FIVE MINUTE DAILY

Friday’s news stretches from Washington and Wall Street to a citrus grove in Florida and a music vault holding recordings unheard for six decades. Congress has a major weapons sale to scrutinize, scientists have new bets on saving an American industry, and one very strange traffic stop uncovered millions in silver. Here’s what you need to know before the weekend.

In-person early voting opens in Virginia today, with Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota taking in-person absentee ballots, kicking off the final six weeks of a campaign fought over the cost of living, the Iran war and mid-decade redistricting. Two coalitions have filed suits to keep armed federal officers away from polling places under a Civil War-era law, as UC San Diego polling finds about 40% of voters expect ICE agents at their polls.

The worry reached the Senate on Thursday, where Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby acknowledged in a classified briefing that deploying the National Guard at polling places has been discussed, drawing criticism from both parties; Republican Kevin Cramer called it "just sort of dodge and punt."

The 30-year mortgage averaged 6.95% this week, up from 6.76% and the highest since January 2025, a fourth straight weekly rise; it was 5.98% in late February, and the roughly one-point climb adds about $255 a month to a $400,000 loan.

Bonds gave a little back Thursday: the 10-year yield fell to 4.93% from 5.01%, and by Friday morning WTI was back under $100 at $99.95 with Brent at $102.57, while US futures edged higher after Japan's central bank raised rates and the dollar climbed to 157.73 yen.

A year after Trump promised the lowest drug prices in the world for Medicaid's 66 million enrollees, the administration says 26 drugmakers have signed pricing agreements. None has been made public; the program is a voluntary pilot that requires states to opt in, and its application deadlines have already been extended once.

The one company whose terms are known, Gilead, will discount only "selected covered products," its hepatitis and HIV drugs, rather than its full catalog. Medicaid's net prescription spending rose 46% from 2019 to 2024, to $46 billion, and Trump told last week's convention the country had gone "from the highest prescription drug prices to the lowest prescription drug prices anywhere in the world."

A building collapse in Gaza City killed 21 people, the Gaza Health Ministry said, nearly a year after a ceasefire that was supposed to start a reconstruction the enclave has still not seen.

A British woman kidnapped in Malawi was freed after nearly a week when police stormed her captors near Blantyre, in a shootout that killed four suspected kidnappers and wounded a deputy police chief.

Three people died in a school shooting in the Philippines' Mindanao region, including the 16-year-old gunman, the country's third deadly school shooting since June.

Los Angeles prosecutors charged Bailee Rios with two counts of second-degree murder over a Tuesday crash that killed two bus passengers, before a TV news helicopter covering the wreck went down and killed three more.

A federal judge in Massachusetts struck down the Education Department's 2025 cancellation of about $600 million in grants for teacher training, a ruling covering more than 100 programs that does not itself restore any of the money.

The Kennedy Center can't be demolished without 30 days' notice, a federal judge ruled, ordering the Trump-chaired board to explain the closure it voted this week to stretch across the next two years.

Micron, Intel and other chip stocks extended their rebound as investors' fears about an AI spending slowdown and rate-hike drag continued to fade this week.

Costco is putting all 639 US stores on DoorDash for members-only same-day delivery of groceries, household goods and electronics, a day after Uber Eats expanded its own Costco service nationwide.

The Bank of Japan raised rates to 1.25%, a level not seen since 1995, in its sixth hike in 2.5 years, after Washington pressed Tokyo over the weak yen; the dollar still rose past 157.

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A Cambridge start-up called Vsim trained a robot to walk, spot a bottle, and grasp it within minutes- a job rivals can need days to finish- by rewriting algorithms that date to the 1970s for modern GPUs.

Florida's citrus harvest has fallen from about 300 million boxes a season in the late 1990s to just over 15 million, and an EPA-approved gene-edited rootstock is the industry's newest bet against citrus greening.

DNA testing has confirmed a new wild cat in Bolivia's Yungas forests, a tiger cat named Leopardus tilcayo about the size of a house cat, known so far from a single confirmed animal living in a sanctuary.

Josh Allen accounted for five touchdowns as Buffalo beat Detroit 41-31 on Thursday night, opening the new Highmark Stadium with a 21-0 lead and 135 rushing yards from James Cook III.

The Mets lost 3-0 to Philadelphia on a night when first baseman Jared Young was carted off after a collision with pitcher Nolan McLean, later cleared by a CT scan but showing concussion symptoms.

Trevor Story's three-run homer lifted Boston past Texas 4-3 in Arlington, two batters after Willson Contreras left the game with a bruised right hand from a Jakob Junis sinker.

LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt moved from doubtful to questionable for Saturday night at Ole Miss, a shift that drew skepticism from Rebels staffers under an SEC policy that bars injury-report gamesmanship.

Ten unreleased David Bowie recordings from 1965 went on sale Friday under the name Davie Jones, found on a 12-inch acetate in producer Shel Talmy's collection about a decade ago by archivist Alec Palao.

Zach Cregger's "Resident Evil" is on track for a franchise-best opening, with previews topping $8 million and a 91% Rotten Tomatoes audience score pointing to a $40M–$50M weekend.

Gustavo Dudamel takes over the New York Philharmonic as its 27th music director after 17 years in Los Angeles, opening at Radio City with Lizzo, St. Vincent and Aaron Tveit on the bill.

What it is: The administration has approved selling nearly 50 F-35s to Saudi Arabia for about $24 billion, and under arms-export law, Congress has 30 days to pass a resolution blocking it. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi objected Thursday that the deal "could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party."

The detail: The F-35 is the fifth-generation stealth fighter the US has so far sold only to close allies, and Riyadh's ties to Beijing are the core of the objection.

It also lands in the middle of the Houthis' biggest land grab in years: the Iran-backed group now holds Mokha and islands astride the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which carries about 12% of world trade in peacetime, has pushed within 20 miles of Djibouti and its US bases, and has displaced an estimated 125,000 people.

Why it matters: A missile battery is a loan; a stealth fighter fleet is a marriage. The sale would tie US industry and training to Saudi Arabia for decades, in the middle of a war in which the kingdom's air defenses are being tested daily, and its oil exports are under direct threat.

What to watch: Whether a joint resolution of disapproval gets a floor vote before the 30 days expire, which Republicans join Krishnamoorthi, and whether the White House attaches conditions on Chinese technology access to the final notification.

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A truck driver spent 20 years building a balsa-and-foam model of New York with 800,000 structures, and after TikTok clips hit 10 million views and is now on display at the Museum of the City of New York.

A swerving van outside Oslo led Norwegian police to 66,000 American Eagle silver coins worth about $2.65 million, the proceeds of a US investment scheme.

Jalen Brunson will guest-star on "Law & Order: SVU" on November 5 and host the "Saturday Night Live" premiere next weekend, a busy fall for a man who also has a season to play.

George Washington lays the cornerstone of the US Capitol (1793) · The first issue of The New-York Daily Times, now The New York Times, is published (1851) · Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Exposition address (1895) · The Department of the Air Force is established as a separate service (1947) · Jimi Hendrix dies in London at 27 (1970) · The FBI captures Patty Hearst in San Francisco (1975) · Atlanta is awarded the 1996 Summer Olympics (1990)

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." — Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, Atlanta, September 18, 1895

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—The Five Minute Daily Team