Friday, October 16, 2026 — evening edition. Here’s what happened today.
🚨 BREAKING
Four dead in Bend, Oregon elementary school shooting; bystander stops the gunman
No fitting photo was available for this story.
A 16-year-old shot his way into a special education classroom at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon and killed three children and a teacher before a bystander shot him dead. The children were 5, 8, and 11 years old. The youngest, 5-year-old Rhoam Summer, had just started kindergarten. The teacher killed was 25-year-old Megan Lambert, a volleyball coach whose family said Silver Rail was her dream job. A 7-year-old girl who uses a wheelchair and a 54-year-old teacher are in critical condition.
Authorities identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II, a former special education student at the school. He jumped a fence, forced his way through a side door, and opened fire in the classroom near the entrance. Police Chief Mike Krantz said a teacher threw her cellphone at the shooter and then tackled him, an act that “almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.” A parent at the school, 36-year-old Kaylub Giamanco, followed the shooter inside and fatally shot him minutes before police arrived. The weapon was a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun the shooter’s mother bought around his 16th birthday in August — in Oregon, the minimum age to buy a shotgun is 18. It is the 28th mass killing in the United States this year, according to the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University database.
🌍 INTERNATIONAL
Russia pounds Ukraine’s energy grid days after Trump’s “energy ceasefire”
Russia launched 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the overnight hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least six people and leaving at least 600,000 Ukrainians without electricity. All three of Kyiv’s municipal combined heat and power plants were hit, along with energy sites in the Kharkiv region. A nine-story apartment building in Kyiv was struck around 1:30 a.m., and fire spread through its first eight floors. The Darnytsia plant alone supplies heat to about 1,100 buildings and roughly 318,000 customers, just as cold weather moves in.
The attack came three days after President Trump announced what he called an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s defense ministry said it targeted facilities it claims Ukraine’s military uses — it did not honor the truce. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strikes “an unprecedented show of disrespect toward the United States” and announced Ukraine was lifting its own three-day pause on hitting Russian refineries. Ukrainian officials also said they received no early warning from Western partners before the ballistic launches.
Israeli settlers beat an American journalist during a West Bank olive harvest
Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives near the village of Abu Falah in the West Bank on Friday, and badly beat an American journalist covering it. Heidi Levine, a 64-year-old photographer for The Washington Post, was wearing a helmet and a vest clearly marked “PRESS” when a group of settlers pushed her to the ground, kicked her, and beat her with clubs for about ten minutes. They stole her cameras and phone. She was rushed to a hospital and is now safe.
Levine said she saw at least 50 masked men come running down a hilltop before the attack. Video shows the settlers hurling stones with slingshots while Palestinians throw stones back. The Post said the settlers set Palestinian olive groves on fire. Israeli soldiers also shot and wounded at least one Palestinian at the scene. The paper’s executive editor, Matt Murray, said the Post was “outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job” and urged a thorough investigation. Israeli police acknowledged reports that a foreign journalist was injured and said they would investigate and “bring those involved to justice.”
🏛️ POLITICS
White House press secretary out after five days — the shortest tenure ever
Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary just five days into the job — a record for the shortest tenure in the role. President Trump told reporters Friday he had asked her to “reconsider” the position, hours before officials confirmed she was “transitioning out.” Trump said she had been treated “very rough” by the media. He is in no rush to name a replacement.
Zacharia, a 41-year-old former cable news commentator, was hired October 9 and gave her first — and only — briefing Tuesday: 14 minutes, three questions, and she read falteringly from notes. She also faced days of scrutiny over her legal background after admitting she failed the California bar exam and is not licensed to practice law, despite repeatedly describing herself as a lawyer and Trump introducing her as an attorney. The previous record for a short-lived Trump spokesperson was Anthony Scaramucci’s ten-day run as communications director in 2017.
Musk put $158 million behind Paxton in the Texas Senate race
Federal campaign filings released Thursday show Elon Musk gave $75 million on September 9 and another $83 million on September 22 to the Senate Leadership Fund, the Republicans’ main Senate super PAC. The filings show the super PAC moved identical amounts to a group called Texas PAC — set up to back Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign — the day after each donation. Musk also gave $10 million in August to another pro-Paxton super PAC.
The money is keeping Paxton financially competitive against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who raised a record $64 million in the third quarter. Polls have the race in a dead heat in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. Trump has campaigned in Texas three times in the past month and said Thursday he would go back if needed. The filings do not establish that Musk’s donations were the specific dollars transferred to the Paxton group, a caveat noted in the reporting.
Trump and Zelenskyy clash over a reported slowdown of Ukraine’s military internet
Relations between Washington and Kyiv hit their worst point since last year’s Oval Office blowup. Reuters reported Thursday evening that the White House ordered a slowdown of Starshield — the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink that Ukraine’s army relies on — citing two U.S. officials and a Western official. Trump denied it Friday: “I didn’t do that. No, we didn’t do that at all.”
The fight started last Friday, when Trump waived sanctions to buy more than 2.25 million barrels of diesel from Russia, saying it would bring down fuel prices ahead of the midterms. He also pressed Zelenskyy to stop striking Russian oil refineries. Zelenskyy complied for three days — then told the Financial Times this week that “the block is out. We’re done,” after Russia kept bombing Ukrainian energy sites. Trump lashed out in a Newsmax interview: “I’m not a big fan of Zelensky. They’ve destroyed that country… I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.” Zelenskyy responded by praising the “real leaders” in Europe who have stood by Ukraine.
🧳 IMMIGRATION
Appeals court blocks California’s law forcing ICE agents to wear visible ID
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked California on Wednesday from enforcing a law that required plainclothes federal immigration officers to visibly display identification. A three-judge panel — two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee — granted a preliminary injunction, ruling the state’s “No Vigilantes Act” directly regulates the federal government in violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The decision reverses a lower court that had refused to block the law. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the measure in September 2025, arguing federal agents had arrested U.S. citizens and hidden their identities during enforcement operations. The ruling covers only the ID requirement, not California’s separate mask ban, and the underlying lawsuit continues.
Government watchdog: ICE won’t turn on body cameras automatically when agents draw weapons
The Trump administration has rejected a watchdog’s recommendation that immigration agents’ body cameras activate automatically when an officer draws a weapon or turns on a siren. The Government Accountability Office released its report Wednesday after reviewing body-camera programs at ICE and Customs and Border Protection. The Department of Homeland Security accepted six of the GAO’s seven recommendations but declined this one, citing privacy and operational risks — false activations, recording informants or victims, and filming bystanders engaged in free-speech activity. The report found CBP already uses auto-activation technology while ICE does not, and that personnel at six of ten locations reviewed were unsure when they were required to turn their cameras on. The recommendation lands amid scrutiny of enforcement tactics that, according to the report’s coverage, included fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
🏢 CORPORATE WATCH
Cloudera settles with DOJ over discrimination against U.S. workers: $2 million and a two-year green-card hiring ban
No fitting photo was available for this story.
The Justice and Labor Departments announced a settlement Friday with the Santa Clara software company Cloudera Inc. over claims it discriminated against American workers. The company will pay $1.4 million into a back-pay fund for qualified U.S. workers who were denied fair consideration, plus $600,000 in civil penalties. It is also barred from the PERM green-card sponsorship program for two years and must accept enhanced monitoring and reporting. The DOJ sued in April, alleging Cloudera rigged recruiting for seven positions under the PERM process — which lets employers sponsor foreign workers only after showing no qualified American was available — in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Officials called it a precedent for future enforcement. The Labor Department has also frozen PERM processing for Microsoft, Adobe, and other tech firms over alleged violations.
Judge affirms $1.6 million age-discrimination verdict against Norfolk Southern
A federal judge in Alabama entered a final judgment Thursday confirming a $1.6 million jury verdict against Norfolk Southern in an age-discrimination case — nearly $800,000 in compensatory damages and an equal amount in liquidated damages. The worker, a railroader in his mid-60s employed by Norfolk Southern’s Alabama Great Southern Railway, said a superintendent asked him “Why haven’t you retired?” and declared him unfit for duty despite medical clearances from his primary care doctor and cardiologist and two successful physical evaluations. He sued in 2023 after the company refused to reinstate him. The judge affirmed the jury’s finding that the company pushed him out because of his age.
📈 MARKETS
Nasdaq posts its worst week since June as AI stocks keep sinking
Stocks split in two on Friday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.2% to close at 26,140, ending the week down 4.5% — its worst week since June. The S&P 500 dropped 1.1% to 7,659, down 2% for the week, its fourth losing week in six. The Dow was the outlier: it slipped 0.3% to 52,002 but still finished the week up 0.7%, its second straight weekly gain. Investors kept dumping semiconductor and AI-infrastructure stocks over worries about the debt funding the AI buildout, and rotated into defensive names like healthcare and consumer staples. The S&P’s technology sector fell 3% on the day. Palo Alto Networks plunged 18% for the week; Tesla fell 2.1% the day after unveiling a flying Roadster.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, speaking overnight at an IMF meeting in Bangkok, declined to signal whether the central bank will hold rates steady or raise them at its meeting later this month. Traders now put the odds of an October hike at just 17%, down from 28% a day earlier, but still see an 89% chance of a December hike. The 10-year Treasury yield sat above 5.09%. Gold slipped 0.1% on the week to $4,186.50 an ounce; silver dropped 4.4%; and West Texas crude jumped 4.2% on the week to $97.65 a barrel.
🇺🇸 OTHER STATES
California: Bryson Fire forces evacuations in Malibu; Getty Villa closes
A wind-driven wildfire erupted in the hills above Malibu on Thursday afternoon and forced evacuation orders in parts of the Santa Monica Mountains. The Bryson Fire started around 4:40 p.m. near Encinal Canyon Road and grew to about 200 acres by nightfall with 0% containment; it was 17% contained by Friday morning as more than 400 firefighters worked the lines. Los Angeles County issued evacuation orders in the immediate area and warnings across a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway toward Leo Carrillo State Park. The Getty Villa closed Friday to keep roads clear for emergency crews. About 36,000 Southern California Edison customers lost power as the utility shut off lines against the fire risk. The National Weather Service has a red flag warning in effect through Saturday evening, with Santa Ana winds gusting up to 60 mph. The cause is under investigation.
Indiana: Democrat Bayh leads by 8 points in the secretary of state race
A new nonpartisan poll shows Democrat Beau Bayh with an eight-point lead over Republican Max Engling in Indiana’s race for secretary of state — 43% to 35%, with 11% undecided, among 839 likely voters surveyed October 8–11 (margin of error 3.4 points). It’s the first independent poll of the race; internal polls from both sides had it as a toss-up. Bayh — the son of former governor and senator Evan Bayh, a former Marine — also leads big on name recognition: 48% of voters have never heard of Engling. If Bayh wins on November 3, it would be Democrats’ first statewide victory in Indiana since 2012. The poll caught the attention of Donald Trump Jr., who attacked Bayh on X Friday as “another leftist radical cosplaying as a moderate.” Libertarian Lauri Shillings and Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard are also on the ballot.
Sources / Fuentes
USA Today; The Associated Press; The New York Post; The Times (London); Brownstone Worldwide; ABC News; CNN; NPR; The Wall Street Journal; Reuters; The Washington Examiner; Fox News; The Washington Post; The Financial Times; Newsmax; The Indianapolis Star; The Indiana Capital Chronicle; The Indianapolis Business Journal; HR Dive; Bloomberg Law; U.S. Department of Justice; Investopedia; Investor’s Business Daily; Morningstar; KFI AM 640 (Los Angeles); Bellwether Research / Free Press Indiana poll; James Alan Fox, AP/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database.
Leave a Reply