FIVE MINUTE DAILY
Some stories today are about sudden change; others are about discoveries that force a second look at what we thought we knew. A tiny medical study is raising much bigger questions, billions are moving into American communities, and a packed sports Saturday stretches from October baseball to Kinnick Stadium. Plus: an extraordinary midair struggle, a 99-cent holdout, and Miranda Lambert’s unexpected turn.
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Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
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.
The Big Read
Nearly 1,400 Laid Off at an Ohio Truck Plant Days Before Trump's Rally
Nearly 1,400 people were laid off on Wednesday from what had been the Navistar truck factory in Springfield, Ohio. The cuts came in a single day and were large enough to erase roughly a year of job growth across the greater Dayton area.
President Trump rallies supporters on Saturday at a high school nearby, three days after the layoffs. Kyle Bos, 30, has two daughters and a third due in January, and says five items at the grocery store now cost about what a full cart once did.
An Energy Department Engineer Is Charged With Aiding the Houthis
A Department of Energy electrical engineer has been charged with providing material support to the Houthis. Ashton Ellaboudy, 51, of Richland, Washington, is accused of buying explosive precursors and drone parts, and of traveling to Yemen last September to help the group improve its communications.
Prosecutors say he told Customs officials the trip was a US government work mission, and that he later gave technical advice to FBI informants posing as Houthi operatives. He faces up to 20 years. "These allegations are so deeply disturbing that they almost defy imagination," said Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg.
ICE Bans High-Speed Chases After a Year of Shootings
ICE has banned high-speed vehicle pursuits and tightened its rules for traffic stops, in guidance signed by executive associate director Marcos D. Charles. Officers must drive marked vehicles with lights and sirens, record encounters on body cameras, and take down plate details rather than chase a driver who will not stop.
Only specially trained personnel may run stops or deploy spike strips and vehicle pinning. Agents have fired their weapons in more than a dozen encounters since last year, killing at least four people. Trump has called traffic stops "one of ICE's most important and effective crime-fighting tools."
World View
The Flydubai co-pilot attacked with a crash axe, the UAE prosecutor general said, after the Tel Aviv-bound jet plunged 17,000 feet and passengers overpowered him mid-flight.
Congo's Ebola deaths passed 4,000 among 8,300 cases in the fastest-growing outbreak on record, with over 50 health workers dead and no vaccine for the strain.
Two Iranian nationals were charged over an alleged plot against Manchester's Jewish community, arrested in the city on the eve of Yom Kippur.
Need To Know
A former Miami congressman got 10 years for a secret $50 million lobbying campaign on behalf of Nicolás Maduro's government, with David Rivera jailed since May.
A man was charged in a Queens subway killing: Jyrell Thomas, 25, accused of knifing a J train rider in the city's sixth subway homicide this year.
Hegseth created a Pentagon religious affairs office reporting directly to him, saying the department is "putting on the full armor of God" while it wages spiritual war.
Money & Markets
Amazon will put $1 billion into data center towns over five years, funding schools, job training, and water projects as local backlash grows over the buildings.
Bayer is building a $2.2 billion plant in Ohio, making Kerendia and Nubeqa in New Albany and adding 600 permanent jobs plus 1,500 construction roles.
Tesla and Rivian beat delivery forecasts, Tesla shipping 486,532 cars and Rivian 19,248, up 58% from the spring as gas stays above $4 a gallon.
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Future Frontiers
A feathered dinosaur got airborne on its own terms, a Liaoning fossil named Norellraptor barsboldi suggesting flight evolved more than once among dinosaurs and birds.
Electric cars are making passengers queasy, with riders reporting they feel newly carsick in EVs even as the drivers behind the wheel notice nothing.
The Smithsonian is turning AI loose on the Revolution, using it to draw connections between its own artifacts and Library of Congress holdings for the country's 250th.
The Score
Golden State rallied from 16 down, Gabby Williams scoring 19 and hitting the go-ahead jumper as the Valkyries beat Dallas 77-73 to reach the WNBA semifinals.
Baseball's division series open today, with four Game 1s stacked from the White Sox at Cleveland at 1 pm ET through San Diego at Milwaukee at 8:30.
Shohei Ohtani will play hurt, calling biceps, knee, and neck trouble something to manage rather than fix as the Dodgers open against Atlanta this afternoon.
Ohio State goes to Kinnick Stadium, the fifth-ranked Buckeyes carrying a loss into Iowa's upset factory, where the 14th-ranked Hawkeyes are still unbeaten at 4-0.
Life & Culture
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance, David Ellison keeping both studio names in the spotlight after the $110 billion deal cleared court.
Miranda Lambert went disco, her 11th album "Crisco" trading heartbreak for boogie-forward strings and what the country star calls a lot of joy.
Scotland has become a wedding destination, with nearly a quarter of marriages registered there last year involving couples who live somewhere else.
Deep Dive
The 40-Child Study Behind What Gets Prescribed to Kids
What it is: A single trial of 40 children, published in Iran in 2006, skewed the evidence base on antidepressants for childhood depression. It tested fluoxetine, sold as Prozac, against an older drug and reported an advantage so implausibly large that one of the researchers who later re-examined it said the effect size was the kind you get asking people whether they prefer "chocolate or feces."
The detail: The study ran in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences and pitted Prozac against nortriptyline, an older antidepressant. Every participant's depression score changed by nearly identical amounts in both treatment groups, a pattern that almost never appears in real trials. The paper carried no description of an ethics-approval process, and its original authors never answered repeated inquiries about the findings.
Why it matters: The trial fed into a 2016 Lancet meta-analysis and a 2020 Lancet Psychiatry analysis, both of which concluded the drug beat placebo. When researchers pulled it out and re-ran the numbers, that advantage disappeared entirely. A 2021 Cochrane review, which had excluded the trial on design grounds, found only "small and unimportant" benefits. Syntheses like these are what prescribing guidelines for children are built on.
What to watch: Cochrane's rules now let reviewers discard studies shown to be untrustworthy, an option the earlier analyses did not readily have. The open question is how many other such trials still prop up conclusions in corners of medicine where the data cannot be checked.
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Today's Trivia
Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" on this day in 1951, winning the pennant for the New York Giants. Which team did they beat?
Extra Bits
Oktoberfest started handing out cycling shorts, the Devil's Wheel ride giving women free pairs after thousands of upskirting videos spread on social media.
The 99-cent AriZona can is still holding, its printed price a measuring stick for the dollar and a lesson in nostalgia for grown-up drinkers.
Botswana licensed 23 elephants for a party, providing meat for rural communities at its independence celebrations and drawing criticism from conservationists and a former president.
On This Day
Lincoln proclaims a national day of Thanksgiving (1863) · Bobby Thomson hits the Shot Heard 'Round the World (1951) · Britain tests its first atomic bomb (1952) · Germany reunifies (1990) · O.J. Simpson is acquitted of murder (1995)
"The Giants win the pennant!" — Russ Hodges, calling Bobby Thomson's home run, October 3, 1951
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