America


Prediction Markets Under Fire • California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff , along with seven other lawmakers, urged the federal government to rein in prediction markets to prevent people from profi ting on wildfi res and other disasters. As deadly fi restorms


raged in Los Angeles County in January 2025, displacing families and killing 31 people, bets fl owed into Polymarket, a company that bills itself as the largest platform for predicting global events, where it posed frequently asked questions like how fast would the blazes grow? How long would it take to contain them? How much would be destroyed? According to a letter sent


from nine senators to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction market platforms, Polymarket accepted more than $1.2 million in predictions, or bets, on the fi res.


3-Year Degrees Gain Popularity • As of this spring, 26 states have a college that off ers at least one reduced-credit, three-year bachelor’s, according to the nonprofi t research group RAND. Advocates say these programs are a solution to the college aff ordability crisis and a godsend for non-traditional students. Critics, however,


worry that they’ll narrow too much what students learn, confuse employers, limit graduate school


20 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2026


options, and create


headaches in fi elds that require state licenses.


Writer Reinstated After Kirk Posts • An arbitrator ordered The Washington Post to reinstate a Black opinion writer fi red over social media posts following last year’s killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The ruling said the newspaper did not have suffi cient cause to terminate Karen Attiah, who at the time was the last Black full-time member of the Post’s opinion desk. Kirk, 31, was shot and


killed Sept. 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University. After his killing, Attiah


posted to her Bluesky account: “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is . . . not the same as violence.”


Monster Marlin Shatters Record • Damon Sacco had never seen anything like the fi sh he and fellow anglers fought for hours in August in the waters off Massachusetts. As it rose from the depths, it looked like a glimmering blue spaceship. Sacco, a longtime Massachusetts charter fi shing boat captain, thought he was dealing with an enormous shark. He was wrong. Sacco


and his client, Walter Chapman, landed the largest Atlantic blue marlin


Epstein Girlfriend to Stay in Jail


G


hislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her sex traf icking conviction and be freed from prison was rejected by


a federal judge, who said the claims by Jeff rey Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate that new evidence had emerged were “demonstrably meritless.” Maxwell filed a habeas petition last December seeking to set aside her conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence, claiming exonerating information was withheld and false testimony presented at her trial, resulting in a “complete miscarriage of justice.” Judge Paul A. Engelmayer rejected her arguments,


saying in his written ruling they “all or almost all are frivolous” and that she had presented nothing that could upend the outcome of her trial. Epstein, a millionaire financier, was found dead at a New


York federal jail in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex traf icking charges.


ever caught off the U.S. East Coast. The massive billfi sh,


more than 11 feet in length, weighed 1,260 pounds when they got it back to Falmouth.


False Report Costs $9.25 Million • An Alabama jury awarded $9.25 million in damages after fi nding that The New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa. Kai Spears, who


played for the University


of Alabama men’s team, sued the Times in 2023 after it published a report that indicated he was a passenger in a car involved in the shooting. Days later, the Times acknowledged its error in an editor’s note and corrected the story. Three other basketball


players from the school were present at the January 2023 shooting, which killed a 23-year-old mother. In the lawsuit, Spears claimed the inaccurate reporting had caused him emotional distress and forever linked him with a murder.


Briefly Noted


AP PHOTO/JON ELSWICK


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