Greetings! Happy National Bison Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇯🇲 Hurricane Melissa hollowed a Jamaican seaport. Black River’s wooden storefronts and stilted homes buckled as storm surge and days of rain turned streets into canals and livelihoods into wreckage. Local officials counted mounting deaths and dozens missing while clinics rationed diesel for generators and antibiotics for flood-borne infections. Aid groups staged tarps, chlorine tablets, and ready-to-eat rations as washed-out bridges throttled delivery speed. Fisheries that fed the town lost boats and nets, a shock that ripples through food prices for months. Schools and courts shifted to shelters, a civic pause that becomes economic drag by the day. Insurers and reinsurers will tally billions across Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba, but the arithmetic cannot price memory or salt-stained ledgers. Recovery moves at the speed of bulldozers and paperwork in equal measure.

🇹🇿 Hassan claims a disputed landslide. Official results put Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan above 97% in a vote opposition parties say was neither free nor fair. Observers flagged media restrictions, arrests, and opaque tabulation that sapped credibility before ballots were counted. Courts may become the only venue for challenge, though remedies rarely reverse margins this large. Currency traders will watch for capital controls if protests hit tourism and ports at Dar es Salaam. Donors will calibrate programs against governance risk, especially in energy and health where performance contracts can outrun politics. The ruling party’s dominance narrows legislative scrutiny at the exact moment public finances need it most. Landslides settle quickly; legitimacy takes longer.

🥫 Judges unlock SNAP during the shutdown. Federal courts ordered the administration to tap emergency reserves so Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments go out on schedule despite lapsed appropriations. State agencies now have a legal green light to load benefits, easing pressure on food banks that were preparing for a tidal wave. Retailers in low-income ZIP codes will dodge a cash-flow cliff that a missed cycle would have triggered. The ruling buys time, not certainty, since reserves cover weeks rather than months. Governors and mayors want Congress to fund through the fiscal quarter to stabilize planning. For households, the win is simple: the grocery run happens this week. Policy stuttered; hunger cannot.

🛩️ Ex–Green Beret ordered arrested after no-show. A federal judge issued a warrant for a former Special Forces soldier linked to the failed 2020 Venezuela raid when he skipped a court appearance in Florida. Prosecutors say the case blends unlicensed arms brokering and mercenary contracting with false paperwork. Defense counsel cites health issues and disputes the scope of the indictment. The warrant increases the odds of pretrial detention and restrictions on communications if he’s taken into custody. International contacts and encrypted devices will sit at the center of discovery battles. Intelligence agencies are not parties to the case but hover in the background of every filing. Court calendars are unforgiving; so are bench warrants.

🚨 Threat charges span synagogues and a mosque. An Alabama man faces counts tied to threatening rabbis, an imam, and others across multiple Southern states, according to newly filed complaints. Investigators say messages referenced specific houses of worship, prompting security surges and federal coordination. Prosecutors will push for detention on danger grounds while defense counsel contests intent and capacity. Faith leaders called for vigilance without panic and emphasized interfaith support networks. Civil-rights groups renewed calls to track hate-motivated threats with better data standards. The legal threshold is speech becoming menace, a line crossed in context, not slogans. Communities will feel safer when locks are just hardware again.

⚾ Dodgers force a winner-take-all. Los Angeles beat Toronto 3–1 behind another strong outing from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, stretching the World Series to Game 7. The Dodgers’ bullpen bent but did not break through the eighth, leaving runners stranded in scoring position. Toronto’s offense managed scattered hits without sequencing rallies into runs. Managers burned high-leverage arms, a choice that narrows options for the finale. Television partners and ticket markets could not have scripted better drama or ratings. Historical odds tilt slightly toward the home club, but Game 7 is a coin flipped with sweaty hands. Baseball saves its best punchline for the last box score.

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That’s all for today!

Much obliged and many thanks for reading and sharing today’s newsletter.

See you tomorrow!