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The weekend is bringing plenty beyond today’s top lines. Washington is fighting over nearly $1 billion in canceled spending, Bangkok is under a flood emergency, and AI agents are searching giant-virus DNA for discoveries humans may have missed.

Elsewhere, Papua’s permanent ice is disappearing, and an 11-year-old gamer just took Asian Games gold. Forward this to a friend who wants the world in five minutes.

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The administration is canceling close to $1 billion in spending Congress approved, the White House said Friday, using a contested budget power to strike funding for immigrant services and diversity programs. The Office of Management and Budget described the cuts as aimed at "the most harmful government spending."

Most of the money was for Health and Human Services programs serving refugees and unaccompanied minors, which the administration says are no longer needed because border crossings have fallen sharply. Also cut: an Education Department program for migrant students, a Justice Department office that works on racial tensions, and a business development program for minority entrepreneurs.

TikTok and ByteDance will pay Alabama at least $100 million and change how the app works for teenagers in the state, settling days before a jury trial was to begin. Alabama sued in 2025, arguing the platform's algorithm was built to addict children and that the company knew it.

The changes are specific: teens get the option of a feed that is not personalized, a two-hour daily cap, and overnight and school-hour limits. Cosmetic-procedure filters are barred for teen accounts. Dozens of states have brought similar suits; this one ends before any internal research reached a jury.

The White House left CNN off the press list for Trump's Saturday flight to Knoxville, replacing the network with the conservative outlet Real America's Voice. It came hours after CNN, MS NOW and Politico walked back into the White House with cameras, their access restored by court order.

Judge Timothy Kelly's order runs 14 days and found the original ban likely unconstitutional. The exclusions since have been narrower: the state dinner arrivals on Thursday, now the plane. CNN says no other outlet was listed in its place in the pool.

Bangkok declared a flood emergency disaster after 48 hours of heavy rain submerged roads across the Thai capital, with all 50 districts named emergency zones and more rain expected into Sunday.

Lula banned online gambling in Brazil days before an election, signing an order that prohibits sports betting and online casinos and calling the industry a "cancer."

Israeli settlers have stepped up efforts to seize the West Bank's natural springs and heritage sites, putting water that Palestinian villages rely on increasingly out of reach for farming and tourism.

OpenAI told dozens of institutions its agents may have meddled with their websites, including the SEC, the Census Bureau and the Education Department.

A nor'easter flooded coastal New Jersey and cut power to thousands, with tens of millions exposed as dangerous flooding is forecast through the weekend.

Trump posted a "Trump Strait" map of Hormuz early Saturday, his first public signal since Iran floated a deal to reopen the waterway within a week if the US meets its conditions.

Paramount promised at least 30 theatrical films a year in 2027 and 2028 under its settlement with state attorneys general over buying Warner Bros. Discovery, rising to 32 annually through 2031.

Tim Tebow paused his ties to Life Surge, a Christian events company accused of predatory sales, saying his team is investigating.

Chinese AI models now dominate usage on two major developer platforms, claiming 57% to 67% of tokens on OpenRouter in mid-September, up from as little as 6% in February.

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Some 950 AI agents spent 21 hours combing DNA databases and flagged CRISPR-like sequences in giant viruses, a lead nobody has characterized in a lab.

Papua's "eternal snow" is nearly gone, with only small patches left on peaks that carried permanent ice for centuries and anchor Papuan spiritual life.

Bristol venues are banning AI-generated art, with Café Kino now barring AI posters and the University of Bristol's student union blocking AI artwork from its Freshers Week poster sale.

Stephen Curry agreed to a two-year, $116 million extension with Golden State, taking a pay cut to stay with the only NBA team he has known through his 20th season.

The Yankees will host the Red Sox in a best-of-three wild-card series starting Tuesday, their seventh postseason meeting ever, with the rivals split 3-3 in past October showdowns.

White Sox infielder Colson Montgomery took his 224th strikeout of the season Friday, breaking Mark Reynolds' 2009 record of 223, though the 24-year-old has also hit 31 home runs.

Liam Neeson is helping bring the story of Catherine Corless, whose research helped uncover the Tuam babies scandal in Ireland, to the big screen as a co-producer of the film.

An 1811 first edition of Sense and Sensibility at England's Longleat House, still signed "By A Lady" on its title page, suggests Austen's novels were read by the elite during her lifetime.

Silent Hill: Townfall relocates the horror franchise to a fictional Scottish island, St Amelia, the Japanese-created series' first UK setting, built by Glasgow studio Screen Burn and released Thursday.

What it is: Kratom, a Southeast Asian tree leaf with opioid-like effects, sits on shelves in convenience stores, gas stations and vape shops across the US. It arrived as a supplement around 2016 and is sold in concentrated pills, powders and drinks. This week, investigators found packaged kratom with two dead University of Mississippi students; their deaths have not been attributed to it.

The detail: In low doses, it acts like caffeine. Higher doses produce euphoria, sometimes hallucinations, and can depress the central nervous system, which is "where the deaths come in," says Dr. Shane Speights of the New York Institute of Technology's osteopathic college at Arkansas State.

Tolerance builds fast. Jana Wu, who runs clinical integration at the treatment center Mountainside, has worked with people taking 20 pills a day and spending thousands of dollars a month. "It affects marriages, relationships," she said.

Why it matters: Because kratom is classified as a supplement, the FDA does not regulate what goes into it. "There's no way to know exactly what you're getting," Speights said. "You could go and create something in your basement, market it as a supplement, and nobody's really going to check." Some users, like retired timber cutter Jeffrey Deaver, credit it with ending chronic pain no doctor could treat.

What to watch: Eleven states ban it, Massachusetts most recently in August. The DEA tried to schedule it in 2016 and backed down after public objections, leaving states and lawsuits like Arizona's against a kratom drinks maker to set the rules.

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A St. Pete Beach firefighter standing 4 feet, 5 inches tall earned a Guinness World Record as the shortest woman in the profession, a title that began as a firehouse joke.

Two men were arrested in Manhattan after three climbed out of a manhole near the hotel hosting Netanyahu, charged with trespassing and conspiracy; police say sewer trips are becoming a thing.

An 11-year-old Japanese schoolboy won Asian Games gold in Puyo Puyo Saturday, beating South Korea's Kang Dongshin 10-2 and calling the medal "beautiful, shiny and heavy."

Francis Drake completes his circumnavigation at Plymouth (1580) · Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity (1905) · Kennedy and Nixon hold the first televised presidential debate (1960) · Stanislav Petrov judges a nuclear alert to be a computer error and averts catastrophe (1983) · Hurricane Helene makes landfall in Florida as a Category 4 (2024)

"I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that's all." — Stanislav Petrov, on the night he judged a nuclear alert to be a false alarm

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