At Least 2 Dead, Multiple Others, Including a Child, Injured in ‘Mass Shooting' After College Football Game and Fair in Alabama

Gunfire erupted in downtown Montgomery on Saturday, Oct. 4

By Latoya Gayle Published on October 5, 2025 09:32AM EDT

• At least two people were killed and multiple others, including a child, were injured in a "mass shooting event" in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday, Oct. 4

• Police said three individuals who were shot have "life-threatening injuries"

• "We will use every resource to charge and hold the people responsible who were involved in this offense," Montgomery Police Chief James Graboys said during a press conference

Police responded to a “mass shooting event” in downtown Montgomery at around 11:30 p.m. local time on Saturday, Oct. 4, Montgomery Police Department (MPD) Chief James Graboys said in a press conference live-streamed online, per WSFA 12 News.

Graboys confirmed that at least 14 people were struck in the incident, with two of the victims dying at the scene and three sustaining “life-threatening injuries." The remaining nine, he added, are not believed to have potentially fatal wounds.

An adult woman was among those killed, and at least one of the people who suffered life-threatening injuries is a child, MPD Lt. Tina McGriff confirmed to PEOPLE.

The victims' identities have not yet been shared publicly.

The incident took place during a busy time in the city, with a fair and other attractions set up to coincide with a football game between Tuskegee University and Morehouse College.

Police Chief Graboys said the incident was a “senseless act of violence.”

“I am going to state specifically that we will use every resource,” he added during the press conference, per WSFA 12 News.“We will do whatever we need to do. We will use every resource to charge and hold the people responsible who were involved in this offense.”

Describing the incident as “tragic and chaotic,” Graboys continued, “My heart is weeping for the families, and I am incredibly angry, because this was not a typical mass shooting that people read about."

“This was two parties that were involved that were shooting at each other in a crowd. I know enough to say that right now,” Graboys then said. “While I am limited in some of the information that I can release,I am releasing that because the people who did what they did, who are responsible for opening fire on each other like that, did not care about the people around them when they did it."

“Now we have 14 people wounded, shot, two of them deceased. We will not rest until we get you,” he concluded, adding that suspects are currently being interviewed in connection with the shooting.

Roads in the area where the shooting took place were closed, with traffic redirected amid the ongoing investigation, the MPD said on Facebook.

https://people.com/2-people-killed-multiple-others-injured-mass-shooting-alabama-11824522

Phil Mickelson

@PhilMickelson

If you would like to have a town hall meeting with me to discuss Sable Offshore I will meet you anytime and anyplace. Let’s discuss this openly so the public knows the facts. 👍👍

Quote

Governor Gavin Newsom

@CAgovernor

·Oct 1

In Trump’s America, energy policy is set by the highest bidder, economics and common-sense be damned.

We’ll keep chasing an all-of-the above clean energy strategy to power our future and clean our air — no matter what politicians in DC try to dictate. x.com/business/statu…

Last edited

10:39 PM · Oct 1, 2025

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https://x.com/PhilMickelson/status/1973578603536457951

ICE Activity Near Santa Barbara Campuses Stokes Community Fears

Four Arrested by Federal Authorities Near SBCC; ICE Officer Attempts to Access UCSB Dorm

By Ryan P. Cruz

Fri Oct 03, 2025 | 2:32pm1/2

Reports of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity near Santa Barbara City College, UC Santa Barbara, and Franklin Elementary school on Thursday, October 2, raised the alarm among immigrant rights advocates who are concerned federal immigration operations are creeping closer to spaces that have traditionally been protected from ICE enforcement.

The 805 Immigration Coalition — which runs the 24/7 Rapid Response Hotline to monitor potential federal immigration enforcement on the Central Coast — reported several sightings of ICE vehicles earlyThursday morning, including in the areas of Chino, Milpas, and Haley streets in Eastside Santa Barbara, with one sighting reported near Franklin Elementary School (though the school was closed for a holiday, and no students were on campus).

Rapid Response Hotline volunteers immediately follow up to verify reported incidents as they happen, sending legal observers to document any arrests and cross-reference the often-unmarked vehicles with a list of “known ICE vehicles” that have been confirmed to be used during previous operations, either for arrests or transporting individuals to ICE processing facilities in Santa Maria or Camarillo. These incidents are further corroborated by legal representatives who work directly with the families of individuals detained, arrested, or deported.

Just after 7 a.m. the same morning, Rapid Response Hotline legal observers were alerted to another incident near the Santa Barbara City College campus, in the adjacent residential neighborhood on Oceano Avenue.=In this incident, 805 Immigrant Coalition confirmed at least four people were taken into custody by ICE officers in bulletproof vests and federal agents wearing navy blue “FBI” jackets. According to witnesses at the scene, the four people were taken away in unmarked vehicles after the federal agents smashed the driver’s side window of the detainees’ car.

After the early-morning incidents in Santa Barbara, 805 Immigrant Coalition dispatched multiple community response teams to patrol neighborhoods on the Eastside, Westside, andother areas of the city that have become hotspots for ICE activity in recent months. “Let’s protect each other and keep watch for our community,” the group wrote in a post on Instagram.

Another incident involving federal immigration enforcement — originally reported by UCSB’s student-run newspaper the Daily Nexus —occurred at a student dormitory on El Colegio Road around 10:30 that same morning. According to reports from firsthand witnesses, an individual who later identified himself as a federal immigration officer was able to gain access into the main lobby of the Santa Catalina Residence Hall(an area accessible only to residents with an electronic key), likely after a resident either entered or exited the front door.

(I lived in Santa Barbara, no one there wanted to illegals. I was back there a couple of years ago, the homeless population is gigantic, and these people are crazy)

https://www.independent.com/2025/10/03/ice-activity-near-santa-barbara-campuses-stokes-community-fears/

>>23696150

2/2

The Daily Nexus spoke to a staff member who asked to remain anonymous, who reportedlysaid the officer — who was either with ICE or another federal agency — showed a front desk worker a file with the name of an individual whose address was listed at the student dorm. Santa Catalina Residence Hall staff could not confirm whether the individual in question currently lives in the building, and federal agencies could not confirm whether the officer had a warrant to enter the property.

Dormitory staff members and supervisors did not reveal any information about the individual, due to university policies which prevent the disclosure of any information about student residents without the student’s permission. After a few minutes, the federal agent reportedly left the dormitory without any further incident.

The Independent reached out to UCSB and the Department of Homeland Security for more information regarding the incident at the Santa Catalina Residence Hall. ICE did not respond to specific questions, and the agency does not comment publicly regarding day-to-day operations.

UCSB spokesperson Kiki Reyes addressed the incident in a statement sent to the Independent on Friday afternoon,in which she said the federal agent who entered the lobby of the student dormitory may not have been from ICE, but could have been from another agency inquiring about a student’s immigration status.

“The university is looking into a report concerning individuals identifying themselves as federal representatives who entered the lobby of one of our housing residences and asked to speak to an individual regarding an expired international student immigration status,” Reyes said. “By university policy, and in accordance with [The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act], the university did not disclose any information and the individuals were denied access to the residence hall. At this time, the campus does not believe that the individuals were agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

According to University of California’s informational page regarding immigration policies (updated July 28, 2025),UCSB does not technically have the authority to prevent federal immigration enforcement officers from coming on campus to enforce federal law, though staff and UCPD are not required to assist in any capacity.

The policy makes a distinction, however, between public areas of the campus — which are accessible to any member of the public, including ICE officers— and “private” areas, such as dormitories and buildings with monitored entryways restricted to those with key cards. Specifically, the policy states, ICE requires a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) to enter non-public areas like college dorm rooms.

“UC employees are not required to affirmatively assist federal immigration authorities or grant permission to enter limited access space when officers do not have a judicial warrant to enter,” the policy states. “If an immigration officer seeks your consent to enter limited access space or requests information or documents from you about another individual, take steps to ensure that you have authority to provide the requested access, information or documents. Ask the officer for their documentation of their name, identification number, agency affiliation, and business card; ask for a copy of any warrant they may have.”

Since January, there have been more than 600 immigration-related arrests on the Central Coast, with more than 100 confirmed arrests in Santa Barbara County (though these arrests, recorded by 805 Immigrant Coalition, represent a low estimate, counting only those reported through the Rapid Response Hotline). The vast majority of ICE-related activity has occurred in neighborhoods with high concentrations of working-class Latino families, such as Santa Barbara’s Eastside and Westside and Old Town Goleta.While reports of ICE activity near school campuses has raised the level of fear among immigrant advocates and community watchdogs, there have been no confirmed instances of ICE entering a school property in Santa Barbara County this year.

https://www.independent.com/2025/10/03/ice-activity-near-santa-barbara-campuses-stokes-community-fears/

(My brother has a house painting business in Santa Barbara and he hires illegals all the time. They are so worried about them staying they are putting up with tremendous crime. S. CA is a shithole now.)

Governor Kevin Stitt

@GovStitt

If New York wants to hand out CDLs to illegal immigrants with “No Name Given,” that’s on them. The moment they cross into Oklahoma, they answer to our laws.

OHP performed an enforcement action along I-40 and apprehended 125 illegal immigrants.

==This is keeping Oklahomans safe.

A New York State Commercial Driver License with the text "NO NAME GIVEN" highlighted by a red arrow. The license shows Richmond Hill, NY 11418, Class A, Limited-Term CDL, DOB 04/14/2025, issued 05/26/2028, expires 05/26/2028, sex M, height 5-08", eyes BLK, and endorsements F, NONE.==

2:59 PM · Sep 29, 2025

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5.8M

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https://x.com/GovStitt/status/1972737969594433871

US to Cancel Billions for West Coast Hydrogen Hubs Amid Shutdown

By Ari Natter

October 1, 2025 at 9:26 PM UTC

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The Trump administration is planning to cancel billions of dollars earmarked for hydrogen projects in California and the Pacific Northwest.

The move is part of nearly $8 billion in funding eliminations for green energy projects in Democratic-leaning states, including wind, solar and other energy projects.

The Energy Department funding cuts come as the White House seeks to pressure Democrats to end the government shutdown.

The Trump administration is planning to cancel billions of dollars earmarked for hydrogen projects in California and the Pacific Northwest as part of its first tranche of funding cuts following the government shutdown, according to an administration official.

The move is part of nearly $8 billion in funding eliminations that White House Budget Director Russell Vought flagged was coming for green energy projects in Democratic-leaning states. The administration is also set to cancel spending for unspecified wind, solar and other energy projects, according to the official who wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter on the record.

The Energy Department funding cuts come as the White House seeks to pressure Democrats to end the government shutdown.

Read More: Trump Plans to Use Shutdown to Fire Federal Workers This Week

The Biden administration previously announced as much as $2.2 billion would be awarded for the so-called hydrogen hubs — broad networks of hydrogen producers and consumers spanning multiple states — as part of its effort to spur development of the clean-burning source of power.

The hydrogen funds included $1.2 billion for the California hydrogen hub, which would produce hydrogen exclusively from renewable energy and biomass and is aimed at decarbonizing public transportation, heavy-duty trucking and port operations. Project partners announced at the time included Amazon and Air Products.

Also See: White House Freezes $18 Billion in NYC Funding as Shutdown Hits

The awards also included $1 billion for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, which was set to span parts of Washington, Oregon, and Montana. In all, about $7 billion was announced for seven hydrogen hubs in 2023.

Politics

US to Cancel Billions for West Coast Hydrogen Hubs Amid Shutdown

By Ari Natter

October 1, 2025 at 9:26 PM UTC

Takeaways by Bloomberg AI

The Trump administration is planning to cancel billions of dollars earmarked for hydrogen projects in California and the Pacific Northwest.

The move is part of nearly $8 billion in funding eliminations for green energy projects in Democratic-leaning states, including wind, solar and other energy projects.

The Energy Department funding cuts come as the White House seeks to pressure Democrats to end the government shutdown.

The Trump administration is planning to cancel billions of dollars earmarked for hydrogen projects in California and the Pacific Northwestas part of its first tranche of funding cuts following the government shutdown, according to an administration official.

The move is part of nearly $8 billion in funding eliminations that White House Budget Director Russell Vought flagged was coming for green energy projects in Democratic-leaning states.

The administration is also set to cancel spending for unspecified wind, solar and other energy projects, according to the official who wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter on the record.

The Energy Department funding cuts come as the White House seeks to pressure Democrats to end the government shutdown.

The Biden administration previously announced as much as $2.2 billion would be awarded for the so-called hydrogen hubs— broad networks of hydrogen producers and consumers spanning multiple states — as part of its effort to spur development of the clean-burning source of power.

The hydrogen funds included $1.2 billion for the California hydrogen hub, which would produce hydrogen exclusively from renewable energy and biomassand is aimed at decarbonizing public transportation, heavy-duty trucking and port operations. Project partners announced at the time included Amazon and Air Products.

The awards also included $1 billion for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, which was set to span parts of Washington, Oregon, and Montana. In all, about $7 billion was announced for seven hydrogen hubs in 2023.

https://archive.is/RmNbp

250TH CELEBRATION OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY PART 1

Bannon’s war room is covering all of it

https://rumble.com/embed/v6xpppi/?pub=4

TONY™

@TONYxTWO

“Just got back from Memphis… Memphis is a totally different place right now. For real. I did not know that President Trump was sending them guys down there… it’s police everywhere.”

“Crime has slowed down. It look like a totally different city..”

I voted for this!! 🔥👇🏼

https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1974668656413233453

Figment 🇺🇸 🦅🌍⚓️

@TCC_Steve

How did an illegal immigrant get a New York State Real ID? They are not eligible for it.

@TheJusticeDept

@FBI

Doesn't this jeopardize the security and purpose of a real id.

==I had to provide a ton of documents to validate that I was a US Citizen.

Three New York State identification cards labeled REAL ID, Enhanced, and Standard. Each card shows a photo of a man, text with cardholder details, and New York State symbols. Text on the cards includes requirements and uses for domestic flights and border crossings.==

7:27 PM · Sep 29, 2025

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82.3K

Views

https://x.com/TCC_Steve/status/1972805533682843651

1,800-Pound Pumpkin Dropped From 200-Foot Crane, Destroys Outhouse

A 1,788-pound pumpkin was dropped on an outhouse from a 200-foot crane on Saturday at the Wyoming State Pumpkin Championship in Worland on Saturday. “You can’t get more redneck than pumpkins, an outhouse, and a 200-foot crane,” Wyoming pumpkin king Jay Richard said.

Andrew Rossi

October 04, 2025

== — More than 4 tons' worth of giant pumpkins were weighed at the 2025 Wyoming State Championship Weigh-Off and Pumpkin Drop on Saturday. Then, a lot of that tonnage was hoisted 200 feet into the air and dropped to explode in spectacular fashion.

The climax of the event was watching a 1,700-pound pumpkin smash the crap out of a porta-potty.

The cold, windy weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of people whose “pumpkin fever” had them fiendishly devoted to their pumpkins, zucchinis, and watermelons for months.==

They came to see the weight of their work, then watch it explode into smithereens.

Jay Richard, aka Wyoming’s Pumpkin King, ensured nobody left the Washakie County Fairgrounds disappointed.

The main event of the day was watching the largest pumpkin of the weigh-off become the largest pumpkin ever dropped in Wyoming, destroying a porta-potty with incredible precision as it crashed into the ground.

“You can’t get more redneck than pumpkins, an outhouse, and a 200-foot crane,” Richard said. “I don’t know why, but destroying an outhouse is my crown jewel of pumpkin drops.”

Cream Of The Crop (And The State)

The weigh-off began at 11 a.m. The forklift used to lift the 1,000-plus-pound pumpkins onto the scale got stuck in the mud briefly, but the otherwise rainy and windy weather did nothing to stop the dedicated crew of volunteers from making the weigh-off memorable.

The envy of all was Chad Kurtenbach’s massive pumpkin, grown in his backyard in Lovell over the last several months. Everyone knew it was the largest squash at the weigh-off, but nobody knew exactly how big it was.

“If this is a record-breaker, it’ll hold it for about an hour,” Richard said.

The Wyoming state record for a pumpkin was set by Andy and Amy Corbin in 2023, with a 2,062-pound behemoth they grew in Cheyenne.

Richard knew the Corbins were poised to break their own record on Saturday at a competition in Colorado, which they did with a 2,085-pound pumpkin they had grown this season.

Kurtenbach’s pumpkin weighed in at 1,788 pounds. It was short of record-breaking and a bit smaller than anticipated, but it was his personal best and the largest pumpkin at the weigh-off.

“I’d trade for that one,” Richard said, referencing his “disappointing” crop of pumpkins this year. “It’s only a 530-pound improvement over his personal best.”

The most anticipated pumpkin was brought to Worland from Montana.

Joe Nigro was looking to break Montana’s state record of 1,359 pounds with a well-shaped pumpkin he’d been doting on since he planted the seed on May 1.

“I’ve been chasing the dragon for the last five years,” Nigro told Cowboy State Daily. “I didn’t plan on being here. It was all hail, and bugs, and fungus, and mildew, and everything else this year.”

Despite everything, Nigro’s pumpkin weighed in at 1,591 pounds, more than 100 pounds over what he expected. That clinched a new state record for a Montana-grown pumpkin.

“It feels great, and very relieving,” he said. “It all came together.”

Long article

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/10/04/1-700-pound-squash-smashes-the-crap-out-of-a-porta-potty-at-state-pumpkin-drop/

https://youtu.be/GLWdsTDY_EA

Billionaire populist Andrej Babis' party wins Czech parliamentary election10 hours ago

Rob CameronPrague1/2

Billionaire businessman Andrej Babis has won parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, although his populist ANO party fell short of an overall majority.

ANO received just under 35% of the vote, earning them 80 seats in the 200-seat lower house – up from 72 seats four years ago, according to preliminary results.

Babis – who served as prime minister from 2017 to 2021 – is expected to be invited to lead talks on forming a new coalition.

"This is a historic success," Andrej Babis announced to cheering supporters at the ANO headquarters in the suburbs of Prague.

He'd entered the building holding aloft a Bluetooth speaker blasting a remix of the 1981 hit 'Sarà perché ti amo' by the Italian pop trio Ricchi e Poveri.

The same song resounded across the stage as he accepted the applause. Some colleagues – including the former finance minister Alena Schillerova – danced along to the beat.

"It's the pinnacle of my political career!" he said, adding that he and his team would now work to make the Czech Republic "the best place to live in the European Union".

But while this election has thrown up no great surprises – few had any doubt he would emerge in first place - there are still plenty of questions.

Babis has already begun talks with the two small right-wing eurosceptic parties that managed to pass the 5% threshold: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves, and the anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, led by the Czech-Japanese entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.

Parliamentary maths means he will need an alliance with both to form a government that enjoys a majority in parliament - none of the other parties are likely to work with him.

After giving his acceptance speech he said he wanted ANO to govern alone, rather than create a formal coalition.

ANO will have the most in common with the Motorists. The two already sit in the same European Parliament group – the "pro-sovereignty" Patriots for Europe, which Babis founded alongside Hungary's Viktor Orban and Austria's Herbert Kickl last year.

ANO shares the Motorists' misgivings about the EU's emissions targets, and vows to modify or reject them outright.

Both parties are firmly against Czech households carrying a greater financial burden for cleaner energy, and both oppose the EU's ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars after 2035.

Relations with the SPD could be more fraught.

For a start, SPD fought this election in a formal alliance with a number of fringe parties on the far-right, meaning they will have to yield some of their seats to them. Okamura may not have full control of the MPs in his caucus – always a recipe for disaster in coalition politics.

Babis has also categorically ruled out allowing a referendum on either EU or NATO membership – a key policy priority for the SPD.

"I have been prime minister. We have been in government before. And we had excellent results."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62qezmr92lo

>>23696518

2/2

The ANO leader might have leaned heavily into anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in the final days of the campaign, lambasting the centre-right government for giving "Czech mothers nothing, and Ukrainians everything".

But Okamura's call for Ukrainian refugees to be deported en masse will likely fall on deaf ears.

Czech military support for Ukraine's war effort however is likely to change significantly under a Babis administration. He has already vowed to scrap the successful Czech ammunition initiative – which has delivered 3.5 million shells to Ukraine since 2022.

Babis claims it lacks transparency, but Czech government officials who created the scheme say it works precisely because it is not transparent.

Under the initiative, Czech arms dealers use their international contacts to procure shells for Ukraine on the global market, with the bulk of the money coming from EU and NATO partners. Some of the producers are in countries that have relationships with Russia but as the deal is arranged with Czech dealers their involvement remains private.

The ANO leader wants it moved under the umbrella of NATO instead, and again on Saturday accused Czech arms dealers of making enormous profits from the scheme.However, he said he would have no problem negotiating the matter with President Zelensky.

Babis also laughed off claims Western allies were worried the Czech Republic would no longer be a reliable partner in the EU and NATO under his administration, and that was why he now appeared to be distancing himself from extremist parties.

"Your problem is you just copy lies from Czech journalists," he replied, answering a reporter from the New York Times in English.

"I spoke with Trump five times! I was in the Pentagon. I was in the FBI. I talked to the head of the CIA," Babis said, speaking of his first term, which overlapped with President Trump's first term in office.

"We were a very reliable partner," he went on.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62qezmr92lo

I bet the EU are losing their minds now

She Faked Her Way into Yale. Then Things Unraveled

How fabricated transcripts, recommendation letters, and a personal statement about North Dakota fooled the Ivy into admitting a Chinese student from the Bay1/2

BY CLARA MOLOT

OCTOBER 4, 2025

Katherina Lynn had only been Katherina Lynn for a month before she was expelled from Yale for admissions fraud.

Lynn, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, says that growing up in a Chinese family in Northern California, she always hated her given name. She says she was bullied so much for it that, halfway through her sophomore year of high school, she decided to become someone new. Someone with a Western name and an Ivy League degree who left her detractors in the dust.

That’s how “Katherina Lynn” was born.

Convinced that her chances of success as an Asian kid with average grades were less than ideal in the ultra-competitive Bay Area—for good reason, given the proven anti-Asian bias in Ivy admissions processes, which culminated in a Supreme Court lawsuit penalizing Harvard in 2023—Lynn swapped studying for identity hunting. After careful research, she landed on the 2,000-person town of Tioga, North Dakota, as her escape ticket.

Lynn spent the next few years perfecting her plan to gain admission into an Ivy League college using a completely fabricated identity. “It’s basically just a lot of reading, because I didn’t have outside help from a counselor,” she says.

“I had to learn how to use Adobe from scratch” in order to forge transcripts and financial documents, Lynn says. She wrote her own letters of recommendation and “came up with ways around [colleges’] security measures.”

“If I had not been as careful as I was,” she says, “I would have gotten caught.”

Lynn would not answer questions about whether her parents knew of her fabrications, and avoided going into the specifics of her process when we spoke. The reasons seemed less to do with embarrassment or fear of punishment and instead appeared to be born out of pride and protectiveness—to make sure copycats wouldn’t be able to mimic her tricks of the trade.

“That transcript drove me crazy,” she says.

Katherina from Tioga

On September 22, the Yale Daily News student newspaper reported that a first-year had been removed from campus for falsified application information. The article identified Lynn but provided no personal information beyond her name.

The search for Lynn’s real identity first took me to the Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham Tioga, whose address Lynn listed as her place of residence in her application to Yale.

“Unless she’s working on an oil rig, she’s not here,” the innkeeper told me when I called. The registrar at the local Tioga high school, where Lynn claimed to have graduated this past spring, also didn’t recognize her name. When I asked if there might be another school in the area, she laughed before replying succinctly: “No.”

I called the phone number associated with Lynn’s Yale application—a 701 North Dakota area code that pops up with a scam warning, the tell-tale sign of being a Voice over Internet Protocol number, used by call centers and spammers—expecting it to be a dead end.

Instead, Lynn picked up.

Out with the Old, in with the Fabricated

Not only did Katherina have to be created, Lynn tells me when we speak, but all signs of her previous life needed to be wiped.

She missed her Bay Area high-school graduation, in 2024, and begged the school not to read her name during the ceremony, but to no avail: a recording of the principal reading Lynn’s given name is available online, though no one walked up to receive the diploma. And she legally changed her name.

The fall before she graduated, Lynn had applied to another Ivy League university with some fabricated application components, including her made-up name, though she kept her California address. As she expected, she was rejected, solidifying her plan to pretend to be from North Dakota the next time around.

In the fall of 2024, a few months into her post-high-school life studying resources such as Ivy League–admissions podcasts while living at her parents’ house, she applied to Yale as Katherina Lynn from Tioga, North Dakota.

“I wrote about how being from a small town would shape who I am,” she says.

https://archive.is/CuDhW

>>23696572

2/2

It Worked

Then, in late March, Lynn received the thick letter she’d been dreaming of for years. She’d been accepted to Yale’s graduating class of 2029.

Lynn tells me that the Yale admissions officer assigned to her “said that my application was his favorite, and that I did a really good job of appealing to the admissions office.” She would not comment on how her fall tuition was paid; Yale spokesperson Paul McKinley also declined to comment.

Lynn arrived on Yale’s campus in the middle of August with a single suitcase and a purse.

She had been assigned a small suite of four girls in Old Campus’s Lanman-Wright Hall dorm, known colloquially as L-Dub. The suite comprised a cramped common room and two bedrooms, each only big enough for a set of bunk beds. The door to the suite was decorated with signs featuring the students’ names and hometowns. Hers read, “Katherina Lynn: Tioga, North Dakota.”

When Lynn saw the sign, her stomach dropped. Her plan had been to return to saying that she was from the Bay Area once she got to campus, so that it would be easier to keep her story straight in case she ever let her guard down. “It was just a sticker on a door, and I should have removed it,” she says, “but I had just flown from California on a red-eye and I was so tired and not thinking properly.”

Lynn had spent the past three years making sure every single aspect of her made-up identity was fully accounted for. Now she was coming to the realization that not everything was in her control.

Things unraveled from there.

Lynn claims one of her suite-mates, Sara Bashker, took an immediate dislike to her. “She kept asking me where I was from,” says Lynn. Bashker disagrees, saying, “No, I found her quite nice and friendly for the most part.”

Other rumors started to spread about Lynn, as Bashker and her other suite-mates complained about a mildew smell emanating from Lynn’s room and messes she left behind, including rotten food. “It was this nightmare roommate thing,” a student in the dorm tells me.

Students also complained about Lynn’s long calls to an older boyfriend in California, who students claim was Lynn’s “submissive.” Bashker told the Yale Daily News about Lynn’s “B.D.S.M. relationship” with a man in his 30s, estimating that they spoke to each other for “three to four hours” a day.

“She was trying to put a cage in their room for when her boyfriend visited,” one student tells me. “Sex-slave stuff.”

“That’s just made up,” retorts Lynn, who admits to leaving an apple core and some wet clothes in her room. Lynn also confirmed that she does have an older boyfriend in California with whom she is in a dominant-submissive relationship, but alleges that it was spun into rumors to do with her being a dominatrix: “[Bashker] took a sprinkle of truth and then exaggerated it,” she says, to the point where it was “unrecognizable.”

On Tuesday, September 16, Bashker says she noticed a luggage tag on Lynn’s desk that listed a name she didn’t recognize. “I took a photo and sent it to my [freshman counselor],” she says.

Later that night, while Lynn was in the shower, Bashker says she sneaked back into Lynn’s room and looked through her purse, where she found the ID Lynn had used to fly across the country to Yale a month earlier. The ID listed a California address and the same name she’d seen on the luggage tag. This time, Bashker decided to show it to her college dean.

Lynn was called into Dean Adam Ployd’s office, where she was told her acceptance had been rescinded. A Yale police officer and Head of College Anjelica Gonzalez escorted Lynn back to her dorm room, where she was asked to collect her things. She flew back to California that same day.

“Yale receives thousands of admissions applications each year, and the process relies on the honesty of the applicants and the accuracy of the information that is provided. When it came to the university’s attention that a student misrepresented themselves in their application,the university rescinded their admission as outlined in the admission’s policies. Yale will not be sharing additional details,” says the Yale spokesperson.

Looking back at the incident, Bashker says she’s “actually kind of impressed” with Lynn’s faking her way into Yale. “At the end of the day, you have to recognize game.”=

When I ask Lynn, who is back home living with her parents, what she plans to do next, she doesn’t hesitate:“Change my name and start over.”

“I’m a little mad,” she adds, “because I really liked that name.”

https://archive.is/CuDhW

>>23696599 thugs

Does God exist? Modern science shows he must, bestseller argues

A book by two French authors that challenges a longstanding academic consensus is being published in Britain next week1/3

Sunday October 05 2025, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times

Science and religion have never been easy bedfellows. As Thomas Jefferson put it in 1820, priests “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight”. Five centuries of scientific breakthroughs — from Galileo to Darwin to Crick and Watson — have eroded our belief in the divine.

But now, according to a new book, a “great reversal” is under way. Science, its authors argue over 580 pages,has come full circle and “forcefully put the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table”.

In a striking challenge to the academic consensus, two French authors, Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, argue that thelatest scientific theories lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it.

Their argument has already gained traction. The French edition of their book God, the Science, the Evidence, published in 2021, and subsequent translations in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, have sold more than 400,000 copies. The English edition, which will be published next week, has had an initial print run of 110,000.

Readers have long sought answers about their origins. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has sold more than three million copies. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time has sold 25 million.The Bible, of course, is the bestselling book of all time, with an estimated seven billion copies printed.

These authors — like Dawkins and Hawking — consider themselves men of science. Bolloré, 79, from Brittany, is a computer engineer who has founded a series of successful heavy industry, engineering and mechanical firms; Bonnassies, 59, from Paris, studied science and maths before a career as an entrepreneur in the French media industry.

Both are also men of faith. Bolloré is a lifelong Catholic. Bonnassies, who did not find his Christian faith until his twenties, said he thought before his conversion that “believers were irrational people”, adding: “God, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary — I found it crazy.” Yet it was logic, he said, that won him around: “The surprise was there were many rational reasons to believe in God.”

Despite their beliefs, they insist their book is not about spirituality. Bolloré, who has lived in west London for the past 15 years, said:

“This is not a book about faith or religion. Who God is, what does he want, what does he think, what does he say: that’s very interesting, but it’s a question of religion. That’s not what this book is about.”

Instead, the authors have written a critique of materialism— the theory that all reality, including our origins, thoughts and consciousness, can be explained solely by physical matter and physical processes.

The materialist narrative for the beginnings of the universe and life on earth is so full of holes, he and Bonnassies argue, that every modern scientific advance increases the strength of the case that a “creator” is the only rational explanation.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/does-god-exist-modern-science-shows-he-must-bestseller-argues-mgnrqrtp6

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The authors’ ideas have received support from unexpected quarters. The renowned physicist Robert Wilson, who was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, agreed to write the foreword to the book.“Although the general thesis … that a higher mind could be at the origin of the universe does not provide a satisfying explanation for me, I can accept its coherence,” he wrote. “If the universe had a beginning, then we cannot avoid the question of creation.”

Their book explores key scientific theories such as the Big Bang, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and the human genome. Each detail was checked with a group of leading scientists to ensure the arguments could not be challenged on the basis of scientific inaccuracy.

The conclusions they arrive at pose a fundamental challenge to the orthodoxy that underpins modern science. For the past century, for example, scientists have known the universe is expanding. If stars and galaxies are always moving further apart, logic dictates, the universe must have started at a single point, in a state of immense density.

In 1931 the Belgian theoretical physicist Georges Lemaître termed this the “primeval atom”. We now call it the Big Bang.

But if all matter originates from that single explosion, and materialism dictates there is nothing outside of matter, what caused the bang?

For most of the 20th century physicists got around this metaphysical headache with another theory: that of the “big crunch”. This held that the universe goes through an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction; a few billion years after a Big Bang, the universe would stop getting bigger and start shrinking. Drawn inward by the overwhelming force of its own gravity, the universe would squeeze into a single point, the theory went, triggering another Big Bang, then another crunch, in a repeating pattern.

This neat explanation, however, was discredited in the 1990s when astronomers discovered two distant supernovae were further apart than they should have been. The expansion of the universe,they realised, was not slowing down — as it should have if the big crunch theory held true — but actually accelerating.

“The theory doesn’t work,” Bolloré said. The laws of motion, he said, lead to the conclusion thatthere must have been a single beginning, a starting point to all physical existence. “Nothing is infinite,” he said. “The reasonable mind must hold that our universe has one beginning.”

He argues that the only rational explanation for a single point is for something outside the material world, an external being that could have started it — a creator God.

Another key mystery that can be explained only by the existence of some universal God, the authors argue, is the start of life. “DNA appeared on earth 3.8 billion years ago, and it was a technological marvel,” said Bonnassies. “All living beings on earth: bacteria, human beings, plants, animals — they are all coded by this same DNA.”

According to the theory of evolution, this incredibly sophisticated data storage system — 40,000 billion times more dense than the most advanced computer today — emerged from the primordial soup quite by chance. The authors write: “While we still do not know how that gap was bridged, or a fortiori, how to replicate such an event,we do know enough to appreciate its infinite improbability.”

Bolloré acknowledged that the book does not present proof of God’s existence. “You cannot prove it,” he said. “You have evidence for one theory — the existence of God. And you have evidence for the other one, which is the non-existence of God.The best you can do is to compare the two sides of the scale.”

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/does-god-exist-modern-science-shows-he-must-bestseller-argues-mgnrqrtp6

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But he said that many areas of science require as big a leap of faith as that demanded by faith in God. “We are all believers,” he said. “Believers in God believe, with some evidence —and believers in materialism, they believe in plenty of things which are a little bit weird.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest critics of the French edition of the book have not been scientists, but priests. “Some theologians say we don’t want evidence of God because it would reduce the merit of faith,” he said. “‘We don’t want proof’, they say. ‘Because proof would mean that we don’t have faith.’”

Bolloré and Bonnassies want a great debate with scientists about their ideas. Last month they held conferences with leading astrophysicists, neuroscientists and philosophers — believers and nonbelievers alike — at Princeton and Berkeley in the US, and plan similar events at Oxford and Cambridge in the coming months.

Bolloré insisted this is not an evangelical project; he is not trying to convert anyone: “I say again, this is not a book about faith or religion.”

But he said a debate about the origins of the universe raises questions about the meaning of life itself, adding:“I think that everybody should ask themselves, at some point in their life, ‘Are we just the result of chance and necessity? Or are we more than that?’”

God, the Science, the Evidence, by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, will be published by Palomar on October 14 at £22

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/does-god-exist-modern-science-shows-he-must-bestseller-argues-mgnrqrtp6