JQJO — General news · Page 13

Two episodes into Season 28, South Park turns the joke on itself in Halloween special The Woman in the Hat. After a government shutdown costs Stan’s dad his USGS job and pushes the family into his grandfather’s retirement home, Stan says the show “sucks now,” and the kids launch a “South Park Sucks Now” crypto meme. A White House seance follows, overseen by Pam Bondi with Brendan Carr and Kristi Noem, as Donald Trump is haunted by Melania. Stephen Miller, Ed and Lorraine Warren, and Kyle’s cousin being arrested cap it off, the crypto exposed as a scam.

Kayla Nicole celebrated Halloween by channeling Toni Braxton, recreating the He Wasn't Man Enough video in an Oct. 31 Instagram post and calling Braxton an icon and a legend. Fans praised the choice, while some read the lyrics as a pointed nod to ex Travis Kelce, now engaged to Taylor Swift. Nicole hasn't commented on the engagement; at a Sept. 11 New York Fashion Week event, she brushed off a question, later telling People that the opinions of others only matter if she lets them. Last year, she dressed as Ciara.

Cursor introduced Composer, its first claimed competitive coding model, alongside Cursor 2.0, an IDE modeled after Visual Studio Code. Composer, built with reinforcement learning and a mixture-of-experts architecture, is pitched as a frontier model “4x faster than similarly intelligent models.” Cursor’s internal benchmarks suggest it trails the best frontier models in intelligence, tops open and speed-oriented rivals, and far outpaces them in speed. A new multi-agent interface lets developers run many agents in parallel via git worktrees or remote machines to compare results. Early reactions in a small sample cite high cost and a perceived capability gap.

George Springer, who left Game 3 clutching his lower right side, will return atop the Blue Jays order for World Series Game 6, batting leadoff as the DH. His comeback moves Bo Bichette, also dealing with injury, back to second base and the cleanup spot after two games at DH. Toronto must face Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who threw a complete game in Game 2. Springer hit .309/.399/.560 with 32 homers and a team-best 4.8 bWAR this season, and has four postseason homers, including the ALCS Game 7 winner.

LSU women’s coach Kim Mulkey skipped her postgame news conference and was “heartbroken,” assistant Bob Starkey said, after athletic director Scott Woodward’s ouster. The upheaval followed LSU’s firing of football coach Brian Kelly despite a $54 million buyout and Governor Jeff Landry’s unusually direct role, including declaring Woodward would not select the next coach and invoking Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher buyout. Woodward, who hired Mulkey for the Tigers’ 2023 title, left despite a buyout exceeding $6 million. Starkey praised Woodward’s longtime support for coaches and student-athletes at LSU and Texas A&M.

An escalating measles outbreak along the Arizona Utah border has surpassed 150 cases in two months, and a likely infection in Salt Lake County is stalling the response after the patient refused testing, questions, and location details, officials said. Vaccination rates remain low at 78.4 percent for Mohave County kindergartners and 80.7 percent in southwest Utah, well below the 95 percent needed to curb spread. Utah County reports eight cases. With 1,648 US cases across at least 41 states, experts warn the country could lose its measles elimination status.

Blue Origin cleared a key hurdle for New Glenn’s second flight, igniting seven BE-4 engines on the Cape Canaveral pad for 38 seconds at 9:59 pm EDT Thursday. The run hit full power for 22 seconds, topped nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust, and included staged shutdowns to mimic a barge landing burn. With the hold-down firing done, crews will roll the rocket back to install a fairing holding NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars probes. A launch could come as soon as November 9, after which the spacecraft will loiter near Earth until next November before departing for Mars.

The Pentagon has shifted recent anti-smuggling strikes from the Caribbean to the eastern Pacific, where officials say intelligence more clearly links cocaine routes to the US. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the last four strikes were in the Pacific, part of 15 since September that have killed at least 61 people. Yet lawmakers say the administration hasn't shown evidence the boats carried drugs or identified those aboard, and briefers admitted they lack metrics for success. Officials now say the campaign targets cocaine, contradicting President Donald Trump's fentanyl claims, while bipartisan demands for legal justification and documents remain unanswered.

Google is opening early access to Gemini in Google Home. Gemini adds smarter, contextual commands — including multi-device control and tune recognition with details about artists or albums. Subscribers to Google Home Premium Advanced can have Gemini analyze camera footage, label events in video history, and surface key clips from a given day. Early access requires requesting entry in the Google Home app and enabling Google Groups settings; Public Preview members aren’t eligible. Accepted users will be notified when Gemini is ready.

Ohio’s redistricting commission approved new U.S. House maps Friday, a bipartisan vote that could strengthen Republicans in two Democratic-held districts and aid President Donald Trump’s efforts to hold a slim congressional majority. The move came amid intensifying national map fights: Virginia Democrats advanced a constitutional amendment to bypass a bipartisan panel for 2026, while Indiana and Kansas eyed special sessions. In Ohio, residents blasted the plan as gerrymandered; commissioners said it averts a harsher 13-2 map and a costly referendum fight. Republicans currently hold 10 of Ohio’s 15 seats; Democrats vow to defend targets and pursue flips.