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How the Republican redistricting gambit faltered under Trump slump

By Joseph Ax Oct 21 (Reuters) - At President Donald Trump's urging, Republicans pursued an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting campaign ahead of November's midterm elections, redrawing dozens of US

Oct 21 • 6:03 AM EDT • Politics • centraloregondaily.com

Netflix slides as weak profit, ad outlook intensify investor anxiety

Oct 21 (Reuters) - Netflix shares dropped 6% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the company cut its full-year advertising forecast and issued a tepid fourth-quarter profit outlook, deepening

Oct 21 • 5:41 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com

Sony Issues New PS5 Firmware Update as Jailbreak Race Heats Up Ahead of GTA 6 Release

Sony has issued a new PlayStation 5 firmware update amid the homebrew community's ongoing effort to jailbreak the console.

Oct 21 • 5:36 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com

News 6 is being sued over a political ad. Here's why it matters to you

The Republican Party of Florida has sued News 6 and multiple Orlando and Tampa Bay television stations over a political ad about the Hope Florida controversy, arguing broadcasting the “gist” of an erased grand jury report is a crime.

Oct 21 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • clickorlando.com

2026 Health Care Congressional Voter Guide

At NC Health News, we care about you and your family’s health and we think our elected officials should too. We started in September to reach out to all of North Carolina’s Congressional candidates asking them to answer a series of questions about health care issues that you care about: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, […]

Oct 21 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • northcarolinahealthnews.org

Sunderland Have Issues, But They Are Fixable

All is not well on Wearside, but with three key games to come, the Lads need to get themselves back on track.

Oct 21 • 1:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Glendale business owner sues federal government over 2025 raid

Mario Ayala said he is trying to keep the business running, but the uncertainty and damage from the raid has taken a toll.

Oct 21 • 12:53 AM EDT • Business • azfamily.com

Glendale store owner sues federal government over cash, computers seized in raid 20 months ago

A Glendale convenience store owner filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday demanding the return of cash, computers and phones agents seized from his money services business in February 2025.

Oct 20 • 8:56 PM EDT • Business • abc15.com

GOP leans on anti-Trans attacks as economy & corruption are top issues

Oct 20 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

The SUEZ Foundation and the Institut Pasteur join forces to promote women's access to scientific careers

The Institut Pasteur and the SUEZ Foundation have announced a three-year partnership designed to inspire young women to pursue scientific careers, support female scientists in their professional development, and foster the emergence of a new generation of women in the fields of health and the environment.

Oct 20 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • suez.com

Florida health department issues water quality advisory for Palm Beach County parks

The Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach County has issued a water quality advisory for several parks due to high levels of Enterococcus bacteria found in recent water tests.

Oct 20 • 7:48 PM EDT • Health • wpbf.com

Heating oil costs test political loyalties in northern Maine

As voters in Maine consider the races on this year’s ballot, another issue is weighing heavily: the high cost of heating oil amid the ongoing war with Iran.

Oct 20 • 5:49 PM EDT • Politics • scrippsnews.com

SpaceX revenue soars 161% as AI business grows

Elon Musk-led SpaceX issued its second-ever quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.

Oct 20 • 5:34 PM EDT • Business • abcnews.com

Sports Entertainment Gaming Global Received Notice of Delisting

On October 14, 2026, Nasdaq staff issued a determination to delist the company’s common stock and warrants after it failed to file its Q2 2026 Form 10-Q, violating Listing Rule 5250(c)(1). Trading would be suspended on October 23, 2026 absent a hearing request; the company has requested a hearing a…

Oct 20 • 5:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • tradingview.com

Alexander County Veterans Service Officer Cherry Kilby published in NC Medical Journal

Alexander County Veterans Service Officer Cherry Kilby has been recognized for her contributions to rural veterans’ health with the publication of her article, “The Quiet Crisis: A Call for Community-Embedded Solutions for Rural Veterans,” in the Fall 2026 issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal (NCMJ). The article appears in the journal’s special issue, “North […]

Oct 20 • 4:38 PM EDT • Health • alexandercountync.gov

Exclusive | Christina Applegate's next steps towards finding cause of worsening health issues revealed after incorrect MS diagnosis

Oct 20 • 2:03 PM EDT • Health • nypost.com

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.

Oct 20 • 1:47 PM EDT • Technology • bigtechnology.com

Cavaliers Bench Unit Among Biggest Questions Entering NBA Season

Can the Cavaliers overcome the potential issues from the bench this season?

Oct 20 • 1:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

NFL reportedly will not punish Eagles for their handling of Jalen Hurts' blood clot

Jalen Hurts is expected to miss the 2026 season due to the issue.

Oct 20 • 1:16 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Child care affordability could become a key issue for Texas voters in November

Oct 20 • 12:42 PM EDT • Politics • click2houston.com

NED and Partners Launch October 30 Coalition, Issue Global Call for Release of Political Prisoners

NED and partner organizations announce the formation of the October 30 Coalition and released a joint statement to rally support for political prisoners and champion their freedom.

Oct 20 • 11:36 AM EDT • Politics • ned.org

Truist Financial Issues Pessimistic Forecast for Accel Entertainment (NYSE:ACEL) Stock Price

Truist Financial lowered their price target on shares of Accel Entertainment from $14.00 to $13.00 and set a "hold" rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday.

Oct 20 • 11:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com

Engling plans to sue Bayh for defamation in secretary of state race over 'reckless' claim

After the Bayh campaign rebuffed Engling's call to retract and correct a campaign attack ad, the Republican says he's filing a defamation lawsuit.

Oct 20 • 10:57 AM EDT • Politics • indystar.com

The problem(s) with the White House’s new women’s health initiative

Under the circumstances, it’s probably best to keep expectations low as the White House’s efforts on this issue get underway.

Oct 20 • 9:11 AM EDT • Health • ms.now

The problem(s) with the White House’s new women’s health initiative

Under the circumstances, it’s probably best to keep expectations low as the White House’s efforts on this issue get underway.

Oct 20 • 9:11 AM EDT • Health • yahoo.com

T-shirts and silver balls: Politics get mixed in with the profane at a Trump store

By Elle Reeve, Samantha Guff, Frank Fenimore, CNN Boones Mill, Virginia (CNN) — Walk into Trump Town USA in Boones Mill, Virginia, and you may marvel at the breadth of human creativity, as long as you’re not distracted by how the merchandise tackles some of the most controversial political issues in the most vulgar way

Oct 20 • 9:05 AM EDT • Politics • kvia.com

Scientists finally uncover why statins can cause muscle pain

Scientists have uncovered a surprising reason why statins, the widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that help prevent heart attacks and strokes, can sometimes cause muscle pain, weakness, and even severe muscle damage. Using advanced imaging technology, researchers discovered that statins can attach to a crucial protein in muscle cells and force open a channel that normally controls calcium flow. This causes calcium to leak continuously, potentially damaging muscle tissue.

Oct 20 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Study links rise in online sports betting to mental health issues

The study’s authors said gambling and sports betting have never been more accessible.

Oct 20 • 7:52 AM EDT • Health • wbay.com

Nashville CARES sues TN Health over HIV care restrictions

A Middle Tennessee HIV care center is suing the Tennessee Department of Health over new rules that require proof of citizenship to access services.

Oct 20 • 7:02 AM EDT • Health • nashvillebanner.com

Some Google Home Speakers caught downloading hundreds of gigs of data

The issue might be tied to failed attempts to install a firmware update.

Oct 20 • 6:16 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

As Hollywood implodes, is success still possible for a striving actor?

Last year 34-year-old actor Katie Folger moved from Austin into a Silver Lake casita to pursue her acting dream. Now she's performing a one-woman show called "Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man" at Elysian Theater. But will the TV pilot sell?

Oct 20 • 6:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com

Why Calling Anti-Trans Hate a “Distraction” Is So Troubling

It’s a familiar line in the midterms: Anti-trans attacks are a “distraction” from “kitchen-table” issues. That sends a chilling message about whose rights are worth fighting for.

Oct 20 • 5:30 AM EDT • Politics • thenation.com

The key health care ballot measures we’re watching in the midterms

State fights over issues like transgender rights and Medicaid offer clues to where Americans stand on contentious health matters.

Oct 20 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com

Pfizer makes ‘business decision’ to end phase 2 trial of autoimmune drug as program’s future uncertain

Pfizer has called time on a phase 2 trial of its CXCR5 antibody in an autoimmune blood disorder, with the company tight-lipped on whether this marks the end of the road for the asset. The Big Pharma had been evaluating the therapy, dubbed PF-06835375, in a phase 2 study of 61 patients with primary immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) that kicked off in 2022, according to the federal trials register. However, Pfizer confirmed to Fierce on Monday that this study had been terminated “due to a business decision.” “The decision to terminate the trial was not based on any safety concerns,” a spokesperson pointed out. At time of publication, PF-06835375 remained listed on Pfizer’s website for both ITP and lupus. A phase 1 study in lupus wrapped up in 2022, according to the trials database. ITP is an autoimmune disorder characterized by a low platelet count. Novartis was at one point evaluating its B-cell-depleting antibody ianalumab—recently approved as Fabhalta to treat immunoglobulin A nephropathy—as a potential treatment ITP. But the therapy struggled to demonstrate a benefit in the clinic for this indication. When contacted by Fierce, Pfizer wouldn’t confirm whether all work on PF-06835375 has been halted, and whether the company has any other plans to explore C-X-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CXCR5) as a mechanism. CXCR5 is found in blood cancers such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma chemokine receptor. However, there is little expression in normal tissue, which has led some drug developers to explore its potential. Vincerx Pharma had at one point been planning to take an anti-CXCR5 ADC into the clinic to treat B-cell malignancies, but that ambition was scrapped due to cash constraints. Where Big Pharma is placing its bets is one of the hot topics being discussed at Fierce Biotech's high-impact event in London next month. Find out more information and register by clicking on the banner below: [ ](https://qtxasset.com/quartz/qcloud5/media/image/where_big_pharma_is_placing_its_bets.png?VersionId=B8JrRbJ.pFUSK1pJgjeWHLGm_18RdLAy)

Oct 20 • 3:59 AM EDT • Business • fiercebiotech.com

Auburn Linebacker Xavier Atkins Dismissed From Football Program

Auburn linebacker Xavier Atkins has reportedly been dismissed from the football program following a disciplinary issue that sidelined him against Georgia. With Atkins no longer on the roster, Alex Golesh and DJ Durkin must rely on Elijah Melendez, Bryce Deas and De'Marcus Riddick against LSU.

Oct 20 • 2:42 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Tencent Music Entertainment Group Sponsored ADR (NYSE:TME) Stock Now Rated "Hold" by Wall Street Brokerages

Tencent Music Entertainment Group Sponsored ADR (NYSE:TME - Get Free Report) has been given an average recommendation of "Hold" by the thirteen ratings firms that are covering the stock, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation, three have issued a bu

Oct 20 • 2:29 AM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com

WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (WBTN) - What Are Researchers Saying About This Stock?

WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ:WBTN - Get Free Report) has earned an average rating of "Hold" from the seven analysts that are presently covering the firm, MarketBeat reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, five have issued a hold recommendation and one has issued a

Oct 20 • 2:14 AM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com

Liam Coen Shares Message He Gave Jaguars Heading Into Bye Week

The Jaguars head into their bye week coming off a tough loss, but head coach Liam Coen is confident they will fix their issues during their break.

Oct 20 • 2:05 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Sudden Instagram shutdown leaves Omaha business owner baffled

The sudden shutdown of a social media site has an Omaha business owner baffled. It’s an issue faced by others who rely on Facebook and Instagram to get their message out.

Oct 19 • 11:27 PM EDT • Business • wowt.com

Some Google Home Speakers downloading massive amounts of data in the background

The new Google Home Speaker has an issue where it downloads hundreds of gigabytes of data in the background for some owners.

Oct 19 • 6:54 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com

Pennsylvania issues alert on congenital measles—something US hasn't seen for decades

Congenital measles can be fatal, and survivors require monitoring for years.

Oct 19 • 6:44 PM EDT • Health • arstechnica.com

World Stage, the venue previously known as World Cafe Live, will close at the end of October

The West Philly music venue which has been wracked with tension and labor issues since being taken over by new management last year, will shut down after two Halloween shows.

Oct 19 • 6:37 PM EDT • Entertainment • inquirer.com

President Trump signs executive order aimed at improving women's health. How could it impact you?

President Trump signed an executive order creating a women's health task force and a division at the National Institutes of Health to advance research, diagnostics, and treatments for women's health issues.

Oct 19 • 5:36 PM EDT • Health • gulfcoastnewsnow.com

President Trump signs executive order aimed at improving women's health. How could it impact you?

President Trump signed an executive order creating a women's health task force and a division at the National Institutes of Health to advance research, diagnostics, and treatments for women's health issues.

Oct 19 • 5:36 PM EDT • Health • wbaltv.com

Percival AI can uncover unseen health issues in CT scans

When analyzed by a new artificial intelligence model developed at Penn Medicine, CT scans reveal much about a patient's health beyond the specific condition they were originally ordered for, according ...

Oct 19 • 5:30 PM EDT • Health • medicalxpress.com

Headway Issues, Then Retracts New Clinician Contracts After Backlash

Therapist enablement platform Headway is once again facing backlash from its clinician pool on its platform over a lengthy new contract the company rolled

Oct 19 • 4:50 PM EDT • Business • bhbusiness.com

Scientists are growing human brain tissue in living mice—could this make their welfare harder to assess?

What happens when scientists start changing the brain—the very system through which an animal's mental states are expressed in behavior?

Oct 19 • 4:40 PM EDT • Science • phys.org

HHS issues seven nonconformity letters in crackdown on health data blocking

The Trump administration is seeking to give patients access to electronic health information through the enforcement of regulations and “troubleshooting call[s].”

Oct 19 • 2:03 PM EDT • Health • nextgov.com

PlayStation founder Ken Kutaragi says discs became "metaphor for 'owning' games", and that upset at their discontinuation is a "mentality issue"

The founder of PlayStation has weighed in on Sony's decision to end game discs, saying it isn't "economically reasonable" to continue supporting them.

Oct 19 • 12:07 PM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

Executive order calls for creation of NIH Women’s Health Division

An executive order issued by the White House today directs the Department of Health and Human Services, through the National Institutes of Health, to establish a Women’s Health Division. The new division will focus on conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women.

Oct 19 • 12:05 PM EDT • Health • aha.org

Data Centers Are Skewing Political Party Lines in Texas

Data centers have emerged as a hot-button issue this election season. Could the controversy lead to big wins for Democratic hopefuls?

Oct 19 • 11:39 AM EDT • Politics • austinmonthly.com

GOP focuses on fraud, seeking to redirect voters’ ire over healthcare costs

Heading into the midterm elections, high healthcare costs rank among voters’ biggest concerns. But lately, there’s a twist giving the issue new momentum on campaign agendas: a focus on fraud in government health programs. The administration of President Donald Trump has used claims of widespread wrongdoing to justify investigations, suspensions of billions of dollars in […]

Oct 19 • 11:21 AM EDT • Health • mainemorningstar.com

Factbox-Top cases on the US Supreme Court's docket

Oct 19 (Reuters) - The US Supreme Court is hearing a series of important cases during its current nine-month term involving issues such as President Donald Trump's immigration policies, asylum,

Oct 19 • 10:59 AM EDT • Politics • centraloregondaily.com

Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos' Puppy Adoption Delayed Due to Health Issue

The couple adopted the dog after it appeared on 'Live With Kelly and Mark.'

Oct 19 • 10:53 AM EDT • Health • tvinsider.com

Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos’ Puppy Adoption Delayed Due to Health Issue

The couple adopted the dog after it appeared on 'Live With Kelly and Mark.'

Oct 19 • 10:53 AM EDT • Health • yahoo.com

Republicans sue, claim it’s a crime for stations to air Democrats’ Hope Florida ad

The Florida GOP’s lawsuit leans on an appeals court ruling that a leaked grand jury report should be expunged from the record.

Oct 19 • 10:47 AM EDT • Politics • miamiherald.com

Pakistan suspends Iran border trade, amid violence on both sides

Islamabad cites security concerns, while Tehran points to technical issues as Pakistan mediates between Iran and the US.

Oct 19 • 10:43 AM EDT • Politics • aljazeera.com

39 homers should force the Yankees to rethink third base

Hanshin has agreed to let Teruaki Sato pursue a move to Major League Baseball through the posting system. For the […]

Oct 19 • 9:56 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Researchers Discover a Blood-Pressure Drug May Stimulate “Healthy” Brown Fat

Losartan, a drug commonly prescribed for high blood pressure, boosts brown adipose tissue or “brown fat” activity and enhances its metabolism, according to a preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers.

Oct 19 • 9:48 AM EDT • Health • news.weill.cornell.edu

Live: Governor candidates Demuth and Klobuchar to talk business issues at forum

The forum hosted by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce begins at 9 a.m. Monday in Brainerd.

Oct 19 • 9:30 AM EDT • Business • startribune.com

How a Massive Chinese Crime Ring Hacked Staples to Steal Millions

A sophisticated organized crime gang hacked into Staples, issued millions of dollars worth of gift cards, and went on a spending spree across the U.S.

Oct 19 • 9:23 AM EDT • Technology • 404media.co

The Latest: Democrats gain ground with AAPI adults as trust in GOP fades, poll finds

According to a new AP-NORC/AAPI Data poll, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander adults have become more disillusioned with President Donald Trump and Republicans as the Nov. 3 midterm elections approach, giving Democrats a substantial edge on major issues like the economy and health care

Oct 19 • 8:49 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Four questions with ThinkTennessee President Erin Hafkenschiel

Over the next several weeks, Tennesseans will head the polls to elect the state’s next governor. Meanwhile, Tennessee continues to face exponential growth and development — an issue the state’s

Oct 19 • 8:45 AM EDT • Politics • nashvillepost.com

Witcher 3 Switch 2 patch rolls out today with a number of changes, including alterations to resolution and "visual clarity"

Switch 2 Witcher 3 players: today's the day. A big patch has rolled out, tackling some of the main offending Remastered edition issues.

Oct 19 • 8:13 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

Live Nation Entertainment's (LYV) "Buy" Rating Reiterated at BTIG Research

BTIG Research reaffirmed a "buy" rating and issued a $215.00 price target on shares of Live Nation Entertainment in a research report on Monday.

Oct 19 • 8:06 AM EDT • Entertainment • marketbeat.com

Yankees' Intriguing Trade Rumor Resurfaces — But Does It Make Sense?

Does it make sense for the New York Yankees to pursue this trade?

Oct 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Where they stand: Amy Klobuchar and Lisa Demuth on health care

Klobuchar as made lowering health care costs a pillar of her campaign, while Demuth has pointed to her record at the Capitol to show how she would address the issue as governor.

Oct 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Health • startribune.com

Bridges, Colorado Dems have embraced every tax hike

Kevin Grantham, the Republican nominee for state treasurer, exposed the single most important issue that defines Colorado Democrats during a debate with his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Jeff Bridges. Grantham is a Fremont County commissioner and former state senator from Cañon City who served as president of the Colorado state Senate when Republicans controlled the […]

Oct 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com

Affordability, immigration and a referendum on Trump: Listeners weigh in on the U.S. Senate race in Texas

Houston Public Media conducted a survey of what issues listeners considered the most significant in helping decide their votes between Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

Oct 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • houstonpublicmedia.org

Gina Hinojosa Has Managed to Make Greg Abbott’s Reelection Bid a Real Race

The Austin Democrat’s campaign to unseat the three-term governor looked like a long shot. But she’s been able to capitalize on Texans’ anger on two major issues: data centers and schools.

Oct 19 • 6:58 AM EDT • Politics • texasmonthly.com

Women are baring their souls to make the midterm elections feel personal

By sharing their stories, everyday women are becoming trusted messengers on issues such as immigration, intimate partner violence and healthcare.

Oct 19 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • 19thnews.org

Nutex Health Schedules 2026 Third Quarter Financial Results Release and Conference Call

Nutex Health, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUTX), a physician-led, integrated healthcare delivery system comprised of 28 state-of-the-art micro hospitals and hospital outpatient departments in 12 states and primary care-centric, risk-bearing physician networks, today announced that it plans to file its Form 10-Q for the third fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, 2026, on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, after the market close. The Company will also issue a corresponding press release summarizing financial results on the same

Oct 19 • 5:30 AM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com

Analysis | Home heating oil is a sleeper campaign issue across cold-weather battlegrounds

As the weather grows cold in key battlegrounds nationwide, sky-high home heating oil prices could tilt a series of tight races.

Oct 19 • 5:24 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

‘Pitchfork Populism’ Over Data Centers Rattles Ohio’s U.S. Senate Race

The issue, which barely registered with candidates last year, looms large in a race that could determine control of Congress.

Oct 19 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • insideclimatenews.org

The Iran war, inflation and ICE: Talarico and Paxton on the issues

Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Rep. James Talarico both said affordability is a top priority, but have different ideas for how to lower the cost of living.

Oct 19 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • houstonchronicle.com

‘Clean’ energy, local costs: Advocates challenge bioenergy’s climate claims

Companies market wood pellets and hog biogas as climate solutions. Critics say neighbors are exposed to health risks and life quality issues.

Oct 19 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • northcarolinahealthnews.org

SM Entertainment Sues Over 462 Malicious Posts Against NCT's Ji Sung

SM Entertainment Sues Over 462 Malicious Posts Against NCTs Ji Sung Agency Pursues Intimidation, Stalking Charges; Previous Defendant Fined 5 Million Won

Oct 19 • 3:35 AM EDT • Entertainment • chosun.com

More needs to be done to help tackle maternal and child health

A senior Irish Government minister has called for more to be done to help further improve maternal and child health across the world. Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday (14 October), Neale Richmond said it was vital the issue remained a “priority” for policymakers at EU and member state level. Richmond, Minister of State for International […]

Oct 19 • 2:00 AM EDT • Health • eureporter.co

Most AAPI adults cite the economy, cost of living, and health care as the most important issues heading into the midterm elections - AP-NORC

Since 2025, AAPI adults have moved away from Republicans and towards Democrats in who they trust to handle the economy and immigration.

Oct 19 • 12:01 AM EDT • Health • apnorc.org

ITZY's Chaeryeong to make solo debut with 'Lovesick' EP on Nov. 9

Chaeryeong will release her first solo EP, ‘Lovesick,’ on Nov. 9, becoming ITZY’s third member to pursue a solo career.

Oct 18 • 9:49 PM EDT • Entertainment • koreajoongangdaily.com

Bengals Trade Idea: Should Cincinnati Pursue This Superstar RB?

With Cincinnati’s ground game stalling behind an elite offensive line, acquiring Jonathan Taylor could provide the explosive spark needed to transform the Bengals into legitimate Super Bowl contenders.

Oct 18 • 9:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Streaming’s Biggest Show Returns…and a Buzzy Genre Struggles

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Obviously, the big news of the week (if not month) is Netflix letting go of executive Bela Bajaria, their chief content officer. I’m going to cover this in my next “Most Important Story of the Week”, but I also have a data angle that I might publish before then. (Too much news this month, am I right?) But first, I have a bonus Streaming Ratings Report issue for you. Today’s article is a bit of a grab bag of topics I’ve wanted to write about, but couldn’t squeeze into the (already very long) Streaming Ratings Report issues. The NFL drives huge viewership numbers, so I’ve got a look at that. A whole bunch of TV shows returned to the traditional broadcast channels, and I have thoughts. And I have a quick look at adult animated shows, since a couple flopped earlier this month. Plus, the Emmys aired earlier this month, and we got some fun data bout how popular those nominated shows are and why I’m not optimistic about the show’s future. That’s a lot, so let’s dive right in. Subscribe Sports - Football Remains the King of Streaming Over the last two Streaming Ratings Reports, I sorta ignored the biggest “show” each week. (I was tempted to say “piece of content” but I know that word bugs folks.) In my database, I call these “specials”, and they sure are special. I speak of the king of American TV: football!!! Streaming football is back and, unlike some other sports, it routinely dominates all viewership. Probably the best way to show this is to update one of my favorite graphics, the “40 Million Hour Club”1 since football games have joined that club each week they’ve premiered: (Yep, that’s the data through 28-Sep, the first four weeks of the season. As a reminder, I take the average minute audience provided by Nielsen, factor out a percentage of linear TV viewers in home markets, and multiply the run time by the three-hour runtime.) Again, the numbers are huge. Let’s start with Netflix. They grabbed the rights to the bonus opening week NFL Kickoff game (which was on YouTube last year) and it put up 18.5 million viewers on average. That nets out to 47.4 million hours of estimated streaming hours. That’s good! Though, notably, it’s well below Christmas Day games from previous years. Compared to other streamers/broadcasters, that’s a bit of a mixed result. On one hand, Netflix’s 18.5 million average is about what YouTube claimed last year, though Nielsen used a bespoke methodology at that time, so I trust this viewership figure more. So that’s good. (The game also shifted from a Friday to a Thursday and that could have helped the viewership as well.) And Netflix continues to best Prime Video in total viewership—as you’ll see next—though Netflix has had much higher-profile (opening week and Christmas Day) games. NBC/Peacock’s opening game the night before averaged 25.1 million average viewers, which is just much bigger than Netflix (or Prime Video). That’s the big caveat to all streaming viewership records: even in success, they can’t compete with traditional linear TV. Previously, I called this my “hierarchy of viewership”, and the data keeps supporting that thesis. The downside for NBC is that this game’s viewership was down compared to previous years, though it may be a counting issue. Here’s a great chart from Sports Media Watch: Indeed, looking at all the opening week games across all windows, Netflix still lags the other primetime windows, but does well compared to the afternoon games: I saw a few folks make the case that streamers still lag traditional broadcasters in reach, and I’d add they really lag compared to “broadcast plus streaming” options like NBC/Peacock, ESPN/Disney+ and CBS/Paramount+. The best data I saw for this came from Samba TV, who charted reach through the 2025 season, and, wow. (Samba TV’s numbers are historically lower than Nielsen’s, so don’t compare their household figures to Nielsen’s hours, but use them as a proxy for the relative reach of the streamers.) The good news is Prime Video is NOT having a down year. Their opening Thursday Night Football game reached 18.6 million viewers (about what Netflix got), but that’s a high for Prime Video on Thursdays and the biggest Thursday night game since 2015. The TNF games the weeks of 21-Sep and 28-Sep continued this streak, getting 43.1 (16.8 million average viewers) and 42.5 total hours (16.6 million average viewers), which were both up from last year. Still, that continues the (typical) season slide: (For those new-to-streaming-football-numbers folks, the viewership declines for Thursday Night Football as the year goes along.) Overall, it appears as if Prime Video is now part of the “football habit”, be it for customers at home or out at places like bars and restaurants. And its viewership is slowly catching up to broadcast. One last chart shows this. Last season, Nielsen started adding out-of-home viewership to the charts, so I try not to do season-to-season comparisons as I did for the first few years. And while Nielsen added Big Data viewing this year, I’m going to compare the last two seasons. Here’s that chart, which shows the season-over-season gains: When it comes to streaming football, we have to keep a few seemingly contradictory thoughts in our head… First, streaming doesn’t come close to matching broadcast’s reach and, thus, viewership. Second, even with that gap, football is still the biggest “thing” on streaming. It’s very, very popular. Third, while some methodology changes have likely helped Prime Video’s numbers, their viewership does appear to be growing. Lastly, yeah, the NFL started the season off poorly, with week one dragging down the numbers in year-over-year comparisons. However—and again, methodology changes may have helped this—the viewership grew compared to previous seasons over the next couple of weeks. So football is still king. On streaming and off. Television - Adult Animation Continues to NOT Make the Streaming Charts In the last two reports, two adult-animated shows whiffed: Netflix’s animated comedy, Dang! Paramount+’s Sega-video-game-inspired fantasy/comedy, Golden Axe. Neither made the charts, but that’s usually the case for animated shows. I mean, here’s literally every animated show that’s made the Nielsen Original charts since the start of 2025: And one of those shows is G_abby’s Dollhouse_! A kids show! The problem with charts like this is that they don’t give you a sense of how many shows miss the charts. Netflix had at least eleven animated flops, including comedies like Big Mouth (a show everyone assumed was popular in the pre-Streaming Ratings Era), Long Story Short, Haunted Hotel, Mating Season, Strip Law, and Alley Cats, and action shows like Blood of Zeus, Castlevania: Nocturne, Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Prime Video had at least six animated misses, two in the same universe (Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss), three more comedies (#1 Happy Family USA, The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy and Kevin) and an action show (The Mighty Nein). Disney+ had MCU and Star Wars animated misses (Eyes of Wakanda, Marvel Zombies, Star Wars: Visions, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld) but I can’t tell how many of those shows were geared towards adults. HBO Max had Harley Quinn and Hulu had Solar Opposites. None of these shows made the charts! That’s a lot of misses! If I remade the chart with all those misses, here’s how it would look: Listen, I know the counter arguments. First, it’s cheaper to produce animated shows than live action. Fair enough, but with viewership this low, even that cheaper price point starts to not matter. Second, just look at the acquired charts. Hit animated comedies can generate viewership for years! Shows like The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers do really, really well. Fair enough, but streaming has failed to recreate the dynamic that Fox has mastered so well. That’s a problem for streaming still. Television - Emmys! The annual Emmys broadcast was a few weeks ago, and I’ve got data on how the nominees performed on streaming, plus hot takes on this year’s viewership (and the big news about the broadcast’s, er, streamcast’s future). We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… The top Emmy-nominated shows… ...why I’m worried about the future of the Emmys telecast... ...the pros of broadcast television ...and the cons... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! Next week, we’ve got a double issue (since the weeks of 21-Sep and 28-Sep were so light), but then I’ll be all caught up after a deluge of streaming ratings data from Nielsen in September. In the meantime, I’m going to try to take a look at Netflix’s stats to explain why Bela Bajaria is out. But even light weeks give me plenty to talk about. The Great British Baking Show returns to Netflix and Apple TV has a buzzy new star-studded comedy. And Netflix has a controversial-but-appears-to-be-popular new game show. Plus big films like Toy Story 5, Backrooms and The Breadwinner head to streaming. And is East of Eden a hit? After that, The Kardashians return to Hulu, Prime Video has a reboot of Carrie, and Netflix has a horror show, Below. Disclosure Day heads to Peacock, The Housemaid heads to HBO Max_,_ a new Ben Affleck film, Animals, lands on Netflix, and Apple TV has a new John Cena action film based on, checks notes, Hasbro’s Matchbox toys. Okay. Longterm, some interesting TV production news. HBO Max ordered How to Survive Without Me, starring Kaley Cuoco, Joshua Jackson, Ray Romano and Rita Wilson, for fifteen episodes! I love that some streamers (or, at least, HBO Max) are finally ordering TV shows with more than eight episodes. In less wise production news, Landman does not appear to be coming back this year, since it just started production. Frankly, I don’t love this (get your shows out on time) but Landman is so popular, I doubt it matters.

Oct 18 • 3:59 PM EDT • Entertainment • entertainment.substack.com

Obama Defends Rep. Ilhan Omar Amid Trump Administration Inquiry

Federal agents searched Ms. Omar’s Washington home last week and issued subpoenas to some family members in search of evidence of fraud in immigration paperwork.

Oct 18 • 2:34 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

RJ Mitte’s story offers insight into life with cerebral palsy and mental health issues

Letter: Dr Denise Al Mari-de Waal and Aaron Hume call for lifelong support and an integrated care pathway that recognises the physical and mental health impacts of cerebral palsy

Oct 18 • 12:18 PM EDT • Health • theguardian.com

California Politics 360 full episode | California, US government clash over voter rolls

The Trump administration sued California election officials this week. They asked a judge to block the state from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has identified as “likely” non-citizens until their status can be confirmed.

Oct 18 • 11:25 AM EDT • Politics • kcra.com

Troy Jackson says not enough people in Senate ‘give a sh*t’ about working-class issues

Oct 18 • 11:15 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Pat Sajak Issues Bold Political Statement Dividing ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Fans

Sajak's message came on the heels of 'Jeopardy!' host Ken Jennings appearing in a political ad.

Oct 18 • 9:34 AM EDT • Politics • yahoo.com

Power & Politics: Long Island congressional candidates discuss affordability, immigration and key issues ahead of Election Day

Republican candidate for New York's 4th Congressional District Jeanine Driscoll and Democratic candidate for New York's 2nd Congressional District Pat Halpin join this week's show.

Oct 18 • 8:59 AM EDT • Politics • longisland.news12.com

Scientists Discover a Surprising New Effect of a Popular Blood Pressure Drug

A drug for high blood pressure could inspire future treatments for people with normal readings, thanks to an unexpected effect on the body’s energy-burning fat. Losartan already helps people control high blood pressure. New research suggests it could have a second use in activating brown fat, a tissue that burns energy to produce heat and

Oct 18 • 6:52 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com

On the issues: Governor candidates talk health care affordability

With more than 9% of Tennesseans uninsured, how does our next governor plan to tackle health care affordability?

Oct 18 • 6:03 AM EDT • Health • tennessean.com

Rural voters in Kansas want practical solutions not politics

A new survey shows rural voters prioritize practical issues like health care and cost of living over partisan debates.

Oct 18 • 5:04 AM EDT • Politics • cjonline.com

Dementia rates are high in Louisiana. These experts have tips to keep our brains healthy.

There are simple ways to reduce your risks of Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive issues. Doctors share their advice for better diets, sleep and easy exercise.

Oct 18 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • nola.com

Nestle, Unilever face regulatory action in India over misleading health claims

Investing.com -- India’s food safety regulator has issued notices to Nestle India and Hindustan Unilever over allegedly misleading nutritional and health claims on dietary supplements, as authorities intensify scrutiny of food manufacturers.

Oct 18 • 4:14 AM EDT • Health • uk.finance.yahoo.com

'Lucky' Cowboys Watch As 'Frightening' Health Issue Moves Eagles QB Jalen Hurts To IR

Oct 17 • 4:42 PM EDT • Health • sports.yahoo.com

Man Shows Up to AI Job Interview With His Own Helicopter AI to Interview for Him

An influencer invited his own AI, dubbed Victor, to sit in on yet another interview with a chatbot. Chaos ensued.

Oct 17 • 9:47 AM EDT • Technology • futurism.com

SpaceX Dragon Delivers Groundbreaking Science and Solar Arrays to ISS

SpaceX has delivered tiny brain models, 3D heart tissue, and artificial retina technology to the space station in a mission that could open new doors for medical research on Earth. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft successfully arrived at the International Space Station on October 15, docking at 10:27 a.m. EDT with the space-facing port of the station’s

Oct 17 • 7:53 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com