9: Millions have boarded up, sandbagged, and evacuated their homes in Florida this week as Hurricane Milton barrels through the Gulf of Mexico toward the Sunshine State. Deemed a Category 5 storm on Tuesday, with winds reaching speeds of up to 180 mph, Milton is expected to weaken slightly but still bring an "extremely life-threatening situation" when it makes landfall Wednesday night. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency – still busy with the impact of last month’s Hurricane Helene – reported this week that only 9% of its personnel, or 1,217 staffers, were available to help with new disaster relief efforts.
3.3: About 3.3% of US high school students identify as transgender, according to a new survey. The first-of-its-kind study also revealed 2.2% of students are questioning their gender identity. About 10% of transgender students reported suicide attempts, 10 times that of cisgender boys. Transgender issues are at the center of America’s culture wars – while most Americans favor discrimination protections for transgender people, support for restrictions on transgender care and education is significantly higher among Republicans than among Democrats.
13: TikTok is in legal hot water again as 13 US states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the short-form video platform alleging that it breaks US consumer protection laws and has exacerbated a mental health crisis among teenagers. The suit comes as TikTok faces the prospect of being banned outright in the US next January unless it cuts ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance.
42: An alliance committed to restoring Kashmir’s autonomy within India won the region’s elections, which culminated on Oct. 8, taking 48 of the local legislature’s 90 seats. The vote was the first since Kashmir was stripped of its special status in 2019 by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist BJP party won just 29 seats in the Kashmir election. However, the BJP also looked set to win a surprise victory in the state of Haryana – a result that the opposition Congress party is contesting.
7,000: The Dominican Republic has deported at least 4,900 Haitians since last Thursday alone. The move is part of a new policy in which the Dominican government says it will deport up to 10,000 undocumented migrants weekly amid rising concerns about crime and lawlessness. The government of Haiti, which is currently mired in a severe political, economic, and humanitarian crisis, has blasted the deportations as “an affront to human dignity.”
