Joseph Cooper

UPDATED MONDAY. The official toll is four soldiers dead and 39 hurt, 19 of them critical as of Sunday. The dead are Sgt. Morgan Wong and Ptes. Shaun Farrell, Aidan Goulding and Hayden Lykkemark. The division commander says a sudden wind shift drove a nearby grass fire over troops training with live munitions, and doubts that a gas line was hit. Cause under investigation. Earlier, unconfirmed: military sources told Global News at least seven people were killed and dozens injured, Global News reports, citing multiple military sources, who say a live-fire training exercise struck a gas line or gas well around 4 p.m. Saturday, causing an explosion. The Canadian Armed Forces has not confirmed the toll or the cause. Alberta hospitals went to Code Orange and burn patients were flown to Edmonton. The fire, pushed by winds up to 100 km/h, was being held by Saturday midnight. Earlier: An unspecified incident at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in eastern Alberta on Saturday caused a fast-moving fire that killed and injured people on the base, Defence Minister David McGuinty said. Officials have not said what the incident was or how many people were hurt. Driven by high winds, the fire crossed the base fence; no evacuation order was in effect Saturday night.

The Astoria cookie shop backed by Danny Meyer's investment fund closed its remaining stores, roughly two dozen in New York, New Jersey and Texas, at the end of business on Thursday, October 1. Staff were told the money had run out. Four days earlier, co-founder and former CEO Peter Phillips had sued the company and its controlling investor, saying he had been pressed to sign paperwork on more than $640,000 in small-business loans he personally guaranteed.

The cookie chain that put a pink box on every TikTok feed has closed at least 57 locations in 2026, at least 55 more franchises are listed for sale, and its CEO has told franchisees: 'It's my fault where we are today.' The headline number is the closures. The more revealing one is the gap between what a Crumbl costs to open and what it earns once it does.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu's dark climate satire, starring Cruise as an aging oil magnate, opened to about $8 million in the US, fell 60% in its second weekend and has made around $35 million worldwide against a budget reported at up to $180 million. Loss estimates run from $150 million to $245 million. Ben Affleck has defended it: punish movies that take risks, he says, and 'you're going to get a bunch of shitty, homogenized movies.' The studio that has to absorb the lesson now belongs to Skydance.

Insta360's Luna cameras are the first real challenge to DJI's Osmo Pocket line. On paper they win on resolution: 8K against DJI's 4K. DJI wins on battery life, storage and dynamic range. But the deciding factor for American buyers has nothing to do with specs: DJI does not officially sell the Pocket 4 or 4P in the United States.

An unusually strong El Niño, arriving on top of a marine heat wave, has sent warm-water species up the California coast: the first sea turtle nests ever recorded on the US West Coast, a fish never before seen in the state, a venomous sea snake, whale sharks and hammerheads. Anglers are thrilled. Scientists are more cautious, because the animals that cannot swim away are the ones that lose.

UPDATED SUNDAY MORNING. Trudy peaked overnight at 105 mph, Category 2, while its center stayed offshore. It is now about 115 miles southwest of Cabo Corrientes and will start moving away from mainland Mexico this afternoon. Mexico has dropped all hurricane warnings; a tropical storm warning covers Playa Pérula to San Blas and Las Islas Marías. Another 2 to 6 inches of rain, locally 12 in total, could still cause life-threatening flooding in Jalisco. Rapid weakening begins tonight. Live map, radar and forecast cone inside.

Apple's first foldable opened for preorder on Friday and was gone within minutes, with US delivery estimates jumping from October 23 to late January 2027. Preorders are reselling on eBay for up to $5,000. Demand is not Apple's problem. Production is: final-assembly yields were reported at just over 60% in September, and one of the hardest-hit suppliers is Samsung Display, whose parent company says the iPhone Duo has been good for sales of its own foldable.

UPDATED SUNDAY. France's interior minister now counts 1,800 arrests nationwide and more than 500 police, gendarmes and firefighters injured, and later reports put arrests above 2,000. Nineteen people have been detained in the Limoges area. The prime minister blames the 'ultra-left' and is holding a crisis meeting; Macron is due to address the nation Sunday evening, according to France's ICI radio. Saturday: More than 15 people have been arrested over the fire and rioting in Limoges, the local prosecutor says, and the prime minister puts the national toll at about 1,200 arrests and 150 officers injured. The mayor and prefect say Limoges's 1883 city hall is 'largely lost': the roof has fallen onto the floors below, two-thirds of the facade is gone, and the 43-metre bell tower collapsed at about 9:20 p.m. No one was hurt. The prefect blames rioters, 'not protesters.' Nationally, about 400 people were arrested and Macron says those responsible will be punished. Earlier: Part of a protest march in Limoges broke into the city hall on Saturday afternoon and set a fire on the ground floor that spread to one wing and the roof, according to local media and a witness quoted by AFP. It came at the end of a nationwide day of student and cost-of-living protests that organisers say drew 800,000 people. Clashes were also reported in Paris, Marseille and Lyon, and about 272 people had been arrested by mid-afternoon.

At a military graduation on Saturday, Egypt's president said his term ends in 2030, that the constitution 'will not be touched,' and that potential future leaders will be put through a 30-month program at the military academy first. Then he asked for an emergency session of parliament to authorise action to defend Saudi Arabia, which has been hit by Houthi attacks on its main airport and Aramco. Parliament meets on Sunday.

UPDATED SUNDAY AFTERNOON. Police have named the dead as Adrian Cole, 6, and Nicholas Schafer, 35, both of McPherson, and released the 34-year-old driver without charges pending toxicology tests and a mechanical inspection of her pickup, after consulting the Sedgwick County DA. The cause is still undetermined. Earlier Sunday: Still no charges or motive; police say the driver has been cooperative, had a valid license and no warrants, and they are asking for video. McPherson is mourning the two killed. Police say the dead are a 6-year-old boy and a 35-year-old man from McPherson, who were not related, and 11 people ages 5 to 68 were hospitalized, none believed to have life-threatening injuries. The driver, a 34-year-old Garden City woman, is in custody; two children were in her truck. Police have not said why it happened or what charges she may face. Earlier: A pickup truck drove onto the fields at the Stryker Sports Complex in northeast Wichita during a youth soccer game on Saturday afternoon, killing a child and an adult and injuring several others, police said. The driver was taken into custody and two juveniles were also in the vehicle. Police have not said whether it was deliberate, and there is no ongoing threat.

'You Can See Everything,' the A24 documentary Nathan Fielder co-directed with Lance Oppenheim, opened in theaters on Friday. Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, invited a film crew into their home in the weeks before she reported to prison in 2023. Fielder was supposed to stay behind the camera. He did not. It runs nearly three hours, critics are using the word 'bonkers,' and it has a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.

UPDATED FRIDAY NIGHT. Zacharia has now posted her own goodbye, in the past tense: 'It was an honor to work for him.' Earlier: two officials say Katie Zacharia is being removed as press secretary five days into the job, the shortest tenure in modern history. Her one briefing was widely panned. But the problem that sank her was put there by the president: his Truth Social post introduced her as an attorney. She is not one. She failed the California bar in 2011 and never retook it. Anyone could have checked that in a minute on the State Bar's public website. Nobody did until reporters did.

UPDATED FRIDAY. Police have named two of the dead: first-year teacher Megan Lambert, 25, and Rhoam Summer, 5. The families of the 8- and 11-year-old boys asked that their names be withheld. The shooter, a 16-year-old former Silver Rail student, opened fire in a mixed-age special needs classroom. A teacher threw her phone at him and tackled him, and Kaylub Giamanco, 36, a father of two Silver Rail girls, followed him inside and shot him. Thursday night: Police Chief Mike Krantz has confirmed the toll: three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher. Another child and another teacher are in hospital. Authorities say the 16-year-old shooter was killed by a community member who pursued him into the school, and officials say he got in by shooting through locked doors. Earlier: a shooter opened fire inside Silver Rail Elementary School in southeast Bend shortly before 1 p.m. on Thursday. Law enforcement sources say three children and one adult were killed. The suspected shooter, reported by sources to be 16, was shot dead inside the school before officers reached him. Police have not said who fired that shot. No official death toll has been released, and the counts circulating do not yet agree.

Between 250 and 350 stores across six chains lost their cold chain overnight, with fridges pushed to 50°C for about six hours, food destroyed and fires reported. The technique was not an exploit of the refrigeration itself: attackers triggered the automatic defrost cycle, a function every commercial fridge has by design. And as of Monday morning, 1,590 of these controllers were still sitting on the open internet in France alone — findable with a search engine.

UPDATED OCTOBER 15. His representative has confirmed the cause of death was suicide, and Bryan Cranston has written a tribute calling him 'my sweet son.' The memorial on Friday is being held at The Mitte: Arts and Cultural Center in Brownsville — the district his grandparents' foundation seeded in 1998 and which he ran as its president. The national obituaries had the second act wrong: he did not simply die 'in Texas.'

UPDATED, WITH A CORRECTION. She was arraigned Monday night on two counts of second-degree assault and released on $20,000 cash bail; prosecutors say the top count carries two to seven years. But those felonies concern the police officer and the nurse, after she was off the aircraft. What happened to the two injured flight attendants sits in a different court in a different borough, as a federal petty violation. In court her lawyers disclosed a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and Parkinsonism, said she had missed several doses of medication, and said she fell and hit her head during the flight.

Trump has approved death by Army firing squad for the Fort Hood shooter, and the coverage is calling it the first US military execution in 60 years. It is longer than that: the Army has not shot a condemned man since Eddie Slovik in 1945, 81 years ago. Two things nobody is saying — the Army's own regulation specifies lethal injection, not a firing squad; and 'judgement day has finally come' is premature, because federal habeas review has not begun.

UPDATED OCTOBER 15. On camera, in front of his own CNN anchor, David Ellison pledged 'complete and total editorial independence' and backed CNN's lawsuit over White House access. That is a promise, not a protection, and the board that would make it binding still does not exist. Meanwhile HBO Max and Paramount+ are confirmed to become one service, layoffs are coming with no number attached, and SKYD lost about a quarter of its price in one session. Paramount closed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, creating Skydance. The coverage is calling it a media behemoth, which it is. The part worth your attention: two of America's four major television news organisations now answer to the same owner, and the only binding protection for their independence exists because twelve states sued — the DOJ's own consent order in June did not include one. There is now a 180-day clock running.

UPDATED OCTOBER 17 with the NTSB preliminary report: in the last 29 seconds the helicopter's sound changed and warning horns consistent with high and low main-rotor RPM alerts sounded, after it slowed almost to a hover 800 feet up and then descended rapidly in a right turn. The three dead were reporter Eliana Moreno, 38, pilot George Marciniw, 70, and Edy Gutierrez Mejia, 29, who was on the ground. No cause has been determined. Earlier: The helicopter has been confirmed as NewsChopper4, flying for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 — but operated by a contractor, Angel City Air. Two people were aboard, a reporter and a pilot. The third person killed was on the ground and had nothing to do with any of it. A trade journalist who has reviewed the live on-board transmission says cockpit warning alerts sounded before the aircraft went down, and a witness says it came straight down. The NTSB will decide what that means, not us.

Every obituary will call him the Sultan of Sequins and list Cher, Carol Burnett and Tina Turner, and every one of them will be right. But Mackie's real subject was never glamour. It was illusion — the gap between what a garment is and what it appears to be. At about 22 he sketched Marilyn Monroe's Happy Birthday dress and got no credit for it. Fourteen years later he put Carol Burnett in a pair of curtains with the rod still attached.

He died peacefully at home in Los Angeles on Wednesday. No cause has been given. Every obituary will say he voiced Optimus Prime for forty-two years — but the sentence his family chose to end their statement with was not written by Hasbro or by a screenwriter. It was said to him in a car in 1984 by his brother Larry, a Marine captain who came home from Vietnam with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

He died peacefully at home in Toluca Lake on Tuesday. No cause has been given. Everyone will lead with Frank-N-Furter, Pennywise and Wadsworth, and they should. But a stroke took his body in 2012 and left him the one instrument he had always been best with — and he worked with it for fourteen more years.

UPDATED. At 8:40am on Wednesday a wall of water arrived in northern Nepal from the Tibetan side of the border, with no rain behind it. Scientists believe an ice-and-rock avalanche fell into the Lhende Khola and released a surge that raised the Trishuli nine metres in thirty minutes. The toll has climbed from dozens to more than 160. And the debris is still sitting in the river: a barrier lake is filling behind it, and ICIMOD says a second flood is considered imminent.