https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/us/jb-pritzker-blackjack-winnings-charity.html

https://news.sky.com/story/israel-says-first-seven-hostages-handed-to-red-cross-13448949
Hamas has handed over all 20 surviving hostages being held in Gaza - with President Trump heralding the moment as the "historic dawn of a new Middle East".

The remaining Israelis were exchanged for over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners after being held in the tunnels of Gaza for more than two years.

Hamas initially handed over seven hostages to the Red Cross, before releasing the other 13 for emotional reunions with their families.

They were then flown to a special "homecoming" hospital where they will be allowed to recover in private.

Tens of thousands of Israelis watched the moment the hostages were finally freed at public screenings across the country.
Families and friends cheered as TV channels announced the hostages were safely in the hands of the Red Cross.

The 20 released are all men aged between 20 and 48, some taken from their homes and others from the Nova music festival during the October 2023 terror attack.

Israel previously said 20 of the 251 kidnapped were thought to still be alive in Gaza - as well as the remains of 28 who died.

Coffins of two of the dead have been released to the Red Cross - with two more to follow, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Monday evening. All of the deceased must be handed over under the terms of the agreement. Other hostages had been released as part of previous short-lived deals.

As part of the first phase of Donald Trump's ceasefire agreement, Hamas was given 72 hours to release all the hostages, alive and dead.

The ceasefire started on Friday, with tens of thousands of Palestinians walking many miles back to northern Gaza. Drone footage has revealed the destruction wrought by two years of Israeli attacks, with neighbourhoods flattened and countless buildings turned to rubble.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8gdl54n1go
President Donald Trump has said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has agreed to stop buying Russian oil, as the US seeks to put economic pressure on the Kremlin as part of efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump told reporters he had received assurances from Modi that India would halt its purchases "within a short period of time", which he called "a big stop".

The US president has sought to leverage India's purchases of Russian oil in his trade war, but Delhi has so far resisted.

Reacting to the Trump remarks, an Indian government spokesman said discussions were "ongoing" with the US administration which had "shown interest in deepening energy co-operation with India".

"Our consistent priority to safeguard the interests of the Indian consumer in a volatile energy scenario. Our import policies are guided entirely by this objective," the spokesman said.

Oil and gas are Russia's biggest exports, and Moscow's biggest customers include China, India and Turkey.

"Now I've got to get China to do the same thing," Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday, as part of his administration's broader push to cut off Moscow's energy funding.

The Trump administration is also pushing Japan to stop importing oil and gas from Russia, and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he communicated this "expectation" to visiting Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato on Wednesday.

India cannot "immediately" halt oil shipments, Trump said, adding that the shift will be "a little bit of a process, but the process is going to be over with soon".

The Trump administration has imposed 50% tariffs on goods from India, levies that Trump has characterised as punishment against Delhi for buying Russian oil and weapons.

The tariffs – which took effect in August and are among the highest in the world – include a 25% penalty for transactions with Russia that are a key source of funds for its war in Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-hear-case-that-takes-aim-voting-rights-act-2025-10-15/
WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices signaled their willingness on Wednesday during arguments in a case involving Louisiana electoral districts to undercut a key section of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 federal law enacted by Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting.
Arguments in the case focused on the Voting Rights Act's Section 2, which prohibits electoral maps that would result in diluting the clout of minority voters, even without direct proof of racist intent. Section 2 gained greater significance as a bulwark against racial discrimination in voting after the court, in a 2013 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, gutted a different part of the same law.

"This court's cases, in a variety of contexts, have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time - decades, in some cases - but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point," conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who was arguing on behalf of a group of Black voters.
Those Black voters appealed a lower court's finding that a voting map that added a second Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana was guided too much by racial considerations in violation of the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law. That map was approved by the Republican-led state legislature after a judge ruled that an earlier map that had just one Black-majority district likely harmed Black voters in violation of Section 2.
Louisiana, where Black people make up roughly a third of the population, has six U.S. House of Representatives districts. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/14/politics/alex-jones-sandy-hook-supreme-court

The Supreme Court declined an appeal from Alex Jones on Tuesday, brushing aside the right-wing conspiracy theorist’s effort to overturn a $1.4 billion libel judgment a lower court ordered against him over his false comments about the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.

Jones has faced mounting legal pressure after juries in Connecticutand Texasfound him liable in 2022 for defamation and emotional distress over his lies about the massacre, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed. Jones has repeatedly tried to head off the sale of his far-right platform, Infowars, to pay those damages.

“The result is a financial death penalty by fiat imposed on a media defendant whose broadcasts reach millions,” Jones told the Supreme Court in an appeal filed at the Supreme Court in September.

The families waived their right to respond to that appeal — and the court did not order them to do so.

In a separate emergency appeal Jones filed at the Supreme Court last week, he said his platform has an average of 30 million daily listeners. Without an intervention by the high court, his attorneys wrote, “these viewers/listeners will not have just been deprived of a valued source of information, the risk is they will have been greatly deceived and damaged by operation of media source InfoWars by their ideological opposites.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied that emergency appeal later Tuesday.

16th daily thread covering The 2025 Democrat Shutdown of the US Government

Day 16 Updates:
- Democrats refuse to fund military while larger funding is negotiated, leaving Americans defenseless https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/government-shutdown-military-pay.html
- Democrats block the senate from voting on a spending bill for the 10th time in a row https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/government-shutdown-2025-latest-senate-defense-bill/
- Democrats responsible for Yosemite skeleton crew https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/16/yosemite-government-shutdown-national-parks
- Just checked, The Democrat Shutdown is still going on https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575134/government-shutdown

The issue is caused by Democrats being angry that when they wanted emergency corporate subsidies to health companies they set them to expire in 2026, but now that it is nearly 2026, they are angry that the corporate subsidies are expiring.

https://local21news.com/news/local/suspected-arsonist-cody-balmer-accused-of-firebombing-governors-residence-to-attend-plea-hearing-harrisburg-dauphin-county-courthouse-tuesday-gov-josh-shapiro-pennsylvania-news-pa

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHP) — Cody Balmer, the man who was previously accused of firebombing the Pennsylvania governor's residence in April, has pleaded guilty to all charges against him, including attempted murder and terrorism, among others.

Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg appeared in person for the proceeding, which started around 8:30 am. at the Dauphin County Courthouse in Harrisburg.

He was seen walking into the courthouse around 8 a.m. in a red jumper with his hands cuffed and ankles chained together.

During the hearing, Balmer pleaded guilty to all charges, including one count of the attempted murder of Gov. Shapiro, aggravated arson, burglary, and over 20 counts of arson. He was sentenced to between 25-50 years behind bars and won't be eligible for parole until April 13, 2050, when he's 63 years old, according to the district attorney.

Officials said that the morning of the arson, Balmer called 911 and admitted to setting fire to Gov. Josh Shapiro's residence with several Molotov cocktails around 2 a.m. Sunday, April 13.

A fire that cost over $7 million taxpayer funds to repair, records obtained by CBS 21 revealed.

During Tuesday's hearing, the court played video evidence that showed Balmer throwing Molotov cocktails at the residence and another video that showed him trying to push through doors to reach the governor once inside.

After watching the videos, Judge Deborah Curcillo looked at Balmer and said, "That was frightening to watch."

Authorities said Balmer called 911 about an hour after the fire broke out and told dispatchers, "Governor Josh Shapiro needs to know that Cody Balmer will not take part in his plans in what he wants to do to the Palestinian people."

Day 14 of making a thread everyday until Republicans remember that senior citizens and soldiers will remember who is holding up their paychecks and stop destroying our country to suck orange.

Day 14 Updates:
- Government shutdown could be the longest ever, House Speaker Johnson warns https://apnews.com/article/government-shutdown-trump-obamacare-republicans-democrats-b6b59cae2ec28b39e57fbb703704f46a
- 'I don't have any strategy': Speaker Johnson still backs GOP's clean CR as shutdown drags into 3rd week https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/strategy-speaker-johnson-backs-gops-clean-cr-shutdown/story?id=126511106
- House GOP blocks Dems' military pay bill as government shutdown threatens checks https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-gop-blocks-dems-military-pay-bill-government-shutdown-threatens-checks
- 'MAGA's mad': Far-right activists said to be upset 'Trump made them look stupid' https://www.rawstory.com/trump-rick-wilson-maga-mad/

> EU’s at it again
They’re pushing something called “Chat Control”, officially the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation.
Sounds good, right? “Protect the kids.” Classic move.
What it actually does: forces all messaging apps — WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Gmail, everything — to scan every single message, image, and video you send.
And the scan happens before encryption.
Yeah, even your “private” end-to-end chats get read on your own phone before being sent.

So basically your device becomes a government spy.
No warrant, no suspicion, no reason — just everyone under surveillance by default.

> “But I’ve got nothing to hide!”
Cool. Then you’ve got nothing left to protect either.
Privacy isn’t about hiding, it’s about being free to speak and think without being watched.
The worst part? These detection systems suck.
False positives everywhere — normal pics, memes, jokes, flagged as “illegal.”
Once that happens, random people can look through your stuff.

And once you accept this kind of scanning “for safety,” you’ve already lost.
Today it’s about pedos.
Tomorrow it’s about “terrorists.”
Next week it’s about “fake news.”
Step by step, every private space online is gone.

Also, these systems create backdoors — holes that hackers, governments, anyone can exploit.
All in the name of “safety.”

They’re literally voting on this right now in the EU Parliament.
If it passes, encryption is dead.

Not a conspiracy. It’s all in the official proposal.
Read this if you want details and voting info:
https://euperspectives.eu/2025/08/eu-chat-control-heads-for-a-decisive-vote/

> They say it’s to protect us.
But who’s protecting us from them?