A multi-vehicle crash involving a school bus in central Florida has killed two people, including a 10th-grade girl, authorities said Monday.

In a news conference, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said that 39 people were aboard the bus that morning — mostly students heading to Winter Haven High School — when a white Chevy Malibu hit the rear of the bus. The impact ripped a tire off the bus and caused it to collide head-on into an oncoming Jeep, which caught fire.

The death toll includes one student on the bus and one person in the Jeep, authorities said. Between five and seven people were taken to the hospital with potentially traumatic injuries, with one remaining in critical condition, the sheriff said.

“I think this is the most horrific bus tragedy we’ve had in decades, as far back as I can remember,” Judd said, according to News 6.

Read more at News 6:

The Supreme Court’s new term begins Monday with cases on climate change, religious rights and President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration high on the agenda.

Here’s a look at what’s in store, via AP:

Texas Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton privately griped about how much influence D.C. has over his campaign during a recent fundraising event, an audio recording obtained by Politico shows.

“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming — you know — from D.C.,” Paxton says in the clip. “I don’t control the message or what we’re doing.”

The audio was recorded at the same D.C. event where Paxton also complained about President Donald Trump’s insistence on a midterm convention that ended up backfiring.

“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” he conceded. “Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.”

A Cornell fraternity member accused of gang-raping a fellow student questioned her memory in a recorded phone call obtained by ABC News, and in school records reportedly suggested that she assaulted him.

In a phone call with student Matthew Ingalls days after the alleged 2024 attack, the woman only identified as Jane Doe asked for help piecing together what happened, saying she was confused and trying to heal.

This call took place as students, later speaking to campus authorities, said some fraternity members tried to do “damage control” to ensure she was “not upset,” according to records reviewed by ABC News.

Ingalls, who the woman said invited him to the fraternity house on the night of the incident, questioned her level of sobriety and their ability to correctly identify everyone who was in the room.

“I have racked my brain for this mystery. It’s possible that both of us, like remember this, and it’s not true,” he says in the recording when asked who was there.

When she asked “how any of these guys walked in,” Ingalls, according to the recording, suggested that the room filled up because the house was crowded and “there was nowhere else to go.”

He didn’t mention that he had texted a photo of her in bed to a group chat, according to ABC News, with the message: “Boys come whip it out.”

According to records reviewed by ABC News, Ingalls later told investigators with Cornell that he was too intoxicated to consent and suggested she assaulted him.

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is joining Fox News as an on-air contributor, and she’s expected to start on Nov. 1, The New York Times reports. Mediaite has also confirmed.

Read more here:

Mark Thompson will continue leading CNN after Paramount completes its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery this week.

In an internal memo to staffers Monday, Thompson wrote he’s “convinced that from David Ellison on down, Paramount Skydance leadership really does believe in news alongside entertainment as a top strategic opportunity for our new company.”

“I have real confidence that they both understand and will fully support the principle and practice of the kind of independent news that CNN has always stood for,” Thompson added, per CNN. “That’s why I will be leading CNN into this new chapter as it becomes one of Skydance’s suite of major media assets and global brands.”

The news is likely to ease concerns about the future of the network under the new ownership given the changes Ellison made at CBS News following Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount.

The FBI arrested a woman at Los Angeles International Airport as she was leaving the country and accused her of spying on the Taiwan president’s family for China.

Wanying Zhang, also know as Heather, surveilled the Taiwanese president’s son and his family for the Chinese government while in the United States, according to the FBI.

Zhang, 34, was arrested on charges for working for China as an unregistered agent, Assistant U.S. State Attorney Bill Essayli announced on social media. Zhang took photos and videos of her targets and sent license plate information to Chinese officials, he said.

Read more from the Associated Press:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a new ad featuring the family of Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse who died by suicide, calling out Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) for helping to cover up President Donald Trump’s ties to the late child sex offender.

“My sister Virginia was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims,” Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts says in the ad, titled “Virginia.” “She spent her life trying to expose the truth. After she died, we promised to carry on her fight. But our own Congressman Jeff Crank refused to meet with us.”

Roberts and his wife, Amanda, who also appears in the ad, are both Crank’s constituents.

They tried to meet with him in 2025 to advocate for releasing the Epstein files but got no response. They later protested outside of his office. In the meantime, Crank repeatedly voted to block efforts to release the Epstein files and didn’t join a bipartisan effort that successfully forced a vote on releasing the files.

“When he had the chance to expose the truth and release the Epstein files, he repeatedly voted to cover them up,” the Roberts say in the ad. “Virginia deserved better. Jeff Crank covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump. He has no business being in Congress.”

Crank is in a tight race against Democrat Jessica Killin in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has described this district as the fastest-trending Democratic seat in the country, and last month shifted its rating of this seat from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”

Watch the full ad below.

The shrapnel hit Army Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón’s body like shattered glass.

One chunk of metal lodged into the left side of his jaw. Another piece sliced through his salivary gland before bouncing off his jaw and piercing the back of his neck, severing an artery and embedding in a vertebra.

Lincón was among dozens of U.S. soldiers injured in an Iranian drone strike on March 1. The attack on the second day of the U.S. war with Iran killed six troops who were providing logistical support of critical supplies at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait.

Whether the military was properly prepared for treating its wounded has become a sharp point of contention. Soldiers and family members have told The Associated Press of a failure to recognize the seriousness of injuries, a poor plan to get the wounded to hospitals and red tape that has hindered follow-up care. The Pentagon has said that the medical care was appropriate.

Nine U.S. service members who were wounded spoke to the AP on the record — rare for troops still in the Army — about what they describe as a medical system that left them in many ways fighting to get treatment on their own.

Read more at The Associated Press:

In an interview with Decoded by Politico, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits” of artificial intelligence.

Altman said there’s “a lot of daylight” between his company and one of its top rivals in the space, Anthropic, when it comes to AI regulation even though he recently joined Dario Amodei’s calls for a slowdown in AI model development.

Asked to specify where he and Amodei differ, Altman replied: “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”

Read more at Politico:

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their research into light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.

The prize was announced at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, kicking off Nobels week.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).

Read more from The Associated Press:

A researcher working at a laboratory in Siberia studying the plague died after being diagnosed with pneumonia of “unknown” origin, CNN reported, citing Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian agency focused on infectious disease.

Authorities have since put in place a “comprehensive set of anti-epidemic measures,” the mayor of the Shelekhovsky district said, including quarantining the hospital facility where the worker was treated before her death.

About 200 people are under observation over potential exposure to the mystery illness, according to local reports cited by CNN.

The U.S. State Department said it’s “monitoring the situation closely with the CDC and our other interagency partners.”

“We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly,” a spokesperson told CNN.

Read more at CNN:

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has sued a local U.K. police force over his arrest earlier this year.

Andrew was taken into custody on Feb. 19 — the same day as his birthday — on suspicion of misconduct in public office over his ties to late sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. He was released later that day.

The suit is challenging the legality of search warrants that allowed police to raid his home in Sandringham and his former residence in Windsor, The Telegraph reported.

“Whilst our investigation into misconduct in public office continues, we are engaged in legal proceedings in relation to warrants previously obtained from the Central Criminal Court,” Thames Valley Police said in a statement. “As these legal proceedings are currently ongoing, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.”

The abrupt pullout of all U.S. bombers from the RAF Fairford base in England was prompted by new threats about a Tehran-linked plot targeting the base, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

American officials did not specify the nature of the new threats. One U.S. official told The Times they were part of the same warnings that emerged last month, but specific details and a sense of urgency heightened during the past 24 hours, prompting thw unusual withdrawal.

The pullout comes after a total of six people were arrested and then released on bail during a probe into a security incident near the base last weekend.

Read more at The New York Times.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced early elections Monday after his government suffered a bruising legislative defeat last week on emergency measures related to the country’s housing crisis. The vote will be held Nov. 29.

In recent weeks, Spaniards have demanded solutions from the government over housing affordability, holding protests in cities across the country after public outrage grew over the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month.

Right-wing opposition parties joined forces to scuttle two emergency decrees in Parliament that included measures to reduce evictions and real estate speculation. The setback sparked wide speculation that Sánchez could consider moving up a national election from next year.

In a televised address, Sánchez argued that a broader progressive coalition in Parliament would allow Spaniards to tackle the biggest issues facing the country today. “The time has come, therefore, for the Spanish people to decide what future you want for yourselves and for your country,” Sánchez said.

Sánchez, 54, has been Spain’s prime minister since 2018, making him one of Europe’s longest-standing leaders. He has become one of the leading international progressive heads of government thanks to his defense of migration, his diplomatic efforts to defend Palestinians and his criticism of the American and Israeli war against Iran. He has also enjoyed one of the fastest growing economies in the developed world in recent years.

But back home, the Spanish leader has been hemmed in by a series of legal cases involving his Socialist party as well as his wife and brother, who both deny wrongdoing.

He has also struggled to account for this summer’s border crossing by tens of thousands of mostly Moroccans into Spain’s North African territory of Ceuta, where a humanitarian crisis remains two months after the initial crisis. He has led a coalition minority government along with the left-wing junior partner Sumar since 2023. But his reliance on several smaller parties to get anything done has hamstrung his legislative ability.

Throughout his political career, Sánchez has earned a reputation as a political escape artist capable of winning elections he looked set to lose.

The Socialist leader appears set to face another tough election against the conservative Popular Party that holds the most seats in Parliament already and will aim to retake control of the government. The formal dissolution of parliament will need to be approved by the Cabinet, which Sánchez has convened for later Monday.

Japanese police arrested a U.S. Marine accused of robbing and killing a woman on Okinawa, officials said Sunday, in the latest criminal case involving U.S. military personnel on the southern island where the heavy American troop presence is a sensitive issue.

The Okinawa prefectural police said they arrested a 20-year-old Marine stationed at the Futenma Air Station on suspicion of killing a 39-year-old local woman at a hotel in Naha, Okinawa’s capital city, and taking her wallet and backpack early Saturday.

Read more at The Associated Press:

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and Brazil’s incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face off in a runoff Oct. 25 for the top job of Latin America’s powerhouse economy after neither won a majority in Sunday’s vote.

The country’s electoral court in Brasilia said neither the 80-year-old incumbent, seeking his fourth non-consecutive term, nor the 45-year-old son of former President Jair Bolsonaro would garner the majority vote needed for an outright win.

The court had Bolsonaro with just over 56 million votes to Lula’s 53.7 million, with 99.8 percent of the vote reported. The next presidential term is set to begin Jan. 5.

Read more at The Associated Press:

For previous updates from HuffPost, click here.

By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.