Musk pours money into New York races critical to House GOP win

Elon Musk’s super political action committee is funneling $2.1 million to Republican candidates in battleground districts across the country, possibly helping the world’s richest person build a bench of allies in Congress.

The group’s support could be key to determining whether Republicans hang onto their House majority after the November election.

The latest spending, detailed in a new federal filing, is the first major push from the group Musk founded earlier this year to influence elections outside of the presidential race. The group, America PAC, has so far focused most of its spending supporting former President Donald Trump’s White House bid.

In New York, the group is supporting Representative Mike Lawler’s race in the New York Westchester suburbs and Representative Marcus Molinaro’s upstate district. The PAC is also funding three incumbents in California facing reelection battles: Representatives Michelle Steel, David Valadao and Ken Calvert.

—Bloomberg News

Jimmy Carter is almost 100 and ‘still experiencing this world’

ATLANTA — As former President Jimmy Carter nears his 100th birthday, his physical health is diminished, but he remains interested in current news — especially politics — and is aware of the well-wishes coming his way after 19 months in home hospice care.

“He’s remarkably, basically, in the same position he’s been in since he went into hospice,” grandson Jason Carter said last week during a meeting at the Carter Center in Atlanta. “… And when he went into hospice, we thought it was a matter of days, weeks, really. And, of course, we’re not in charge. But …what I can tell you is, he is still experiencing this world.”

On Tuesday, Jimmy Carter is being celebrated at an Atlanta concert to benefit the work of the Carter Center. The event at the historic Fox Theatre, “Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song,” includes the iconic Athens group The B-52s and Chuck Leavell, a keyboardist who has played with the Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers Band.

Carter, who turns 100 on Oct. 1, entered hospice care in February 2023. He is receiving care and visits from family at his south Georgia home in Plains. One interest is the current presidential campaign. Jason Carter said the former president told relatives he looks forward to voting. “I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” he said in August to his son, Chip.

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Are tiny black holes zipping through our solar system? Scientists hope to find out

LOS ANGELES — A mind-bending hypothesis is gaining traction among scientists: The universe may be teeming with microscopic black holes the size of an atom, but with the mass of a city-sized asteroid.

Created just a split second after the Big Bang, these hypothetical black holes would whip quietly through the solar system roughly once every few years, traveling over a hundred times faster than a bullet.

Some have even argued that an immense explosion that flattened a Siberian forest in 1908 could have been the result of one of these micro black holes impacting Earth. Now, researchers say they've figured out a way to test whether these cosmic bullets truly exist.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Physical Review D, physicists at MIT say the presence of a tiny black hole speeding through the solar system could be identified by the gentle gravitational nudge it exerted on the Earth and other planets, which would alter their orbital paths by no more than a few feet.

—Los Angeles Times

Push to return north Israel residents risks inflaming tension

Israel said enabling residents displaced by Hezbollah attacks to return home is now a formal war objective, a signal the country is considering an all-out offensive against the Lebanese militant group.

Hezbollah, which is trained and receives funding from Iran, has been trading fire with Israel since the war in Gaza erupted almost a year ago. The group has sent thousands of rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, which is also backed by Tehran and designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.

Israel has responded in kind, and tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese civilians have fled the border area as a result of the hostilities.

“The security cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: returning the residents of the north securely to their homes,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said after a late-night meeting on Monday.

—Bloomberg News