3. UK prime minister race sorts itself out
For a minute there, it looked like Boris Johnson might actually come back to 10 Downing Street, not two months after he left. His successor, Liz Truss, quit as prime minister in an even more embarrassingly spectacular fashion than Johnson did after his scandal-plagued tenure, and Johnson had suggested before that he could return. But he withdrew from the Conservative leadership race over the weekend, paving the way for Rishi Sunak, his former finance minister, to take the reins. Sunak had finished second to Truss in their race during the summer after pushing back on her economic plans, which called for steep tax cuts. Markets rebelled once her government actually proposed such an economic package as Britain contended with a cost-of-living crisis and high levels of wealth inequality, and Truss retreated. Now investors are looking to Sunak for stability.
4. U.S. slams Russia over 'dirty bomb' claims
Russian authorities have been spreading claims that Ukraine is preparing to use a so-called dirty bomb, a device that can poison a region with radioactivity without a nuclear explosion. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other critics denounced Russia’s “transparently false” message as a pretext for potential escalation as Vladimir Putin’s ground forces lose ground to Ukraine’s military. Meanwhile, a million Ukrainians are without electricity following a barrage of Russian strikes on cities and infrastructure. Read live war updates here.
5. 'Black' magic at the box office
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Warner Bros. conjured quite the spell at the weekend box office. The superhero flick “Black Adam” scored the best opening weekend for any movie since July with a $67 million domestic haul. It’s a relief for movie theaters, which had been craving a big blockbuster-style movie after “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Top Gun: Maverick” ran their lucrative courses. But the win may be short-lived. Superhero movies tend to have fairly large dropoffs in their second weekends of release, and “Black Adam” still has to recoup a reported $200 million budget. The real test of the box office’s mettle will come Nov. 11, when the hotly anticipated “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” lands in theaters.
And one more thing ...
The World Series is set. The surprising Philadelphia Phillies, who took out the San Diego Padres in five games, will battle American League juggernaut the Houston Astros, who swept the New York Yankees. Game 1 is scheduled for Friday. While the Astros are the favorites, we here at 5 Things are willing to bet a DiNic’s roast pork sandwich that the Phillies will at least put up a good fight.
– CNBC’s Carmen Reinicke, Evelyn Cheng, Hannah Ward-Glenton, Natasha Turak and Sarah Whitten contributed to this report.
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