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The Morning Dispatch
Seattle's Morning Paper · Saturday, October 17, 2026 · No. 3
Page 1: Front Page
Trump puts new Russia sanctions on hold
Order pauses penalties Congress passed, two days before they took effect
President Trump in his official portrait, 2025 (file photo). Photo: Daniel Torok / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
WASHINGTON. President Trump signed an executive order late Friday pausing a sweeping package of sanctions on the Russian economy that Congress passed and he signed into law last month. The order was posted on the White House website in the evening, two days before the penalties were due to take effect on Oct. 18.
Zelenskyy asks Europe for 70 billion euros more as U.S. rift deepens
He calls the U.S.-Russia diesel deal a betrayal at the Brussels summit
BRUSSELS. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked European Union leaders on Friday for at least 70 billion euros ($79 billion) in extra aid next year. Speaking at their summit in Brussels, he said the war would cost Ukraine 155 billion euros in 2027, with air defense at the top of his list.
U.S. and Iran both claim control of Hormuz as ship attacks mount
At least 12 vessels hit in a week; Brent oil touches $110
DUBAI. At least 12 ships were attacked in or near the Strait of Hormuz in the week ending Friday, the British agency UK Maritime Trade Operations said late that day. October has now brought more attacks on shipping than any month since the war began on Feb. 28, Al Jazeera reported.
Nasdaq has its worst week since June as AI stocks slide
Chip stocks lead the drop; the Dow still ends the week higher
NEW YORK. The Nasdaq composite fell 2.1% on Friday to close at 26,140.03, capping a 4.5% drop for the week, as big technology stocks pulled the market lower. The S&P 500 lost 1.1% to 7,659.44, and both indexes had their worst week since June, the Associated Press reported.
Teacher Megan Lambert, 25, among the dead; a bystander shot the 16-year-old gunman
BEND, OREGON. Police on Friday identified the gunman who killed three children and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School as Griffin John II, 16, a former student at the school. He used a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun that his mother bought around his birthday in August, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.
Suspicious letters probe widens to senators and Washington's elections office
Letter with white powder bound for state elections division is intercepted; no one hurt
WASHINGTON. A federal investigation into suspicious letters mailed to congressional offices and election officials widened Friday, when mail reached the home-state offices of two Republican senators. Sen. Mike Rounds' office in Sioux Falls, S.D., was evacuated, and Sen. Pete Ricketts' office in Omaha received a letter with a powdery substance, CBS News reported.
Katie Zacharia to move to a new role, officials say
Katie Zacharia at her first White House press briefing on Oct. 13, 2026 (file photo). Photo: Andrea Hanks / The White House / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
WASHINGTON. Katie Zacharia is leaving her post as White House press secretary after five days on the job, administration officials said Friday. A senior administration official told NBC News she is moving to a new role that will be announced later. A White House official told NPR she was "transitioning out."
CDC counts 330 new cases in a week and 451 hospital stays this year
ATLANTA. The nation had 4,410 confirmed measles cases this year as of Oct. 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. That was 330 more than a week earlier. Hospital stays for measles this year reached 451, up 37 from the week before, according to the CDC count.
President backs Rep. Mike Collins against Sen. Jon Ossoff in Dalton
DALTON, GEORGIA. President Trump campaigned Friday at Dalton Municipal Airport in northwest Georgia for Republican Rep. Mike Collins, who is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. The rally came 18 days before the Nov. 3 midterm election.
Justice Department sues California over 20,000 mail ballots
Suit seeks to block counting votes from people it suspects are not citizens
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA. The Justice Department sued California election officials Thursday, asking a judge to stop the state from counting mail ballots cast by about 20,000 people the administration calls "likely" noncitizens. The suit asks that those votes be held back until each voter's citizenship can be determined.
Nvidia and Apple each gave $25 million for White House ballroom
Documents name donors behind the $330 million project
WASHINGTON. Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million toward President Trump's planned White House ballroom, The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing a list of donors it obtained.
Fort Hood gunman's execution will not be streamed, Trump says
President overrules Hegseth's plan; firing squad still set for Dec. 3
WASHINGTON. President Trump said Thursday that the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood in 2009, will not be livestreamed. The decision overruled a plan announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Russian strikes kill 8 in Ukraine and black out a million
Poland scrambles jets as drones hit regions near its border
Map: the Volyn region (shaded) in northwest Ukraine, on the border with Poland. Photo: TUBS / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
KYIV, UKRAINE. Russian strikes on Friday killed at least eight people and injured 60 across nine regions of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said. The attacks hit two shopping centers and the power grid, cutting electricity to more than a million people before repair crews restored it, the Ministry of Energy said.
Settlers beat U.S. photojournalist in West Bank olive harvest attack
Washington Post freelancer Heidi Levine, 64, hospitalized in Ramallah
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK. Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian olive pickers on Friday in Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and beat American photojournalist Heidi Levine, 64, who was working for The Washington Post, witnesses and journalists at the scene said.
Report says Meta staff saw restrictions hurt Lula's Instagram
Brazil's election court has ordered equal treatment before the Oct. 25 runoff
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL. Meta employees acknowledged in internal messages that restrictions during Brazil's election campaign hurt the Instagram accounts of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, while the platform recommended the profile of his challenger, Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, the Sao Paulo daily Folha de S. Paulo reported Friday.
French student protests set to swell as yellow vests join
More than 1,750 rallies planned for Saturday
PARIS. Former "yellow vest" activists, veterans of France's 2018 cost-of-living protests, urged supporters to join the country's student protests on Saturday. A website that tracks their actions listed more than 1,750 planned protest locations, Al Jazeera reported. Turnout was not known at press time.
Three men get 158 years for killing surfers in Mexico
Australian brothers and an American were slain on a 2024 Baja trip
ENSENADA, MEXICO. A judge in Ensenada, Mexico, on Friday sentenced three men to 158 years and nine months in prison each for killing Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoad during a surfing trip in 2024, Al Jazeera reported.
Iran's president calls the war 'ecocide' at nature summit
Pezeshkian speaks in Armenia with the UN chief present
YEREVAN, ARMENIA. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told a nature summit in Armenia on Friday that the wars in the region amount to "ecocide, or environmental genocide, and it must be condemned," CBS News reported.
Late Friday, two days before a new set of penalties on Russia was due to start, President Trump signed an order setting nearly all of them aside. He told Congress that holding them back serves the national interest. Here is what was on the table, what changed and what comes next.
The law in question is the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, named for the Republican senator who died in July. It passed both chambers of Congress by large majorities, and the president signed it in September. It was meant to squeeze the money that pays for Russia's war in Ukraine, and it was set to take effect Oct. 18.
Page 5: Business and Technology
CoreWeave debt fears drag on AI cloud stocks
Nvidia's Huang says no backstop is needed
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang speaking at Stanford University in April 2026 (file photo). Photo: Anderseidesvik / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
NEW YORK. Fears over the heavy borrowing of CoreWeave, a company that rents out computing power for artificial intelligence, weighed on technology stocks this week. The cost of insuring its debt against default reached a record on Thursday, The Next Web reported, citing figures from ICE Data Services.
Allstate's Arity to buy Bellevue traffic data pioneer Inrix
Microsoft spinoff founded in 2004 is sold after two decades
SEATTLE. Arity, the mobility data arm of insurer Allstate, has agreed to buy substantially all of the assets of Inrix, the Seattle-area traffic data company that spun out of Microsoft in 2004. The deal, announced Friday, would end Inrix's 22-year run as an independent company, GeekWire reported.
Anthropic investors weigh a lower price for its stock debut
Talk shifts to $1.5 trillion from $2 trillion as growth slows
SAN FRANCISCO. Some current and prospective investors in Anthropic are discussing a valuation of about $1.5 trillion for the artificial intelligence company's planned November stock offering, down from the roughly $2 trillion that had been expected, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the talks. The Information had earlier reported that investors were weighing a lower figure.
Tesla shows a Roadster it says can hop into the air
Production promised for 2028; no price yet
AUSTIN, TEXAS. Tesla on Thursday evening unveiled its long-delayed second-generation Roadster, showing a short-burst flight feature that the company says lets the sports car leap off the ground. In demonstrations, the car flipped over parked vehicles and reached 60 mph from a standstill in 0.81 seconds, according to reports.
Microsoft's Brad Smith warns White House on foreign workers
He says green-card curbs could cripple U.S. tech for a generation
REDMOND, WASHINGTON. Microsoft President Brad Smith has warned that the Trump administration's new limits on green cards for skilled foreign workers could hurt American technology and drive talent abroad, Politico reported Thursday. He said closing those paths to permanent residency could "cripple" the U.S. tech sector for more than a generation.
$75 wristband listens and summarizes conversations, links to Alexa+
SEATTLE. Amazon's Bee unit on Thursday introduced two gadgets that record everyday conversations and turn them into summaries, to-do lists and calendar invites. They are the first new Bee devices since Amazon bought the company last year, TechCrunch reported.
UW report ties state driver data to 356 immigration arrests
Researchers count more than 1 million searches by immigration enforcement
SEATTLE. Federal immigration agents have used Washington driver and vehicle records in at least 356 detentions and arrests in the state so far this year, according to a new report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. The researchers also counted more than 1 million successful searches by immigration enforcement.
Social housing agency plans 20 family homes in Central District
$15 million project on land bought from the family of Frank Chopp
The entrance of the Douglass-Truth Branch of the Seattle Public Library on East Yesler Way, near the planned site, in 2007 (file photo). Photo: Joe Mabel / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
SEATTLE. Seattle's Social Housing Developer has unveiled plans for a 20-unit building in the Central District, most of it two- and three-bedroom homes for families. The building would rise on a 7,800-square-foot lot next to the neighborhood's public library branch, and the agency hopes to open it in 2028.
El Nino-driven wave heads for Washington, raising flood and erosion risk into winter
SEATTLE. Washington's coast faces higher water and a greater risk of flooding and beach erosion this winter as a pulse of warm ocean water driven by El Nino moves north, scientists say. The bulge, called a Kelvin wave, is lifting sea levels along the West Coast by as much as a foot.
After Bend, Washington schools look again at safety
UW Tacoma researcher says prevention matters more than response
SEATTLE. A day after a shooting killed three students and an adult at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, KUOW asked a Washington researcher what keeps schools safe. Eric Madfis, a criminal justice professor at UW Tacoma, told host Kim Malcolm that prevention should matter more than the response during an attack.
Issaquah store to fill a former Rite Aid; Tacoma to follow
SEATTLE. Uwajimaya, the Seattle market known for Asian groceries and fresh seafood, plans to open a store in Issaquah in the space once held by a Rite Aid, KUOW reported. The new store, at Town and Country Square, is expected to open next spring.
Substation trouble darkens nearly 50,000 in Pierce County
Power back for most by early afternoon Friday
TACOMA, WASHINGTON. A problem at a Tacoma Power substation knocked out electricity to nearly 50,000 homes across Pierce County on Friday afternoon, FOX 13 reported. Officials had not said what caused the trouble.
Zach Bryan releases new EP, plans 2027 stadium tour with Seattle stop
Lana Del Rey and Turnpike Troubadours join him on the eight songs
Zach Bryan performing in Melbourne, Australia, in 2023 (file photo). Photo: MAx Kermit / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE. Zach Bryan put out an eight-song EP, 'Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs,' on Friday and announced a 23-show stadium tour for 2027 under the same name. Seattle and Vancouver are both on the list, part of a summer swing through the West.
Video game film faces softer box office forecasts; 'Whalefall' fares better with critics
LOS ANGELES. Paramount's 'Street Fighter,' Kitao Sakurai's film of the long-running video game, reached theaters Friday after a round of mostly poor reviews. Kotaku put its Rotten Tomatoes score at 41 percent, and early counts reported by other outlets were lower still.
NPR Music's picks also include The Avalanches and June McDoom
WASHINGTON. NPR Music's New Music Friday show picked five favorite albums from a busy week of releases on Oct. 16, led by Fontaines D.C.'s 'Dopamine Chamber' on XL Recordings. Host Stephen Thompson was joined by public radio music hosts from Nashville, Kansas City and Austin.
Netflix names Peter Rice content chief as Bajaria departs
Change follows the streamer's largest layoff, about 1,000 jobs
LOS ANGELES. Netflix has named Peter Rice, a former Disney and Fox executive, as its chief content officer, effective Oct. 26. He will run the company's worldwide programming, including scripted and unscripted series, films and live events, the company said.
LOS ANGELES. A new film of Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility' opened in U.S. theaters Friday from Focus Features, three weeks after its Sept. 25 release in Britain. Georgia Oakley directed it from a screenplay by Diana Reid.
Jennifer Johnson Cano sings Herodias opposite Brenda Rae
SEATTLE. Seattle Opera opens its season tonight at McCaw Hall with Richard Strauss's 'Salome,' the company's first staging of the one-act opera since 2002. Performances continue Oct. 23, 25, 28 and 31.
Backup Elijah Brown throws for 302 yards and three touchdowns
Husky Stadium, home of the University of Washington football team, seen from Lake Washington in 2015 (file photo). Photo: Dllu / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA. Elijah Brown threw for 302 yards and three touchdowns in his first start for Washington, and the Huskies beat Purdue 38-26 on Friday night to end a three-game losing streak. The win, Washington's first in Big Ten play this season, lifted the Huskies to 4-3 overall and 1-3 in the conference.
'We trust Sam,' coach says as Seahawks, 3-3, get 10 days off
RENTON, WASHINGTON. Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said Friday that the team still has faith in quarterback Sam Darnold, a day after Darnold's interception in overtime set up Denver's winning field goal in a 17-14 loss. "We trust Sam, we believe in him," Macdonald said.
Brewers sweep Dodgers, reach first World Series since 1982
Milwaukee ends Los Angeles' bid for a third straight title
LOS ANGELES. The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-4 on Thursday night to finish a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series and reach the World Series for the first time since 1982. The loss ended the two-time defending champions' bid for a third straight title.
CLEVELAND. Rain in Cleveland postponed Friday's Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, which is now set for Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. The Guardians lead the Tampa Bay Rays two games to one.
Seattle's nine-match unbeaten run ended Wednesday in Dallas
SEATTLE. The Sounders return to Lumen Field tonight at 7:30 against CF Montreal, three days after a 1-0 loss at FC Dallas ended their nine-match unbeaten run in league play. It is the clubs' only regular-season meeting this year, and it streams on Apple TV.
CORVALLIS, OREGON. Washington State plays at Oregon State on Saturday, the Cougars at 1-5 overall and 0-2 in the Pac-12 in the first season under coach Kirby Moore. Kickoff at Reser Stadium is 3 p.m. Pacific.
