
Asia FX cautious amid US govt shutdown; yen tumbles after Takaichi’s LDP win
Asia FX remains cautious following US government shutdown; yen falls after Takaichi’s LDP victory
Trump approves National Guard deployment in Chicago
President Donald Trump has authorised the deployment of 300 National Guard troops to Chicago to address what he says is out-of-control crime.
The move came hours after immigration authorities said they faced off with protesters in the Democrat-run city. Officials said an “armed woman” was shot after claiming she and others rammed their cars into law enforcement vehicles.
State and local leaders have for weeks criticised Trump’s deployment plans and called it an abuse of power. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said Trump was “attempting to manufacture a crisis”.
The announcement came as a federal judge in Portland, Oregon temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying 200 troops there.
Judge Karin Immergut called Trump’s statements about conditions in Portland “untethered to the facts,” and said the move violated the Constitution.
She said the use of the military to quell unrest without the state of Oregon consenting risked the sovereignty of that state and others, adding that it also inflamed tensions in the city and caused increased protests.
Immergut ruled that the administration’s arguments for the deployment “risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power – to the detriment of this nation”.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek applauded the court’s decision and said she hopes Trump respects the order and halts the deployment.
“There is no insurrection in Portland, no threat to national security,” she said in a statement. “The only threat we face is to our Democracy – and that threat is being led by President Trump.”
The Trump administration has filed a notice indicating it will appeal the judge’s decision. The president on Saturday again criticised leadership in the state and said they were taking a look at the order.
“The place is burning down, and they pretend like there’s nothing happening,” Trump told reporters.
Meanwhile, California’s governor Gavin Newsom said Trump had ordered 300 National Guard troops in California to deploy to Oregon after the judge’s order. Newsom said he plans to file a lawsuit over the move.
In Chicago, it’s still unclear whether any troops have arrived – though any such deployment would likely be met with legal challenges.
Getty ImagesPritzker said Trump was also redeploying the Texas National Guard.
In a social media post late on Sunday night, Pritzker said the US president was “ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States”.
He called on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to “immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate.”
The city is the latest – many of them led by Democrats – to be targeted for a controversial deployment of troops, joining Washington, Los Angeles, Memphis and Portland.
The deployments have posed both legal and constitutional questions, as National Guard troops are typically deployed by a state’s governor and century-old laws limit the government’s use of the military for domestic matters.
Chicago has seen an increase in protests over immigration enforcement in the city, many of them happening outside US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.
“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like [Gov] Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has authorized 300 national guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities.”
On Saturday – just before Trump authorised troops there – US Border Patrol personnel shot a woman in Chicago after a group of people rammed cars into immigration enforcement vehicles, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. The woman was armed, the statement said.
DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement: “Agents were unable to move their vehicles and exited the car. One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon.”
“Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots at an armed US citizen,” she added.
The woman’s injuries were unclear. DHS said she drove herself to a local hospital.
Gov Pritzker told CNN on Saturday said Trump’s authorisation of troops there will incite protests. He accused the administration of creating a “war zone” to rationalise the response.
“They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone so that they can send in even more troops,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “They’re using every lever at their disposal to keep us from maintaining order.”
Earlier this week, the president talked about his ongoing military deployments to US cities while addressing high-ranking leaders across the military.
He told military leaders he wants American cities used as “training grounds” for US troops so they can combat the “enemy from within” and quell unrest.
“They’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” he said of Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. He told the military leaders it would be “a major part for some of the people in this room”.
Trump has threatened to send troops to Chicago for nearly a month – citing crime and shootings in the city.
Violent crime in Chicago has fallen significantly over the past two years. Between January and June, the homicide rate was down by a third compared with the same period last year, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.
But the overall levels in Chicago remain substantially higher than the average for many US cities. There were at least 58 people shot – eight fatally – over the Labor Day holiday weekend last month.
Shocking development in Japan’s leadership race causes turbulence in financial markets: Dollar vs yen
An unexpected result in Japan’s leadership contest over the weekend rippled through global financial markets with the dollar surging against the yen on Sunday.
On Saturday, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party tapped Sanae Takaichi, positioning the conservative lawmaker to become Japan’s first female prime minister.
Markets had expected the more fiscally cautious Shinjiro Koizumi to win. But the LDP’s decision to go with Takaichi, who favors looser fiscal and monetary policies, could raise expectations that Tokyo will issue more debt while the central bank rethinks rate hikes.
With Japan’s debt burden already more than 200% of its GDP, the prospect of more debt-fueled stimulus spending could cause investors to demand higher rates on long-term bonds.
That in turn could add more upward pressure on bond yields elsewhere, like the U.S., which relies heavily on Japanese investors as top buyers of Treasury debt.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose 1.9 basis points to 4.138%. The U.S. dollar was up 1.5% against the yen and up 0.2% against the euro.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 40 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.18%, and Nasdaq futures added 0.27%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 4% to a record high.
U.S. oil prices rose 1.35% to $61.70 per barrel, and Brent crude added 1.3% to $65.37. Gold edged up 0.47% to $3,927.30 per ounce.
Takaichi is expected to formally become prime minister in a parliamentary vote later this month, and her approach to President Donald Trump will also be scrutinized.
While she previously suggested Japan renegotiate the trade deal it struck with the U.S. this summer, Takaichi toned down her rhetoric after securing the LDP leadership spot on Saturday, saying that’s not on the table now.
Meanwhile, financial markets must continue to grapple with the ongoing government shutdown, which shows no signs of ending anytime soon and will keep key economic indicators under wraps.
That leaves Wednesday’s release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting as the main economic report to watch in the coming week as the central bank is self-funded and unaffected by the shutdown.
Several Fed officials are also scheduled to speak throughout the coming week, including Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday.
Because the government shutdown prevented the Bureau of Labor Statistics from issuing its jobs report for September on Friday, Wall Street is turning to alternate gauges from the private sector.
On Sunday, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi warned there was essentially no job growth in September, citing data from Revelio Labs and ADP.
“The bottom line is that not having the BLS jobs data is a serious problem for assessing the health of the economy and making good policy decisions,” he said in a series of posts on X. “But the private sources of jobs data are admirably filling the information gap, at least for now. And this data shows that the job market is weak and getting weaker.”
Israel and Hamas Indicate Acceptance of Some Aspects of Trump’s Cease-Fire Agreement
new video loaded: Israel and Hamas Show Signs of Embracing Parts of Trump’s Cease-Fire Deal
By Jorge Mitssunaga
October 5, 2025
Client Challenge: Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Success
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Russia-Ukraine conflict: Recap of important events on day 1,320 | Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine war
Here are the key events from day 1,320 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 5 Oct 2025
Here is how things stand on Monday, October 6, 2025:
Fighting
- A Russian attack killed a family of four, including a 15-year-old girl, in the village of Lapaivka in Ukraine’s Lviv region, the regional prosecutor’s office reported in a post on Facebook.
- The attack on the region in Ukraine’s west, far from the Russian border, also injured several people and targeted gas infrastructure used for heating during a cold snap, the regional administrator’s office wrote in a post on Telegram.
- One person was killed and 10 others injured as Russian forces launched 702 attacks on 18 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region in a day, Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
- The attacks left at least 73,000 people without power, with service restored to most people by early afternoon, Fedorov added.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed on Sunday its forces had hit Ukrainian military-industrial facilities as well as gas and energy infrastructure overnight.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a post on Facebook that Russian forces launched more than 50 missiles and about 500 attack drones at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, targeting the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Odesa and Kirovohrad regions.
- Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s Belgorod region left some 40,000 people without power, Regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote in a post on Telegram.
- Three people were also injured in Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported.
- Russian forces shot down four Ukrainian guided aerial bombs and 145 drones in a 24-hour period, TASS reported.
Politics and Diplomacy
- In response to a question from reporters about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer last month to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons, United States President Donald Trump said, “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
- German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned Europe must be wary of falling into “Putin’s escalation trap” while also strengthening anti-drone defences, amid drone sightings near airports across Europe.
- Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said that “specific people from abroad … expressed direct support … for the announced attempt to overthrow [Moldova’s] constitutional order,” naming the European Union ambassador to Georgia, the day after protesters sought to force their way into the presidential palace.
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz informed Trump about plans to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukrainian armed forces in a phone call on Sunday.
- The Reuters news agency reported that Trump administration diplomats are planning to accuse Cuba of providing up to 5,000 fighters to support Moscow’s war on Ukraine, in a bid to limit support for lifting the decades-long US embargo on Cuba. Cuban authorities previously arrested 17 people on charges related to a human trafficking ring that allegedly lured young Cuban men to fight in Ukraine with the Russian military.
Weapons
- Putin said that if the US supplies Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for long-range strikes deep into Russia, it would “lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations”, in a video released by Russian state television reporter, Pavel Zarubin, on Sunday.
- In a post on X, Zelenskyy said that Russian weapons used to attack Ukraine include components made by companies from many places, including “the United States, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the Netherlands”.
Oil prices rise by approximately 1% following a small increase in OPEC+ production levels
Oil prices open up around 1% after modest OPEC+ output hike
1000 people stranded by snowstorm on Mount Everest’s slopes
Rescue efforts are under way in the remote Tibetan slopes of Mount Everest where a snowstorm has trapped nearly 1,000 people in campsites on the eastern side of the mountain, according to Chinese state media.
Hundreds of local villagers and rescue teams have been deployed to clear out snow blocking access to the area which sits at an altitude of more than 4,900 metres (16,000 feet).
According to local media about 350 people have been rescued and guided to safety to the small township of Qudang town, the Reuters news agency said.
Heavy snowfall began on Friday evening and has intensified on the eastern slopes of Mount Everest in Tibet, which is an area popular with climbers and hikers.
“It was so wet and cold – hypothermia was a real risk,” Chen Geshuang, who was part of a trekking group who made it to Qudang, told Reuters.
“The weather this year is not normal. The guide said he had ever encountered such weather in October. And it happened all too suddenly.”
Tibet’s Blue Sky Rescue team had received a call for help saying that tents had collapsed due to heavy snow, and that some hikers were already suffering from hypothermia, Chinese state media reported.
Tingri County Tourism Company suspended ticket sales and entry to Everest Scenic Area from Saturday, according to Reuters news agency.
The region is facing extreme weather at the moment, as neighbouring Nepal has been battered by heavy rains which triggered landslides and flash floods that have washed away bridges and killed at least 47 people in the last two days.
In China, Typhoon Matmo has made landfall, forcing about 150,000 people to evacuate from their homes.
Mount Everest is the world’s highest peak at over 8,849m. Although many people attempt to climb the summit every year, it is considered an incredibly dangerous hike.
In recent years it has been plagued with concerns of overcrowding, environmental concerns and a series of fatal climbing attempts.
Deciphering the Criteria for a ‘Conference Champion’: Exploring the Nuances of the Updated NCAA Qualifying System
By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

As the American swimming community unpacks the radical changes to the NCAA Championship format that was approved by the NCAA Swimming & Diving Sport Oversight Committee last week, there will be lots of questions about the nuance of the rules. Piece-by-piece, we’ll together learn the wrinkles of how the new system will work in fringe situations.
Two good questions that have come up so far are these:
- Does the Conference Champion have to clear the qualifying standard at the conference meet? and
- Does this apply to every NCAA Division I conference? And what defines a conference?
Under the new rules, conference champions who clear a certain time standard, based on the 72nd-ranked time in the country from past seasons, receive an automatic qualification to the NCAA Championships – even if they are slower than another swimmer in the same event.
2026 Women’s NCAA Division 1 Qualifying Times
Individual Events
Event Standard 50 Freestyle 22.28 100 Freestyle 48.60 200 Freestyle 1:45.53 500 Freestyle 4:43.70 1,650 Freestyle 16:25.29 100 Butterfly 52.52 200 Butterfly 1:57.11 100 Backstroke 52.65 200 Backstroke 1:54.80 100 Breaststroke 1:00.30 200 Breaststroke 2:11.27 200 Individual Medley 1:57.88 400 Individual Medley 4:13.20 2026 Men’s NCAA Division 1 Qualifying Times
Individual Events
Event Standard 50 Freestyle 19.43 100 Freestyle 42.55 200 Freestyle 1:33.93 500 Freestyle 4:18.07 1,650 Freestyle 15:06.60 100 Butterfly 46.11 200 Butterfly 1:43.79 100 Backstroke 46.29 200 Backstroke 1:42.14 100 Breaststroke 52.58 200 Breaststroke 1:54.95 200 Individual Medley 1:44.13 400 Individual Medley 3:46.19
Conference Championship-Winning Times
The simple answer to the first question is that the qualifying standard needs to be cleared during the conference title-winning swim.
If we accept the rule (which many in swimming still do not), then this is a great addition, because it gives a punctuated moment of exuberance that a conference can build hoopla around. Steamers, fireworks, music, a massive celebration, social media content…all of these things are possible and can be enhanced by the singular moment. Singular moments are the best of swimming, and a move toward more of them will be objectively good for the watchability of the sport (Last Chance meets, we’re looking at you).
That means the time can’t be swum at:
- Dual meets
- Last Chance meets
- Mid-season invites
- Relay leadoffs
- Splits on longer races
- Time trials
This brough up another question though. What about teams that compete in multiple conferences, like members of the ECAC?
What Defines a Conference?
In certain applications, the NCAA has allowed teams to recognize multiple conference championship meets. Most prominently, that has historically been the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), a historical amalgamation of teams mostly in the Northeastern United States.
As of fall 2023, there were 78 Division I members, 7 Division II members, and 79 Division III members, with most competing in only one or a few sports (the ECAC is rising to prominence in esports competitions).
For NCAA Division I teams, the league sponsors cross country, equestrian, golf, gymnastics, swimming & diving, tennis, and track & field.
In swimming & diving, the conference’s championship meet has become effectively a last chance meet or an alternate championship for swimmers who didn’t make their conference rosters (though it has occasionally been recently been a primary championship for teams orphaned by conference realignment).
Under the new system, the ECAC won’t count for NCAA Championship qualifications.
The Oversight Committee put in place a few restrictions on what they will count as a conference for the purposes of an automatic qualifier conference).
- A conference must have a minimum of 5 teams of a gender to be Automatic Qualifier eligible.
- If a school’s primary conference affiliation sponsors swimming & diving, that is their conference for AQs.
This rules out both the ECAC, and any attempts to form new conferences for the purposes of Automatic Qualifiers.
For example, take schools like Northwestern, Missouri, Pitt, Texas A&M, and Georgia Tech. Those schools recruit good swimmers, many of whom ultimately rank in the top 72 in the country (which is how the Automatic Qualifier times were set), but who don’t often win conference titles because they race against the likes of Indiana, Texas and Cal.
Those schools couldn’t pull together and form a new super-conference just to escalate the number of NCAA Championship qualifiers they get.
This would also eliminate Automatic Qualifiers from conferences that have fewer than 5 teams of a gender, like, the old AAC men’s championship meet that was a dual between SMU and Cincinnati.
The committee has approved these conferences based on “currently available information”:
- America East Conference;
- American Athletic Conference (women’s only);
- Atlantic Coast Conference;
- Atlantic Sun Conference;
- Atlantic 10 Conference;
- Big East Conference;
- Big Ten Conference;
- Big 12 Conference;
- Big West Conference;
- Coastal Athletic Association;
- Horizon League;
- The Ivy League;
- Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference;
- Mid-American Conference (women’s only);
- Missouri Valley Conference;
- Mountain Pacific Sports Federation;
- Mountain West Conference (women’s only);
- Northeast Conference (women’s only);
- Patriot League;
- Southeastern Conference; and
- The Summit League.
What other questions do you have about the nuance of the rules? Leave them in the comments and we’ll try to get the answers.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: What Defines a ‘Conference Champion’? Unpacking the Details of the New NCAA Qualifying System
Kids Begin to Dodge Information at Age Seven
Whether it’s avoiding the news or checking a bank account, adults often deal with uncertainty by switching off and not seeking knowledge – even when that knowledge could be of benefit to us. Now scientists have identified just when in life we start to choose the “ignorance is bliss” path, opting for comfort rather than uncertainty.
University of Chicago researchers have pinpointed the precise age at which we start avoiding information, a behavior known as the Ostrich Effect (even though ostriches don’t, in fact, bury their heads in sand) – and it begins a lot earlier in life than you might think. In a series of experiments that looked at information avoidance in 320 American children aged between five and 10 years, they found that younger kids actively sought out knowledge, while by the age of seven individuals became information-avoidant if the answers were potentially going to evoke a negative emotion.
“Why is it that children are these super curious people, but then we somehow end up as these information avoiders as adults?” asked Radhika Santhanagopalan, a post-doctoral researcher from the University of Chicago. “What is this transition?”
In the first experiment, researchers looked at five potential reasons we might exhibit this “head in the sand” behavior: to avoid negative emotions like anxiety or disappointment; to avoid negative information about our own likability or competence; to avoid challenges to our beliefs; to protect our preferences; and to act in our own self-interest (perhaps while trying to appear not self-interested).
Different scenarios were then constructed to see if avoidant behaviors were elicited and if these reasons were driving them. One test was to have each child think of their favorite and least favorite candy, and then offer the kids the chance to watch a video about why eating each of their choices was bad for their teeth.
“We found that, whereas younger children really wanted to seek information, older children started to exhibit these avoidance tendencies,” said Santhanagopalan. “For example, they didn’t want to know why their favorite candy was bad for them, but they were totally fine learning why their least favorite candy is bad for them.”
Then there’s the curious case of “moral wiggle room” – where individuals will choose to avoid information for self-interest but do so in a way that doesn’t seem selfish to others. This was demonstrated with another scenario, in which partnered-up children were presented with two buckets of stickers for themselves and their partner. One bucket offered more stickers, while the other was covered and had an unknown amount of stickers. Before choosing which bucket to claim, participants were asked if they wanted to know how many stickers their partner would get.
“We want to act in our own self-interest, but we also care a lot about appearing fair to other people,” Santhanagopalan said. “Moral wiggle room allows us to achieve both goals.”
While knowing how many their partner might get in the hidden bucket didn’t personally affect their own sticker gain, older children increasingly turned down the chance to find out how the other person would benefit. In doing so, it meant there was no guilt that came with choosing the bucket with the unknown amount of stickers for their partner.
“What the moral wiggle room does is allow them to pick the self-interested payoff, while also maintaining the illusion of fairness,” Santhanagopalan said. “That veil of ignorance allows them to act in their own self-interest.”
The findings – that as children got older they increasingly avoided learning information to avoid those negative emotions tied to the knowledge – held true for all but one of the five reasons, and that one was about competence. Kids across the board were not hesitant about finding out if they’d done badly on a test – a situation where the answer could be negative – and the researchers hypothesize that this could be because school fosters growth and positive change, so a bad result is just a minor step on the path to a good outcome.
“It’s possible that because they’re getting all this messaging about how you can change your aptitude if you put in the work,” said Santhanagopalan, “maybe they’re more inclined to seek information because they know they can potentially change the outcome.”
In adulthood, information avoidance is common – it can be overwhelming, threaten long-held beliefs or create fear of uncertainty that is otherwise consciously or unconsciously shut out. The researchers add that this avoidance can have personal and societal consequences, like “deepening political polarization or ideological rigidity.”
The team suggests actively questioning why you might be avoiding useful information, where short-term discomfort is prioritized despite the knowledge potentially having long-term benefits. Then trying to reframe the knowledge as ultimately valuable and useful, making you less inclined to actively avoid information.
“Humans have this propensity to want to resolve uncertainty, but when the resolution is threatening, people might flip to avoidance instead,” Santhanagopalan said. “I think there’s something to be said about being able to tolerate and even embrace some level of uncertainty.
“I think that might help in not falling pray to information avoidance,” she added.
The research was published in the journal Psychological Science.
Source: University of Chicago

