- By Joseph Ax Nov 3 (Reuters) – American voters will deliver a verdict on the first two years of President Donald Trump’s second term in Tuesday’s midterm elections, with polls and nonpartisan analysts favoring Democrats to wrest the House from Republicans while control of the Senate remains uncertain. The battle for the Senate is unfolding […]
- By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday a Learjet 60 that crashed on Sunday in a residential area in Palm Beach County, Florida, killing all nine people on board, may have broken up before hitting the ground at high speed. The private Bombardier-made jet had taken […]
- Nov 2 (Reuters) – The New York State Department of Health said on Monday that a child in Lewis County had died in connection with an ongoing measles outbreak, marking the state’s first known measles-associated death in more than 30 years. Last month, Governor Kathy Hochul declared a State Disaster Emergency in response to the […]
- By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – A group representing General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and other major automakers on Monday backed the Trump administration in a legal challenge to its sharply lower vehicle fuel economy standards filed by California and other states. Last month, the US Transportation Department said it was finalizing a fleet-wide […]
- State Department Adviser Warns of US-Israel Divide Over Further Strikes on Iran By Giorgia Valente/The Media Line A US State Department adviser has warned that renewed military strikes against Iran could deepen tensions between Washington and Israel, strain American military resources, and complicate diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Speaking to The Media […]
- Control of Congress on the Line as Final Day of Midterm Voting Begins
on November 3, 2026 at 12:16 pmIt’s Election Day, the culmination of months of fierce campaigning and record spending in a high-stakes battle for control of Congress. The latest polls show that Democrats have a chance to make substantial gains, but Republicans are hoping to rally their base and defend their majorities. Results will begin to trickle in at 6 p.m. EST, with control of Congress on the line. Although the final tabulation of votes could take days or even weeks, race projections Tuesday night will begin to paint a picture of which party will clinch power on Capitol Hill. House: Democrats’ chances of flipping the House are improving, according to the latest ratings. Senate: Six tossup races will decide control. Trump: The president will spend the day out of the public eye, and plans to attend an election-night viewing reception at the White House. 6 p.m. Kentucky and Indiana will be the first states to have some of their polls close at 6 p.m., with their remaining polls closing at 7 p.m. 7 p.m. Polls close at 7 p.m. in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and most of Florida and New Hampshire, though remaining polls in those last two states close at 8 p.m. West Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina’s polls close at 7:30 p.m. The state with the quickest reporting in the country is Florida, with early data points expected to be available after closing. The Panhandle closes at 8 p.m. 8 p.m. Several states will have their polls completely close at 8 p.m. Tuesday. These are: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, in addition to Washington, D.C. Polls across Arkansas will close at 8:30 p.m. Most polling closes at 8 p.m. in Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas, with each state being split between time zones. The rest of the polls in these states will close at 9 p.m. The results from the battleground Senate races between former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Abdul El-Sayed (D) in Michigan, Sen. Susan Collins (R) and Democrat Troy Jackson in Maine, and Ken Paxton (R) and James Talarico (D) in Texas will begin to trickle in and will provide insights into which party has the momentum. A Rogers victory in Michigan would mark a “massive win” for the GOP, as the party seeks to defend its majority. 9 p.m. States that will see all polls close at 9 p.m. include Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Democrats in Iowa and Republicans in Minnesota are seeking to flip open Senate seats. Iowa is one of the key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress, with toss-up House and Senate contests. Nebraska, meanwhile, is also a state to keep a close eye on in the 9 p.m. hour. Independent Dan Osborn is mounting a Senate comeback bid after losing to Republican Sen. Deb Fischer by single digits in the red stronghold two years ago. 10 p.m. Montana, Nevada and Utah will see polls close at 10 p.m., along with most of Idaho, which will also see some of its polls close at 11 p.m. Oregon will also see polls close as early as 10 p.m. for communities in the Mountain time zone, though the rest of the state’s polls close at 11 p.m. Another independent candidate making waves is Montana’s Seth Bodnar. He faces an uphill battle against Republican Kurt Alme, who DDHQ estimates has a 77 percent chance of winning Sen. Steve Daines’s (R) open seat, as of Monday. With the bulk of polls closed by 10 p.m., the balance of power on Capitol Hill is likely to begin to come into focus. 11 p.m. Two West Coast states — California and Washington — will see polls close at 11 p.m. Western states, with some almost entirely conducting elections by mail, allow longer windows of time for ballots to arrive for counting after Election Day, notably California. The Golden State’s votes for House candidates have proven decisive in who controls the lower chamber, including in 2022 and 2024, years in which the party in control held a narrow majority. 12 a.m. and beyond The last two states to join the union, Hawaii and Alaska, will see polls close at 12 a.m., with some of Alaska’s polls closing at 1 a.m. Alaska’s size could leave its polls results open-ended in the hours after Election Day ends, with ballots from rural areas sometimes taking days to be counted as they are transported. Early vote ballots in regional elections offices through the Thursday before Election Day are counted the night of the election, while ballots cast on Friday through Election Day are counted seven days after the election, according to Alaska’s Division of Elections. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- Betting on US midterms brings rush, stress as serious money goes on the line
on November 3, 2026 at 11:18 amBy Suzanne McGee, Douglas Gillison and Chris Prentice NEW YORK, Nov 3 (Reuters) – When polls close in the US midterm elections on Tuesday night, Noah Poser will be glued to his phone tracking dozens of large wagers he placed on prediction markets. Poser, 28, who works in financial technology and has written about betting strategies in such markets, plans to track every change in the vote count from a friend’s watch party in New York City. He said he has wagers with a total value in the six figures on the line, betting on a strong showing by Democrats, and entered the bets a few months ago when odds were at a much better price. If he wins, he estimates profits of as much as $30,000. “It’s a numbers game; you have to strip your emotions out of it,” said Poser, the author of a self-published book about his prediction markets strategies. Poser built a quantitative model for trading these markets based on a career in Wall Street technology systems. He will not be alone on Tuesday evening. Across the United States, people are betting on this year’s midterm races at record levels for US election betting. Prediction markets rose to prominence in 2024 when they bucked traditional opinion polls in signaling that Donald Trump would win the presidency. The platforms allow traders to buy and sell “yes” or “no” contracts on an array of race outcomes and variables, and there is more than $1.4 billion wagered on the midterms, according to the platforms and industry research. SWEAT AND PANIC SELLING Among those placing bets is Darius Gamble, 51, in Gardendale, Alabama, who said he has been betting on the platforms for two or three months but won’t wager more than $20 on anything. “It is gambling, just disguised as predictions,” said Gamble, who is a human resources business partner. “It gives you a gambling rush.” Another hopeful with money on the line is Yadin Eldar, a 22-year-old student at Florida State University. While he anticipates large-scale Democratic victories, Eldar is opting for a contrarian strategy by placing bets on races where his analysis shows the odds of Republican candidates emerging victorious are “extremely underpriced.” “You can make a 50-55% profit on Republicans winning in Florida,” he said in an interview. Still, betting on elections is stressful, said Eldar, who may leave his own phone at home when he heads to an unrelated birthday party on Tuesday night. “The emotional roller coaster is extremely dangerous,” he said. “It never does me any good. I panic sell or panic buy.” MORE MAINSTREAM Large-scale events are also taking advantage of the exploding interest. A packed gathering of more than 2,000 prediction markets traders, investors and platforms in October in New York called NEXTPredict featured several sessions devoted to election contracts. “It’s a very different vibe than we had in 2024, when prediction markets were really new and kind of upstarts,” said Lucas Kohorst, co-founder of Adjacent Markets, a platform that this summer raised $2.5 million to help build out its business aggregating contracts into tradable indexes or benchmarks. Adjacent’s Democrat Political Futures Index has climbed 2.38% in the last seven days, while its Republican counterpart has edged up 0.14%. Late last week, Kohorst and his team decided to fly from New York to Chicago to attend an election eve watch party hosted by Kalshi, a top prediction market that joined financial market stalwarts like the Options Clearing Corporation as a silver-level sponsor of the Futures Industry Association’s annual conference. “This time, prediction markets seem to have joined the mainstream,” Kohorst said. Kalshi did not respond to requests for comment on the event. VEGAS Even in Las Vegas, spiritual home to an industry that strongly opposes such platforms, prediction markets aficionados are seizing on the midterms as a way to distract gamblers from the blinking slot machines and spinning roulette wheels in the Strip’s casinos. Peter Klamka is wagering that the elections will transform his just-launched Prediction Vegas bar into a hot new destination, as he prepares to host the Prediction Markets Conference industry gathering on Tuesday evening. “No casinos will be showing elections,” Klamka said. “From a Vegas standpoint, I’m it.” Nevada has severely restricted prediction market offerings. But Klamka says many of his out-of-state clientele make their trades before arriving. That’s why Ish Milly, the organizer of the Vegas prediction markets conference, sees the election party as only one small part of the story. “Ultimately, we’re more interested in the long-term development and credibility of the industry than the outcome of any single election,” he said. (Reporting by Suzanne McGee in New York, additional reporting by Douglas Gillison and Chris Prentice; editing by Megan Davies) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- Exclusive-US intelligence sharing has fractured under Trump, officials say
on November 3, 2026 at 11:05 amBy Erin Banco and Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) – US intelligence sharing on Iran and other global threats with Congress and across the federal government has slowed and, in some cases, temporarily stopped during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to eight current and former officials and people briefed on the matter. Former officials and outside experts said the disruptions risk leaving policymakers with an incomplete picture of threats facing the country, echoing intelligence failures exposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. The slowdown comes as the administration weighs whether to resume strikes on Iran after the midterm elections on Tuesday. The problems emerged during Tulsi Gabbard’s tenure as director of national intelligence, amid deep tensions between her office and the CIA. While those tensions have subsided since her resignation in June, problems stemming from the clash persist, according to two US officials familiar with the matter. The CIA has stopped co-authoring assessments with the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an analytical group within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the officials said, reducing the number of reports that pull together the intelligence community’s views for decision-makers on subjects including Iran. Lawmakers and their staffs also briefly stopped receiving intelligence reports from Gabbard’s office in the days after the US military intervention in Iran in June 2025 and again after the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, according to two people familiar with the matter. Gabbard’s team had accused lawmakers of leaking to the press. The disruption in intelligence sharing has not been previously reported. CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons said the CIA “participates fully” in the process of providing intelligence assessments through the Presidential Daily Brief, which is led by ODNI, and through the NIC. Now, some former officials are working on a bipartisan basis at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution to draw up plans to rebuild the intelligence community in the next administration, four former US officials said. “All of these things are adding up in a really complex world where policymakers need to have a more sophisticated, nuanced, and integrated view of the world, and they are getting less,” said Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term. TURF WARS AND REDUCED COOPERATION The problems inside the intelligence community started last year amid significant cuts to national security agencies, including the ODNI and the CIA, as Trump moved to remove or sideline officials he viewed as disloyal. Some analysts who remain at the intelligence agencies are now careful to not write assessments at odds with White House’s views for fear of political retaliation, two former officials and a current US official said. The officials did not say which topics the analysts were avoiding. “Analysts still do the work, but this White House has made them irrelevant because the president treats unwelcome information as disloyalty,” said Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst who said she was fired from the Trump National Security Council last year for being transgender. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The situation was worsened by what officials described as one of the biggest turf wars in three decades between two of the most important agencies: the CIA and the ODNI, which was formed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Reuters earlier detailed the dispute between the agencies. The infighting between the agencies — triggered when Gabbard’s office revoked the security clearances of current and former intelligence officials a year ago — reached the point where White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had to intervene several times to defuse tensions, three former officials said. The National Intelligence Council, which for decades has been a key resource for officials and lawmakers making foreign policy decisions, lost its main author when the CIA stopped writing into the assessments last year. The assessments are meant to consolidate the views of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, and the council relied heavily on the CIA for analysis on topics like Iran and Russia. While the CIA continued sharing intelligence with the NIC and working with it on some reports, its analysts focused on their own assessments. Since the move, the intelligence council, which was also hit by staff cuts, has slowed production of its assessments, two people familiar with the matter said. None have focused on the war in Iran, five current and former officials said. In response to a request for comment, an ODNI official said the group has maintained assessment levels close to “historic trendlines.” “While Tulsi did not utilize the NIC, DNI Clayton has proven to be a good steward of the IC and recognizes the value of the NIC,” said a US official, referring to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton. NEW BARRIERS Some former intelligence officials worry that new barriers are appearing between agencies. “The problem is that by taking actions which have the effect of hollowing out institutions where there’s actual intelligence community coordination on things, you’re creating little lily pads, and then everybody can pick their own lily pad to listen to,” said Morgan Muir, the former deputy director of national intelligence in the Biden administration who also briefed President George W. Bush. Gabbard’s office also stopped briefing Congress on election threats in 2025, according to two people familiar with the matter and a former US official. Clayton, who became director of national intelligence in August, has resumed congressional briefings on election threats, officials said. “Director Clayton remains committed to ensuring that ODNI and the intelligence community have the resources they need to continue informing key U.S. government decision-makers and keeping Americans safe,” ODNI said in a statement to Reuters. In another clash between agencies, the FBI late last year stopped sharing some intelligence with the National Counterterrorism Center for several weeks after the center’s then-head, Joe Kent, and his staff tried to investigate the shooting of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, two former officials said. FBI leaders told Kent they believed NCTC was overstepping its authority. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Erin Banco; Editing by Don Durfee and Sanjeev Miglani) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- Prediction markets face US midterms test as election bets soar
on November 3, 2026 at 11:01 amBy Douglas Gillison and Michelle Price WASHINGTON, November 3 (Reuters) – With more than $1.48 billion wagered on Tuesday’s US midterm elections, prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket are facing their biggest test yet of how reliably they can forecast political races amid growing scrutiny of their businesses. The platforms rose to prominence in 2024 when they bucked traditional opinion polls in signaling that Donald Trump would win the presidency, and have since amassed a global following among media outlets and investors. On Monday, prediction market prices aggregated by analytics firm BetInt implied Democrats had a 95% chance of taking the House of Representatives and a 76% chance of taking the Senate. Though the markets tout high accuracy rates in providing betting odds, some high-profile misses during the US primaries and in Brazil’s presidential election have shown they are fallible. If the midterm results diverge sharply from prediction-market odds, the industry’s reputation could suffer, analysts say, especially given the record sums being wagered for such US election betting. Kalshi and Polymarket, the biggest platforms, are also under pressure to guard against misconduct after several candidates bet on their own races, and research from Washington nonprofit the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) found political markets can be shifted with relatively small bets. “Tuesday does, in fact, represent a real test for the new wave of prediction markets,” said Yesha Yadav, associate dean at Vanderbilt University Law School, adding that this year’s many congressional races could help contribute to the industry’s overall scorecard. “Many of these contests are close,” she added. Polymarket and Kalshi say they have ramped up controls and are well equipped to guard against misconduct. Kalshi blocks politicians and campaign workers from political wagers. The companies also say their markets quickly correct when large bets move prices. “The point is not that prediction markets are perfect, it’s that in an imperfect world full of chaos and biased news sources, it’s important to have another way to forecast important events,” said Sean Patrick Maloney, CEO of the Coalition for Prediction Markets. STUDIES SAY MARKETS ARE WELL-CALIBRATED AT SCALE The platforms allow traders to buy and sell “yes” or “no” contracts on an array of race outcomes and variables. Kalshi on Monday reported $1.33 billion in trading volume across all midterm bets, while about $145 million has been wagered on Polymarket’s congressional markets, according to ACDC. More than 28,000 midterm markets have been opened so far, with a fraction of individual contests, including Senate races in Texas, Michigan, Maine and South Carolina, accounting for most of the trading volume, the nonprofit said. Academic studies, including a 2025 Vanderbilt University paper which analyzed nearly 2,500 markets on the 2024 election, have generally found prediction markets to be well calibrated at scale. But what that means about their overall accuracy is harder to interpret because most races are not competitive, said Joshua Clinton, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, who led the 2025 research. Accuracy measures whether the market picked the winner. Calibration measures whether odds are reliable. Overall, across all markets, contracts priced at a certain probability tend to come true about as often as that probability suggests. “But how accurate the price is for any specific market is impossible to know,” Clinton said. A small proportion of sophisticated profit-seeking traders appear to account for a large chunk of the capital in prediction markets, according to Harry Crane, professor of statistics at Rutgers University, and also to ACDC data. Such traders, using polling and other data, help to correct prices, which is why the markets should be taken seriously, said Crane. Still, even the most expert traders can get it wrong, Clinton said. Prices on Kalshi and Polymarket implied a 20% chance, for example, of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeating his right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro, which he did last month. That may have been because sophisticated traders overcorrected for the risk that polls often underestimate the pull of right-wing candidates, said Clinton. Company spokespeople said that events with a 20% chance of occurring happen all the time and political upsets are no different. Carlos Hardenberg, partner and portfolio manager at MCP Emerging Markets, said the lesson for investors was that the markets are a useful gauge. “But they should not be confused with certainty.” (Additional reporting by Hannah Lang in New York and Johann M Cherian in Bengalaru; Editing by Jonathan Spicer) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- Investigators say Learjet may have broken up before crashing in Florida
on November 3, 2026 at 12:03 amBy David Shepardson WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday a Learjet 60 that crashed on Sunday in a residential area in Palm Beach County, Florida, killing all nine people on board, may have broken up before hitting the ground at high speed. The private Bombardier-made jet had taken off from Austin, Texas, and was headed to the Bahamas. Heavy rainfall and thunderstorms were occurring in the area where it went down. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, posting on X, highlighted the harrowing experience of those on the aircraft, including the 20-year-old copilot. “She was doing her job, communicating with (air traffic control) right to the end in a terrifying situation,” Isaacman wrote. “She likely knew before many of those calls that she was going to die.” A jet can break up in midair at very high rates of descent, subjecting passengers to extreme physical forces. Videos on social media showed the jet slamming into the ground next to a road and exploding. The pilots reported ice at 35,000 feet (10,668 m) but then reported the plane was descending at a rate of 10,000 feet per minute, which quickly increased to 22,000 feet per minute. “The weather conditions are a major focus of the investigation,” NTSB board member Tom Chapman said. Maintenance records indicate a cockpit voice recorder was installed on the jet, but investigators do not know whether it was still on board, he added. The crash left a massive crater by the road near the entrance to a mobile home park, which was partially filled with water because of the severe storms, Chapman said. “We do have some evidence that there was some breakup of the aircraft before impact,” he said. “We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site.” TMZ identified the passengers as a Texas tech entrepreneur and his family, a nanny and two close friends, along with two pilots. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Edmund Klamann) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
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