THE TWIN BRIEF
Russia’s deadliest week of strikes on Ukraine in a while, Saudi Arabia hits back at the Houthis, ChatGPT gets a new look for everyone today, stocks slip a day after records, the Yankees are swept, and the Oilers storm back with five goals in one period in Anaheim.
Dvar Torah
Stand up for it
Yesterday we saw how the Ben Ish Chai starts his Bereshit halachot with Hashem dressing Adam and Chava, and then turns to tzitzit. A few halachot later he gives two short rules that say a lot about attitude. First: whether it’s a big tallit or the tallit katan you wear under your shirt, you say the bracha standing up. Think of how you’d stand when someone important walks into the room. A mitzvah is a meeting with Hashem, so you don’t do it slouched on the edge of your bed.
Second: when you put on a new tallit, you add Shehecheyanu, the bracha for something new that makes you happy. On a new tallit katan, he says, you usually don’t, because people don’t normally get excited about one. But if it’s made of something special that really makes you happy, you do say it. In other words, the bracha follows how you actually feel. Teen takeaway: stand tall for the first mitzvah of the day, and notice the new things you’re genuinely grateful for, because the Torah gives you words for that joy.
Source: Ben Ish Chai, Year One, Parashat Bereshit (Laws of Tzitzit), halachot 6 and 7. Teen reference, not a personal ruling. Ask your rav for your own practice.
World
Deadly Russian strikes on Ukraine · Saudi Arabia hits 82 Houthi targets · Hormuz safe lanes
- Ukraine: A Russian cruise missile destroyed a five-story apartment building in Pryluky, east of Kyiv, on Wednesday. The death toll rose to 22, including five children, and 54 people were hurt. It was part of a huge barrage on Kyiv and about a dozen regions. On Thursday, officials said a Russian glide bomb hit two civilian buses in the front-line city of Kramatorsk, killing 33. The UN says more Ukrainian civilians had been killed by August this year than in all of 2025. President Zelenskyy asked allies for more air-defense help, but interceptor missiles are in short supply worldwide.
- Saudi Arabia / Yemen: Saudi officials say Wednesday’s Houthi attacks on airports in Riyadh and Abha killed three civilians and injured 36. The Saudi-led coalition says it struck back at 82 Houthi military targets across four Yemeni provinces.
- Strait of Hormuz: Iran and Oman agreed on the exact map coordinates for “safe” shipping lanes through the strait, a small step toward reopening it. But a tanker off Qatar’s northern coast reported being hit by several projectiles, so ships still aren’t guaranteed safe passage.
- Russia health scare: A worker at an anti-plague research institute in Irkutsk, Siberia, died of pneumonia on Oct 2. Russia says no plague was found in the people around him. The World Health Organization says it still doesn’t have the full picture and is asking Moscow for details.
Tech
ChatGPT goes visual for everyone · Mathematicians weigh OpenAI’s paper dump · Mistral’s giant open model
- OpenAI launched a new GPT-6 model for all ChatGPT users with a feature it calls Intelligent UI. Instead of just text, answers can include interactive charts, tappable buttons, forms, and mini tools built on the spot, like a custom calculator. Paid users got it Wednesday, and it reaches the free and Go tiers starting today. You can dial the visuals down in settings if you prefer plain answers.
- Math follow-up: Mathematicians are still sorting through OpenAI’s 722 AI-written papers. Some experts say the release skipped guidelines a math committee had suggested, like naming the model, sharing the prompts, and saying how many problems it tried and failed. OpenAI says it wants to give the math community time to check the work.
- Mistral, the French AI company, released a preview of Large 4, an “open-weight” model (anyone can download and run it) with about 1.05 trillion parameters that can read about a million tokens at once.
Money
Stocks dip off records · 10-year yield touches a 24-year high · Caterpillar slides
- Stocks: A day after record closes, the S&P 500 slipped 0.2% to 7,801.77 and the Nasdaq fell 0.2% to 27,538.69. The Dow dropped 0.7% to 51,179.87, and small companies (Russell 2000) fell 1.3%. Caterpillar sank almost 6% after two federal agencies opened an inquiry into farm-equipment markets.
- Rates: The 10-year Treasury yield briefly hit about 5.37%, its highest since 2002, before easing after strong demand at a $39 billion bond sale. Notes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting showed most officials expect another interest-rate increase by year-end. Higher rates already pushed the average 30-year mortgage rate to a near three-year high.
- Oil and gold: Brent crude settled around $100 a barrel and U.S. oil about $88. Gold fell 1.2% to roughly $4,137 an ounce.
Sports
Oilers 5, Ducks 2 · Rays sweep the Yankees · Dodgers and Brewers set up the NLCS
- Oilers 5, Ducks 2: Anaheim dominated the first period and led 2–0 on two power-play goals by Beckett Sennecke. Then Edmonton scored all five goals in the second. Evan Bouchard scored 11 seconds in and again later, giving him an NHL-leading six goals. He’s only the second defenseman in NHL history with six goals through four games. Kasperi Kapanen scored his 100th career goal, Vasily Podkolzin scored on a breakaway, and Connor McDavid finished it with 52 seconds left in the period. Leon Draisaitl had four assists, McDavid had three points (12 on the season), and Devon Levi stopped 29 shots. The Oilers (3–0–1) have won three straight. Next: Saturday at San Jose, then Tue Oct 13 at the Kings (10:30 PM ET).
- MLB: Rays 4, Yankees 3. Tampa Bay swept New York 3–0. Victor Mesa Jr. hit a tiebreaking two-run homer off Max Fried, and the Yankees lost a game-tying homer when a fan reached over the wall and umpires called fan interference. The Rays reach the ALCS for the first time since 2020. Dodgers 4, Braves 1. Andy Pages broke a tie with a bases-loaded single in the seventh, and L.A. won the series 3–1 for its third straight trip to the NLCS. Brewers 3, Padres 1 sends Milwaukee to face the Dodgers starting Sunday. Guardians 9, White Sox 3, and Chicago now leads that series 2–1.
- NBA: Still preseason. The regular season tips Tue Oct 20.
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