📌 Vigilance, Recurring Payments, Moon Tree

The agency that protects the president and other high-ranking officials wants more vigilance from state and local law enforcers.

The US Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) on Wednesday issued a guide encouraging law enforcement agencies to create specific units to address threatening behavior where there are significant concerns, even though no laws have been broken.

The guide calls explicitly for police agencies to set up what NTAC calls behavioral threat assessment units to assess potential dangers and then provide resources to ensure individuals get help before they resort to violence.

The latest guidance comes as national security officials are bracing for potential violence. The Department of Homeland Security's 2025 annual threat assessment, issued last month, warned, “The terrorism threat environment in the United States over the next year will remain high.”

It added: “The threat will continue to be characterized primarily by lone offenders or small cells motivated to violence by a combination of racial, religious, gender, or anti-government grievances; conspiracy theories; and personalized factors.”

The NTAC guide aims to show police agencies how to spot warning signs quickly and find ways to intervene. "This publication represents the most comprehensive guidance ever produced on how to adapt and operationalize the Secret Services behavioral threat assessment model,” NTAC said.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has created a “click-to-cancel” rule, requiring straightforward cancellation of recurring payments.

“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan. “Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.”

According to research from online payment technology company Bango, the average American has roughly 4.5 subscriptions and pays an average of $924 per year, with streaming services as the leading category.

The rule is meant to address common issues with subscription plans, including sellers that misrepresent facts about products or services, those who make it difficult to cancel, and people billed when they didn’t agree to pay, such as when a free trial ends.

“The rule makes it clear that it has to be as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up,” said Laura Brett, vice president of the National Advertising Division of BBB National Programs.

“That means it’s got to be easy to find where to cancel and how to cancel and that you never have to interact with a live person in order to cancel the subscription,” Brett said. The rule goes into effect 180 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

Former first lady Michelle Obama will appear at a rally on Kamala Harris‘s behalf for the first time since endorsing her in July.

With three weeks left until the election, the Harris campaign is focused on garnering votes from swing states, including Georgia. The state elected President Joe Biden in 2020 after voting for the Republican candidate since 1996. Its 16 electoral votes could give either candidate a significant lead.

The Oct. 29 rally comes two weeks after early voting began in Georgia and three weeks after the voter registration deadline. After that, there will only be a week left until Election Day.

Obama’s absence on the campaign trail had grown conspicuous. She was reportedly lying low out of concern for her safety in “the new reality” of political campaigning, a reference to assassination attempts against ex-President Donald Trump.

A former Las Vegas-area official was sentenced Wednesday to serve at least 28 years in Nevada state prison for killing a reporter.

A judge invoked sentencing enhancements for the use of a deadly weapon and the age of the reporter to add eight years to the minimum 20-years-to-life sentence that a jury set in August after finding Robert Telles guilty of first-degree murder.

Telles, 47, testified in his defense at trial, denying he stabbed Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German to death in September 2022. But the evidence against him was strong — including his DNA beneath German’s fingernails.

Telles was the administrator of a county office that handles unclaimed estate and probate cases when he was arrested and jailed without bail several days after German's killing. German wrote articles critical of his conduct in office two years ago and exposed an intimate relationship with a female coworker.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who alleged that they were sexually abused as children by Catholic priests.

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said Wednesday, “I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart. My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered.”

The Archdiocese began mediating the abuse claims after California enacted a law that allowed new lawsuits to be based on past instances of sexual abuse involving minors.

The California law and similar laws in other states have driven many large Catholic organizations to seek bankruptcy protection around the US. In California, the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the dioceses of Oakland and San Diego have filed for bankruptcy to resolve similar abuse claims.

Gomez said the Los Angeles Archdiocese would pay victims from cash reserves, investments, loans and contributions from other religious organizations named in lawsuits.

Axiom Space, NASA’s commercial partner, unveiled the final look of its designer spacesuits built for exploring the lunar surface.

At the International Astronautical Congress, Axiom showed its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit designed with the luxury brand Prada. The suit dropped the dark layer from its first reveal over a year ago, favoring the familiar white.

AxEMU has health monitoring, a cooling system, and coatings on the helmet and visor to enhance astronauts’ view of their surroundings and pressure garments.

The next-generation spacesuits are designed to give astronauts more range of motion and enhanced safety while exploring the lunar surface. They are designed with more sizing and adjustability options to fit a wide range of people.

The suit is “nearing the final development stage,” said Axiom Space, having completed a pressurized simulation with NASA and SpaceX for the Artemis 3 mission, set to launch in Sept. 2026.

Students carrying shovels dug a new home for a “moon tree” grown from seeds flown around the moon.

Santiago STEAM Magnet Elementary School in Lake Forest, Calif., which has roughly 500 students in grades K-12, was selected to receive a seedling for a giant sequoia grown with seeds flown on NASA’s Artemis I Mission.

“It’s kind of crazy,” said Emily Aguesse, a sixth grader who participated in Monday’s ceremony welcoming the tree. “I’ve always wanted to go to space, but this motivates me even more.”

The school’s parent and teacher association will have community volunteers care for the tree, which is expected to grow in girth and stature for decades amid a grove of eucalyptus that shades the campus in Southern California.

In 2022, NASA and the Forest Service flew nearly 2,000 seeds from five species of trees aboard the unmanned Orion spacecraft.

The craft went into lunar orbit and spent about four weeks in space. It isn’t known whether space travel affects plant growth, but scientists are continuing their studies.