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Генштаб ЗСУ вказує на те, що жовтень став рекордним із кількості пусків ударних безпілотників РФ
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Засуджені – мешканець Харкова та двоє киян, які були завербовані до початку повномасштабного вторгнення
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Оператор відзначає скорочення споживання електроенергії: на 9:30 у вівторок воно на 4,5% нижче, ніж напередодні
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SEATTLE — Unionized machinists at Boeing voted Monday to accept a contract offer and end their strike after more than seven weeks, clearing the way for the aerospace giant to resume production of its bestselling airliner and generate much-needed cash.

Leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers district in Seattle said 59% of members who cast ballots agreed to approve the company’s fourth formal offer and the third put to a vote. The deal includes pay raises of 38% over four years, and ratification and productivity bonuses.

However, Boeing refused to meet strikers’ demand to restore a company pension plan that was frozen nearly a decade ago.

The contract’s ratification on the eve of Election Day clears the way for a major U.S. manufacturer and government contractor to restart Pacific Northwest assembly lines that the factory workers’ walkout have idled for 53 days.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a message to employees Monday night that he was pleased to have reached an agreement.

“While the past few months have been difficult for all of us, we are all part of the same team,” Ortberg said. “We will only move forward by listening and working together. There is much work ahead to return to the excellence that made Boeing an iconic company.”

According to the union, the 33,000 workers it represents can return to work as soon as Wednesday or as late as Nov. 12. Boeing’s CEO has said it might take “a couple of weeks” to resume production in part because some could need retraining.

The contract decision is “most certainly not a victory,” said Eep Bolaño, a Boeing calibration specialist based in Seattle who voted in favor of ratification. Bolaño said she and her fellow workers made a wise but infuriating choice to accept the offer.

“We were threatened by a company that was crippled, dying, bleeding on the ground, and us as one of the biggest unions in the country couldn’t even extract two-thirds of our demands from them. This is humiliating,” Bolaño said.

Leaders of IAM District 751 had endorsed the latest proposal, saying they thought they had gotten all they could though negotiations and the strike.

“It is time for our members to lock in these gains and confidently declare victory,” the union district said before Monday’s vote. “We believe asking members to stay on strike longer wouldn’t be right as we have achieved so much success.”

The average annual pay of Boeing machinists is currently $75,608 and eventually will rise to $119,309 under the new contract, according to the company.

A continuing strike would have plunged Boeing into further financial peril and uncertainty.

CEO Kelly Ortberg, an outsider who started at Boeing only in August, has announced plans to lay off about 10% of the workforce, about 17,000 people, due to the strike and a series of other factors that diminished the company’s reputation and fortunes this year.
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Millions of U.S. voters are set to cast their ballots Tuesday as they decide whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump will be the country’s next leader.

Polls heading into Election Day indicated a tight race, particularly in a group of battleground states that will be key to deciding the winner.

Both candidates made stops Monday in Pennsylvania, one of those closely watched states, holding a series of rallies including nearby each another in the Pittsburgh area as they projected confidence in their own campaigns.

“Tomorrow is Election Day, and the momentum is on our side,” Harris told her supporters gathered at a historic steel facility that nodded to Pittsburgh’s history as the heart of the country’s steel industry. “Our campaign has tapped into the ambitions, the aspirations and the dreams of the American people. And we know it is time for a new generation of leadership in America.”

“We must finish strong,” Harris added. “Make no mistake, we will win.”

Trump, addressing his supporters at a sports arena, said another Trump administration would “launch the most extraordinary economic boom the world has ever seen.”

“If you vote for Kamala, you will have four more years of misery, failure and disaster,” Trump said. “Our country may never recover. Vote for me and I will deliver rising wages, soaring income, and a colossal surge of jobs, wealth and opportunity for America of every race, religion, color and creed. Every one of them.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s Election Day, more than 81 million Americans cast early votes, either in person at polling stations or by mail.

The total is more than half the 158 million who voted in the 2020 election, when President Joe Biden defeated Trump. It was a Democratic victory that to this day Trump says he was cheated out of by fraudulent voting rules and vote counts.  

Dozens of court decisions, often rendered by Trump-appointed judges, went against him as he attempted to challenge the 2020 results. But Sunday, he told a Pennsylvania rally he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 when Biden assumed office.   

Trump has said he will only accept Tuesday’s outcome if he concludes that the election is conducted fairly, which Democratic critics have said they assume means only if he wins. Both Trump and Harris have assembled vast teams of lawyers to contest voting and vote-counting issues as they materialize Tuesday during the day, into the evening and the following days, until a clear winner emerges.  

A Trump victory would make him only the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland in the 1880s. He would also be the first felon to serve as president as he awaits sentencing later in November after being convicted of 34 charges linked to his hush money payment to a porn film star ahead of his successful 2016 run for the presidency.   

Trump has often punctuated his campaign with angry broadsides at his Democratic opponents, calling them the “enemy within” the country and a threat to the country’s future. He has belittled Harris as a person of limited intellect and said she would be the pawn of other world leaders in dealing with international relationships.   

Harris for weeks has claimed she is the underdog in the campaign but lately expressed more optimism and now says she expects to become the country’s 47th president. If elected, she would be the first woman to be the American leader, its first of South Asian descent and its second Black president after Barack Obama.  

She has described Trump as an “unserious man,” saying he would be a threat to American democracy and unhinged by any normal presidential constraints after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that presidents cannot be prosecuted for any wrongdoing linked to their official actions.   

Pollsters say the country’s voters are deeply divided between the two candidates. It is an assessment reflected in how major media outlets look at the possible outcome just ahead of the official Election Day.  

Last-minute polling shows the Harris-Trump race all but tied in the battleground states, within the margin of statistical error.  

ABC News polling shows Trump winning five of the seven battleground states, but The Washington Post says its aggregation of polls has Harris ahead in four. The New York Times says Trump is ahead in four, Harris two, and the race tied in Pennsylvania.   

The importance of battleground states cannot be overstated.  

U.S. presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but through the Electoral College, which turns the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 of the states awarding all their electoral votes to the winner in those states. Nebraska and Maine allocate theirs by both statewide and congressional district vote counts.  

The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the biggest states hold the most sway in determining the overall national outcome, with the winner needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to claim the presidency. Pennsylvania alone has 19 electoral votes.  

Polls show either Harris or Trump with substantial or comfortable leads in 43 of the states, enough for each to get to 200 electoral votes or more. Barring an upset in one of those states, the winner will be decided in the seven remaining battleground states, where both Harris and Trump have staged frequent rallies, all but ignoring the rest of the country for campaign stops.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters
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30 російських безпілотників були локаційно втрачені в різних регіонах України, ще один – повернувся в Росію
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Washington — Just hours before tens of millions of U.S. voters headed to the polls for the country’s presidential election, U.S. intelligence agencies issued a dire warning about ramped up influence operations – some apparently aimed at convincing Americans to turn on each other.

The statement late Monday cautioned voters to beware of a new wave of influence operations aimed at undermining trust and confidence in the U.S. election process, adding that a flood of fake videos and articles meant to spark outrage and inflame tensions is likely to only accelerate, especially in swing states that could determine the outcome of the presidential race.

“Russia is the most active threat,” according to the warning issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency, or CISA.

“Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences,” they said.  

“We anticipate Russian actors will release additional manufactured content with these themes through election day and in the days and weeks after polls close,” the statement added. “These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials.”

The last-minute warning follows a series of declassified assessments that U.S. intelligence officials have issued in the weeks and months leading up to Tuesday’s election.

Yet while most votes have been cast without issue, organizations representing state election officials cautioned there are likely to be some disruptions.

“As with any Election Day, it is important to note operational issues may arise,” according to the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State.

“Voting locations could open late, there could be lines during busy periods, or an area could lose power,” they said in a statement. “These are inevitable challenges that will arise on Election Day.”

There have also been other efforts to try to derail the election.

CISA said it has observed “small scale incidents,” including efforts to take down official election websites with distributed denial of service attacks, as well as several attempts to blow up or set fire to ballot drop boxes.

The most recent declassified assessment, issued just two weeks ago, warned Russia, Iran and China “remain intent on fanning divisive narratives to divide Americans and undermine Americans’ confidence in the U.S. democratic system consistent with what they perceive to be in their interests.” 

It further warned that intelligence obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies made them “increasingly confident” that Russia was starting to engage in plans “aimed at inciting violence,” and that Iran might follow Moscow’s lead. 

The information shared in the new warning builds on that assessment, pointing to a flurry of new activity linked to Russia.

Specifically, the new statement blames Kremlin-linked actors for posting and amplifying an article falsely claiming that U.S. officials in key states are orchestrating a plan to rig the election by using tactics such as ballot stuffing and cyberattacks.

It also links Russian actors to a video of a fake interview of an individual claiming a scheme in the Southwestern state of Arizona sought to tip the vote in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with fake overseas ballots and doctored voter rolls.

U.S. intelligence agencies had already attributed responsibility for other social media videos to Russian influence actors — including two last week claiming to show Haitian immigrants voting multiple times and purporting to show ballots in Pennsylvania being ripped up.  

The latest statement also warned that Iran “remains a significant foreign influence threat to U.S. elections,” citing, in part, previously Iranian efforts to hack the campaign of Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump. 

VOA has reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York for a response to the new U.S. allegations.

Russia, Iran and China have repeatedly rejected previous U.S. assessments of their influence operations.

The Russian Embassy in Washington late Monday in an email to VOA dismissed the newest U.S. intelligence warning as “baseless.”

“The Embassy has not received either any proof for these claims during its communications with U.S. officials, or any inquiries regarding the narrative being promoted by the press,” the embassy said, further describing Washington’s accusations of Russian disinformation campaigns “an unfortunate tradition” for U.S. elections.

The Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York has yet to respond to VOA’s request for comment.

Despite concerns about the potential of Russian and Iranian influence operations, the U.S. expressed confidence earlier Monday that other foreign efforts to hack into the country’s election infrastructure in order to alter the vote tally would come up short. 

In a briefing with reporters, CISA officials said there is no evidence to suggest foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran and China have the wherewithal to infiltrate and manipulate the country’s election infrastructure.

“I can say with great confidence that I do not believe that a technical hack of our elections in the way that it would materially impact the presidential election is possible,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly.

“Given the multiple layers of safeguards, the cybersecurity protections, the physical access controls, the preelection testing of equipment for accuracy, the postelection audits, it would not be possible for a bad actor to tamper with or manipulate our voting systems in such a way that it would have a material impact on the outcome of the presidential election, certainly not without being detected,” Easterly told reporters.

Some of the confidence stems from the decentralized way U.S. elections are run — with each state using its own, individual system to record and tally ballots. But it also follows years of preparation by CISA, working with state and local election officials across the United States.

Those efforts have included more than 700 cybersecurity assessments, and hundreds of election exercises and training sessions since the start of 2023.

Additionally, none of the state voting systems are connected to the internet, and an estimated 97% of U.S. voters will be casting ballots in jurisdictions that produce paper records as a backup.

“Our election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said. “The election community has never been better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections.”

As of late Monday, CISA estimated that more than 77 million Americans had already cast ballots during the early voting period, with tens of millions more expected to vote in person on Election Day.

That confidence, however, has been tempered by concerns that foreign actors could play on mundane disruptions, like power outages, or cyberattacks on other U.S infrastructure to spark fears across the U.S.

“As with any Election Day, it is important to note operational issues may arise,” according to the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State.

“Voting locations could open late, there could be lines during busy periods, or an area could lose power,” they said in a statement. “These are inevitable challenges that will arise on Election Day.”

Already, there have also been other efforts to try to derail the election.

CISA said it has observed “small scale incidents,” including efforts to take down official election websites with distributed denial of service attacks, as well as several attempts to blow up or set fire to ballot drop boxes. 

“We expect that these types of incidents and other forms of disruptions will continue on Election Day [and] in the days that follow,” Easterly told reporters, adding despite cause for concern there have been “no significant impacts to election infrastructure.” 

Still, CISA and its state and local partners are wary that even though the U.S. is on track, foreign influence campaigns could alter the perception among voters due to what U.S. officials have described as “a firehose of disinformation.”

Some of the efforts, like those attributed to Russia and Iran, have gained widespread attention.

Others, like Chinese efforts against Republican lawmakers and candidates seen as critical to Beijing, appear to be more targeted.

And gauging the effectiveness of these efforts, especially the recent videos attributed to Russia, is difficult to determine.

“The successfulness, I would say, is quite small,” said Brian Liston, a senior threat intelligence analyst with Recorded Future’s Insikt Group.

“We have not really seen these videos, or this content break out beyond social media or on Telegram,” Liston told VOA.

But there are concerns, however, that some of these narratives could gain traction on more mainstream social media platforms.

“Since Elon Musk took over Twitter and gutted content moderation and really changed the purpose of X, we’ve seen it become just a hotbed of mis and disinformation,” said Audrey McCabe, an information accountability analyst at Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog and advocacy organization.

McCabe told reporters Monday that the changes to X have rippled across the social media space.

“[It] has allowed other platforms to lower their standards for content moderation and what they’re doing to protect users,” she said. “And so, we’re seeing an increase of this stuff everywhere, including on Meta, and other platforms as well.”

And if some of the foreign influence efforts spread far enough, it could help exacerbate exiting tensions.

“They are deliberately finding narratives to try to stoke partisan discord and inflame domestic tension and pit Americans against one another, and we cannot let them succeed,” a senior CISA official said, who briefed reporters last Friday on the condition of anonymity.

“We’ve seen how these disinformation campaigns have led to very real threats of violence targeting these public servants, and that should be unacceptable,” the official added, citing repeated threats against election officials across the country. 

CISA officials on Monday said that state and local election officials have been in close contact with law enforcement agencies, and that precautions have been put in place to better protect election workers, election officials and even the ballots themselves.

They also emphasized that so far, there have been no credible or specific threats to polling locations.

“We’ve not seen specific reporting about violence at polling places,” Easterly said Monday in response to a question from VOA. “I certainly don’t want voters to feel at all intimidated about going to voting locations.” 
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Have you ever wondered why America’s presidential elections always fall on a Tuesday? The tradition stretches back almost 200 years to a time when the U.S. looked very different from how it does today.
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PHILADELPHIA — The $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk ‘s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday.

Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta — ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are not chosen by chance — did not immediately give a reason for the ruling.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had called the sweepstakes a scam that violates state election law and asked that it be shut down.

The winners of the sweepstakes did not win by chance but are instead paid spokespeople for the group, Musk’s lawyers said in court Monday.

Musk lawyer Chris Gober said the final two recipients before Tuesday’s presidential election will be in Arizona on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

Chris Young, the director of America PAC, testified that the recipients are vetted ahead of time, to “feel out their personality, (and) make sure they were someone whose values aligned” with the group.

The disclosures prompted a lawyer for District Attorney Larry Krasner to call the effort a “scam” that is “designed to actually influence a national election.”

Musk’s lawyers, in closing arguments, called it “core political speech” given that participants sign a petition endorsing the U.S. Constitution. They said Krasner’s legal bid to shut down the sweepstakes under Pennsylvania law was moot because there would be no more Pennsylvania winners before the program ends Tuesday.

Krasner believes the giveaways violates state election law and contradict what Musk promised when he announced them during an appearance with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ‘s campaign in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 19: “We’re going to be awarding a million dollars randomly to people who have signed the petition every day from now until the election,” Musk vowed.

Young also acknowledged that the PAC made the recipients sign nondisclosure agreements.

“They couldn’t really reveal the truth about how they got the money, right?” asked Krasner lawyer John Summers.

“Sounds right,” Young said.

In an Oct. 20 social media post shown in court, Musk said anyone signing the petition had “a daily chance of winning $1M!”

Summers grilled him on Musk’s use of both the words “chance” and “randomly,” prompting Young, who also serves as the PAC’s treasurer, to concede the latter was not “the word I would have selected.”

Young said the winners knew they would be called on stage but not specifically that they would win the money.

Musk did not attend the hearing. He has committed more than $70 million to the super PAC to help Trump and other Republicans win in November.

“This was all a political marketing masquerading as a lottery,” Krasner testified Monday morning. “That’s what it is. A grift.”

Lawyers for Musk and the PAC said they do not plan to extend the lottery beyond Tuesday. Krasner said the first three winners, starting on Oct. 19, came from Pennsylvania in the days leading up to the state’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.

Other winners came from the battleground states of Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. It’s not clear if anyone has yet received the money. The PAC pledged they would get it by Nov. 30, according to an exhibit shown in court.

More than 1 million people from the seven states have registered for the sweepstakes by signing a petition saying they support the right to free speech and to bear arms, the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Krasner questioned how the PAC might use their data, which it will have on hand well past the election.

“They were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”

Krasner’s lawyer, John Summers, said Musk is “the heartbeat of America PAC,” and the person announcing the winners and presenting the checks.

“He was the one who presented the checks, albeit large cardboard checks. We don’t really know if there are any real checks,” Summers said.

Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta was presiding over the case at Philadelphia City Hall after Musk and the PAC lost an effort to move it to federal court.

Krasner has said he could still consider criminal charges, as he’s tasked with protecting both lotteries and the integrity of elections. In the lawsuit, he said the defendants are “indisputably violating” Pennsylvania’s lottery laws.

Pennsylvania remains a key battleground state with 19 electoral votes and both Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly visited the state, including stops planned Monday in the final hours of the campaign.

Krasner — who noted that he has long driven a Tesla — said he could also seek civil damages for the Pennsylvania registrants. Musk is the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. He also owns the social media platform X, where America PAC has published posts on the sweepstakes, and the rocket ship maker SpaceX. 
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miami — A Turkish businessman was arrested Monday in Miami and charged with helping Venezuela’s state-run oil company circumvent U.S. sanctions.

Taskin Torlak, 37, was arrested while attempting to return to Turkey, the Justice Department said in a statement.

According to court documents, Torlak operated several companies involved in the shipment of sanctioned oil. Starting in 2020, he allegedly started working with unnamed co-conspirators and companies from Ukraine, China, Indonesia and elsewhere to transport Venezuela’s crude oil at a time when most Western buyers stayed clear of the South American country for fear of undermining U.S. sanctions aimed at removing President Nicolas Maduro.

Torlak and his associates allegedly hid the identities of transaction beneficiaries to enable U.S. banks to unknowingly process payments related to the illegal oil transports.

“We could use one of the clean names to avoid money getting stuck somewhere,” he allegedly wrote in communications with one of the co-conspirators.

To evade detection, the chartered oil tankers frequently turned off their automated tracking systems, a mandatory safety device, when transporting the illegal Venezuelan crude. They also frequently changed the vessels’ registry to fly so-called flags of convenience. 

It wasn’t immediately possible to locate an attorney for Torlak. 

The U.S. started ratcheting up sanctions on Venezuela following Maduro’s first re-election in 2018, in which several key opponents were barred from running. Since then, the self-declared socialist leader has deepened his grip on power, this year claiming he won a third six-year term in the face of evidence presented by his opponents that the vote was stolen. The U.S. responded with another round of sanctions against officials accused of obstructing the vote and carrying out human rights abuses. 

“The Justice Department will continue to hold accountable those involved in criminal efforts to circumvent sanctions imposed on the Maduro regime,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement.
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Quincy Jones, the multi-talented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson’s historic “Thriller” album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists, has died at 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalog that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.

Jones kept company with presidents and foreign leaders, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for “Roots” and “In the Heat of the Night,” organized President Bill Clinton’s first inaugural celebration and oversaw the all-star recording of “We Are the World,” the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.

Lionel Richie, who co-wrote “We Are the World” and was among the featured singers, would call Jones “the master orchestrator.”

In a career that began when records were still played on vinyl at 78 rpm, top honors likely go to his productions with Jackson: “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” were albums near-universal in their style and appeal.

Jones’ versatility and imagination helped set off the explosive talents of Jackson as he transformed from child star to the “King of Pop.”

On such classic tracks as “Billie Jean” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Jones and Jackson fashioned a global soundscape out of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&B and jazz and African chants. For “Thriller,” some of the most memorable touches originated with Jones, who recruited Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on the genre-fusing “Beat It” and brought in Vincent Price for a ghoulish voiceover on the title track.

“Thriller” sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone and has contended with the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits 1971-1975” among others as the best-selling album of all time.

“If an album doesn’t do well, everyone says ‘it was the producers fault’; so if it does well, it should be your ‘fault,’ too,” Jones said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2016. “The tracks don’t just all of a sudden appear. The producer has to have the skill, experience and ability to guide the vision to completion.”

The list of his honors and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography “Q”, including 27 Grammys at the time (now 28), an honorary Academy Award (now two) and an Emmy for “Roots.” He also received France’s Legion d’Honneur, the Rudolph Valentino Award from the Republic of Italy and a Kennedy Center tribute for his contributions to American culture.

He was the subject of a 1990 documentary, “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” and a 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoir made him a best-selling author.
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Unionized factory workers at Boeing are voting Monday whether to accept a contract offer or to continue their strike, which has lasted more than seven weeks and shut down production of most Boeing passenger planes.

A vote to ratify the contract would clear the way for the aerospace giant to resume airplane production and bring in much-needed cash. If members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers vote for a third time to reject Boeing’s offer, it would plunge the company into further financial peril and uncertainty.

In its latest proposed contract, Boeing is offering pay raises of 38% over four years, as well as ratification and productivity bonuses. IAM District 751, which represents Boeing workers in the Pacific Northwest, endorsed the proposal, which is slightly more generous than one the machinists voted down nearly two weeks ago.

“It is time for our members to lock in these gains and confidently declare victory,” the union district said in scheduling Monday’s vote. “We believe asking members to stay on strike longer wouldn’t be right as we have achieved so much success.”

Union officials said they think they have gotten all they can though negotiations and a strike, and that if the current proposal is rejected, future offers from Boeing might be worse. They expect to announce the result of the vote Monday night.

Boeing has adamantly rejected requests to restore traditional pensions that the company froze nearly a decade ago. Pensions were a key issue for workers who voted down previous offers in September and October.

If machinists ratify the latest offer, they would return to work by Nov. 12, according to the union.

The strike began Sept. 13 with an overwhelming 94.6% rejection of Boeing’s offer to raise pay by 25% over four years — far less than the union’s original demand for 40% wage increases over three years.

Machinists voted down another offer — 35% raises over four years, but still no revival of pensions — on Oct. 23, the same day Boeing reported a third-quarter loss of more than $6 billion. However, the offer received 36% support, up from 5% for the mid-September proposal, making Boeing leaders believe they were close to a deal.

Boeing says average annual pay for machinists is $75,608 and would rise to $119,309 in four years under the current offer.

In addition to a slightly larger pay increases, the proposed contract includes a $12,000 contract ratification bonus, up from $7,000 in the previous offer, and larger company contributions to employees’ 401(k) retirement accounts.

Boeing also promises to build its next airline plane in the Seattle area. Union officials fear the company may withdraw the pledge if workers reject the new offer.

The strike drew the attention of the Biden administration. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su intervened in the talks several times, including last week.

The labor standoff — the first strike by Boeing machinists since an eight-week walkout in 2008 — is the latest setback in a volatile year for the company.

Boeing came under several federal investigations after a door plug blew off a 737 Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Federal regulators put limits on Boeing airplane production that they said would last until they felt confident about manufacturing safety at the company.

The door plug incident renewed concerns about the safety of the 737 Max. Two of the plane’s crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. The CEO whose effort to fix the company failed announced in March that he would step down. In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for deceiving regulators who approved the 737 Max.

As the strike dragged on, new CEO Kelly Ortberg announced about 17,000 layoffs and a stock sale to prevent the company’s credit rating from being cut to junk status. S&P and Fitch Ratings said last week that the $24.3 billion in stock and other securities will cover upcoming debt payments and reduce the risk of a credit downgrade.

The strike has created a cash crunch by depriving Boeing of money it gets when delivering new planes to airlines. The walkout at Seattle-area factories stopped production of the 737 Max, Boeing’s best-selling plane, and the 777 or “triple-seven” jet and the cargo-carrying version of its 767 plane.

Ortberg has conceded that trust in Boeing has declined, the company has too much debt, and “serious lapses in our performance” have disappointed many airline customers. But, he says, the company’s strengths include a backlog of airplane orders valued at a half-trillion dollars.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The two parties that have dominated Puerto Rican politics for decades are losing their grip as they face the stiffest competition yet from a younger generation fed up with the island’s corruption, chronic power outages and mismanagement of public funds.

For the first time in the island’s governor’s race, a third-party candidate has a powerful second lead in the polls ahead of the U.S. territory’s election Tuesday — and some experts say there’s a possibility he could win.

“This election is already historic,” said political analyst and university professor Jorge Schmidt Nieto. “It already marks a before and an after.”

Juan Dalmau is running for Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement, established in 2019. A Gaither international poll this month shows Dalmau closing in on Jenniffer González, a member of the New Progressive Party and Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress. She beat Gov. Pedro Pierluisi in their party’s primary in June.

Gaither’s poll shows Dalmau with 29% of support versus González’s 31% as he nearly caught up with her since a different poll in July showed him with only 24% compared with González’s 43%. Coming in third was Jesús Manuel Ortiz, of the Popular Democratic Party, followed by Javier Jiménez of Project Dignity, a conservative party created in 2019.

Under pressure

Puerto Rican politics revolve around the island’s status, and up until 2016, the New Progressive Party, which supports statehood, and the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the status quo, would split at least 90% of all votes during general elections, Schmidt said.

But that year, U.S. Congress created a federal control board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances after the government announced it was unable to pay a more than $70 billion public debt load. In 2017, Puerto Rico filed for the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy in history.

The debt was accrued through decades of corruption, mismanagement and excessive borrowing, with Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority still struggling to restructure its more than $9 billion debt, the largest of any government agency.

Puerto Ricans have largely rejected and resented the board, created a year before Hurricane Maria slammed into the island as a powerful Category 4 storm, razing the electrical grid.

In 2020, Pierluisi won but received only 33% of votes. His opponent from the Popular Democratic Party received 32%. It marked the first time either party failed to reach 40% of votes.

The power outages that have persisted since the elections, coupled with the slow pace of hurricane reconstruction, have frustrated and angered voters.

Under Pierluisi, the government signed contracts with two companies, Luma Energy and Genera PR, which together oversee the generation, transmission and distribution of power. Outages have persisted, with the companies blaming a grid that was already crumbling before the hurricane hit due to a lack of maintenance and investment.

“Disastrous things have occurred during this four-year term, especially with the electric energy,” Schmidt said. “It has affected everyone, regardless of social class.”

Voters, he said, are viewing Tuesday’s elections “as a moment of revenge.”

Dalmau said he would oust both companies in an “organized fashion” within six months if he becomes governor. Ortiz said he would cancel Luma’s contract, while González has called for the creation of an “energy czar” that would review potential Luma contractual breaches while another operator is found.

However, no contract can be canceled without prior approval of the federal control board and Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau.

The candidates also are under pressure to create affordable housing, lower power bills and the general cost of living, reduce violent crimes, boost Puerto Rico’s economy, with the island locked out of capital markets since 2015, and improve a crumbling health care system as thousands of doctors flock to the U.S. mainland.

Dalmau, who suspended his campaign for two weeks in mid-October after his wife had emergency brain surgery, also has said he would eliminate tax breaks for wealthy U.S. citizens from the mainland.

Apathy dominates

Despite their promises to turn Puerto Rico around, candidates face persistent voter apathy.

In 2008, 1.9 million out of 2.5 million registered voters participated in that year’s election, compared with 1.3 million out of 2.3 million in 2020.

This year, nearly 99,000 new voters registered and more than 87,000 reactivated their status, according to Puerto Rico’s State Elections Commission.

“A much higher number was expected,” Schmidt said.

He noted that those middle age and older favor González and her pro-statehood party, while those younger than 45 “overwhelmingly” favor Dalmau, which means that if a majority of young voters participate on Tuesday and fewer older ones do so, he might have a chance of winning.

The Bad Bunny factor

The months leading up to the Nov. 5 elections have been contentious.

Reggaetón superstar Bad Bunny paid for dozens of billboard ads criticizing Puerto Rico’s two main parties. In response, the governor’s New Progressive Party financed a billboard ad suggesting an obscenity in reference to Bad Bunny.

On Friday, the singer published a page-long letter in a local newspaper deriding González’s pro-statehood party.

While the artist has not endorsed any local officials, the sole person he recently began following on Instagram was Dalmau.

On Sunday, he briefly appeared at Dalmau’s closing campaign. A hush fell over a crowd of tens of thousands of people as Bad Bunny spoke before singing, saying he doesn’t endorse a specific candidate or party.

“My party is the people. … My party is Puerto Rico,” he said as he later praised the alliance between Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement.

Meanwhile, a so-called “cemetery of corruption” was set up Thursday in the capital, San Juan, featuring large black-and-white pictures of nearly a dozen politicians from the island’s two main parties who have been charged or sentenced by federal authorities in recent years. It was created by Eva Prados with the Citizen Victory Movement, who is running for Puerto Rico’s House. By Friday, police reported that the pictures were destroyed or stolen.

As the race heats up, the number of formal complaints about alleged electoral crimes also has increased. These include people who say they received confirmations for early voting when they made no such request.

A persistent question

Voters on Tuesday also will be asked for a seventh time what Puerto Rico’s political status should be.

The nonbinding referendum will feature three choices: statehood, independence and independence with free association, under which issues like foreign affairs, U.S. citizenship and use of the U.S. dollar would be negotiated.

Regardless of the outcome, a change in status requires approval from the U.S. Congress.

The push for a change in status doesn’t depend on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump win in the U.S. mainland.
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Although Halloween has passed, pumpkins are still an indispensable part of the fall season in the United States. Americans are expected to spend nearly $800 million on the decorative gourds this year. For many, heading to a pumpkin patch and picking a pumpkin is an annual tradition. Alexey Gorbachev has the story, narrated by Anna Rice
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New York — Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands won the men’s race at the New York City Marathon on Sunday and Sheila Chepkirui of Kenya took the women’s event.

Both runners pulled away from their closest competitors in the final few hundred meters to come away with their first victories in the race.

Nageeye was step-for-step with 2022 champion Evans Chebet before using a burst heading into Central Park to come away with the win in 2 hours, 7 minutes, 39 seconds. Chebet finished 6 seconds behind.

Chepkirui was running New York for the first time and pulled away from defending champion Hellen Obiri in the women’s race. Chepkirui started to run marathons in 2022. She finished the race in 2:24.35. Obiri finished nearly 15 seconds behind.

Obiri was looking to be the first repeat champion since Mary Keitany of Kenya won three in a row from 2014-16. Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya finished third, giving the African nation the top three spots.

Tamirat Tola, the men’s defending champion and Paris Olympic gold medalist, finished fourth, right behind Albert Korir.

The top Americans finished sixth in both races. Conner Mantz led the men and Sara Vaughn the women. Vaughn was in the lead group heading into Mile 20 when they entered the Bronx before she dropped off the lead pack.

Vaughn was geared up to run Chicago before COVID-19 kept her from competing in that race. She was a late addition to this marathon.

The day got started with an upset in the men’s wheelchair race as three-time defending champion Marcel Hug was beaten by Daniel Romanchuk, who won in 2018 and 2019. Susannah Scaroni won the women’s wheelchair race. It was her second victory in New York, also taking the 2022 race and giving Americans winners in both events — the first time that has happened.

The 26.2-mile course took runners through all five boroughs of New York, starting in Staten Island and ending in Central Park. This is the 48th year the race has been in all five boroughs. Before that, the route was completely in Central Park when it began in 1970. The first race had only 55 finishers while more than 50,000 are expected to compete this year.

The weather was perfect to run in with temperatures in the lower 40s when the race started. Last year, it was 61 degrees when the race started.
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orlando, florida — The news rippled through Treasure Island, Florida, almost like a third storm: The mayor planned to move off the barrier island a month after Hurricane Helene flooded tens of thousands of homes along the Gulf Coast and two weeks after Hurricane Milton also ravaged the state. 

Mayor Tyler Payne’s home had been flooded and damaged beyond repair, he explained in a message to Treasure Island residents, and he and his husband can’t afford to rebuild. He also was stepping down as mayor. 

“While it pains my heart to make this decision in the midst of our recovery from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, this is the best decision for me and my family,” Payne, who had held the office for more than three years and was a fourth-generation Treasure Island resident, said Monday. 

Up and down Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast, residents are making the same calculations about whether they should stay or go. Can they afford to rebuild? What will insurance cover? People considering moving to Florida are contemplating whether it’s worth the risk to come to a hurricane-prone state. 

These existential questions about Florida’s appeal are raised regularly after the state experiences a busy hurricane season, such as in 2004, when four hurricanes crossed the Sunshine State. 

If moves into the state offer any answer, then hurricanes have served little as deterrents. Florida’s population has grown by one-third to 23 million residents in the two decades since Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan ravaged the state. Last year, Florida added more than 365,000 residents, second only to Texas among states. 

On the other hand, there are signs that Florida’s white-hot real estate market has cooled. Sales of single-family homes were down 12% in September compared with the same time in the previous year. But interest rates, rising home prices and skyrocketing insurance costs likely played bigger roles than the recent hurricanes. 

“Florida recovers much faster than you think,” said Brad O’Connor, chief economist for Florida Realtors. 

What happens after a storm? 

Studies of hurricanes along the Gulf Coast have shown that any outbound migration tends to be short-lived, and if people do leave, it’s usually a short-distance move, such as from a barrier island to the mainland. Older people with more financial resources are more likely to return to devastated communities. 

When it comes to the housing market, there may be an initial shock to the supply as homeowners wait for reimbursement from insurance companies to fix up their homes or sell them. 

But in the three years after a hurricane, home prices in areas of Florida that were hit by one are 5% higher on average than elsewhere in the state because of smaller supply, according to a study of the impact of hurricanes on Florida’s housing market from 2000 to 2016. New homeowners tend to be richer than previous ones because wealthier buyers can absorb price increases. 

Other factors that determine how quickly communities bounce back include whether homes were insured, the speed of insurance reimbursements, and whether there are enough construction workers. Because of stricter building codes implemented in the years after Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in 1992, newer homes withstand hurricanes better than older ones, O’Connor said. 

“If a property is damaged and uninsured, and the homeowner says, ‘I don’t want to deal with this,’ there are always people willing to scoop up that property because it’s valuable land,” he said. “People build new homes under the new codes and there’s less of an impact from hurricanes.” 

Short term and long term 

Recent storms offer examples what happens to communities, both short term and longer term. 

In Lee County, home to Fort Myers, Hurricane Ian made landfall two years ago in what had been one of the fastest growing parts of the United States. Population growth slowed afterward to 1.5% from 4.4% before the storm. The number of households dropped from about 340,000 to about 326,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

In 2019, three-quarters of all United Van Lines truck moves were into Lee County and a quarter were outbound, but that dropped to two-thirds inbound and a third outbound in 2023 to 2024, the company told The Associated Press. 

The share of people in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s increased, as did the share of men with no spouse or partner, reflecting an influx of construction and recovery workers. The share of the white population dropped while it increased for the Hispanic community. The percentage of utility and transportation workers in the county jumped, according to the Census Bureau. 

Bay County in the Florida Panhandle, where Michael made landfall as the first Category 5 hurricane on the continental U.S. in a quarter century in 2018, offers a portrait of longer term trends. Four years later, Bay County had recovered its pre-hurricane population, which dropped almost 6% in the year after the storm. 

Since Michael, the county has grown more diverse, wealthier and older, with the median age rising from 39.6 to 41.4 and more people identifying as multiracial or Hispanic. The share of households earning $200,000 or more went from 4.3% before the hurricane to 8.3% in 2022 in a sign that some of the least affluent residents couldn’t afford to rebuild or return. 

Treasure Island’s mayor 

In his message to constituents, Payne said he would still stay connected to the Treasure Island community because his parents plan to rebuild on the barrier island, one of a string of beach towns along the Gulf of Mexico west of St. Petersburg known for motels, restaurants and bars lining the street. Payne, an attorney who also is an executive in his family’s eyeglass-lens manufacturing business, said in his message that his decision to move was “difficult.” 

“I completely empathize with the difficult decisions that are facing so many of our residents,” he said. 
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CHICAGO — Billboards with the words “STOP Child Gender Surgery.” Pamphlets warning about endangering minors. “PROTECT PARENT RIGHTS” plastered on church bulletins.

As voters in nine states determine whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions, opponents are using parental rights and anti-transgender messages to try to undermine support for the ballot proposals.

The measures do not mention gender-affirming surgeries, and legal experts say changing existing parental notification and consent laws regarding abortions and gender-affirming care for minors would require court action. But anti-abortion groups hoping to end a losing streak at the ballot box have turned to the type of language many Republican candidates nationwide are using in their own campaigns as they seek to rally conservative Christian voters.

“It’s really outlandish to suggest that this amendment relates to things like gender reassignment surgery for minors,” said Matt Harris, an associate professor of political science at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, a state where abortion rights are on the ballot.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated constitutional protections for abortion, voters in seven states, including conservative Kentucky, Montana and Ohio, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to curtail them.

“If you can’t win by telling the truth, you need a better argument, even if that means capitalizing on the demonization of trans children,” said Dr. Alex Dworak, a family medicine physician in Omaha, Nebraska, where anti-abortion groups are using the strategy.

Tying abortion-rights ballot initiatives to parental rights and gender-affirming is a strategy borrowed from playbooks used in Michigan and Ohio, where voters nonetheless enshrined abortion rights in the state constitutions.

Both states still require minors to get parental consent for abortions, and the new amendments have not yet impacted parental involvement or gender-affirming care laws in either state, said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.

“It’s just recycling the same strategies,” Cohen said.

In addition to Missouri and Nebraska, states where voters are considering constitutional amendments this fall are Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota.

Missouri’s abortion ballot measure has especially become a target. The amendment would bar the government from infringing on a “person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”

Gov. Mike Parson and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, both Republicans, have claimed the proposal would allow minors to get abortions and gender-affirming surgeries without parental involvement.

The amendment protects reproductive health services, “including but not limited to” a list of items such as prenatal care, childbirth, birth control and abortion. It does not mention gender-affirming care, but Missouri state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican and lawyer with the conservative Thomas More Society, said it’s possible that could be considered reproductive health services.

Several legal experts told The Associated Press that would require a court ruling that is improbable.

“It would be a real stretch for any court to say that anything connected with gender-affirming care counts as reproductive health care,” said Saint Louis University law and gender studies professor Marcia McCormick. She noted that examples listed as reproductive health care in the Missouri amendment are all directly related to pregnancy.

As for parental consent for minors’ abortions, she pointed to an existing state law that is written similarly to one the U.S. Supreme Court found constitutional, even before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Most states have parental involvement laws, whether requiring parental consent or notification. Even many Democratic-leaning states with explicit protections for transgender rights require parental involvement before an abortion or gender-affirming care for minors, said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

A state high court would have to overturn such laws, which is highly unlikely from conservative majorities in many of the states with abortion on the ballot, experts said.

In New York, a proposed amendment to the state constitution would expand antidiscrimination protections to include ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health care and autonomy.” The constitution already bans discrimination based on race, color, creed or religion.

The measure does not mention abortion. But because it is broader, it could be easier for opponents to attack it. But legal experts noted that it would also not change existing state laws related to parental involvement in minors getting abortions or gender-affirming care.

The New York City Bar Association released a fact sheet explaining that the measure would not impact parental rights, “which are governed by other developed areas of state and federal law.” Yet the Coalition to Protect Kids-NY calls it the “Parent Replacement Act.”

Rick Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, the group behind South Dakota’s proposed amendment said it uses the Roe v. Wade framework “almost word for word.”

“All you have to do is look back at what was allowed under Roe, and there were always requirements for parental involvement,” Weiland said.

Caroline Woods, spokesperson for the anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund, said the measure “means loving parents will be completely cut out of the equation.” Weiland said those claims are part of a “constant stream of misinformation” from opponents.

If this campaign strategy failed in Michigan and Ohio, why are anti-abortion groups leaning on it for the November elections?

Ziegler, the University of California, Davis, law professor, said abortion-rights opponents know they may be “playing on more favorable terrain” in more conservative states like Missouri or in states like Florida that have higher thresholds for passing ballot measures.

“Anti-abortion groups are still looking for a winning recipe,” Ziegler said.
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