Lincoln Riley can’t tell you who for sure will be at quarterback for Indiana when USC meets the defending national champions this weekend. And Indiana coach Curt Cignetti has kept things pretty close to the vest over whether it’ll be Josh Hoover, the usual starter, or Grant Wilson, the seventh-year backup.
“We could spend our time speculating back and forth who it’s going to be,” Riley said. “I doubt we’re going to see some radically different offense based on who the quarterback is.”
His calm comes from the fact that under-center uncertainty is nothing new at this point for No. 18 USC. Riley has spent pretty much the entire season preparing for opponents racked by quarterback questions.
It wasn’t clear, back in Week 1, who would be under center for Fresno State. Nor was it obvious two weeks later if Rutgers was sticking with its original starting quarterback.
Oregon got only three drives out of its top passer, Dante Moore, against USC before his injury thrust No. 2 Dylan Raiola into action. And a month after that, an injury to Ohio State star Julian Sayin left USC to face his backup, Luke Fahey, whom the Trojans terrorized.
It’s still up in the air if Hoover, who came to Indiana as a top transfer, will be healthy enough coming out of Indiana’s bye. Banged up for most of the past month, Hoover was replaced by Wilson in the Hoosiers’ last game before the bye. And Wilson proceeded to bring Indiana back from the brink in an overtime win over Minnesota.
Hoover wasn’t listed with any injury designation on the Big Ten’s availability reports this week. But over his last four games, Hoover has completed only 48% of his passes; clearly, he was affected by injury.
“We’ll see how the week plays out, and we’ll see who we trot out there,” Cignetti said Monday.
Indiana quarterback Grant Wilson runs with the ball during a win over Howard in September.
(Doug McSchooler / Associated Press)
Whoever plays quarterback for No. 9 Indiana will have an array of weapons at their disposal, including star wideout Charlie Becker, who’s tracking to be a top-15 pick in the 2027 NFL draft. Though, that part should be nothing new, either, given USC’s recent work against Ohio State and the presumptive No. 1 pick Jeremiah Smith.
“Real physical guy, has some great speed, a really experienced receiver,” cornerback Chasen Johnson said. “That’s going to be a great matchup.”
How well Indiana is able to move the ball could decide not just the Big Ten race but both teams’ College Football Playoff fates. With a loss in Bloomington, USC would be knocked out of contention, reigniting questions about Riley’s future. With a win, USC would be propelled into the playoff conversation.
That would leave only No. 4 UCLA — and another backup quarterback, Ty Dieffenbach — standing in the Trojans’ way.
Meanwhile, USC quarterback Jayden Maiava remains the most consistent — and healthy — passer in the conference. Even if he hasn’t seemed all that consistent — or healthy — by his standards.
“He’s in a great place mentally,” Riley said. “He’s in a great place physically right now. He’s had some bumps and bruises along the year, but right now he’s as healthy as he’s been in terms of his body feeling good. He’s ready to roll, and I think he’s gearing up to play extremely well in this last stretch.”
RUSSELL Brand could be hit with a £2.9million tax bill after his jail sentence made him a UK resident again.
The rapist was advanced £7.4million by his British firm managing his earnings after sex investigations began.
Russell Brand faces a potential £2.9million tax bill after his prison sentence reportedly made him a UK resident againSource: APBrand and his wife Laura, above, co-own Pablo Diablo’s Legitimate Business Firm Limited which was formed in October 2006Source: AP
Then two years ago he moved his residence to the US on company records.
And the loan was taken off his firm’s accounts last year.
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Entrepreneurs living abroad usually pay no further UK income tax on dividends from their companies — if they stay abroad over five years.
UK residents pay up to 39.35 per cent on dividends so Brand could be liable for up to £2.9million tax.
The fallen funnyman and his wife Laura co-own Pablo Diablo’s Legitimate Business Firm Limited which was formed in October 2006.
The company managed his earnings from film and broadcast work, live shows, royalties and merchandise and made profits of £3,341,057 in 2021.
A tax expert said: “HMRC will want to know how Brand’s £7.44m loan was wiped out in 2025 as a dividend or a write-off is taxable, and prison could bring the five-year rule into play.
“Companies House records show he didn’t change his residence to the US in 2024 so he hasn’t been there long enough to be exempt.
‘The tax will be owed by Brand personally – not the firm – and he won’t be able to offset his criminal defence costs against any business profits.”
He was cleared of two rapes and an attempted indecent assault.
Six fresh claims by women
SIX more women have accused Russell Brand of sexual misconduct.
The allegations, revealed last night by The Times, could not be reported until the end of the court case.
They include claims of sexual assault and emotionally or physically abusive behaviour.
One woman alleges the disgraced comic apologised after having sex with her without consent. Another said he continued having sex with her after she asked him to stop because it was hurting.
A third accused Brand of attempting to pull her into a toilet in 2015, when he was already in a relationship with his now wife Laura. Three say Brand pursued them at his own shows.
Voters have sent a strong election-year message to the new Democratic congressional majority and President Trump: Repair the damage inflation has done to the economy.
Trump, who campaigned on the idea that a Democratic victory in the midterms would trigger a 1929-style economic depression, has maintained that the economy is booming. Since his party lost in Tuesday’s voting, he has claimed he is willing to work with Democrats in the House and Senate, though that’s not something he has done much of in the past.
“I’ll get along, probably, with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive,” Trump told reporters last week.
After Friday’s strong jobs report showed employers adding 165,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dipping to 4.1%, Trump was defiant. “Democrats may control Congress, but I will NEVER stop fighting for you, and I will VETO anything that hurts America,” he said in a text message to his supporters.
Democrats are seeking to check Trump’s power and are preparing for early fights on government spending. Other challenges include chronic budget deficits, tariffs, artificial intelligence and difficult choices about a Social Security system that could run short of money in as little as six years.
But as long as rising prices keep making middle-class lives less affordable, Democrats and Republicans alike face the risk of angering and alienating voters in the next election cycle.
“Until inflation and interest rates are under control, the likelihood of change elections is going to be high on an ongoing basis,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Americans want lower prices
Trump’s tariffs and the war against Iran that he launched in February contributed to the consumer price index climbing to 3.7% annually. The president also tried to bully the Federal Reserve, an independent body tasked with keeping inflation low, to slash its benchmark interest rate in ways that could have worsened inflation.
The gridlock of a Republican White House and Democratic Congress gives the Fed more room to maneuver, possibly smoothing the central bank’s ability to return inflation to the 2% target it has failed to reach for nearly six years.
“I think that one of the surprise winners Tuesday was the Fed,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and president of the center-right American Action Forum.
The Democratic Senate could block Trump’s ability to fill potentially open spots on the Fed board, Holtz-Eakin said, removing “Trump’s incentives to meddle with the Fed” and clearing a path for Fed Chair Kevin Warsh “to follow his instincts and aggressively reduce inflation.”
Trump has maintained that the costs of oil, gasoline and diesel will all plummet once the Iran war ends. The problem is he refuses to say when or how the war will come to a conclusion.
John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, stressed that the Fed’s efforts to combat inflation would be helped if the federal government reduced budget deficits.
“It takes monetary and fiscal restraint,” he said.
Federal government keeps borrowing
The U.S. government keeps amassing debt as tax revenues fall short of burgeoning spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other programs. Paying the interest on the national debt now tops $1 trillion annually and exceeds spending on the military. The problem could spiral because investors have pushed up the interest rates charged on government debt over the past year.
Neither the White House nor Democrats ran on spending cuts. The president wants an additional $500 billion a year for the military, while some Democratic candidates have pushed for restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed under Trump.
Since August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly said the administration would put forward a plan to trim the roughly $2-trillion annual budget deficit. Bessent is working with White House budget director Russell Vought on cuts they’re branding as a “fiscal consolidation plan,” to be released after the election.
Deficit reduction would likely require some combination of tax increases and spending cuts, Goldwein said. But he said that the lowest hanging fruit would be to trim Medicare expenditures in ways that save money for both the government and patients.
“It’s not rocket science,” he said. “The most important thing you can do is reduce healthcare costs and find policies that lower the costs of Medicare, which will reduce deficits and interest rates.”
AI poses a dilemma for economy
When Harvard University economist Jason Furman thinks about the most important economic issues facing the United States, AI is at the top of his list.
“It’s the most screamingly obvious investment boom this country has ever had, or, possibly, second to railroads” in the late 19th century, Furman said.
Using AI, Furman has built an economic analysis tool called Econvitals that replicates some of the work done when he was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in Democratic President Obama’s administration.
Econvitals parsed construction spending data on Tuesday and found an 80.6% increase in data center construction over the past year, while spending on building homes, schools, factories and offices had fallen.
The stock market sold off last week on concerns that Democrats could restrict the construction of data centers and impose guardrails on AI. But the American economy still needs the technology to keep fueling growth now and into the future.
Trump has been vociferous in promoting the sector and has taken a hands-off stance on regulating AI, insisting that existing laws and voluntary agreements signed by tech companies are enough. He has shrugged off public concerns about the risks of job losses and large-scale cyberattacks, but a majority in the AP Voter Poll, a sweeping survey of the American electorate conducted in all 50 states, say AI does more harm than good for the economy.
The dilemma is that AI is helping to propel demand in the economy and sustain the stock market. If those slipped, there could be less consumer spending, lower growth and many in the U.S. feeling even worse off financially.
“Every time you have a single strength in an economy you are also having a big vulnerability,” Furman said.
Social Security needs to be rescued
Senators who won six-year terms last week will face the politically fraught challenge of working with Trump’s successor to find ways to save Social Security, which is projected to be unable to pay full benefits at the end of 2032.
Removing the cap on payroll taxes and increasing the retirement age are among the possible lifelines for sustaining the program that provides income to older Americans and those with disabilities. But any changes would likely need to be bipartisan to get enough votes to clear the Senate because Social Security overhauls cannot be made by party-line votes through the reconciliation process.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said she saw an opening earlier this year to fix Social Security when she overheard Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, talk about the need to lift the cap on payroll taxes. “I reached out to him in a matter of days,” she said in an interview this summer. The two senators went public with a plan that is still being formulated as legislation.
Warren, who worked with the Republicans on a law this year to encourage the construction of more homes, said other bipartisan efforts had failed because Republican lawmakers had been afraid to cross Trump.
But with Social Security, there is a need to act now. Experts say “the checks that go out to seniors will drop by nearly a quarter” after 2032, Warren said.
“Think what that means, literally, to millions and millions of Americans, who depend on those Social Security checks, or who have parents who depend on them. And Congress is doing nothing,” she said.
Ueno collapse raises questions about state influence and accountability.
Paraguay is engulfed in political turmoil after a banking scandal put its president and major institutions under scrutiny.
At the centre is Ueno, a fast-growing digital lender, whose collapse has left millions of people unable to access their savings. But the fallout goes beyond the banking sector.
Congress has rejected President Santiago Pena’s resignation and is pressing ahead with impeachment proceedings. He’s accused of negligence and being complicit in an alleged cover-up of the bank’s insolvency.
So, what went wrong? Were regulators compromised by political influence? And who should be held accountable?
Presenter: Dareen Abughaida
Guests:
Daniel Duarte Braga – Journalist and contributing editor to The Paraguay Post
Mariano Machado – Principal Americas analyst at global risk intelligence firm, Verisk Maplecroft
Javier Farje – Historian specialising in Latin American affairs
Khan Younis, Gaza – A few metres from the sea, near al-Qarara port on Gaza’s coast, Anas al-Shami, 33, is trying to keep his family of six warm and dry in a dilapidated tent. It offers little protection from wind and rain, while the damp seeps into their bedding and belongings at every moment. The swelling waves in the sea also pose a constant threat as winter approaches.
The beach was not al-Shami’s choice of place to live, but the refuge his family took shelter in after being displaced from their home quickly became overcrowded. They can’t afford anything safer than this tent.
Now, he and his family are living in constant fear of a repeat of last winter’s flooding.
Al-Shami and his family were forced to leave Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, when it became part of Israel’s so-called “Yellow Zone” beyond which Palestinians are not permitted to go.
“I searched for land in displacement areas where I could pitch a tent, but overcrowding and high rental costs made that impossible,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I was therefore forced to stay on the beach, despite the dangers facing my family and me.”
Al-Shami recalls last winter, when seawater and rain flooded his tent while the family was asleep. He would wake to find his children lying in water. Their bedding and belongings were repeatedly soaked, leaving him unable to protect them from the cold as the tent turned into a pond.
Despite trying all year, the family has been unable to find anywhere else to go, leaving them facing another winter on the beach.
“My children’s repeated exposure to water, cold and damp caused serious illness which threatened their lives,” he says.
Khalil Al-Shami, 33, and his family have nowhere to go other than the beach, and are fearful about what the winter will bring [Eyad Al-Qatrawi/Al Jazeera]
‘I feel helpless in front of my children’
It’s a familiar story along this stretch of coastline.
Ibrahim Abu Tair, 47, whose family has also been displaced from eastern Khan Younis, is sharing a cramped tent with his seven children on the port’s shoreline. The dilapidated shelter lacks any basic necessities and offers little protection from the cold, rain and wind.
“What hurts me most is feeling helpless in front of my children,” he says. “I cannot provide winter clothes to protect them from the cold or even a dry mattress for them to sleep on.”
The strong wind and the sound of the rising waves keep him awake at night, he says, and he is terrified of another flood like last year’s, when water inundated the tent and forced the family to endure the cold in the open. His greatest wish is to find safe shelter where his children can sleep without fear.
Ibrahim Abu Tair, 47, is living in a dilapidated tent with his seven children on the beach. They have few provisions and little protection from the winter sea, wind and rain [Eyad Al-Qatrawi/Al Jazeera]
Some families have found a makeshift solution to keep the water at bay.
By filling damaged cooking pots with earth, they have forged a barrier against encroaching seawater alongside the tents.
Mayasem Association, an aid organisation which works in cooperation with World Central Kitchen, has seized on this innovation and is now producing these pot-barriers for families in this area close to al-Qarara port.
The initiative reuses large pots rendered unusable by repeated exposure to flames, corrosion and holes. Three pots, donated by World Central Kitchen, are filled with soil and stacked on top of one another, reaching approximately 150 centimetres in height to form barriers that hold back the incoming water and prevent waves from reaching shelter sites.
“The initiative initially involved building barriers to protect the association’s safe space, which hosts its education programmes, school, cultural activities, arts and heritage programmes,” Khalil Abu Lahia, the association’s emergency response coordinator, tells Al Jazeera. “The idea later developed into an attempt to protect the displaced families’ tents along the coastal strip.”
A row of cooking pots which have been fashioned into water barriers [Eyad Al-Qatrawi/Al Jazeera]
A winter fraught with risk
While this is an example of the innovative thinking which can help families who are destitute and at risk in Gaza, it is nevertheless only a temporary measure which cannot make up for the widespread lack of safe shelter.
The initiative comes amid a warning from Gaza’s Winter Emergency Committee of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, as tents and caravans remain in critically short supply as Israeli authorities continue to prevent their entry into the Gaza Strip, alongside the delivery of critical construction materials and fuel.
The committee has reported that Israeli forces have also destroyed about 70 percent of municipalities’ essential operational equipment and 90 percent of civil defence rescue equipment. The fuel crisis means machinery and generators will soon stop functioning altogether, further limiting the ability to respond to floods, carry out rescue operations and clear roads.
In all, there are about 200,000 dilapidated tents sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children, women and people with disabilities.
Some 7,800 of them are located in extremely hazardous areas, the committee has warned, including on dry riverbeds which may now flood, rainwater collection ponds and beaches exposed to crashing winter waves. These need to be urgently relocated to safer locations.
About 2,000 cracked buildings are also at risk of collapse, threatening families who have sought refuge inside them. Building materials, caravans, shelter and fuel are all urgently needed, the committee says.
If Katich’s words seem strong for a side 1-0 up in the series, this South African subsidence was the latest example of an Australian batting line-up only consistent for its inconsistency.
Bowled out for 132 in the first Test of the Ashes last winter, they piled up 511 in Brisbane in the next.
They scored 567 at the end of the Ashes, but were bundled out for 198 by Bangladesh in their next Test en route to a shock defeat.
Even the highs of Matt Renshaw’s 190 in the first-Test win in Durban were countered by the fact no other Australian made 50.
And after another failure, Marnus Labuschagne appears the most at risk. He will not get another chance to bat for his place before Cape Town hosts the third Test from 27 October.
After edging a drive to third slip for 14 off Anrich Nortje in the morning, he gave it away by hitting spinner Simon Harmer to long-on after tea for 39 – his third dismissal in the thirties in the series.
It was made worse by the fact he had only survived an lbw decision on review just three balls earlier.
It is now 47 innings since the 32-year-old, once the leading batter in the world, has made a Test century.
“Only he knows what was going through his mind when he tried to take Harmer down the ground, against the breeze, when Australia are trying to play for a draw,” added Katich.
“How will the Australian selectors view that dismissal?
“He’s been given plenty of rope over the past few years, when plenty of others haven’t, but he has.”
Hasanat al-Rashid, 48, has lived with diabetes for 15 years, and the three-and-a-half-year civil war between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has worsened her situation. Finding the treatment she needs has become a daily struggle.
When the war broke out in April 2023, she was forced to flee south from her home in Haj Yousif in Khartoum North to Umm Daw Ban in Khartoum State.
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During her displacement, she went for days without medication and was forced to eat foods unsuitable for her condition, such as asida, a traditional Sudanese porridge.
She underwent operations on her foot twice when she developed complications of diabetes, including a severe infection.
She moved between hospitals in Gezira State south of Khartoum, seeking treatment in Rufaa, Wad Madani and Al-Hasahisa. When fighting spread to these areas in December 2023, she fled again, arriving in Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea that was less affected by the war.
Her condition has worsened to the point that she now has to use insulin every day and with this comes added costs, something that forces diabetes sufferers in Sudan to choose between medicine and other essentials, such as food.
“The doses vary depending on whether my blood sugar is high or low,” she told Al Jazeera.
The war has pushed income levels in Sudan back to those last seen in the 1990s, according to the United Nations Development Programme. This means Hasanat and other diabetes sufferers are struggling to afford the medicine they need to treat the condition.
Hasanat’s doctor recommended she use an insulin pen, a device used to inject insulin under the skin. She would need one or two of the devices a month, but the cost at 70,000 Sudanese pounds ($8) is more than she can afford up front, so she opts for a vial of insulin.
This is cheaper at 17,000 Sudanese pounds ($1.80), but there is the additional cost of buying ice every day to keep the insulin cool. She spends 180,000 pounds ($20) a month on ice to preserve the medicine. But she is able to spread these costs out through the month, making the vials her only viable option even if the overall costs are higher than an insulin pen.
“It may last a month or less, but the challenge is that I don’t have a refrigerator, so I struggle to store the insulin properly,” she said.
She also needs painkillers and vitamins on a regular basis to manage complications caused by the diabetes.
Hasanat al-Rashid has struggled to find the medicine to treat her diabetes during Sudan’s civil war [Fatima Edam/Al Jazeera]
The rising cost of treatment
Fatima Adam, 75, is among the patients at Port Sudan Hospital struggling to afford the medicines she needs to manage her hypertension and a thyroid condition.
She was admitted to the hospital with complications caused by high blood pressure, which has started to impact her heart. Too unwell to speak to Al Jazeera herself, her daughter, Aisha, described how the rising cost of treatment has affected her whole family.
Before the war, Fatima received medicine through the National Health Insurance Fund. She paid a quarter of the cost while the fund covered the rest. But when the war started and the economy collapsed, the medicines she needed were no longer covered by the scheme.
“My mother takes six different medicines because hypertension has affected her heart in addition to her thyroid medication. The war has made things harder because the prices of these medicines have gone up,” Aisha told Al Jazeera.
The responsibility for paying for Fatima’s treatment and supporting her and her daughter falls on her son, who works as a casual worker. With no fixed income, he goes to the market every day in search of work but sometimes returns home empty without any luck.
“Sometimes, when my brother finds work, we buy enough medicine to last a month. Other times, we have to buy smaller quantities and take the medicines intermittently,” Aisha said.
She bought a month’s supply of her mother’s medication a few days ago for 160,000 Sudanese pounds ($17.80), a substantial expense for a family whose income depends on day labour but essential to treating Fatima’s condition.
War damage
The war has caused an estimated $500m in losses to medicine stocks, infrastructure and transport fleets, dealing a major blow to Sudan’s pharmaceutical supply system, the National Medical Supplies Fund told Al Jazeera.
The National Medicines and Poisons Board estimated that only eight of the 30 pharmaceutical factories in Khartoum that shut down during the conflict have resumed operations despite the security situation in the capital recently improving.
This has increased Sudan’s reliance on imported medicines, but the subsequent depreciation of the Sudanese pound has driven up the costs of pharmaceutical procurement and production.
Hossam al-Naeem struggles to stock some medicines in his pharmacy due to the collapse of the Sudanese pound [Fatima Edam/Al Jazeera]
Hossam al-Naeem, who works as a pharmacist in Port Sudan, said customers with diabetes and hypertension require regular painkillers and vitamins to help their overall condition.
“I feel deeply saddened when I see the expressions on some patients’ faces as they ask about the prices of medicines and discover how much they have increased because of the depreciation of the Sudanese pound,” Hossam told Al Jazeera.
The currency’s collapse has created added challenges for pharmacists. Before the war, a dollar traded for roughly 600 Sudanese pounds. Now black-market currency traders are quoting rates of 9,300 pounds to the dollar, meaning higher costs for most goods in Sudan.
Sometimes Hossam incurs losses himself when he finds that the prices of drugs have risen sharply, and keeping essential medicines stocked is becoming difficult.
“I used to sell a strip of cold and flu tablets for 6,000 Sudanese pounds [70 cents]. But when I went to buy new stock, I found that the supplier’s price was also 6,000 pounds per strip. That means I made no profit, not even enough to cover the pharmacy’s operating costs,” he said.
The struggle to afford heart medication
Huda Mahmoud, 58, lives in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state in south-central Sudan, where drone attacks and other violence remain a problem while the military is making advances towards the city.
Huda has lived with heart problems for more than 12 years and described the impacts of the war as being physical, financial and emotional.
“I take five different medicines. There was a time when they weren’t available, and I suffered a lot. Sometimes, I had to ask people in Wad Madani, Sennar or Port Sudan to send them to me,” she told Al Jazeera. “The medicines were extremely expensive, costing me 300,000 Sudanese pounds [$33.30] a month.”
Taking medication has become a carefully managed routine with each pill tied to a specific time of day.
“I’ve become tied to my pills: this one before eating, that one afterwards. If I forget one, my heart starts beating very fast,” she added.
In March, Huda was forced to travel from el-Obeid to Omdurman. Following her strict treatment regimen has become increasingly difficult during repeated periods of upheaval.
She has now returned home to el-Obeid, where her regular medicine is priced at 151,000 Sudanese pounds ($16.80) a month, something she can barely afford.
Her greatest fear is running out of medicine or being unable to afford her next supply, which would put her at risk of a blood clot.
“I’m afraid of becoming incapacitated. I used to be responsible for the whole household, but now I need help. I feel like I’ve become a burden on my family,” she said.
BRITS could face hefty fines if caught smoking, or playing loud music at one popular holiday spot.
In some cases, the penalty could be as much as £2,500.
In areas of Tenerife it’s now it’s been banned to smoke on the beachCredit: Getty It’s also been banned to be disruptive around natural swimming poolsCredit: Getty
The area of La Laguna in Tenerife, has approved new rules banning smoking, camping, overnight stays and disruptive music on its beaches and natural swimming pools.
The announcement was made on October 7 and has been put in place to protect the coastline.
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Under the new rules, beaches within the areas and natural pools are now smoke-free.
It also stops visitors from leaving rubbish behind including soap and shampoo in public showers.
