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New Roc City opened in Westchester County in 1999 at a cost of nearly $200 million. Despite millions more in upgrades, it's a failed experiment.

The raging trade war between the US and Canada is hitting home in states hosting some of the 2026 cycle's most competitive Senate contests, according to an analysis obtained by The Post.

Star's contributions can sometimes fly under the radar. 

China Stocks Sink To One-Year Low As Proposed US Curbs Hammer Optical Suppliers

The CSI 300 Index, a leading benchmark tracking 300 of the largest stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, fell to a one-year low Monday. The index, roughly comparable to the S&P 500, came under pressure as co-packaged optics (CPO) shares sold off following a Reuters report of proposed US restrictions on Chinese optical transceivers used in sensitive government systems and data centers.

UBS's Lucy Zhang offered clients a first take on the Reuters report and the resulting selloff in Chinese stocks overnight:

China A-shares were under broad-based pressure Monday, led by a sharp selloff in the co-packaged optic (CPO) complex following press reports of fresh US policy restrictions.

Zhongji Innolight fell 9% and Eoptolink dropped 8%, weighing on the broader technology space, as investors reacted to proposed US restrictions targeting Chinese optical transceivers. 

The weakness came against an already fragile backdrop following the Trump-Xi summit, which delivered few concrete outcomes. Growth and technology heavy indices underperformed, with the ChiNext Index down 4.5% and the STAR 50 down 4.1%, as selling pressure spread across AI, optical networking, and broader TMT names. 

The combination of policy uncertainty, crowded positioning, and limited positive catalysts continues to weigh on market sentiment in the near term. A-share full-day turnover remained at RMB1.7 trn, broadly in line with the August-September average, indicating limited buy-on-dip flows ahead of the long holiday.

Meanwhile, The Information separately reported that Beijing may allow Alibaba and ByteDance to purchase Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 chips, potentially intensifying competition for homegrown suppliers.

The onshore benchmark CSI 300 Index closed 2.2% lower Monday, tumbling to levels last seen in August 2025. The decline leaves the index vulnerable to further downside toward 4,000, with limited technical support that could amplify the move.

Last week's Trump-Xi summit, as described by Barclays senior China economist Yingke Zhou, was "more signaling, less substance," adding, "The Trump-Xi summit was primarily about stabilizing relations rather than resolving disputes. Beyond a short trade-truce extension, progress was limited. The absence of Chinese CEOs suggests China viewed the summit as a strategic dialogue, not a deal-making exercise." 

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 07:20

Audio firm Taction Technology claimed Apple infringed its patents for tech used to power device vibrations.

East Harlem business owners say the MTA's $8 billion Second Avenue Subway project is ruining their shops, with some seeing sales drop by up to 70%.

“All my people that I grew up with in Wantagh have been dying for me to come out to Long Island,” said Vitolo, whose city clientele includes Taylor Swift, Aaron Judge, Barack Obama and Jaxson Dart.

It's A 'McDisaster'

McDonald's shares are on pace for their worst annual decline in nearly a quarter-century after the burger chain disappointed Wall Street last week at its Investor Day, with CFO Ian Borden warning that its US business would be "slightly negative" in the third quarter.

On top of that, Wall Street analysts, including Deutsche Bank's Lauren Silberman, soured on last week's developments and said the turnaround inflection point for the quick-service Big Mac chain has been delayed.

Shares of the burger giant have fallen nearly 31% from their February high and are heading for their worst annual performance since 2002.

Demand woes are emerging as the US price of a Big Mac jumped 23% between 2019 and the end of 2025, according to the Economist's Big Mac Index. While those increases helped offset higher ingredient, labor, and fuel costs, the days of a cheap burger are long gone.

"Their prices have gone up substantially, and it's no longer viewed as the best value in food," said Jacob Aiken-Phillips of Melius Research, who has the only "Sell" rating on the stock among analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

The Melius analyst noted, "I could go to Texas Roadhouse instead and have an actual sit-down experience with my family that's not that much more expensive."

What happened to MCD's quality control? 

Bloomberg pointed out that rival QSR chains are finding more traction with customers: Burger King posted US comparable sales growth of 8.5% in its latest quarter, supported by a revamped Whopper and a Star Wars promotion. Taco Bell's same-store sales rose 7% as its $5, $7 and $9 meal boxes attracted customers.

McDonald's answer to sagging demand has been an $8.5 billion multiyear overhaul involving technology, restaurant upgrades, food quality and service improvements, and an effort to revive its PlayPlaces, but the turnaround plan failed to ignite optimism on Wall Street.

Silberman's key quotes from her initial takeaways from Investor Day:

• US sales remain weak: "US SSS were slightly negative in July and August, and while September should be positive, 3Q SSS are expected to be slightly negative given the slow start to the quarter."
• Fourth quarter caution: "We suspect 4Q US SSS will likely remain sluggish, in part due to a tough comparison."
• Forecast cuts: "We are lowering our 3Q/4Q US SSS to -0.5%/-1% (from flat)."
• The capex bill: "We estimate the total system investment for NEXT will cost ~$19BN, implying MCD will contribute ~45%."
• AI and productivity upside: "We walk away with increased conviction in the company's ability to improve unit economics by unlocking productivity through the implementation of its ArchIQ technology platform."

Read Deutsche Bank's report here. McDonald's play fits into a broader theme UBS equity trader Mark Paski recently warned about: Wall Street has turned its back on consumer stocks. An expensive turnaround is a tougher sell when working-poor customers can no longer afford pricey Big Macs. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 06:55

Sunday against the Lions, Geno Smith played the best game of his second Jets stint — albeit in a losing effort. 

Edward Paltzik said juror Michael P. Desronvil had 'a mountain of evidence' supporting his position during deliberations.

Boat Migrants Who Have Entered Britain Now Outnumber Its Soldiers

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Britain now has more illegal Channel arrivals under the Labour government, which has been in power two years, than it has soldiers in the British Army.

Home Office figures put small-boat arrivals since Labour took office on 4 July 2024 at 83,279. The regular Army stands at 83,000.

On Wednesday alone, 781 people came ashore - the worst single day since Andy Burnham replaced Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister in July. The first three days of the week delivered 1,085 arrivals. Across 809 days of Labour government, that works out at roughly 103 people a day.

'It has been a very bad week for Shabana Mahmood...'

GB News Political Editor @ChristopherHope discusses the latest illegal migration milestone after it was revealed that the number of small boat migrants now exceeds the size of the British Army. pic.twitter.com/crGvJwxl5L

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 25, 2026

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the milestone speaks for itself. "Labour has let an entire army-sized population cross the Channel illegally," he said. "More people have arrived in small boats than we have soldiers defending Britain. That is completely bonkers. Labour has lost control of our borders and seems utterly incapable of getting it back."

Former Royal Navy officer Chris Parry went further. Labour's intake, he said, amounts to six-and-a-half divisions of fighting-age men. "That's more divisions than were in the Allied assault wave on D-Day," he added, calling the crossings "amphibious operations against our coast."

The comparison is worse when the rest of the services are brought in. Labour's small-boat total already sits 15,429 ahead of the Royal Navy and RAF combined, which together field 67,850 full-time personnel. And this is only the post-election slice. Under the Conservatives, around 128,000 people arrived by dinghy. Since records began in December 2018 the running total has blown past 200,000 - higher than the combined strength of the Army, Navy and RAF.

Writing in the Mail after more than 1,200 people crossed from Monday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: "It is utterly insane. And if it wasn't clear before, the events of the past few days have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that both Border Force and the Home Office have completely lost control."

He added: "Years ago, I warned the small boats crisis would define this era of British politics. Predictably, the chin-stroking commentariat declared I was exaggerating. Well, look where we are now."

"Ordinary Britons rightly ask if successive governments cannot stop people from arriving illegally in broad daylight, let alone under cover of darkness without detection, then what exactly is the point of having a border?" Farage asked. His party wants the largest military operation in the Channel since the Second World War and a return of every illegal arrival to France.

'It is not right!'

Senior Researcher at the Prosperity Institute, Guy Dampier, reacts as the number of small boat migrants now outnumber the British Army.

? Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604 pic.twitter.com/e1vy4dBcUW

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 25, 2026

Two boats this week reached British beaches without Border Force interception - one at Samphire Hoe between Dover and Folkestone, another near Folkestone the day before. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood ordered an "urgent review" and said even one uncontrolled landing is "one too many." Education Secretary Lucy Powell then told GB News that "you can't stop everything all of the time," while insisting Mahmood was taking "swift action to find out what's gone wrong here and make sure it doesn't happen again."

Border Force union official Lucy Moreton was less diplomatic. Undetected landings are "absolutely, definitely happening," she said, with abandoned vessels and reports "all the way down to Falmouth." "If we don't look for it, we don't know it's happening. We don't know it's happening, we don't have to deal with it."

'We've got a government that is oblivious to the scale of the problem we face in the Channel.'

Shadow Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero Andrew Bowie MP reacts as the number of small boat migrants who have reached the UK under Labour exceeds the size of the British Army. pic.twitter.com/PvXnKE2Q3U

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 25, 2026

Labour's first act in 2024 was to scrap the Rwanda deterrent. Shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie said the latest numbers follow from that choice. "We've got a government that is oblivious to the scale of the problem we face in the Channel," he said. "It's not a surprise, frankly, because the very first thing this Labour government did was get rid of any sort of deterrent to prevent illegal migrants coming into this country."

Former Home Office borders director Glyn Williams told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "the consequences of a failing policy... are becoming more and more extreme," and that "more extreme measures" may now have to be considered.

"The consequences of a failing policy...are becoming more and more extreme."

Small boats containing 781 migrants arrived in the UK yesterday, the highest number in one day this year.

Former Director General for Borders & Immigration at the Home Office, Glyn Williams, says 'more... pic.twitter.com/c01qWFrncc

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) September 25, 2026

The official line is that crossings are down 42 percent this year and that summer 2026 was the quietest since 2020. That is the defence ministers reach for while dinghies still beach in Kent and Britain discusses paying France another billion pounds for the next small-boats deal. GB News presenter Patrick Christys called the week "full-on illegal migrant carnage."

'Full-on illegal migrant carnage.'

GB News Presenter @PatrickChristys reacts to at least 1,000 illegal migrants having crossed the Channel since Monday, as it's revealed Britain might have to pay France another £1bn for the next small boat deal. pic.twitter.com/TtDoUa3kOj

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 23, 2026

The people coming off those boats do not vanish. They are processed, housed and parked on the public. We have already covered what that looks like on the ground. In Piddington, Oxfordshire - 350 residents, 46 children, no shop, no pub - a Home Office paper for the old MoD depot discussed 3,510 "service users" against an official planning figure of 1,256 single adult males. Ten migrants for every local.

Similar dumps are lined up at Linton-on-Ouse, Barnham and Crowborough as hotels are emptied into former barracks.

The legal machine that then keeps them here is not a refugee system. It is a production line. A Home Office official who has handled thousands of cases put the genuine share at "at best 1 per cent." Package stories, recycled police letters, staged nightclub photos, modern-slavery claims that cannot be disproved. Grant rates still run in the tens of thousands. Removals do not.

Who helps keep the Channel route open is another story again. NGO networks on the French coast have spent years treating the crossing as a humanitarian project rather than a breach of an island nation's border.

Migration Watch chairman Alp Mehmet urged "Military-age men are pouring into Britain across the Channel. Illegal Channel crossings are now a major political crisis, and pose a real and present threat to our national security."

Almost 90 percent of those intercepted since 2018 have been male; two-thirds are aged 18 to 39. People-smuggling gangs have told reporters that Iran has used the route to move operatives in return for a "favour" once on British soil. In 2023, nineteen suspected terrorists linked to Islamic State and al-Shabaab were reported to have arrived the same way.

A country that cannot stop a dinghy in daylight does not have a border policy. It has a ferry service run by criminal gangs, underwritten by hotels, lawyers and a claims system that treats refusal as the hard option.

Labour inherited a failure and then dismantled the one deterrent it had. Burnham now inherits the same beaches, the same numbers, and an actual Army smaller than the cohort that has already washed up on his party's watch.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 06:30

A spokesperson for the Downtown Alliance told The Post that while they do not know who technically owns the Charging Bull, they "clean it the best we can," without a formal agreement in place.

Author Benjamin Moser and retired Columbia history prof Rashid Khalidi also glossed over Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel and focused on the Jewish state's retaliatory response in Gaza.

The little-noticed analysis, published on July 7 by Cameron Ellis of the University of Iowa and Lars Powell of the University of Alabama, could reignite long-running complaints by Republicans who have accused Google and other tech platforms of suppressing GOP fundraising efforts – while leaving similar ActBlue fundraising emails from Democrats untouched.

Dr. Susan Zweig, an endocrinologist specializing in bone health at NYU Langone Health, sets the record straight.

No, $131.5 million was not stolen from workers by a greedy delivery company, as Mayor Mamdani suggested in a press conference complete with a giant prop check.  

US Teen Mental Health Is Finally Improving After COVID Crisis

Teenage mental health in the United States continues to show signs of improvement after having fallen to multi-decade lows during the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to new CDC data published this week, teenagers surveyed at high schools across the United States last year showed notable improvements in several key measures, including persistent and debilitating feelings of sadness and hopelessness as well as serious suicide thoughts.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As Statista's Felix Richter reports, it’s the second consecutive time that the biennial survey has shown improvements to teens’ mental health after the 2021 edition had painted a grim picture of a generation in crisis, widely attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic policy responses.

Back then, 42.3 percent of students had reported feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks at some point in the year leading up to the survey. That share has fallen 33.3 percent in the latest survey. Even more dramatically, though, 22.2 percent of students had admitted to having seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months in 2021 – an alarming rate, which has fallen to 14.5 percent in 2025.

The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey has been conducted every two years since 1991.

As the chart shows, rates of mental health issues had gradually increased since 2009 before peaking in 2021.

And while the latest trend is positive, there are still causes for concern in the CDC’s latest data.

Not only does the survey reveal that girls are struggling mentally at a much higher rate than boys, but it also highlights that mental health outcomes are dramatically worse for teenagers who do not identify as heterosexual.

59 percent of those who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual reported feelings of sadness and hopelessness, compared with 28 percent of heterosexual teens. Moreover, 32 percent of gay, lesbian or bisexual students said they had seriously considered suicide, versus just 11 percent of heterosexual students.

The latter findings are particularly alarming at a time when the current administration has normalized anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, which could further ostracize and marginalize a group of young Americans that is already evidently struggling.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 05:45

Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes penned a cryptic social media note from behind bars, where she once again proclaimed her innocence and signed the message off with her initials "EAH."

Netherlands Pushes To Scrap EU Gas Storage Mandate After $1.14 Billion Bill

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

The Netherlands considers that the current EU system of gas storage targets ahead of winter is inadequate and burdens governments that have to pay for meeting the EU-wide obligations.

The Dutch government has already spent almost $1.14 billion (1 billion euros) this summer season alone on building up inventories, while this task should fall mostly on the gas market participants, Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven said in a letter to Parliament cited by Bloomberg.

The Netherlands is a relatively small EU gas consumer, but it is a major natural gas hub and home to the EU's benchmark gas trading futures market, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF).

The current EU rules on mandatory gas storage levels consider storage capacity rather than consumption, the Netherlands argues.

Moreover, this spring-summer filling season has been particularly difficult and very expensive for the EU member states as natural gas prices soared in the wake of the Iran war and the very few LNG cargoes that make it through the Strait of Hormuz.

The price spike and the concern about near-term supply have deepened the backwardation structure of European gas prices, discouraging holding supply for later deliveries. Backwardation is the market structure in which prompt contracts trade higher than those further out in time, signaling concerns about immediate supply.

Weeks ago, the Dutch gas network operator said the Netherlands would miss its target to fill natural gas storage sites ahead of the winter, in one of the first evidence-based signs that Europe may be struggling to have sufficient supply for a harsh winter.

Germany, the EU's biggest economy, is considering expanding a key market incentive to encourage traders to raise gas storage levels ahead of the winter. The government is looking to use the existing market tool, the autumn tender for Long Term Options, or LTOs, on a larger scale.

Germany has the world's fourth-largest natural gas storage capacity, but this capacity was only 57% full as of September 24, according to data by Gas Infrastructure Europe. That's a historically low level, and Germany risks gas shortages this winter if it turns out to be colder than previous years, the country's gas storage association, INES, warned earlier this month.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2026 - 05:00

Voters can tell if you don't really need to win — and they like the attitude.