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A courtroom in the Southwest just handed down a number that Silicon Valley lawyers will be studying closely for years to come. Halfway around the world, an olive grove became a diplomatic flashpoint, the nation's highest court weighed in quietly, and a hidden software flaw sent websites scrambling.

Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:

After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.

The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.

“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”

Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.

Learn More

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion Wednesday after a jury found Facebook deceived users about privacy, the largest fine ever against the tech giant. Jurors in September found more than 43 million violations of state consumer law, and the state was awarded $219.5 billion before the penalty was reduced.

The judge wrote that Facebook's deception was intentional and executives consistently misled users, with interest accruing at 15% a year until the penalty is paid. Meta's chief legal officer said the ruling makes it all but impossible to do business in New Mexico, vowing the company will prevail on appeal.

Israeli forces detained Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander Wednesday as he helped Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank, releasing him hours later. About 80 American and Israeli rabbis and activists were detained with him, which two Israeli lawyers called the largest mass detention of activists there in at least a decade.

The Israeli military said the group lacked approval for the harvest and called the arrival of dozens of activists an act intended solely to provoke. Lander, running for a heavily Democratic New York House seat on Nov. 3, wrote after his detention that harvesting olives isn't a crime under any law he knows.

The Supreme Court refused to let the administration enforce new medical restrictions for transgender federal inmates Wednesday, leaving a lower-court block in place for now. Its brief order offered no explanation, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have granted the administration's request for a stay.

The policy, stemming from a Trump executive order, would halt surgeries, taper hormones and end accommodations like makeup and wigs, while keeping mental health services. The court has previously let other policies on transgender people take effect for now, including limits on military service and passport sex markers.

Nigeria confirmed its first Ebola case since the East African outbreak began in May, a diplomat's wife who fell ill after a holiday in Uganda, and 44 contacts are isolated.

Thousands lined Belgrade's streets Wednesday to greet students marching into Serbia's capital ahead of Sunday's election, which pits strongman Aleksandar Vucic against a youth protest movement.

Pope Leo XIV needs no further treatment after surgery to remove a lung tumor, the Vatican said, with tests confirming the cancer was localized as he resumed weekly audiences.

More than 900 Toledo residents remain evacuated after a chemical tank began venting its contents Tuesday night, though the mayor said an explosion no longer looks like a real possibility.

A Con Edison worker was fatally shot while driving across the George Washington Bridge near the end of Tuesday's evening rush, and no arrests or motive have been announced.

Federal prosecutors charged six people in an alleged decade-long marriage fraud ring in Massachusetts that arranged up to 20 marriages, each costing an immigrant $38,000 to $40,000.

Southwest Airlines cut its 2026 profit forecast, becoming the third major US airline this month to blame higher fuel costs, even as its average fare jumped almost 27%.

EBay will lay off about 1,000 employees, roughly 9% of its workforce, in its second round of job cuts this year after shedding about 800 positions in February.

IBM shares climbed after hours as the company beat expectations with 5% revenue growth and raised its free cash flow outlook, though the stock is still down 15% this year.

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Physicists suspended a single positron in midair, cooling the antimatter particle to its lowest energy state, a setup that could expose subtle differences between matter and antimatter.

A trove of fossils from northern China has given researchers their clearest look yet at the Denisovans, revealing a low sloping forehead, massive brow ridge and flat cheeks.

Psychedelics may help fight inflammation, according to new data from a small group of Parkinson's patients, offering some of the first human evidence of effects beyond the brain.

Manchester United's crisis deepened Wednesday with a 4-1 Champions League thrashing at Como, an Italian side that played amateur football as recently as 2018-19, piling pressure on Michael Carrick.

The Giants are turning to J.J. McCarthy, naming him the starting quarterback for Sunday's game at Houston after he threw for 243 yards in relief last week.

Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner blamed the players for the playoff exit while GM Brian Cashman reached a new deal extending a tenure that began in 1998.

Maryland parted ways with Michael Locksley, the first big coaching move of the college football cycle, after the Terrapins lost to Rutgers for their fifth straight defeat.chan

A previously unknown Canaletto work sold for £135,000 at an Oxford auction, more than double its estimate, for a pen-and-ink capriccio of ruins that an art historian called a masterpiece.

Glee is coming back to television, with Disney and Hulu announcing a reboot of the Emmy-winning musical comedy that followed an Ohio high school choir from 2009 to 2015.

Quilt artist Gary Tyler, sentenced to death at 17, now has his first solo museum exhibition in Grand Rapids, a decade after his release from prison at age 58.

What it is: Governments and organizations took websites offline Wednesday after critical flaws surfaced in PHP, a programming language that quietly runs WordPress, Drupal and countless other sites across the web. The FBI's cyber division warned attackers could remotely execute code through the flaws, putting sensitive data at risk, and advised operators to go offline if they cannot patch immediately.

The detail: PHP developers released a fix Wednesday morning, but with reports of hackers already exploiting the flaws, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland pulled sites offline as a precaution. Officials say every version from PHP 5 onward could be affected, and one security firm warned that WordPress's automatic updates will not apply the fix on their own.

Why it matters: PHP powers roughly 70% of websites whose server-side language is known, a cybersecurity executive said, warning that much of the internet's business and commercial infrastructure is at potential risk. The exposure stretches across shared hosting platforms, control panels and Magento stores, so site owners were advised to find out exactly who is responsible for updating their PHP.

What to watch: PHP has not yet disclosed which versions are vulnerable, so watch for that list and for whether early attacks spotted by Cloudflare turn into wider breaches. Cybersecurity agencies in Europe, Australia, Japan and Britain have urged users to patch now or go dark, and the Dutch agency even took its own website offline.

Shoppers type exactly what they want and get “0 results found” back. They don’t complain. They just vanish to a competitor.

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Eleven current and former police officers were cleared of using software to fake keyboard activity, after accusations they simulated typing to look busy while away from their desks.

Just Eat apologized for its AI menu photos, which served up bacon and eggs floating in a glass of cola after the software confused soda with soda bread.

Welsh primary pupils whose badge floated aboard the space station got to quiz NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, with one 9-year-old calling it the most interesting thing he'd done today.

Aachen becomes the first major German city to fall to Allied forces (1944) · The Guggenheim Museum opens in New York (1959) · Kennedy and Nixon hold their fourth and final presidential debate (1960) · The Phillies win their first World Series (1980)

"I believe in 1960 and sixty-one and two and three we have a rendezvous with destiny." — John F. Kennedy, closing statement of the fourth presidential debate

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—The Five Minute Daily Team