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The Lakers are feeling confident in their first step to becoming NBA title contenders.

“Any time you lose a game late, obviously it’s frustrating, but in our minds we had our best guy out there,” Mattingly said after the game. “You live with this one.” 

Mindgard said it discovered in July that Kimi models K2.6 and K3 Swarm could evade developer's safety limits.

Waste Of The Day: Trips To Tiki Bar, Nightclubs

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

It's no wonder that California's infamous high-speed rail line has more than tripled in cost and been delayed by 20 years. The consultants working on the project have been killing time at a tiki bar, a nightclub, an escape room, a gym and more.

Their travel expenses add up to more than $2 million, including $592,000 that was "not allowable," per a Sept. 15 inspector general report.

Key facts:

The consultants are allowed to bill taxpayers for legitimate business expenses, but the state "routinely" allowed them to travel without advance approval, as required. State officials admitted they sometimes had no idea the consultants had taken trips until the invoices arrived.

Many travel expenses had no written justification, or had vague explanations like "typical travel" or "meetings."

Consultants booked first-class flights and premium services like Uber Black, which picks up riders in a luxury car. One consultant booked a premium Uber to travel 25 miles to a steakhouse, and another used the service for "repeated" trips to Planet Fitness gym locations around Sacramento. Another took a ride to a nightclub at 9:40 p.m. and booked his return trip at 2:30 a.m.

State employees said the absurd expenses were approved due to "the volume of travel expense claims, limited time to review them, and errors."

One legal consulting firm's contract allows employees to earn $570 per hour while traveling on a plane, plus the price of airfare. The consulting firm billed for more than 30 trips. Only three were approved in advance, and even those contained no "adequate explanations for why the travel was necessary."

When state officials tried to enforce their authority over travel approvals, they were "resisted or overridden," according to the report. Consultants argued that Ian Choudri, CEO of the California High Speed Rail Authority, had asked them to travel for in-person meetings, and so all their expenses were justified. Choudri has no authority to approve travel for consultants, according to the audit.

The audit reviewed four consulting firms, which are not identified by name.

The Rail Authority said it would only make some changes to its travel expense procedures, arguing that "state regulations do not require justification for each consultant trip."

Background:

The high-speed rail was supposed to be finished in 2020 at a cost of $40 billion. Barely any track has been laid, and the estimated completion date is now 2040 at a cost of $126 billion.

Last year, President Donald Trump rescinded federal funding and told reporters the project has "the worst overruns that there have ever been in the history of our country."

Summary:

Californians have lost billions of dollars and countless hours of taxpayer-funded labor waiting for their high-speed rail line to be built, but at least the contractors working on the project are enjoying themselves.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/29/2026 - 19:15

Robert Cappelletti was charged with committing the crimes while heading up Meriden Housing Authority.

Neighborhood activists are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to crack down on the illicit sale of fraudulent passports, green cards and Social Security cards along notorious Roosevelt Avenue.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps put out a 25-page letter addressed to Americans urging them to oppose President Donald Trump during the upcoming midterm elections.

Health-conscious snackers are getting a bitter taste of reality.

Batteries based on sodium-ion technology could be made in the US with locally sourced materials.

The 49ers worked out nine different players Tuesday. Wide receivers Brenden Rice (the son of franchise legend Jerry Rice), Dante Pettis (former 49ers players), Brady Body, Quentin Skinner and Malik Turner had a tryout for San Francisco. Brenden Rice makes a catch during an NFL rookie minicamp football practice on May 10, 2024 with the...

The Democratic governor, who is running for reelection in November, refused to weigh in on one of the report’s primary deficiencies; its refusal to define antisemitism.

The powerful nor'easter that pummeled New York over the weekend may have caused havoc -- but it also brought some heartwarming news.

Former Joe Biden official alleged Xavier Becerra called migrant kids 'little Juanitos and Juanitas,' sparking concern inside his California governor campaign.

"There are people out there making assumptions, and they don't know who the hell I am," said Cohn.

The pre-series machinations for Red Sox-Yankees revolved around who was left out and who was the right fit. 

Mystery Explosions: Syria's Recovering Gas Network Keeps Getting Sabotaged

Syria has reported at least two acts of major sabotage against its gas infrastructure in six weeks, and it raises questions over who or what group is behind it, and what this means for future energy transit projects.

Monday evening saw a fire rage out of control for many hours at a gas pipeline between al-Shola and Deir Ezzor following a mystery explosion. 

Syrian media: illustrative file image.

Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC), which oversees the site, called it an act of sabotage which abruptly halted gas flows from the Jbeissa gas plant to power generation stations, according to details from state-run SANA.

The New Arab writes that "In January, the SPC began pumping raw gas from the Jbeissa fields in Hasakah to the Furqlus gas plant in Homs province, with around 1.2 million cubic metres passing through the network each day to support electricity generation."

The report adds, "Damascus has also been working to reconnect other major eastern gas facilities to the national network."

For several years stretching through much of the last decade, Syrian cities - including the capital - have suffered intermittent and long power outages. It was especially during the tail-end of the proxy war to oust Assad that lack of fuel and electricity became a major crisis.

Damascus residents, for example, often had a mere one hour of electricity in their homes per day - if at all. Entire remote villages and towns simply proceeded with daily life amid a total and persistent blackout. This was to a large degree the result of a US-led sanctions war which in effect strangled the population. US troops had even for years directly occupied Syria's eastern oil and gas fields, which had been crucial for meeting domestic energy needs.

But now after Jolani and his HTS jihadists seized power, and with Washington sanctions declared removed, the country is trying to restore and rebuild services.

While no group has yet claimed responsibility for sabotaging facilities in the east, it illustrates how the country is still in a deeply unstable situation.

Powerful explosion hits a gas pipeline in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor, near the Iraqi border.

Follow: https://t.co/Ez42KDdHXv pic.twitter.com/G0eS2BUCO1

— PressTV Extra (@PresstvExtra) September 28, 2026

As for the initial attack among these two latest, it happened on August 18 and involved an explosion at the Jbeissa plant's gas export pipeline. Other sabotage examples back when the war was at its height are plentiful.

One explanation which has emerged for Monday's incident is being reported in The National:

Hisham Al Saleh, a gas sector official at the Syrian Petroleum Company, said crews began isolating the area immediately after the fire broke out.

The local official said that the explosion was apparently caused by thieves who broke into the pipeline to steel the gas. “It seems that the theft had gone wrong. It takes a degree of professionalism to break into a gas pipeline and emerge unscathed,” the official said.

Whether sabotage or theft, it raises big questions as regional officials talk about 'reviving' energy pipelines crossing Syria as an 'alternative' to Hormuz Strait shipping, given the war-ravaged country's longtime geopolitical importance and access to the Mediterranean. A future Iraq-Syria oil pipeline, for example, could be a prime target for unknown terror entities.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/29/2026 - 18:50

Joe Buck said he's "hopeful" that Troy Aikman and ESPN will reach a new deal after he signed a six-year contract extension with the Worldwide Leader earlier this month, worth more than $100 million, to continue in the booth on "Monday Night Football."

Kiké Hernandez is bringing plenty of diamonds to the MLB postseason.

As Gov. Kathy Hochul keeps making New York more expensive while pretending otherwise, challenger Bruce Blakeman just rolled out a plan that really would boost affordability.

New York chose to take its already chaotic streets and add small, speeding vehicles to them. That’s why people are now regularly dying in collisions that don’t involve a car or truck.