A.M. Edition for Oct. 30. President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping emerged from their first face-to-face meeting in six years with a temporary truce in their trade fight. WSJ’s Meridith McGraw explains what the superpowers’ agreement entails. Plus, Trump says the U.S. will begin testing nuclear weapons on an “equal basis” with Russia and China. And, WSJ’s Katherine Clarke details why the Hamptons luxury housing market is staging a comeback for the ages. Caitlin McCabe hosts.
Shamba Chowdhury got his first computer at an early age. He was the kid that explored every button and every setting, trying to figure out how it all worked. His curiosity exploded when he was 15 and the internet came around. Post that, his first foray into programming came from his love of playing video games. Outside of tech, he loves to read, in particular crime thrillers. He noted that his favorite is A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci.
Shamba and his co-founder have participated in many hackathons, and they noticed how difficult it was to stitch together ideas, utilizing AI technology. It was at that point they decided to build a no code builder to wire up AI agents together.
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Three stories from Chicagoans who endured a terrifying experience that they couldn’t explain, couldn’t get over, or couldn’t escape.
Karen Holt tells the story of her haunted childhood home on Chicago’s Southeast Side. Was her house simply saturated with “residual energy”? Or was the ghost of a lost boy wandering the halls?
Rachel Shuki tells the story of the haunted, now-closed school she taught at on Chicago’s West Side. A tragic disaster from the past could be the reason behind unexplained occurrences in the building.
Ben Astrachan and Jackson Zinn-Rowthorn tell the story of their Northwest Side apartment complex, the ritual site they found in the basement, and the friend that messed with it. Have they disturbed a spiritual realm they aren’t equipped to handle?
Get cozy, dim the lights and press play.
Hurricane Melissa leaves devastation across the Caribbean as Cuba braces for impact. Israel reinstates a ceasefire after deadly strikes in Gaza. A Chicago judge clamps down on ICE raids. L.A. moves forward with an $800 million hydrogen power project. Putin touts a new nuclear-powered drone. The Dodgers struggle in the World Series. Disney merges Hulu + Live TV with Fubo to expand its streaming reach. And Grindr’s board members offer to take the company private in a $3.5 billion buyout.
Graphics processing units are essential to training and deploying artificial intelligence models, but they don’t come cheap. Big Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft and xAI have spent billions, amassing hundreds of thousands or even millions of them.
For those without such deep pockets, access to this kind of computing power has gotten out of reach. Recently, the state of California launched an initiative called CalCompute to look into building its own public GPU cluster for startups and non-profit researchers to use. There are similar public compute pilots in New York state and at the federal level.
Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino tells us more.
Stanford University on the San Francisco peninsula is a rarified place, so its intriguing that even 120 years after her death, there's still a mystery surrounding the death of Jane Stanford, the university's co-founder. It's a story full of tyrants, frenemies, poisoning and cover-ups that you won't want to miss.
This story was reported by Carly Severn. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ana De Almeida Amaral, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.
Earlier this month, after Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement, the Israeli military said it would withdraw from parts of Gaza — allowing some Palestinians displaced to the south to try to return home to the north.
Rachelle Bonja, a producer of “The Daily,” recently spoke by phone with three Gazans who were making or contemplating the journey home. One of them, Saher Alghorra, is a photojournalist who often works with The Times; another is Nidal Kuhail, a former restaurant worker whom The Times has spoken to over the course of the war.
The third is Hussein Khaled Auda, a former bodybuilder who ran a small gym in Jabalia. Mr. Auda’s story is about his family. His four young children were killed in airstrikes during the war, and his wife was seriously injured. He has been traveling back home in large part to find and bury the remains of two of his children, who had been in the rubble of his house after one of the airstrikes. We interviewed his wife, Rawa, and other relatives, and reviewed death certificates and video footage to help understand what happened to his family.
In our reporting, The Times also learned that a cousin of Mr. Auda’s was a senior leader of Hamas in Gaza who was killed during the war last year. The Times asked Mr. Auda if he himself had any ties to Hamas. He said he was not a member of Hamas and not political, and had dozens of cousins. He said he had seen the one affiliated with Hamas just a couple of times in his life.
Like other news organizations, The Times has not yet been able to send its own staff journalists into Gaza unescorted. This episode, like many other Times pieces for more than two years, seeks to help our audience understand the experiences of Gazans during a devastating war.
Guest:
Rachelle Bonja, a New York Times audio producer for “The Daily.”
Saher Alghorra, a photojournalist for The New York Times.
Background reading:
“Everything Is Gone”: Gazans return home to find devastation and little hope.
President Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea, where the two leaders agree to ease trade tensions after months of tariff wars and threats. More than 65,000 children could lose access to Head Start as the government shutdown threatens to cut off funding for childcare and early learning programs. And Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Casey Means, faces questions today in her Senate confirmation hearing.
Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.
Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Miguel Macias, Lauren Migaki, Diane Webber, Mohamad ElBardicy and Ally Schweitzer.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas
We get engineering support from Damian Herring-Nathan. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
Officials in Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba describe dozens of fatalities in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. An Illinois deputy is convicted of murdering Sonya Massey. And educators take the stand in a civil lawsuit against an assistant principal after a 6-year-old shot a teacher.
Taxes upon taxes are just one of the reasons that both financial-industry hotshots and businesses are moving out of the Big Apple. We look at what that might cost the city. A snapshot of the drinks business reveals a subtle picture of who is drinking what, and where. And the Chinese rapper that is fast becoming a global household name.
