, Coca-Cola, Boeing, and UPS will report earnings tomorrow; FedEx, Ford, and Chipotle on Wednesday; Mastercard, Eli Lilly, Merck, Caterpillar, Starbucks, and Anheuser-Busch InBev on Thursday; and AbbVie, ExxonMobil, and Chevron on Friday.

Welcome, Great Pumpkin: Make sure you have the Ghostbusters’ number saved in your phone and keep Beetlejuice’s name out of your mouth. Saturday is Halloween—and even the pets are getting in on the fun. The National Retail Federation’s annual survey, conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, predicted that $920 million would be spent just on pet costumes this year. Fun fact: This Halloween also marks 100 years since the death of master escape artist Harry Houdini.

But wait, there’s more:

• Game 5 of the WNBA Finals between the Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries will be played tonight. And the Milwaukee Brewers, currently leading the Tampa Bay Rays 2–0, play them at home in Game 3 of the World Series tonight.
• Happy “Your Car Clock Is Finally Correct Again Day” to all those who celebrate: Daylight saving time ends this Sunday, so remember to fall back an hour.

BRENDAN’S GOT GOOD NEWS

The Boston accent always flies at Logan Airport, kid

Boston Globe/Getty Images

Mondays are bad enough, so the Brew’s own Brendan Cosgrove scoured the internet for a positive news story to help you start the week off right.

Whether somebody’s ordering a regular at Dunks or complaining about the Yankees, there’s no shortage of Boston accents at Logan International Airport. But officials wanted to take that hometown vibe and inject it directly into the airport’s overhead announcements. Their solution: Hold an open competition to find a new PA announcer that could pronounce hahbah and chowdah the way Gahd intended.

Good voice hunting: After drawing more than 5,000 contestants, the list was recently narrowed down to eight finalists. Sarah Lee, Massachusetts Port Authority’s manager of transportation planning (and a judge in the contest), told the Wall Street Journal that pronouncing Gloucester was basically the three-finger gesture from Inglourious Basterds in this test: Bostonians pronounce it GLOS-tah, so anyone who didn’t do so got booted.—BC

News

What else is brewing

• The Archdiocese of New York and attorneys for 1,300 parishioners who said they were sexually abused by clergy reached an $800 million settlement, the second-largest ever involving a US Catholic archdiocese.
• Over 400,000 people rallied across France again this weekend. While most of the demonstrations were peaceful, the protests ended violently in East Paris.
• Anthropic’s Claude accessed public voter information without human authorization, the company disclosed.
• US home sellers are lowering their asking prices or pulling their homes off the market all together if possible, as the housing market stagnates.
• Apollo Global Management said AI has delivered “zero financial payoff” outside of the tech industry.

recs

• Data that answers the question: Are you earning more or less than other people your age?
• These are the eight interior decorating rules worth breaking, according to a professional interior designer.
• What to wear when exercising outdoors in various cold temperatures.
• A classic coming-of-age novel full of friendship and rivalry.**

Play

Turntable: Your center letter is O, surrounded by T, N, A, P, H, and M. Can you make 39 words from those? Give it a whirl and play Turntable here.

Idiomatic trivia

Have you ever realized that for many idioms, people often only say the first part and leave out the rest?

For example, you just say “Great minds…” and don’t complete the entire phrase (“...think alike”).

See if you can complete the second part of these popular idioms:

1. When in Rome…
2. Curiosity killed the cat…
3. If you can’t stand the heat…
4. Speak of the devil…
5. If the shoe fits…

Answer

1. …do as the Romans do.
2. …but satisfaction brought it back.
3. …get out of the kitchen.
4. …and he shall appear.
5. …wear it.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: idiomatic, meaning “related to a particular group.” Thanks to Wanda from Alexander City, AL, and the other like-minded readers who made the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.