Sunday, October 5, 2025
Hamas delegation arrives in Egypt for ceasefire talks
Hamas' delegation, led by its chief negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, arrived in Egypt ahead of Monday's indirect talks with Israel over a ceasefire in Gaza.
The group said in a statement that it arrived "to begin negotiations on mechanisms for a ceasefire, withdrawal of occupation forces, and prisoner exchange."
United States President Donald Trump said on Sunday that talks with Hamas have been "very positive," adding that he "was told" the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan "should be completed this week."
https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Hamas-delegation-arrives-in-Egypt-for-ceasefire-talks/64926979
Israeli opposition promises 'safety net' for Netanyahu
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid (pictured) addressed United States President Donald Trump in a speech on Sunday, reassuring the US administration that his party will provide a "safety net" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order for the Gaza peace plan to be implemented without any obstructions.
"From this moment, this is no longer just my commitment to the Israeli public and the hostages' families, but also to the American administration. ... We will do everything to ensure the deal is carried out as planned," he stated.
Lapid underlined that Netanyahu now has no political reason not to go through with the deal. "He can set an agreed-upon election date with me and receive insurance against his extreme and irresponsible partners," he commented.
https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Israeli-opposition-promises-'safety-net'-for-Netanyahu/64926574
Kalshi now sees government shutdown lasting nearly 21 days, second-longest in U.S. history
Prediction market Kalshi now sees the U.S. government shutdown lasting almost 21 days, which would tie it with the second-longest in U.S. history. The shutdown entered its fifth day on Sunday, though Wall Street has appeared to be largely unfazed, hitting new record highs this week.
According to Kalshi, the odds of the shutdown lasting more than 15 days have now increased to 64%. The odds of the duration being more than 20 days stand at 50%, and the odds of the duration spanning more than 25 days are at 40%.
Meanwhile, on prediction market Polymarket, the odds of the shutdown lasting 30 or more days ticked up slightly to 23%. The odds of the shutdown ranging between 10 and 29 days rose to 68%.
The longest shutdown in U.S. history was from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019, lasting 35 days. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the shutdown had cost the American economy an estimated $11B.
See below a chart detailing U.S. shutdowns since 1990:
The latest shutdown came into effect at midnight on Wednesday after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a federal funding deal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday told CNBC that U.S. GDP growth could take a hit from the shutdown.
Wall Street has largely shrugged off the shutdown, with the benchmark S&P 500 (SP500) scaling all-time peaks this week and hitting the 6,700 points mark for the first time ever.
Here are some exchange-traded funds that track the S&P 500: (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NYSEARCA:VOO), (NYSEARCA:IVV), (NYSEARCA:RSP), (NYSEARCA:SSO), (NYSEARCA:UPRO), (NYSEARCA:SH), (NYSEARCA:SDS), and (NYSEARCA:SPXU).
Chicago a war zone over ICE raids, and Illinois's governor doesn't think there's a problem
According to CBS News:
Federal agents shot a woman in the Brighton Park neighborhood on Chicago's Southwest Side Saturday morning after they became boxed in by vehicles, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
...
The patrolling agents were rammed by vehicles and "boxed in by 10 cars," according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
DHS said the agents were unable to move their vehicles and got out of the car. According to DHS officials, one of the drivers of a car boxing them in had a gun, which the agency said was a semi-automatic weapon. DHS said the agents opened fire, striking the driver, who they said is a woman. She was taken to a hospital for treatment. A spokesperson for Sinai Health System said the woman was later released from the hospital.
The woman was in FBI custody as of Saturday night, DHS said.
DHS claimed the woman was named in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection intelligence bulletin last week for doxxing agents and posting threats against ICE online. They have not released any further information on those claims.
A later statement said as ICE agents were responding to the shooting, someone followed them and rammed their vehicle "in an attempt to run them off the road." This person was arrested and was in the custody of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Sunday morning, the DHS statement said.
BREAKING: Law enforcement under siege in Chicago as agitators hurl rocks, bottles at federal vehicles departing violent protest near scene of apparent coordinated attack on ICE officers in Brighton Park earlier today
— Border Hawk (@BorderHawkNews) October 4, 2025
Follow Border Hawk and @Wid_Lyman for updates pic.twitter.com/wWXQl3XHEg
Obviously, President Trump had little choice but to call in the National Guard.
Yet instead of being embarrassed at the feds having to come in and clean up his state's mess because he couldn't, the response from Illinois's governor, J.B. Pritzger, little more than 'nothing to see here, move along.'
According to NBC News:
Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said the guard received notice from the Pentagon early in the day. He called the move unnecessary and “a manufactured performance — not a serious effort to protect public safety.”
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
Amid that war zone, Pritzget does not think there's a problem, and considers any federal move to stop violent, Mexican-flag waving thugs from harming ICE agents to be "against our will"?
Then obviously, he's part of the problem. He's effectively saying he's in league with antifa, which seems to be leading these protests, using them as his agents to halt the Trump agenda he was elected to execute.
He will probably launch a lawsuit the same way California's Gov. Gavin Newsom did, when President Trump's ICE agents hosed Los Angeles out. Maybe a judge will approve a halt to the operations, but it's hard to see that happening, given the videos of the thuggery out there.
The act is getting old and the hard fact is, ICE agents are under combat fire from what amounts to Pritzger's Praetorian Guard.
He ought to be arrested -- along with his crummy little antifa rioter buddies. There's obviously some kind of network conspiracy going on with somebody's rice bowl threatened.
The NFL’s Bad Bunny demographic calculation
In 2020, Hispanics made up 19.5% of the U.S. population, and the Census Bureau projects they’re likely to show accelerated growth because they, unlike other Americans, have children. Of course, this may change with Donald Trump’s ICE crackdowns, but, for now, Hispanics are where the marketplace is moving.
Image created using AI.
Currently, the average NFL viewer is likely to be male, although there are more women watching. While there’s a strong cohort in the 25 to 44 age group, the NFL has a significant older viewership, with as many as 47% of the audience over 55 and relatively affluent. Sites that analyze demographics shy away from identifying the racial breakdown of the average NFL fandom, but the general sense is that the fan base is disproportionately white.
The lagging demographic for the NFL is Hispanics: While they make up almost 20% of the general population, they make up, at most, 14% of the NFL fan base. There’s a lot of room for growth there.
Enter Bad Bunny. You and I see an obnoxious jerk who dresses in women’s clothes and insults Trump and his supporters, attitudes that are unlikely to make friends among many of the traditional NFL fans. However, the NFL honchos see a market opportunity.
The sexually fluid Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio was born in Puerto Rico. Even though Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, its vibe is strongly Latin American. Also, although I find his talent elusive (a toneless voice chanting tunelessly isn’t my kind of music), he is hugely popular. The fact that his songs are all in Spanish may explain why ChatGPT estimates that his core demographic is American Hispanics.
In case you’re wondering what Bad Bunny is selling, Dakiti, which he performs with Jhayco is his most-streamed song (1.6 billion views on YouTube alone), while Yo Perreo Sola is his best-selling song:
I don’t get it, but millions of young people, especially Hispanic young people, do, and the NFL is desperately hoping that they’ll tune in, not just for the show, but for the game. As far as the NFL is concerned, the old white men who currently make up its audience are yesterday’s news, for they’re all soon headed to the grave. The organization is looking for young blood, and Bad Bunny’s audience is its target, and they’re willing to jettison their existing fanbase in this gamble on the future.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/10/the_nfl_s_bad_bunny_demographic_calculation.html
'Higher Failure Rates for Antibiotics Vs Appendectomy in Kids’ Appendicitis'
- Using antibiotics alone to treat children with uncomplicated appendicitis came with higher risks of treatment failure and serious complications within a year compared with appendectomy.
- Researchers reported a treatment failure rate of 36.6% at 1 year in patients who were treated with nonoperative management, compared to 7.0% for those who underwent surgery.
- The findings from the meta-analysis contrast with a 2017 pediatric study that supported antibiotics as a safe primary option.
Children with acute uncomplicated appendicitis (UA) treated with antibiotics alone faced significantly higher risks of treatment failure and serious complications within a year compared with those who underwent appendectomy, according to a meta-analysis.
The review pooled data from seven trials involving nearly 1,500 children. Nonoperative management (NOM) with antibiotics led to a 36.6% treatment failure rate at 1 year versus 7.0% for surgery (RR 4.97, 95% CI 3.57-6.91, I²=0.0%).
Major complications requiring intervention (Clavien-Dindo grade ≥IIIb) also were far more common with NOM (RR 33.37, 95% CI 7.89-141.05, I²=9.5%), reported Isabella Faria, MD, of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and colleagues in JAMA Pediatrics.
The findings contrast with a 2017 pediatric meta-analysis that supported antibiotics as a safe primary option, which the authors noted was based on limited patient numbers and reliance on cohort studies that increased bias.
"What we're seeing now is that, as the volume and quality of evidence increase, a clearer signal is emerging: nonoperative management is associated with higher failure rates and more complications," Faria told MedPage Today in an email. "This does not contradict prior research. It builds on it and helps us understand where nonoperative management might not be as safe or effective as once hoped."
"While antibiotic treatment is still a safe option for pediatric patients, knowing the high chances of having to come back to the [emergency department] or for an operation within a year will help guide parents and physicians to a more informed decision," she added.
The findings should not be used to pick a winner in the debate between treatment options, cautioned Shawn Rangel, MD, MSCE, of Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in an accompanying editorial. Such framing, he said, "risks oversimplifying the complexity of this decision and overstating the certainty of what the evidence can provide."
Reported NOM failure rates in individual trials ranged from about 18% to 37%, a wide range likely to spark confusion, he wrote.
"The more pragmatic interpretation of existing data is that [surgery] and NOM both represent evidence-based options, and that the challenge is no longer to prove one is superior to the other but to provide families with transparent, pathway-specific data to guide decisions that align with their values, lifestyle, and tolerance for risk," Rangel wrote.
Similarly, the authors pointed out that while NOM is associated with higher recurrence and reintervention rates, "these outcomes alone do not determine the optimal approach for every patient." Rather, their analysis allows for trade-offs -- for example, durability versus early recovery, or surgical risk versus avoidance.
"Both operative and nonoperative approaches are valid in the treatment of pediatric UA, and the choice should take into account family values, local expertise, and the evolving evidence base," they wrote. "This nuanced understanding reinforces the importance of shared decision-making at the bedside, where individualized priorities must guide treatment selection."
One observed benefit of NOM was a modestly quicker recovery: Children treated with antibiotics returned to school 1.36 days sooner on average than those who had surgery (95% CI -2.64 to -0.08, P=0.04) and returned to normal activities 4.93 days earlier (95% CI -8.68 to -1.19, P=0.01).
But those gains may be offset by recurrent disease. Recurrence occurred in 17.39% of NOM patients overall (95% CI 12.08-23.38, I²=52.7%), including 18.47% at 1 year (95% CI 12.62-25.07, I²=48.5%).
"Even if your child starts with antibiotics, there's still a real chance they'll need surgery later, often urgently, and sometimes with added complications that would otherwise not be present when the kid first presented with acute uncomplicated appendicitis at the first visit," co-author Ana Carolina Godinho Cintra, of Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil, told MedPage Today in an email.
The overall rate of complications was also higher with NOM (RR 2.98. 95% CI 1.82-4.87, P=0.001), though rates of mild and moderate complications did not differ. The excess came from severe events.
Researchers identified 1,246 studies via searches of PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane, and Web of Science, then screened them to assess eligibility. The final analysis included seven randomized controlled trials conducted between 2015 and 2025, involving 1,480 pediatric patients, ages 3-17 years. The largest of those was a 2025 randomized non-inferiority trial that involved nearly 850 children and found treatment failure at 12 months occurred in 34% of those who received antibiotics compared with 7% of those who underwent appendectomy.
Faria's group emphasized that the trial sequential analysis confirmed the robustness of the main outcomes. Still, study limitations included the variability in the follow-up periods, outcome definitions, and reliance on composite measures.
Faria and co-authors, as well as Rangel, disclosed no relationships with industry.