Nov 5 (Reuters) - Albertsons (ACI.N), opens new tab must pay the state of ​Washington $900 million for helping fuel an opioid epidemic in the state by failing through its pharmacies to prevent the misuse of addictive ‌painkillers, a state court judge ruled on Thursday. King County Superior Court Judge Janet Helson in Seattle issued the decision after presiding over a non-jury trial in a lawsuit the state's attorney general filed in 2022 against the grocery retailer, which operates in Washington mostly under the Safeway brand.

"The opioid crisis has really been an equal opportunity monster, bringing its destruction not only to ​urban areas, but to many small towns and rural areas throughout our state and impacting people in all walks of life," she said.

Helson ​said the evidence presented during the nine-week trial showed that Albertsons played a substantial role in causing that epidemic by ⁠failing to maintain adequate systems to police against suspicious drug orders being fulfilled.

Helson said the company filled prescriptions from so-called "pill mill" doctors who were "prescribing ridiculous amounts ​of opioids to patients." More than 5.5 million pills were dispensed as a result of prescriptions from five prescribers whose licenses were eventually suspended, she said.

​Albertsons in a statement expressed disappointment in the ruling and said it was considering an appeal. It had denied wrongdoing and argued that pharmacists were not required to question the judgment of a patient's doctor unless there was a compelling reason to suspect a prescription was illegitimate.

"We are proud of our pharmacists and their dedication to the patients and communities they ​serve, and we will continue to support our customers and communities across Washington through responsible pharmacy operations," the company said.

The leadership PAC, a committee not connected to his campaign and meant to raise money for his political allies, is the latest sign that El-Sayed aims to influence Democratic politics into the future. El-Sayed has used the word Habibi, an Arabic term of endearment meaning “my beloved” but often used more casually, to address his opponents in the wake of Tuesday’s win.

“JD, habibi,” El-Sayed said in his victory speech, addressing Vice President Vance who has harshly criticized the Michigander. “There is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.”

Arabic terminology and culture were present throughout the El-Sayed campaign as he pushed to become the first Muslim U.S. senator. Supporters often wore “Habibi for Abdul” shirts on the campaign trail.

El-Sayed won by a wide margin Tuesday in a key swing state for the 2028 presidential election, potentially positioning him to influence the likely expansive Democratic primary field of candidates as they make their way through the Midwest state.

“When I was hired in 2024, I was asked to assess and rebuild a young organization that had significant challenges,” Kinnison told the board. “I’m proud of what I’ve achieved, including surfacing structural issues in our finance department and contributing to the path forward for a more accountable homelessness response system.” 

Kinnison’s resignation comes after months of financial challenges for the Authority that oversees homelessness response and services across King County and Seattle, including $8 million that was missing and a deficit that was originally thought to be $4.26 million, but a report in October showed had grown to more than $16 million.

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King County and Seattle had announced taking over contracts from KCRHA amid the scandal. Lawmakers in both the city and county have called for the KCRHA to be dissolved after this year’s federal funding cycle is complete.

“I have a responsibility to the people of Seattle to ensure that financial challenges at KCRHA are addressed and stabilized,” said Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson. “I join Executive Zahilay in thanking Dr. Kinnison for her leadership and partnership, and we will make a recommendation soon on interim leadership.”

Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer announced she is taking a “brief hiatus” from her Loomer Unleashed podcast just hours after a Trump administration adviser exposed her for being paid to post some of her manic, hateful content.

It all started on Thursday, when Alex Bruesewitz, who is behind much of Trump’s digital media strategy, took aim at conservative social media influencers following the GOP’s massive midterm election loss.

“Believe it or not attacking Democrats over their relationships with a streamer (Hasan Piker) wasn’t an effective hit,” Bruesewitz posted, not mentioning Loomer by name. “GOP candidates probably shouldn’t take messaging advice from fringe right-wing ‘influencers’ moving forward.”

Loomer took the bait.

“But they should take their advice and meetings with @TuckerCarlson instead?… It’s completely reasonable for people to be appalled with Democrat candidates campaigning with a guy who said America deserved 9/11. Hasan Piker regularly makes comments in support of jihadi groups,” she wrote. “What wasn’t helpful was your friend Tucker Carlson essentially endorsing Abdul El-Sayed over Mike Rogers and using his show to tell people to not support Rogers just a few weeks out from an election. But we all know you will never condemn your buddy Tucker.”

“Laura, you are basically the Republican version of Hasan Piker. Democrats over the years have attacked Republicans for affiliating with you. Those weren’t effective hits either,” Bruesewitz replied. “Voters simply don’t care enough about ‘influencers’ or streamers. lol”

Loomer took offense to that, claiming that she was not an influencer and criticizing Bruesewitz for his association with Omeed Malik, a conservative venture capitalist and major Republican donor.

“I’m a journalist and an opposition researcher Alex. What are you? What is it that you do for Omeed Malik exactly? He’s a Muslim right? Half Iranian and half Pakistani if I’m not mistaken,” Loomer fired back. “Is that why you have such an issue with the things I say about Islam?”

“Okay lol. But is it common for journalists to get paid for their opinions and tweets?”

“You say ‘Okay lol.’ Not sure why you are laughing. I recall last year your company X strategies reached out to me asking me for help. Do you deny that? What is so funny? I guess I don’t get the joke,” Loomer said, admitting that she was indeed paid to tweet. “You loved sharing my journalistic reports during the 2023/2024 DeSantis-Trump primary too. What changed?”

“No I don’t deny that. I’ve paid you for tweets before. I haven’t for at least a year though,” Bruesewitz wrote back. “I also know you still get paid by others for tweets so I do think it’s fair to refer to you as an ‘influencer.’ What percentage of your tweets are paid for?”

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Hours later, Loomer announced a “one to two month show hiatus.”

On Thursday, Brand was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, and is now in police custody, awaiting sentencing.

Allegations of historic sexual misconduct against Brand were first made public as part of a joint 2023 investigation by The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. Following this, the Metropolitan Police launched their own investigation, resulting in the stand-up performer and actor being formally charged in April 2025.

In light of the guilty verdict on Thursday, Brand’s legal rep Ian Winter KC was reported to have confronted one of the journalists involved in the initial investigation outside Southwark Crown Court, telling her: “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

When the reporter responded that she was “pleased justice has been done”, Winter is alleged to have retorted: “Well it wasn’t. You fucked it.”

The following day, Winter released a statement, which read (as reported by Deadline): “Having seen the ways matters have been characterised in today’s press, I consider my professional duty requires me to self-report those allegations to the Bar Standards Board so the matter can be subject to proper scrutiny.”

He then confirmed: “I have made such a report.”

The Duchess of Sussex’s 82-year-old father will appear in court in Tampa, Florida, on Friday, the US department of justice (DoJ) announced.

Bill Essayli, the first assistant US attorney, said: “Mr Markle is accused of possessing child sexual abuse material, including photographs depicting himself with minor girls.

“These allegations are extremely serious, and we will prosecute Mr Markle to the fullest extent of federal law.”

Mr Markle Sr was arrested at a care home for dementia patients in Tampa, where he had been living.

In footage of the arrest obtained by The Sun, he can be seen handcuffed and surrounded by FBI officers while being lifted into the back of a van on a mechanical stretcher.

Mr Markle Sr had been reported to police in the Philippines and the FBI in October by his son, Thomas Markle Jr, who handed over alleged child abuse images he found in his father’s belongings in Cebu City.

A second tranche was reportedly discovered on Oct 30 in a storage unit that Mr Markle Sr was said to have rented near his former home in Rosarito, Mexico, during a raid by Mexican police.

Earlier this week, Mr Markle Jr said he had also alerted the FBI to search storage boxes in the US belonging to his father.

The DoJ said nearly 80 items were seized from inside storage units rented by Mr Markle Sr, including slides, film negatives, and books that contained suspected child sex abuse images.

In a statement, it said: “According to an affidavit filed with the complaint in October 2026, law enforcement learned that an individual signed an affidavit regarding their discovery of suspected CSAM [child sexual abuse material] among Markle’s possessions in the Philippines.

“Law enforcement also interviewed another individual who disclosed that Markle rented a storage unit in the Los Angeles area. Information from the first individual later led agents to a second unit.

“Pursuant to judicially authorised warrants, FBI special agents searched two storage units registered to Markle. Markle has rented both storage units since 2008, with his most recent payments on both made last month by auto-pay.”

The man had been facing charges of disorderly conduct, attempted third-degree assault of a law enforcement officer, obstructing a law enforcement officer and possession of a controlled substance.

The officer involved in the incident remains on administrative leave pending a full investigation, according to the Auburn Police Department.

The encounter began after police received reports around 3:15 p.m. of a man running in and out of traffic on Auburn Way North and trying to enter passing vehicles. Police said the man did not follow the first officer’s commands.

Video of the officer repeatedly punching the man in the roadway circulated widely on social media. The department later released body-worn camera footage and traffic video of the encounter.

The footage shows the officer approach the man and use a Taser before a struggle breaks out as the officer attempts to handcuff him. The officer punches the man in the head several times before his body camera falls onto the pavement.

At least 24 punches can be seen or heard during the encounter. Three additional officers arrive and help restrain and handcuff the man.

The footage also briefly shows the officer’s bloody hand. At one point, he asks another officer, “Can you roll my sleeves back up, so I at least look cool?”

On Thursday, Nov. 5, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) announced that an infant has died of measles amid the ongoing outbreak in the southwestern region of the state.

This marks the first measles-related death in the state in more than 35 years.

“It is with a heavy heart we are reporting the first death of an infant connected with a measles outbreak in Wisconsin in many years. My heart is broken for the family,” DHS Secretary Kirsten Johnson said in a release. “Any death of a child is a tragedy and even more so when it is related to a vaccine-preventable disease. Measles can cause serious illness and death, and it is important for all Wisconsinites to evaluate their risk and take steps to protect themselves and their family.”

There have been at least two more measles-related deaths reported this week.

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) confirmed that an unvaccinated resident died after contracting measles — the sixth person in the state to die of the infectious disease this year.

Additionally, on Monday, Nov. 2, the New York State Department of Health and Lewis County Public Health announced in a joint statement that a child died of measles, marking “the first known measles-associated death in New York State in more than 30 years.”

Measles cases in the U.S. have hit a 35-year high as vaccination coverage drops well below levels that would help halt the spread of the virus. As of Oct. 30, there have been 4,852 confirmed cases of the wildly infectious illness, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. That more than doubles the number of cases in all of 2025. And in 2024, there were only 285 cases.

In an emotional Instagram post on Wednesday, Nov. 4, the director, 60, shared a photo of his daughter Autumn posing with Henry Cavill in his Superman costume. Snyder added a lengthy caption, honoring his daughter Autumn, who died by suicide in 2017.

“A father’s love for his daughter never ends, even when her time here does,” wrote Snyder. “There are no words to describe the heartbreak of losing a child or the emptiness that lasts a lifetime. The years may pass, but the love, the memories, and the longing to have her here with us never fade.”

The filmmaker went on to ask for donations as he and his family get ready to walk in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Out of the Darkness walk in Pasadena, Calif.on Saturday, Nov. 7. Snyder and his family will walk as part of Team Ironwill.

“Autumn will always be my daughter, our heroic archer. She will always be loved and always be a part of everything I do,” he ended his post.

The title of her memoir, Once Upon a Trainwreck, gives you a flavour of where Carlson Romano, 42, is coming from, but what’s most striking isn’t that she goes off the rails (she doesn’t, hugely, compared to other former child stars), but how sensible and mature she is as a child. It’s alarming. When fans recognise her now – she was in the popular Disney series Even Stevens which started in 2000 – they tell her she was a huge part of their childhoods. She had been acting the part of a normal suburban girl, the perfectionist Ren Stevens, while having no idea what that was like. She was already a mini adult.

Now Carlson Romano has a social media career, which has given her a detachment from the entertainment industry. “I’m outspoken at this point, but for a lot of people they can’t do that,” she says. “What hurts is when I see other child actors suffering, because I know that means they haven’t found their way through the pain.” We speak, over Zoom, not long after Hayden Panettiere, the “Nashville” actor and singer who had started as a child and had talked about her experience of early fame, addiction and mental illness, had been found dead.

Carlson Romano grew up in Connecticut, the youngest of four. Her mother, Sharon, she says, had a competitive streak – she encouraged her two elder daughters to enter dance competitions – and focused her attentions on her youngest child. “They were less compliant, that’s what my mother said,” says Carlson Romano. “My mother said that I was a ‘good girl’, and that I would do what I was told.” Compliance, she says, is “the secret weapon of early childhood fame, and that comes at a cost over time”.

She loved performing, but she remembers that the feeling of impressing adults eclipsed any natural joy in it. “I was locked in a beam of approval and people-pleasing and wanting to make people happy with my performances.” If she did well in auditions, she was pleased that her mother was pleased.

By the time Carlson Romano’s career as a child actor was peaking, she and her mother were living in Los Angeles. Stage parents, says Carlson Romano, “can be very complicated. They are people who have dedicated their lives to their children and not to themselves. They’ve often displaced themselves from their marriages and their other children so that they could sacrifice on behalf of one child.” Now that she is a mother of two daughters, “I have a hard time reconciling how my mom justified being a stage parent to one child and not really to all of us.” She thinks her mother found it fun to shepherd her career, have a lifestyle within the entertainment industry and the reflected glory of her daughter’s success. “We enjoyed the bond that we had, but that bond got tested over time. It became more toxic and unstable and our dynamic became more professional rather than personal.”

Now, her mother lives near her in Texas and they have a good relationship. “She understands that I feel the way I feel, but she also still supports me.” She even supports Carlson Romano’s memoir, in which “she’s not portrayed in the best light, but it’s a true and complex light, and that goes to show just how motivated a stage mother my mom is.” Carlson Romano is also close to her brother, who became her financial adviser after she lost all her money (not helped by her mother’s financial mismanagement and certainly not helped by the $20,000 she paid to a psychic who claimed she could lift a curse on her). But she says she doesn’t really talk to her two older sisters. “I think that has a lot to do with what happened with my mom just not being there for them.”

The wolf pup killings have incensed wildlife advocates in Idaho, where state wildlife officials have been ordered to take extraordinary measures to shrink the state’s re-introduced wolf population amid complaints from the livestock industry and big game hunting outfitters.

A law passed five years ago by the Republican-dominated state legislature loosened restrictions on hunting seasons, removed restrictions on killing methods and allowed people to contract third parties to kill wolves. Individual hunters and trappers are able to buy an unlimited number of permits to kill wolves, which cost $14 each for state residents and $32 for non-residents.

In 2021, Idaho game officials also entered into an agreement with the Foundation for Wildlife Management, a non-profit devoted to reducing wolves to help boost deer and elk numbers, to reimburse expenses to any hunter and trapper who provides proof of killing a wolf. The program pays for a wide range of expenses, including truck payments, fuel, ammunition and outdoor clothing.

The reimbursement program paid $2,000 per wolf kill through the hunting season that ended in June, including the 12 pups, records from the state’s fish and game agency show. The program is funded with a mix of taxpayer money, hunting license sales and contributions from the Foundation for Wildlife Management. .

“It’s an abomination,” said Brooks Fahy, director of the advocacy group Predator Defense. “I think most people, even in Idaho, if they actually understood the depth of this, the fact that taxpayer dollars are paying for this – they would be appalled.”

“Let’s call this what it is – it’s a goddamned bounty,” Fahy said. “What kind of receipts are you going to show for 12 pups who weigh 12lbs? It’s ridiculous on its face and the state of Idaho should be ashamed.”

Neither the foundation nor the Idaho wolf depredation control board, a government entity that oversees payments for third-party wolf killings, responded to requests for comment.

Weeks before Russell Brand’s conviction for rape and sexual assault by a court in the UK, he appeared as a featured speaker on a video call for Maha Action, an American group closely allied with the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

It was a reflection on the warm embrace Brand, a comedian and actor, has received from prominent Trump administration officials and other leaders in Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) movement, where Brand has used his star status to criticize vaccines and vaccine mandates, junk food, and pharmaceutical companies. He has also heaped praise on Kennedy and other members of the Trump administration.

“You’ve just been a great force in the world and a great force for Maha,” Tony Lyons, who runs Maha Action and has close ties to Kennedy, said to Brand during that call in October. He also said at the time that he believed Brand was falsely accused. “We will stand up for you every week, week after week.”

Now, Maha must contend with Brand’s new status as a convicted rapist. He is due to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of raping a fan and sexually assaulting three other women. The actor and Christian influencer, who had pleaded not guilty to the charges, was described during his trial as a ruthless, calculated and manipulative sexual predator.

Brand was acquitted of two other rape charges and attempted indecent assault. It has also been revealed that he is now under investigation for two further rape allegations.