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EGW was not a pastor. As far as I know, she never functioned as a pastor, i.e., served as the overseer of a congregation. It is quite a stretch to compare her work to the work women want to do in the church today. Some may remember Dan Collins. He worked with Amazing Facts in the days of Joe Crews. Dan was hired because he was an effective soul winner. He was noticed when he brought a dozen people to an AF crusade, ready for baptism, schooled in SDA doctrine. How many SDA pastors. male or female, meet that criteria? Some people want a female pastor. Some want a homosexual. A person who wants a straight male pastor can go to a congregation which has one. If one is not available, connect with 7th day Baptists or the Church of Christ, 7th day. The statement of faith 7th day Baptists hold is one with which most SDA could agree. A home church might be an option. Those who are opposed to woman pastors should keep in mind that your tithe may be used to pay them.

🌋 Parting shot: Fire and ice Photo: Dick Stoll Longtime reader Dick Stoll of Milwaukee captured this fiery sunset earlier this month from his balcony at The Retreat at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland.

The AI terms you actually need to know Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Tonight and tomorrow, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei will offer tips on talking and thinking about AI, all written in normal, non-technical language. First up: simple answers to complex questions. Confused about AI? You're hardly alone. Most people still don't know what it is, how it works or whether to trust it. No wonder. The AI language is just plain weird: LLMs, tokens, agents, hallucinations, swarms, misalignment, The Singularity. So consider this your guide to understanding AI, written in Jim, normal-guy, real-world words: 🤖 What is AI? Computers doing things that typically require a human brain: reading, writing, reasoning, creating. Well then, what's an LLM? Large language model. It's the engine of AI — the machine that learns to read, write, reason and create. The most powerful and popular LLMs are built by Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. Oh, so ChatGPT is an LLM? Not exactly, though you don't have to worry about that distinction much. OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini are all consumer products that allow you to interact with each company's LLM. 🧠 How does an LLM or AI work? An LLM eats everything on the internet alongside other stuff (you've probably seen stories about Anthropic and books) and then gets trained by humans — and, increasingly, the AI itself — to read, write, reason and create like us. Wow, so they THINK like humans? NO. All that reading just teaches them to imitate how we write. Talking like us comes from a second step, called post-training, where companies train them to behave more like us. Great, so we know how they work? Yes and no. And this is super important. Yes, scientists know how to build and train these models. But NO — nobody can fully explain what happens inside them when producing specific answers. We built a machine we don't fully understand. This is not a disputed point. Wait, we truly don't know how these machines work? Correct. There is no person running AI companies — or building AI — who argues otherwise. It's like the human brain: It's impossible to fully understand something with limitless inputs and experience that randomly decides its output. Why are they allowed to build something they don't understand? AI grew more powerful and spread more quickly than anyone anticipated. ChatGPT's release in 2022 kicked things off, and it's been a mad sprint by companies ever since to build more capable AI. Presidents Biden and Trump were both convinced that if China beat us to truly all-powerful AI, a communist rival might dominate the world in the decades ahead. It's been all gas, no brakes, with little public discussion about the consequences until very recently. I don't get it. What's the connection between China and our AI? China is building its own LLMs. Both nations believe this technology will determine which country dominates the world, builds the most advanced military (space, satellites, drones) and creates the most economic wealth. So we're in an AI race. 🏁 But we're winning, right? This isn't easy to know with certainty. Yes, our so-called frontier labs appear many months ahead of their Chinese rivals (DeepSeek is one of the best-known) in terms of building advanced AI. But the lead is shrinking. China appears more focused on the actual adoption of AI — the way people use it at work and home — than on advancing its capabilities. They seem way ahead of us there. We've got better AI, but they've put it to work better than us. Jim, you're losing me with these terms. What's a frontier lab? It's just another way to label our top AI companies: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Elon Musk's xAI. They each spend many billions to build more advanced AI. 🦾 And what do you mean by "advanced AI"? This is the best term I can conjure for the current state of the technology. Chatbots — think of them as basic AI — are fun and interesting. It's probably how you mostly use it. But the real magic — and worries of very bad outcomes — hit with advanced AI. AI agents are likely the advanced AI you hear about the most. An agent? It's an AI that can take action. If you ask a chatbot to plan a trip, it tells you how. But an agent does the actual work: It can research flights, compare hotels, check your calendar and book it. Give an agent specific instructions, and it gets to work, as a person would. Why would I trust an agent when AI's answers to my simple questions aren't always smart — or even correct? You're right, these machines still occasionally hallucinate, which simply means they make stuff up. But they're getting a lot better, a lot faster. This is where our conversation gets a little more complicated — because the gap between casual users like you and obsessive, savvy AI users is Grand Canyon-enormous. What do you mean? Most people are content with chatbots and use AI mostly as a souped-up Google search or tool to write better emails. They don't see anything special or scary about this technology. But those who use AI a lot — and really understand how to get the most out of it — are blown away by its ability to solve never-before-solved math problems or build beautiful, functional apps on its own. Why is that gap so big? You need to feed a lot of data and personal info into these machines, then take the time to police and correct the outputs, before AI starts to really impress you. You also need to understand how agents work, or at least what problems they can solve, and have the time, money and compute to coach and fine-tune them to do tasks reliably. There are products right now that are trying to make things easier. Meta's Muse is an agent built on top of its social platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, and Instinct is a buzzy startup whose agent lives inside a text-message thread. For the moment, most people don't need to do this — or know how. So they find AI kind of interesting but hardly existential. That's me! So why are people freaking out about AI ending humanity? This gets more complicated — and a little creepy. Stick with me. Lots of people building AI — including those who founded and run the frontier labs — worry AI is getting so good, so fast that it will increasingly do things on its own. They've seen rising examples of it in their private testing. What do you mean? These companies do endless testing of their models to see what they can and can't do. In the past few months, agents started solving more complex problems faster. The worrisome thing is what happens when multiple agents work together to tackle a problem. 🐝 Huh! Agents work together? What are "swarms"? You can create "swarms" of agents to solve a specific problem — a team of agents, each programmed with specific skills, working together on a shared objective. They never tire or stop until told. Why would that spook anyone? It goes back to not knowing exactly why AI does what it does. You give an agent a specific problem to solve, and it sometimes does strange things, like plotting with other agents or trying to hide its work. Can't they just be programmed to stop doing that? Only by doing something no one seems willing to do: stopping or dramatically slowing AI improvements until you can prove AI is properly aligned with human intent. 🎯 What is alignment? Alignment essentially means an AI follows human orders and intent. They're unaligned now? Correct. That's why incidents like the Hugging Face hack happened. When OpenAI was testing its agents, those agents decided to work together to find the answer key for said test — and in doing so, hacked another company. Should I be worried about rogue AI? Probably not TODAY, but no one knows for sure. The Hugging Face hack happened in private testing, and was eventually revealed by OpenAI and reported to the public. But people worry that there are AI agents out there that no one knows about. Is that why an Anthropic staffer warned AI could end humanity? Yes. Lots of people inside these companies worry we're months away from rogue agents doing real harm in public. The reason: AI, on its own, is starting to develop the next generation of AI. How the heck can AI develop AI? The tech is getting good enough to basically train AI like humans might. This is what they mean by recursive self-improvement, or RSI. You need to remember this term. 🔁 What's RSI? It's AI teaching AI. The process started slowly, but it's getting a lot better. Those big frontier labs all claim they're seeing early signs of RSI. What happens if RSI ramps up? That's where the scary stuff feels much more possible. If AI trains AI (and remember, we don't know how AI really works), you could see something much worse than the Hugging Face hack happening without the labs even knowing it. This is why the companies themselves said it's time to slow things down, so they can allow independent inspectors to check their work and avoid accidents or bad outcomes. OK, so they're self-policing already. It sounds like I have nothing to worry about. They're talking about it, but they haven't agreed on precisely how it will be done or who will do it across the industry. Even if they do, there's nothing to guarantee they'll slow AI advancement or avoid bad scenarios. In fact, you should assume AI only accelerates. 🏛️ Can't the government slow them down? Sure, but Trump and most Republicans in Congress don't want any real limits on AI capabilities. It goes back to that concern about China — and doing anything that might risk our early lead in building advanced AI. Don't expect any meaningful effort to regulate AI unless AI causes some kind of large public incident or harm. 🚨 You keep talking about incidents and harm. What can AI even really do? The companies most fear a cyberattack that shuts down banks, energy grids or water systems — something that causes real pain or even harm to a large number of people. The other big worry: that someone uses AI to create a pathogen that spreads fast with little detection. These can all be done with human instruction and existing AI capabilities, so the danger is real. Both of these scenarios could be set in motion by a human — or a rogue AI agent. Then what would happen? The political and public debate would shift overnight. Democrats would likely join Sen. Bernie Sanders in supporting a pause or outright ban on AI. Calls for urgent, sweeping regulation would likely spike sky-high, even among Republicans. This would go from an abstract worry to a clear and imminent threat. I keep hearing the big companies want to be regulated now. Is that true? Most do. It comes partly from public interest and lots of self-interest. They genuinely worry about bad outcomes and know only the government can regulate and punish companies. Their IPOs are around the corner, and investors like a little bit of regulation. But you also hear critics of the big AI companies arguing they want regulation because only the biggest, best-funded companies can handle it and still grow. Smaller, scrappier startups would get crowded out. When you hear the term "regulatory capture," this is what those critics are talking about. It's sounding like this regulation won't happen. Correct, at least right now. Trump has zero interest in any federal regulations. He believes AI fears are overhyped. This topic is such a downer. Could Trump be right — and this ends well for all of us? Absolutely. AI could help cure disease, improve education and health care, and supercharge the U.S. economy. Imagine all those teams of agents, properly aligned, fixing these stubborn problems and many, many more. This is what AI optimists believe will happen when we hit The Singularity or AGI. 🚀 There you go again with those weird terms, Jim. What is The Singularity? AGI? The Singularity is a hypothetical point when AI progress moves so fast we can no longer predict or control what happens next. Some in the industry believe we're already there. AGI stands for artificial general intelligence. It's AI that can perform basically any intellectual task a human can. There's no test for telling us when either dynamic officially hits. Think of both terms as a way to express broad, human-level intelligence. ✨ Why don't I hear much about these good outcomes? We — as individuals, and the media, as an industry — have a clear negativity bias. We get more stirred by bad stories than good ones. In this specific case, though, the AI companies do a terrible job of explaining their product. Telling people AI will take your job and possibly kill you is hardly reassuring or inspiring. 🙋 This all feels fast and heavy. What can I do? This is the biggest topic facing humanity, so learn about AI. This is a society-wide project that requires you to understand it and then push the government and business to manage it responsibly. Don't protest AI by refusing to use it. Figure out how to best use AI for your specific job and passions. Read and share the note in tomorrow's newsletter, which offers a more detailed way to navigate this moment. It's aimed at kids but applies to all. 📚 5 ways to learn AI Axios: We're deeply sourced inside the AI companies and the White House, and we're testing the tech in real time. Subscribe to Mike Allen's Axios AM and never skip an AI item. MIT Technology Review's The Algorithm: This newsletter calls itself AI "demystified," and it usually delivers. It lands once a week, so you get smart, big-picture pieces instead of a nonstop firehose of AI. Platformer: Casey Newton has covered Silicon Valley for years and really digs into big AI debates in a digestible way on the people shaping AI. Plain English with Derek Thompson: This podcast isn't always about AI. But Derek is obsessed with the larger AI trends. He's smart and balanced. X: You need it IF you want to stay in the daily flow of changes. Sorry. This stuff is moving so fast that the people building it and obsessively using it are often ahead of traditional media. I compiled a list of just 15 people to follow.

Ad Nauseam (Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis / Getty Images)   View in browser Your tax dollars are at work—promoting Donald Trump to the American people. In the past few days, two new ads appeared on some television channels. One, in black and white, features Trump walking down a hall and staring into the camera. In a voice-over, he says, “This is the final battle with you at my side.” The other features clips of Trump giving a speech at Mount Rushmore. But the most striking words are the ones on the bottom of the screen: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” These are part of a series. Last week, as my colleague Matt Viser wrote, the administration aired an ad that featured images of Trump looking resolute and imposing, with the words “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY” superimposed for most of the spot, which also flashes various empty Trump policy boasts. (“Largest tax cuts in history,” which is flatly false; “reigniting American manufacturing,” which is dubious.) The soundtrack, apparently used without permission, is the musician JMSN’s song “Love Me.” To date, taxpayers have spent at least $443,000 on this ad alone, according to the Associated Press. The White House calls these “public service announcements,” intended only to remind “Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” a White House spokesperson told Viser. Taken at face value, this is the latest example of Trump’s Sun King–esque attempt to conflate himself and the state. This administration has named a new visa program the “Trump Gold Card,” tried to place his name before John F. Kennedy’s on an official memorial, established a 47-day training program at ICE to honor his number in the presidential sequence, printed his portrait in passports, and last week launched something called “Trump TV” under White House auspices. (It’s a glorified streaming-video app.) But the White House’s claim that these are PSAs should not be taken at face value. A much simpler term exists to describe them: propaganda. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, pointed out that Trump’s political operation has plenty of cash to spend—almost $416 million as of August 31—and compared him to the strongman whom Hungarians toppled earlier this year: “Using taxpayer dollars, it feels like Viktor Orbán.” Another GOP senator, John Kennedy of Louisiana, said yesterday that no public official “should spend public money on private ads for themselves.” He added: “I think there oughta be a rule—well, there probably is a rule—you can’t spend public money to promote yourself.” Indeed, there is a rule. The law bars the use of taxpayer money on “publicity or propaganda.” The problem is how one defines that. The administration has cited past PSAs, including an anti-drug ad during the George W. Bush administration and a pro-COVID-vaccine spot from the Biden years, to justify the newest ads. The White House insists that these ads are not promoting Trump, because he is not currently running for election. “The PSAs are clearly not political,” an official told NBC News. “The president is not on the ballot, and the ads don’t have a call to action.” These pretexts are so skimpy that they would make a fig leaf shrivel in shame. The ads lean heavily on the White House’s big talking points this cycle, such as dark warnings about “communism.” Trump is not on the ballot, but he has repeatedly begged his supporters to treat this election as a referendum on him—writing on Truth Social this morning, “MAGA, pretend I am on the ballot.” Finally, the new ad is just a new version of one that his campaign produced late in the 2024 presidential race, only this time paid for with public money. (Perhaps someone should have edited out the line where Trump promises to “expel the warmongers from our government,” which hasn’t aged so well.) Yet just because the ads are wildly inappropriate, redolent of personalist dictators, and clearly violate the intent of the law, that doesn’t mean they can easily be stopped. A reasonable viewer will know that the ads are intended to boost Trump and Republicans in the midterms, but because the spots don’t have the “call to action” that qualifies them as campaign advocacy under the law, they may not violate the letter of the law. And even if they did, who would police that? Both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans, whom the ad is intended to help. The Federal Election Commission doesn’t have a quorum to take action, because Trump has declined to nominate members. And anyway, the Supreme Court has consistently granted the president very wide leeway for any “official” actions. Kennedy’s there-oughta-be-a-rule response is understandable, but one big lesson of the Trump era is that writing a law to prevent every potential abuse of power is impossible. Attempting to do so would tie Congress up in reams of mind-numbing legislation. Courts might strike some of it down; other parts would be impossible to enforce; and a sufficiently motivated administration would simply find nefarious work-arounds, just as this one has. A functioning democracy cannot be just a matter of statute. It requires good faith and some measure of virtue from its officeholders. No law can substitute for character in leaders. That makes these transgressions primarily a matter for voters, not legislators or regulators. And in the case of the campaign ads, they can weigh in soon. As Paul Krugman writes, Trump’s personal unpopularity is already a drag on Republican candidates, so emphasizing his role would seem to be politically unwise. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars broadcasting a song called “Love me,” but you can’t make voters love you. Related: Trump’s public service announcement: “Love me” Trump is putting his face on everything.

Fact-checking Trump Daniel Dale started scrutinizing President Donald Trump back when he was an underdog candidate in 2016. The CNN analyst shared 15 things he has learned during a decade of documenting his dishonesty. 🔎 Fact check: Trump lies again that grocery prices ‘have come way down’ ➕ Analysis: 12 moves that illustrate the brazenness of Trump’s second term

A New York prosecutor has reopened an investigation into gang rape allegations at a Cornell University fraternity in response to a lawsuit filed by a woman who says she was sexually assaulted in 2024 by seven students after being plied with alcohol and drugs. Get the latest. A man who spent decades on Utah’s death row is released and awaits a new trial in a 1985 killing A 71-year-old man who was convicted of killing a police chief’s aunt and spent decades on death row was released Monday after prosecutors said newly analyzed DNA evidence doesn’t link him to the crime. https://apnews.com/article/utah-death-row-douglas-carter-eva-olesen-10c0bf7603c87b214e0179ecf7a4be94?

🔎 Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI's two deputy directors, announced on X that he'll leave after just over a year in the job and return to Missouri. FBI director Kash Patel thanked him for serving. Get the latest.

SpaceX Starship goes orbital Starship launches from Starbase, Texas, this morning. Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket reached Earth orbit today for the first time before being brought home early, Alex Fitzpatrick reports. An explosion was visible on the company's livestream just after Starship touched down in the Pacific Ocean. The cause remains unclear. 🚀 The massive, fully reusable Starship is key to SpaceX's commercial spaceflight ambitions. NASA is counting on a modified version for use as a lunar lander in its Artemis program. Starship launched from South Texas just before 9 a.m. ET on a planned test flight of about 10 hours. It was set to orbit Earth about six times before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, west of Chile. But SpaceX decided to bring it back to Earth after only about three hours. As part of the mission, Starship deployed 26 of the company's new, better-performing Starlink V3 internet satellites. Crowds watch this morning's Starship launch. Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images 🌎 SpaceX said in a mission summary: "Flight tests until this point have intentionally flown passively safe suborbital trajectories to maximize public safety while allowing for maximum learning." "By going to orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin." What's next: SpaceX plans to eventually "catch" Starship in the arms of its launch tower — a feat it's accomplished with Super Heavy, but not Starship — but didn't make the attempt this time. Go deeper.

SpaceX Starship goes orbital Starship launches from Starbase, Texas, this morning. Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket reached Earth orbit today for the first time before being brought home early, Alex Fitzpatrick reports. An explosion was visible on the company's livestream just after Starship touched down in the Pacific Ocean. The cause remains unclear. 🚀 The massive, fully reusable Starship is key to SpaceX's commercial spaceflight ambitions. NASA is counting on a modified version for use as a lunar lander in its Artemis program. Starship launched from South Texas just before 9 a.m. ET on a planned test flight of about 10 hours. It was set to orbit Earth about six times before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, west of Chile. But SpaceX decided to bring it back to Earth after only about three hours. As part of the mission, Starship deployed 26 of the company's new, better-performing Starlink V3 internet satellites. Crowds watch this morning's Starship launch. Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images 🌎 SpaceX said in a mission summary: "Flight tests until this point have intentionally flown passively safe suborbital trajectories to maximize public safety while allowing for maximum learning." "By going to orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin." What's next: SpaceX plans to eventually "catch" Starship in the arms of its launch tower — a feat it's accomplished with Super Heavy, but not Starship — but didn't make the attempt this time. Go deeper.

5 men arrested near a US-run air base are bailed as UK police probe whether there’s a link to Iran FAIRFORD, England (AP) — Five young British men arrested on explosives and terror charges near a U.S.-operated air force base in England were released on bail Monday, and counterterror detectives said they were investigating “multiple lines of inquiry,” including whether there is a link to Iran. https://apnews.com/article/uk-fairford-us-air-base-arrests-investigation-4b6fb8b4636c0c360bd7d3d2c44e8075?

What EGW did or did not do is not necessarily the right thing to do. Same goes for the pioneers. The denomination was essentially a legalistic cult for the first 40 years of its existence, according to EGW. Paul outlined the qualifications for pastoral office: 1 ¶ This [is] a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. 2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; 3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; 4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; 5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) 6 Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. There is a direct correlation between his role as husband and head of household and his ability to "rule" a church. Similar qualities are described in Titus: 7 For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; 8 But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate; 9 Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.

👋 Good morning! Welcome back, friends. Bend it like Leo: Please watch this absolutely ridiculous free kick scored by Lionel Messi on Sunday night against Columbus. The two-time reigning MLS MVP has a league-leading 21 goals in 24 games. In today's edition: A historic NFL Sunday, the MLB playoffs are set, Liberty upset Lynx, the Gators are back, USA wins Presidents Cup, Europe wins Laver Cup, Justin's final mound visit, and more. Yahoo Sports AM is written by Kendall Baker and Jeff Tracy. Let's sports...   🚨 ICYMI HEADLINES 🏀 WNBA playoffs begin: The Liberty upset the Lynx, 91-75, to push the No. 1 seed to the brink of elimination as all four best-of-three series tipped off on Sunday. Elsewhere: The No. 2 Valkyries (over Wings), No. 3 Aces (over Fever) and No. 4 Dream (over Mystics) all cruised to victory. ⚾️ Captain Christian: The Brewers have named Christian Yelich the first official captain in franchise history, making him just the third active MLB player to hold that rare honor. The others? Aaron Judge (Yankees) and Salvador Perez (Royals). 🏀 Dubs extend Curry: Stephen Curry has agreed to a two-year, $116 million extension with the Warriors that will keep him in Golden State through his 20th season, a milestone only 12 other players in NBA history have ever reached. ⚽️ City found guilty: Manchester City were found guilty on 114 of 115 charges relating to alleged breaches of the Premier League's financial regulations. Sanctions have not yet been decided, but could include fines, points deductions (today or retroactively), and even expulsion from the league. 🏈 Saturday suspensions: South Carolina suspended star edge rusher Dylan Stewart indefinitely after the projected first-round pick threw a punch at an Alabama player; USC suspended LB Desman Stephens II one game for the hit (and subsequent poor sportsmanship) that left Oregon QB Dante Moore concussed.   🏈 FRANTIC FINISHES SUNDAY FUNDAY: A FOOTBALL FEVER DREAM (Wagner Meier/Getty Images) "NFL RedZone" was invented for days like Sunday, which featured 12 one-score games (the most ever in a single day) and a healthy dose of frantic finishes. But even on a day as exciting as that, two games stood above the rest. Bedlam in Brazil: The Ravens beat the Cowboys, 34-31, in Rio de Janeiro on Tyler Loop's walk-off 56-yard field goal… which came just seven seconds after Brandon Aubrey's own game-tying kick. There have been nearly 15,000 NFL games played in the Super Bowl era, and this was the first in which both teams kicked a field goal in the last 10 seconds of the fourth quarter. (Brooke Sutton/Getty Images) Mile High Madness: The Broncos hung on to beat the Rams, 30-26, in an epic edition of "Sunday Night Football" that featured 739 yards of offense, three lead changes in the final five minutes and a questionable pass interference call that extended Denver's game-winning drive. After entering the season with historically high expectations, the Rams are now 1-2. More bangers: Sunday's other one-score games included the Commanders stunning the defending champs, Deshaun Watson leading an unlikely comeback in Cleveland, the Colts snapping a nine-game losing skid, Brock Purdy lifting the hobbled Niners to victory and the Raiders (3-0) matching their win total from last season (3-14). Commanders 33, Seahawks 31 Colts 19, Texans 17 Browns 21, Panthers 18 Steelers 30, Bengals 27 Giants 12, Titans 7 49ers 36, Cardinals 30 Lions 31, Jets 24 Vikings 23, Buccaneers 16 Bills 24, Chargers 16* Raiders 35, Saints 27 Not so close: They can't all be nail-biters. In Sunday's other two games, the Jaguars destroyed the Patriots, 35-6, as Drake Maye's disastrous season continued, while the Chiefs beat the rebuilding Dolphins, 24-10, to stay perfect. Week 3 recap: Winners and losers *Wild stat: The Chargers fell to 0-3 despite posting a +4 turnover margin against Josh Allen and the Bills, marking just the fifth time since 2015 that a team lost a game with a turnover margin that large. The worst part? The Chargers are three of those five teams.   ⚾️ PLAYOFF BASEBALL BRING ON THE POSTSEASON (Emilee Chinn/Getty Images) Six months and 162 games later, the MLB regular season has finally come to a close — and two teams needed every one of those games to book their spot in the postseason. Down to the wire: The Astros and Phillies snuck into the dance by the narrowest of margins on Sunday with playoff-clinching wins. Houston (81-81) won the AL West for the eighth time in the last 10 seasons, but in so doing became the first division champion in MLB history to finish without a winning record. Philadelphia (88-74) avoided disaster with a victory on Sunday, snapping a four-game losing streak in which they were outscored 23-3. It wasn't pretty, but any way you slice it they're back in the playoffs for the fifth straight year. (Bruno Rouby/Yahoo Sports) The matchups are set: While the Brewers, Dodgers, Rays and Guardians earned byes to the Division Series, the remaining eight teams begin the best-of-three Wild Card Round tomorrow, with the higher seeds hosting all three games. No. 3 Astros vs. No. 6 White Sox: The worst division winner ever takes on the first team ever to reach the playoffs after consecutive 100-loss seasons. Chicago's record from 2023-25 before going 84-78 this year? 162-324 (.333). No. 4 Yankees vs. No. 5 Red Sox: Incredibly, this will be just the seventh time these rivals have met in the playoffs. The last time was last year in this same round, when New York advanced thanks to Cam Schlittler's legendary Game 3 performance. No. 3 Braves vs. No. 6 Phillies: Atlanta dominated the season series, 9-4, and waltzed to the division title. But Philly has never lost a playoff series to its NL East foe, going 3-0 with wins in the 1993 NLCS, 2022 NLDS and 2023 NLDS. No. 4 Padres vs. No. 5 Cubs: San Diego enters the postseason on a tear, having won 17 of its last 20 games. But they'll have their hands full against baseball's highest-scoring team, led by the potentially unanimous NL MVP. Wild Card preview: Predictions, X-factors and more for every series *Well, for most teams: Sunday's Yankees-Orioles game, which had no bearing on seeding, was canceled due to the nor'easter that hit the East Coast this weekend, leaving both teams at 161 games played.   📸 SNAPSHOTS THROUGH THE LENS Make that 11 straight Presidents Cup victories for the Americans. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images) 🇺🇸 Medinah, Illinois For three days at the Presidents Cup, it looked as if the USA might have a repeat of the Ryder Cup on its hands, trailing the International team 10.5-7.5 entering Sunday. Instead, the Americans rallied for a dramatic comeback with a dominant showing in singles, winning 17-13 to capture their 11th straight edition of the biennial event. Classy move: Scottie Scheffler turned an ugly moment into a classy one after an obnoxious spectator yelled "Go Scottie!" during his opponent Nico Echavarria's backswing on the 14th tee box. "There's no place for that," barked Scheffler, who then conceded a 32-foot par putt to Echavarria to tie the hole. Team Europe captain Yannick Noah celebrates with his team. (James Fearn/Getty Images for Laver Cup) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 London, England Team Europe crushed Team World, 13-5, over the weekend to reclaim the Laver Cup and notch their sixth win in nine editions of the annual men's team tennis event. US Open and French Open champion Alexander Zverev defeated American Learner Tien on Sunday to clinch the deciding points. Meanwhile, in China: Czechia beat Ukraine to win the Billie Jean King Cup, marking the 12th time they've won the "World Cup" of women's tennis. The only nation with more titles? The United States, with 18. Youth movement. (Alex Menendez/USSF/Getty Images) 🇺🇸 Orlando, Florida The USMNT opened the international break with a 4-1 victory over Peru in a match that saw 11 Americans make their senior team debuts. That included eight teenagers, none younger than 16-year-old Cavan Sullivan. The future is now: "Mauricio Pochettino is overseeing a four-year project, culminating with the 2030 World Cup," writes Yahoo Sports' Steven Goff. "Many of the players introduced Saturday seem on the right path toward contributing to the program, which is still seeking a breakthrough moment on the global scene. Perhaps the answer lies with the kids." Photo finish. (Andrej Isakovic/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) 🇦🇿 Baku, Azerbaijan Mercedes' George Russell led from start to finish at Saturday's Azerbaijan Grand Prix, barely holding off Red Bull's Max Verstappen to claim his third victory of the season by just 0.196 seconds — the 11th-closest finish in Formula 1 history. Alone at the top: With eight races left, Mercedes (538 points) is running away with the Constructors' Championship, leading second-place Ferrari (378) by 160 points. That's on the strength of first-place Kimi Antonelli (302) and second-place Russell (236), who've combined for 11 wins and nine additional podiums through 15 races.   🐊 GATOR NATION WELCOME BACK, FLORIDA (Dustin Markland/Getty Images) After Florida's 52-28 rout of then-No. 4 Ole Miss on Saturday, first-year head coach Jon Sumrall quipped to reporters that "We have not arrived." Sorry, Jon, but yes you have. Welcome back: The Gators are 4-0 for the first time since 2019, and their victory over the Rebels vaulted them 13 spots to No. 8 in this week's AP poll, marking their first time back in the top 10 in five years. Florida's early success has been powered by an offense that's averaging 53.5 points per game, second-most in the nation. They've scored 50+ in three of their first four games for the first time since 1996, when they won their inaugural national championship. That high-octane offense has been paced by junior running back Jadan Baugh, who's rushed for 600 yards and 11 touchdowns to shatter Tim Tebow's school record for fastest to 10 rushing TDs in a season (7 games in 2007). All he does is win: In Sumrall's first two coaching gigs — at Troy (2022-23) and Tulane (2024-25) — his teams played for at least the conference title every season. There's a ways to go this fall, but Florida has already matched its entire win total from last year (4-8) just a month into his tenure in Gainesville. Well played, coach. (Yahoo Sports) Zoom out: A major narrative entering this season was the Big Ten's streak of three straight national championships, and whether it had supplanted the SEC as the top conference. Through four weeks, the SEC has pretty convincingly shut down that notion, boasting nearly twice as many teams in the top 25 (10) as the Big Ten (6). Two of the four teams that dropped out of the poll this week hail from the Big Ten, with none falling further than Penn State, which tumbled all the way from No. 13 after Saturday's stunning 24-20 upset loss at home to Wisconsin. The fourth-quarter collapse was brutal for the Nittany Lions faithful, but I know at least one fan in Happy Valley who enjoyed himself… What a shot! (University of Wisconsin) Week 4 recap: Winners and losers   📺 VIEWING GUIDE WATCHLIST: MONDAY, SEPT. 28 Soldier Field. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images) 🏈 Eagles at Bears Chicago hosts Philadelphia tonight (8:15pm ET, ABC/ESPN) at Soldier Field after learning that QB Caleb Williams could be sidelined for up to a month with a Grade 2 hamstring injury. In his place, 11-year veteran Case Keenum is expected to get his first NFL start since 2023. The calm before the storm: There isn't much else on the calendar today, but that changes in a big way starting tomorrow with NHL Opening Night and the MLB and WNBA playoffs. Get ready to lock in! Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events in your city.   🏈 LET'S PLAY TRIVIA TIME (Jay LaPrete/AP Photo) After another huge game (12 catches, 217 yards, 4 TD), Ohio State's Jeremiah Smith is making the case to be the No. 1 pick in April's NFL Draft. Question: Who was the last wide receiver to go No. 1 overall? Hint: 1996. Answer at the bottom.   ⚾️ END OF AN ERA FAREWELL, JUSTIN (Duane Burleson/Getty Images) Justin Verlander pitched the final game of his Hall of Fame career on Saturday, striking out six across 5.1 innings before an emotional farewell highlighted by a hug from his 7-year-old daughter, Genevieve. I defy you not to get choked up watching this. "I gave everything for this," Verlander said through tears while talking about his daughter. "I left home, she's in school, and I wasn't there. There's a level of commitment it takes to be great at something. ... I'm just so happy that I get the opportunity now to make up for lost time." Meanwhile, in Toronto: Max Scherzer emptied the tank on Sunday with 114 pitches across seven innings, striking out seven and allowing just one run in what might have been the final outing of his career, too. In typical Mad Max fashion, he snarled at his manager when he considered taking him out of the game in the sixth.   Trivia answer: Keyshawn Johnson, USC (selected by the Jets)

High-risk pregnancy doctors publish new standards for care under state abortion bans As physicians continue to navigate care for patients with complex pregnancies in states with abortion bans, a group of maternal-fetal medicine specialists has developed new guidelines to help providers in those states navigate legal risks for themselves and medical challenges for their high-risk patients. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/09/26/repub/high-risk-pregnancy-doctors-publish-new-standards-for-care-under-state-abortion-bans/?

CDC’s latest youth behavior report offers a narrower look at teen health For more than 35 years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has surveyed American high school students every two years about their health and behavior. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/09/28/repub/cdcs-latest-youth-behavior-report-offers-a-narrower-look-at-teen-health/?

Survey: Floridians sour on prospects for the property insurance market A majority of Florida homeowners say that despite proclamations by lawmakers and rating agencies, they don’t believe the property insurance market is improving in the state, with more than a quarter asserting that the market is getting worse. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/09/28/survey-floridians-sour-on-prospects-for-the-property-insurance-market/? 🤖 Florida seeks ChatGPT halt Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has asked for a temporary injunction against OpenAI and its ChatGPT, claiming the company can't properly regulate its own technology, Axios' Josephine Walker and Avery Lotz report. The legal fight could test states' ability to restrict AI companies despite the federal government declining to enact guardrails. Uthmeier said in a video posted to X: "Stop pretending [AI is] human. Stop selling it to kids. If Sam Altman meant what he said about slowing down, he can join our ask to the court. If he will not, we ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself: protect Florida families." OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri tells Axios that the company is "committed to working with Florida and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry — not just one company." Go deeper.

Second Temple Era Mikveh Found…then Moved A remarkable archaeological discovery has been made in Kiryat Gat (southern Israel), during excavations ahead of construction in the new Carmei Gat neighborhood. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered a large ritual bath (mikveh) dating to nearly 2,000 years ago, at the end of the Second Temple period. The IAA says the discovery provides evidence for a previously unknown early Jewish settlement in an area between the Judean lowlands and the northern Negev. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/second-temple-era-mikveh-found-then-moved/? Ancient Jerusalem: The Village, the Town, the City It’s made such an enormous impact on Western civilization that it’s hard to fathom how small its population really was—small compared even to the centers of contemporaneous empires to the east and to the west. Of course, I’m talking about Jerusalem. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/ancient-jerusalem/?

3 people are killed and 4 are injured in shooting at Detroit after-hours strip club, police say DETROIT (AP) — Three people were killed and four more were injured when an argument led to gunfire at an after-hours strip club Sunday morning in Detroit, officials said. https://apnews.com/article/shooting-crime-detroit-ef32bed9c42cdd6e1e2fc3ade37cca3b?

Trump administration set to roll out lower fuel economy standards for cars, light trucks President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social media account Saturday that the less stringent mileage requirements would "take the waste out of building cars in America" and save families "thousands on a new, beautiful and safe car," while boosting auto production in the U.S. Read more. What to know: News of the revised standards immediately drew rebukes from environmentalists. Without these standards, in 2035, cars could produce 22,111 more tons of carbon dioxide per year than under the Biden-era rules. The average new car in America sold for $50,089 in August, according to Kelley Blue Book data. At the same time, Americans are spending more on gas as Washington’s war with Iran disrupts the global flow of fuel. The national average price for a gallon of gas was $4.47 on Sunday, up from $4.09 a month ago, according to the AAA motor club. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ High airfares could stick around even if jet fuel prices fall Where things stand after Iran’s new pitch for a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz Gulf nations have found ways to keep oil flowing through the Iran war, but the costs are mounting

Trump administration airs 2024 Trump campaign ad in latest taxpayer-funded messaging The 30-second video, which is virtually identical to one that aired in 2024, shows President Donald Trump walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.” It ends with a message that says: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Read more. Why this matters: It is the latest in a series of ads promoting the president ahead of the midterms. Lawmakers of both parties have criticized the new series of ads for their inherently political nature and the use of taxpayer dollars. Spending on the latest ad already topped about $319,000, according to AdImpact, which tracks media spending. The White House maintains they are like the ones used by past presidents, though those previous ads promoted particular policies, not Oval Office occupants. The White House in a statement on Friday defended the use of what it described as “public service announcements” and dismissed criticism of them as “deeply dishonest.” RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump asked China’s president if he wants to buy US arms, ambassador says US and China release reciprocal $30 billion product lists for tariff cuts after Trump-Xi meeting Trump said he would campaign in midterm battlegrounds. He’s starting in deep red states instead House Democrats plan vast oversight of Trump administration. Impeachment is an option New Jersey Republican Tom Kean Jr. and Democrat Rebecca Bennett clash over war in Iran, tariffs ‘Lower 48' is a phrase to fight over in Alaska. It’s a fixture in the state’s US Senate contest Kennedy Center put off planned repairs despite known structural issues, former employees allege

Kevin, neurotic may not have been the correct term. Thank you Gregory for all that info. I still think this is going to be a big problem.

Vance Busted Using Bogus Numbers in His Big Crusade The vice president claimed his task force found $250 billion in fraud—but its own figures tell a murkier story. JD Vance’s claim that his White House task force uncovered $250 billion in fraud in just a few months is based on questionable accounting, a new report has revealed. The vice president has made fighting fraud a major part of his remit since Donald Trump put him in charge of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud in March. Earlier this month, Vance, 42, boasted at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas: “We found $250 billion of fraud just since the president made me the fraud czar.” But a New York Times analysis of the administration’s own records found some figures being used by Vance to show his task force’s successes are inflated, difficult to substantiate, or based on work that began before Trump returned to office—which one expert described as a “sleight of hand.” The White House says the administration has “uncovered” $245.7 billion, stopped another $62.9 billion annually, and enforced $59.1 billion through measures including criminal charges, settlements and penalties. But, unlike Vance’s boast, the ledger counts activity stretching back to January 2025 rather than the March 2026 creation of his task force, the Times reports. The administration has not released a detailed accounting that would let outsiders verify the totals, and a senior White House official told the Times that disclosing individual schemes could interfere with ongoing law enforcement investigations. The outlet also raises questions about what the administration is counting as fraud. Around half of the $245.7 billion supposedly “uncovered” comes from the Small Business Administration. When the Times sought an explanation, an agency spokeswoman pointed to estimates originating in a 2023 assessment of pandemic-era fraud and said approximately $122 billion had been identified as potentially fraudulent. Other supposed victories involve investigations that were well underway before Vance’s task force existed, the Times reports. The White House has highlighted more than $340 million in schemes targeted by the Justice Department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division during its first week. But nearly $280 million involved defendants sentenced in cases uncovered and prosecuted before either the fraud task force existed or Trump’s second term began. The biggest example was a $250 million pandemic food-aid fraud operation in Minnesota. Federal investigators were pursuing the case in 2022, and charges were filed that September, during Joe Biden’s presidency. The accounting also includes money the government has not actually recovered, the Times found. More than a third of the ledger’s $59.1 billion in “fraud enforced” is linked to $22.6 billion attributed to the Small Business Administration. Most of that represents delinquent pandemic loans sent for debt collection, which had previously been identified as potentially fraudulent during the Biden administration, rather than billions already clawed back from fraudsters. Another $2.5 billion touted as Medicaid fraud savings consists of federal reimbursements temporarily withheld from California and Minnesota. The Department of Health and Human Services itself says those deferrals are not permanent cuts and funding can ultimately be released once eligibility documentation is provided. Former Interior Department inspector general Mark Greenblatt told the Times that portraying the work behind older cases as having occurred during the lifespan of Vance’s task force amounted, in his view, to “a sleight of hand.” Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker said the administration’s headline numbers remain “assertions that have not been validated by independent parties.” The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has estimated annual federal losses at between $233 billion and $521 billion, while experts told the Times that the Trump administration has intensified efforts to identify and combat it. The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Vance for comment. https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-found-to-be-fudging-the-numbers-in-his-big-crusade-against-fraud/? ps:Typical from those that know trump!!

Two of China’s giant pandas arrive in Atlanta Ping Ping and Fu Shuang arrived in the US on Sunday as part of Beijing’s long tradition of “panda diplomacy.” The male and female giant pandas will live at Zoo Atlanta for the next 10 years, though visitors will have to wait about a month to see them as they undergo a routine quarantine. Chinese leader Xi Jinping called the pandas an “envoy of friendship” between the US and China, continuing a half-century tradition of pandas living in US zoos on loan from Beijing. Ping Ping, meaning “peace,” and Fu Shuang, meaning “double blessings,” arrived a day after Xi’s state visit to Washington, where the two countries extended a trade truce and agreed to establish an AI hotline. + Read more: Two giant pandas arrive at Zoo Atlanta + Video: China’s long tradition of panda diplomacy with the US

SpaceX’s massive Starship is finally going to orbit SpaceX is preparing to launch its Starship rocket into orbit for the first time today, a major step before the vehicle becomes fully operational. Getting here hasn’t been smooth, though: Since 2023, SpaceX has launched 13 prototypes from Texas, with nearly half ending in unintended explosions. Liftoff today is expected during a 75-minute window opening at 8:15 a.m. ET, though the launch could be delayed or postponed, as previous attempts have been. If successful, Starship will deploy a new generation of Starlink satellites that could boost its internet business and orbital data centers to power energy-sucking AI models. SpaceX ultimately plans to use the rocket for carrying NASA astronauts to the moon and, eventually, pursuing Elon Musk’s ambitions for Mars. + Live updates: Unprecedented test flight of SpaceX’s Starship will aim for orbit + Read more: SpaceX’s massive Starship is facing its biggest test yet

Trump’s taxpayer-funded ads draw bipartisan criticism The Trump administration is using taxpayer money to air television ads featuring the president, including one in which he vows “a final battle” against communists and the “fake news” media. But the most provocative part of the new 30-second spot may be the tagline viewers saw during NFL broadcasts Sunday: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” That money inevitably comes in part from Americans who oppose Trump’s agenda, meaning they, too, are helping pay to promote his message. The White House says the spots are patriotic public service announcements, but government watchdogs and members of both parties have raised questions about whether they cross legal lines barring federal funds from being used for political propaganda. Adding to the scrutiny is the timing: The ads are airing just weeks before the midterm elections, potentially blurring the boundaries between government messaging and campaigning. + Watch: Trump stars in taxpayer-funded video + Read more: Ads portray the president as a ‘relentless, square-jawed strongman’ + Inside Trump’s midterm strategy ps:Pathetic!!