If you’re worried about your bond portfolio, you’re missing the point

• October 9, 2026

By CHRISTINE BENZ of Morningstar

A friend who’s close to retirement texted that she was concerned about the bond market. She’d been building out that fixed-income allocation over the past several years at the urging of her adviser.

Her message made me wonder if some people might have misguided ideas about bonds.

Volatility is much lower than for stocks

For one thing, notwithstanding the recent headlines, bonds’ volatility is almost always going to be mild alongside the fluctuations that stocks experience. For example, on Sept. 1, 2026, a day when bonds grabbed the top headline on The Wall Street Journal’s website, total bond market index funds were down about half a percentage point. Returns for the year to date were just barely in the red. As the saying goes, “A bad year in the bond market is like a bad day in the stock market.”

Of course, the 2022 bond rout is fresh in everyone’s minds: Amid the Federal Reserve’s seven interest rate increases that year, the typical intermediate-term bond fund shed about 13%, and long-term Treasury bonds dropped nearly 30%. But those were the worst bond market losses in history, exacerbated by the fact that starting yields were so low at the time of the sell-off. When bond yields go up, hurting prices of already-existing bonds with lower yields attached to them, investors still receive whatever interest the bond pays; those interest payments help offset price declines. But with 10-year Treasury yields of about 1.5% in early 2022, yields provided limited cover for the interest rate-related losses in bond prices. In 2026, with 10-year Treasury yields at roughly 4.8%, bond investors have more protection in the form of higher yields.

The goal is return of capital, not return on capital

Another point that can get lost is why you hold bonds in the first place. Stocks are your growth engine, but bonds and cash are the sleep-at-night portion of your portfolio, designed to hold their value or lose just a bit when stocks are down. So, if the potential for losses in your bond portfolio is stressing you out, that can be a sound reason to change it up so that it doesn’t. You might give up some return potential in the process, but that’s OK. Your goal for your bond portfolio is “return of capital, not return on capital,” as the saying goes. Return on capital is why you hold stocks.

To help ensure your bond holdings land in the black for a specific spending need, use individual bonds, especially Treasury bonds and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, and hold them to maturity. This allows you to lock in a specific yield, whereas bond mutual funds’ yields will ebb and flow based on prevailing market yields. A laddered portfolio of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities is a popular strategy to address retiree spending needs.

Alternatively, you can use mutual funds or exchange-traded funds. That approach doesn’t provide the same type of principal protection as buying and holding individual bonds to maturity, but it’s less rigid and can make sense for people with less precise spending goals.

If you go with bond funds, the best way to ensure their “sleep-at-night” functionality is to be willing to give up some return potential in exchange for more stability. For money you’ll need within the next few years, stick with cash instruments like money market funds or high-yield savings accounts. For spending horizons of three to 10 years, short- and intermediate-term high-quality bond funds are a solid option. They have some potential for losses, but if you match the bond fund’s duration to your anticipated holding period, your bond fund is likely to be in the black when you need the money.

This is not the spot to be a tactician

Some financial advisers and individual investors try to make tactical moves with bonds: shifting into shorter-term bonds or even cash when it appears higher rates are in the offing, or back into longer-duration bonds when they think yields are at a high-water mark.

My advice: Get out of the timing business. Most professional bond-fund managers don’t make active bets regarding their portfolios’ interest rate sensitivity, so it’s hard to see why individual investors would be able to gain an advantage.

Morningstar’s “Mind the Gap” research provides a stark reminder that bond investors’ ill-conceived timing decisions can take a bite out of returns.

For the 10-year period through December 2025, for example, the typical taxable bond fund earned 3.0%, but the typical investor in such a fund earned just 2.1%. Focusing on your individual situation and not taking more risk than you need to are key ways to avoid unforced errors with your bond portfolio.

This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance.

Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and co-host of The Long View podcast. Subscribe to her free newsletter, Improving Your Finances.

Related links:

How Much Should You Allocate to Safer Assets?

https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/how-much-should-you-allocate-safer-assets

Retirement Planning for Real Life, With Christine Benz

https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/retirement-planning-real-life-with-christine-benz

Christine Benz’s Best Investment Portfolio Examples for Savers and Retirees

https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/best-investment-portfolio-examples-savers-retirees

​ Orange County Register 

In the high desert, dogs are being dumped to die a ‘horrible death,’ animal advocates say

• October 9, 2026

For Faith Easdale, it’s the running that breaks her heart the most.

After dogs are abandoned in the middle of nowhere, they will chase after the owners who dumped them. “Even if they’ve been abused, they run after the vehicle,” says Easdale, director of the foster-based Dream Fetchers Project Rescue. “They run their little legs off.”

She knows this because, sometimes, perpetrators are caught on grainy security camera videos, forcing dogs out of their cars in empty parking lots, in the desert adjacent to remote housing tracts, or by lonely highways. In one instance, a man in a hooded sweatshirt picked up a pit bull terrier and hurled the dog over a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

These abandonments happen on scorching hot days, with coyotes circling, with no food or water for miles.

After 10 years rescuing abandoned dogs, it’s hard not to lose faith in humanity, Easdale says. “I wish I didn’t even know about all this stuff, so I could have a normal life,” she says. “You can’t unsee that stuff.”

The number of unwanted dogs, especially in the inland regions of Southern California, has become a major crisis for animal rescue groups.

“Honestly, we’ve been past the breaking point for about a year and a bit,” says Mike Ryan, an independent rescuer based in Apple Valley who takes in abandoned dogs.

In that timeframe, donations have plummeted more than 75%, Ryan says. A call for donations used to earn him a porch full of dog food; now, he’s lucky if he gets a few boxes. Adoptions are down as well, he says.

“I have personally not been able to find a home for a dog for over two years,” Ryan says. “Before, I could find them like crazy.”

In May 2025, Riverside County Animal Services announced its shelters were 220% over their limit, and in September, San Bernardino County Animal Care announced its shelters were “at full capacity” and offered free adoptions.

“We have more animals in our shelters than I’ve ever seen,” agreed Lesley Huennekens, a field commander with the Riverside Department of Animal Services. “It is definitely worse than it used to be.”

The cause of the crisis

The problem is the result of both intentional breeding and a lack of spaying and neutering, Huennekens said. In the county’s four shelters, all of which are at or over capacity, Riverside Department of Animal Services employees see both accidental litters and purebred dogs, including Belgian Malinois, huskies, French bulldogs — breeds popularized in movies or that are “trending online,” Huennekens said.

There’s “no one reason” for this uptick, she said. Instead, she points to a nationwide shortage of veterinarians, a culture that views animals as “disposable,” and a lack of access to spay and neuter services, especially during COVID, when some veterinarians were forced to temporarily halt those services.

Spay and neuter services are harder to access in more remote areas, said Melissa Durston, director of community outreach for the Spayce Project, a nonprofit that hosts spay and neuter clinics and offers other veterinary services in underserved areas. Many pet owners are coming from the high desert, which Durston says includes communities along the route to Las Vegas, such as Adelanto, Apple Valley, Victorville, Hesperia, Lucerne Valley, Barstow, Daggett and Newberry Springs.

“People are coming to our clinics, walking three miles with their dog, using a shoelace as a collar or a leash, or plastic bags tied in knots as a leash,” Durston says. “They’re trying to do the right thing.”

In the high desert, Durston said she sees people living off the grid, and many don’t have the money or transportation to get their dogs fixed. “If you are struggling to put gas in your car, or feed your children, or whatever, and someone hits you with a $600 spay or neuter bill, it’s not going to happen,” she said.

Spay and neuter clinics

The Spayce Project hosts clinics in shelters, grooming facilities, community centers and even thrift stores. At a clinic in the Lucerne Valley in early September, the Spayce team fixed 52 dogs in one day. The nonprofit, primarily funded through grants and private donations, doesn’t charge pet owners for their services.

“We never want to take someone’s last $5,” Durston said. But many pet owners will donate — anywhere from $100 to a handful of change.

Durston hopes these clinics help address the root of the problem, and that, soon, “we’ll see less dumping, we’ll see less suffering, we’ll see less unwanted litters, and we’ll start to see a reduction in the shelters that are busting at the seams.”

But for now, some shelters are so full, they’re unable to take in more animals, advocates say. Plus, some owners might want to avoid the questions a shelter might ask — like why they’re giving the dog up and what its history is, advocates say. Shelters may have owners fill out paperwork when they surrender an animal.

The fate of these unwanted dogs is often grim. Some dogs wind up dumped on the street. Easdale estimates that she gets “at least” 10 people reaching out to her per day about abandoned dogs, most of which are found in the Inland Empire.

“It’s out of control,” she says. “We can’t keep up.”

The calls keep coming

Faith Easdale knows she doesn’t have a normal life, but she can’t turn her back on the nonstop pleas for help.

When people see an abandoned dog, they call or text her, or when someone sees a video on social media of a dog wandering, they tag her. She gets calls from the San Bernardino Airport security guards and the California Highway Patrol.

When she gets a call, she drops everything, driving for hours in her Jeep with two transport crates packed in the trunk. Then, when she spots the dogs, she sets up the crates wired with a trip pan, baiting the dogs with food or water, and she waits — sometimes for days.

About half of the abandoned dogs she picks up are left in desert regions, she said — areas such as Thermal, Coachella, Hinkley, and near the Salton Sea. “These monsters will go where they think no one sees them,” she said.

In the desert, nature takes its course. It’s “a horrible death,” said rescuer Mike Ryan. “I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy.”

Huennekens said Riverside Animal Services has not heard increased reports of dumped dogs in the desert. “If that’s happening, it’s not being reported to us,” she said.

‘No place for them to go’

Abandoning an animal is illegal under California law, and San Bernardino County Animal Care “conducts public education and outreach, including in desert communities, to educate residents about responsible pet ownership and available resources and alternatives to abandonment,” said Francis Delapaz, a communications officer for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.

Rescue work has taken over every corner of Easdale’s life, it seems. Speaking by phone, she wonders midconversation if she’s gotten messages about dogs in need. Easdale works part-time as a medical esthetician in a dermatologist’s office, but her clients understand — the dogs come first. “I tell my clients that, ‘Hey, I can’t come in today. I’m sorry, I have to go save lives.’ And they all put up with me.”

But lately, her rescue has hit its limit. “We’ve killed ourselves rescuing these dogs, but there’s no place for them to go,” Easdale said. “Everybody’s full.”

Boarding alone costs $3,000 per week, she said, and there can be thousands of dollars of veterinary bills on top of that. “If something miraculous doesn’t happen, we’re just going to get to the point where we’re like, OK, we can’t do it,” she said.

Sometimes, when she’s tagged in a video or receives messages about a dumped dog, she knows she doesn’t have the resources to take it in. “It just kills me when I’m like, ‘What am I going to do with that dog?’ ”

Mike Ryan, a retired English teacher, has taken in more than 70 foster dogs, including six litters of puppies, since he started doing this work in December 2020. Rescuing dogs is “not inexpensive,” he said — there’s the expense of food and medicine, but also the hidden costs of keeping the lights on and the air conditioning running so the litter of puppies in his garage stays cool.

It’s eaten up his retirement savings — about $190,000, he estimates. Now, he raises money on GoFundMe and takes substitute teaching shifts to afford the costs of rescuing.

“I was planning on traveling and vacationing,” he says goodnaturedly. “Here I sit, rescuing dogs.”

The problem has gotten so severe that dogs that survive abandonment will find each other, breed, and form feral packs, Easdale said. Reports of feral dogs attacking livestock have emerged from remote regions of Riverside County. Humans also have been attacked — in 2018, three loose dogs mauled a woman in Anza, and, last year, a pack of stray dogs killed a woman in Perris Hill Park in San Bernardino.

Easdale blames the spike on the COVID pet adoption boom. Now that many people have returned to working from an office, the dogs they adopted during the pandemic are “inconvenient,” she said. Ryan also cites the economy and inflation as contributing factors.

People who abandon their pets fall into a handful of categories, in his experience, Ryan said: There’s backyard breeders who can’t sell their puppies. Then, there are those who adopted high-maintenance breeds, like a husky, and didn’t know what they were getting into, or people who adopted a dog with behavioral issues but didn’t take the time to train them. There also are owners who fall ill or die without a plan for what to do with their pet. The last group is the “cruel SOBs,” Ryan said.

Huennekens encouraged anyone who sees a person dumping a pet to report it to Animal Services. Willful abandonment is a misdemeanor, but the charge can be elevated to a felony depending on where the animal is dumped, Huennekens said — for example, in the hot desert with no access to shade or water. “We do take those crimes very seriously,” she said. “We need to know about these things.”

Keeping the faith

Animal rescue has made Easdale encounter dogs in horrific conditions — pregnant, left in ice chests or dog food bags, bitten by coyotes, in temperatures over 100 degrees.

“You meet a lot of great people through this, but you also see the ultimate worst in people that dump these dogs,” Ryan said.

But Easdale remembers one dog that took her months to track down — a Westie running along the side of the highway between Victorville and Apple Valley. Finally, down a dirt road, she found the dog huddled in a sliver of shade under a cactus. Easdale took him to the emergency vet to tend to his injuries.

One of the vet techs adopted him and named him Ghost. To this day, his owner sends Easdale photos of Ghost — sprawled in the backseat of a car, stretched out belly-up on the couch, perched on the front of a kayak. “That dog is dearly, dearly loved,” Easdale said.

Getting updates like these “is what keeps me going,” Easdale said. “I look at the ones that I’ve saved and I’m like, yeah, well, this got put in front of me for a reason.”

​ Orange County Register 

What happens when fruit trees don’t produce fruit

• October 9, 2026

Five things to do in the garden this week:

Fruit. I had cut back my plumcot twice this year, which never produced fruit due to our warm winter, and just did it again. Given a typical dose of winter cold, plumcots produce enormous numbers of fruit and still put on ten feet of new growth, if not more, each year. In the absence of fruit, all energy in the plant this year has been channeled into vegetative growth, expressed in shoots that just won’t stop growing. Harvesting fruit at a considerable height is a challenge and, generally speaking, all fruit trees can be kept at an eight-foot height and still produce significant crops.

Vegetables. Toy choy is a miniature bok choy (or pak choy) that can produce edible fare in as little as 30 days. Growing just five inches tall, its leaves are delectably tender and crisp. Should we get a sudden surge of hot days, toy choy is more adept at withstanding the heat than other bok choy varieties. Due to its small size, it is also an excellent candidate for container growing.

Herbs. Silver ocean (Mertensia maritima) is also called oyster leaf due to the flavor of its foliage. Recommended for the fall and winter garden, foliage is silver to blue-green while magenta flower buds open into sky blue flowers. This is a tough perennial that can grow on the ocean’s edge and has been cultivated by indigenous peoples in Arctic zones as a source of vitamin C. It can grow in sand or gravel.

Flowers. Sow sweet pea seeds now. No chain link or wooden fence, no unadorned block or stucco wall – as long as it is sun-exposed – should be without fragrant sweet peas scaling its heights. Although bush-type sweet peas are available, the vining types are more rewarding, and their longer flower stalks are more amenable to cut flower arrangements. You can also plant sweet peas in containers to adorn your sunny balcony or patio. Thanks to their tendrils, they can climb unaided up a chain link. For regular fences or walls, you will need to attach twine or wires to which they can grab hold as they grow.

Indoor plants. At Florahound, I was astonished to see a leafy cactus known as lemon vine (Pereskia aculeata var. Godseffiana), named for its edible, if tart, yellow-orange fruits. I learned from Leon Massoth that all cacti were originally tropical plants. Proof of this is the Christmas cactus, an epiphyte that still grows in the canopies of tropical trees. Lemon vine’s foliage is colorful and the plant does climb when given the chance. It is sensitive to frost, is best grown indoors, and must be given the sunniest exposure available.

​ Orange County Register 

Navi Pillay wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in international justice

• October 9, 2026

By STEFANIE DAZIO, JAMEY KEATEN and KOSTYA MANENKOV

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned from defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel that found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote international law as it comes under attack.

Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of a U.N. commission she led that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; Pillay has worked at both.

Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo, Norway, as part of the peace prize’s 125th anniversary.

The Norwegian committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict, and Watne Frydnes said Pillay’s award was a message to those seeking to undermine “the international rules-based system and the institutions.”

While her career has been global in scope, criticism often has been fiercely local, notably in places like Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa as she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.

Pillay, 85, received the news while attending a forum in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.

“Firstly, at this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,” she said to a standing ovation. “You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.”

And, joking, she added: “But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.”

She chaired an investigation that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza

Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza was among Pillay’s first comments Friday after hearing she had won. “What’s happening there is genocide,” she said in Germany, to more applause.

The commission last year also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister “have incited the commission of genocide.” Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations.

Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of antisemitism or allegedly turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.

In an interview with the AP last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the U.N. rights chief from 2008 to 2014.

The Nobel announcement came at another critical time for Gaza, just two days after the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people and sparked the war. Over 74,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with their territory devastated. Saturday marks a year since a fragile ceasefire took effect, while Israeli strikes continue.

A senior Hamas official, Bassem Naim, in a statement Friday called the Nobel for Pillay a message of hope for Palestinians, especially in Gaza, that “humanity still resists the forces of evil targeting international justice.”

The Israeli foreign ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement that “if there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender. She’d be a frontrunner.”

It added on X that the award “isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”

The award also was announced less than three weeks before Israel’s election, in which Netanyahu is fighting to stay in power. For Israelis, however, the issue is less about the government’s approach to Gaza and more about how well it would protect them from further attacks.

Her win puts the focus on a court under pressure from Trump

Pillay’s win brings renewed attention to Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court, where Pillay was a judge from 2003 to 2008. The Trump administration already has sanctioned 13 of the ICC’s staff members, among them key prosecutors and nine judges including the court’s Japanese President Tomoko Akane.

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump called the court an “out of control institution” and an “anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction” over the U.S. as he urged member states to quit the “rogue institution immediately.”

There are fears the court as a whole could be sanctioned, a move that could seriously hamper its ability to mete out justice.

Pillay is currently serving as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.

When countries do not have a national on the court’s permanent, 15-judge panel, they can appoint an expert of their choice. Gambia, which launched the proceedings in 2019, selected Pillay when the country accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority group.

As a young lawyer in apartheid South Africa, part of Pillay’s work involved establishing key rights for political prisoners being held on Robben Island, which included Mandela, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.

After apartheid ended, then-South African President Mandela appointed Pillay to be the country’s first non-white woman to serve as a High Court judge.

There were nearly 300 nominations for this year’s prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo received nominations for 287 candidates for this year’s prize, with just over a quarter of them organizations.

Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation.

Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: the Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.

In Trump’s second term, he has been outspoken about his desire for the Nobel, but has expressed doubts that the committee would ever award him the prize.

“They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

Nominations can be made by a select group of people and organizations, including heads of state or politicians serving at a national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel Prize recipients and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself.

The peace prize follows a week of Nobel announcements

Four of this year’s Nobels were announced earlier this week, in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.

Dazio reported from Berlin and Keaten from Geneva. Associated Press journalists Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, Ali Swenson in New York, Cara Anna in Jerusalem, Molly Quell and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Mark Lewis in Stavanger, Norway.

AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

​ Orange County Register 

Trump’s memorial arch faces new lawsuit from Arlington County, Virginia

• October 9, 2026

By GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Arlington County Board in Virginia filed a lawsuit Thursday opposing the construction of the Triumphal Arch, becoming the first governmental body to take legal action against President Donald Trump’s planned monument.

The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, criticized the speed at which the project slated for Memorial Circle has moved without going through the full review process.

“The National Park Service, the agency responsible for projects on national park land such as Memorial Circle, is proceeding full-speed toward ground-disturbing construction,” the lawsuit said. “Although the agency has claimed that a final decision to construct the Arch has not yet been made and purports to be engaged in a routine decisional process, that rushed process appears to be a pretext designed to shore up justifications for building the Arch in accordance with the President’s repeated marching orders.”

The lawsuit asks that “the agency’s feverish pace toward construction of the arch” be halted to ensure that the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act be followed and proper analysis and testing be done.

“The Arlington County Board has filed this lawsuit because our community has the most to lose from this egregious and unlawful proposed project,” Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in a statement. He added that the county has acted in good faith in the review process, pointing out the “severe, unique, and wide-ranging negative impacts” the project will have on the county and its residents, only to see them ignored.

Memorial Circle sits on federal parkland west of the Potomac River across the Memorial Bridge and immediately adjacent to Arlington County.

The county is being represented in the lawsuit by legal advocacy group Democracy Forward.

The White House and Interior Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit comes just a day after Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson expressed concerns that the 250-foot arch compounds multiple safety issues that she said have gone unaddressed since a deadly January 2025 crash over the Potomac River that killed 67 people. Nelson also criticized Trump’s plan to turn the arch into “a top grade military complex” able to host drones and snipers while storing ammunition.

Though the arch has received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all tapped by Trump, a group of three veterans and an architectural historian sued in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying the project needs to be approved by Congress. The judge in that lawsuit said the administration must give the court 48 hours before undertaking any activities related to or in preparation for construction of the arch.

The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he remakes the city, from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

​ Orange County Register 

Attacks on Riyadh’s international airport killed 3 Saudi citizens, and other Mideast developments

• October 9, 2026

By The Associated Press

Saudi Arabia’s aviation authorities said Friday that attacks targeting the international airport in Riyadh and an aircraft there the previous day killed three Saudi citizens. A U.N. human rights chief who chaired an investigation that determined Israel had committed genocide in Gaza won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Friday. Read our full coverage here.

Thursday’s attack on the Riyadh airport killed 3 people

The attack on an airport in the Saudi capital and an aircraft there killed three Saudi nationals and injured other people on Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation said.

Friday’s statement from the authority did not identify those responsible for the attack, though Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen have claimed they targeted the airport with a ballistic missile.

According to Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation, the two strikes targeted the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and a Saudia Airlines aircraft.

Several people were injured, some seriously, and were transferred to a hospital for treatment, said the authority, adding that the attacks also caused material damage. It did not specify the types of weapons used or those responsible.

The authority said it was coordinating with security agencies to assess the damage and take measures to ensure the safety of passengers and workers.

A former UN human rights chief wins Nobel Peace Prize

The South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, who is currently an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote peace and international law.

Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza, with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings led by her commission.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the award and said on X: “If there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender. She’d be a frontrunner.”

It added that the Nobel prize “isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”

Pakistan’s national carrier suspends flights to Saudi Arabia

Pakistan International Airlines suspended flights to Riyadh over the evolving situation in the Middle East, an airline spokesman said Friday.

Abdullah Hafeez told The Associated Press that the airline apologized for the inconvenience. He said an update would be provided after assessing the situation on the ground.

This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.

​ Orange County Register 

Steven Greenhut: Why is the government so lousy at fighting fires?

• October 9, 2026

SACRAMENTO — My recent trip to Malibu from LAX was my first post-wildfire drive through the Pacific Palisades and, my goodness, there’s nothing like seeing something with one’s own eyes to grasp the enormity of the devastation. The obliterated hulks along Pacific Coast Highway 21 months after the tragedy raise multiple issues, including ones related to the excruciatingly slow rebuilding process.

This being California, the state has yet to grapple sufficiently with the reasons the wildfires started — and the failed response to them. But late is better than never, so I applaud a new report that Gov. Gavin Newsom commissioned from the nonprofit Fire Safety Research Institute. Released this month, it looked at the nitty-gritty of how the fires started and multiple agencies reacted. The results aren’t pretty.

The New York Times provided the best summary: “The comprehensive analysis found that while several state and local agencies fell fatally short in their preparation and response, the clearest lesson from the disaster was the extent to which climate-driven fires are outstripping modern firefighting.” The report found LA officials failed to take the fires seriously enough at the outset. County officials handled the Altadena evacuations in a “chaotic” manner. They were unprepared for the intensity of the fire storms.

We’ve all read about some of the inexplicable stupidity. The Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty during the fires because of a repair to its protective cover, yet it’s empty again (although it’s in the process of being refilled). The California Coastal Commission allegedly delayed new permits for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to install fire-resistant utility poles because of concerns about an endangered weed. The commission disputes that report — and there’s still heated debate involving multiple agencies.

If we can’t get multiple agencies on the same page on one minor question about milkvetch, I’m skeptical California can deal with the basics. The report said the tragedy involved “multiple interlinked systems rather than any single factor or failure.” In one example, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department remained at normal staffing levels. The Los Angeles Fire Department was so concerned about overtime costs it reportedly responded slowly.

This epitomizes California’s approach to everything: Bigger agencies, higher spending and expanded workforces. The left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. Other priorities outside of public protection — budgeting, meeting union demands, turf battles — take precedence. This isn’t malicious, but reflects the fundamental nature of government. 

Even after the state suspended rebuilding regulations, the rebuilding process is still in a quagmire because of the number of involved agencies. How could California realistically streamline a wildfire-fighting process that involves an alphabet soup of local, county, regional and state bureaucracies? Even the feds are involved because around 45% of the state’s land area is owned by them. The wildfire issue is a statewide problem, so the conclusions should resonate beyond LA.

Furthermore, the report argues that California needs to change its overall approach toward wildfire resilience. Back to The Times analysis, which noted that climate-driven fires are becoming more intense and that’s challenging the traditional ways that the state has battled wildfires. But how often have you seen governments respond efficiently to external economic or environmental changes? All governments are slow-moving freight trains.

Everything government does is mired in the past. As an unrelated example, the nation’s education system isn’t much different than the one created in the 1800s — despite all the technological changes that should have sparked a revolution. When COVID hit, private schools adapted and provided successful at-home learning, whereas the public schools watched students fall behind and truancy rates soar. It’s not any different with any public service, including firefighting.

My fear: California policy makers will read that summary about “climate-driven” fire risks and do what they always do: blame the problem on climate change and double down on the state’s counterproductive climate policies. They are designed to change the entire Earth’s weather patterns (even though California is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s greenhouse emissions), rather than adjust our regulatory system to make us more resilient in the face of warming trends.

California’s union-controlled state and local governments aren’t about to adjust firefighting budgets so they can further stretch their dollars. State firefighters generally earn more than $250,000 in annual total compensation, with some Los Angeles firefighting officials earning pay levels that boggle the mind. Instead of trimming costs, California has been ratcheting up pay levels.

California state officials haven’t even been forthright about their approach toward brush clearance. For instance, four years ago Newsom touted an important wildfire-prevention program that at the time hadn’t completed a single project. We hear promises, but little action.

That’s government for you. It doesn’t do anything well and is incapable of learning the right lessons even from the best reports. Driving along PCH was just my latest reminder of this sad truth.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

​ Orange County Register 

Meet the air traffic controller who flies himself to work

• October 9, 2026

By HALLIE GOLDEN and THOMAS PEIPERT

PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) — Jake Hutzler spends his workdays directing planes from an airport tower. Once a week, he gets there by strapping a propeller to his back and taking to the skies of Colorado.

Before his commute, the 28-year-old air traffic controller lays out a large wing on the road outside his apartment complex, fires up the motor and starts running. Within seconds, his feet leave the ground.

For the next 20 minutes, Hutzler flies at a leisurely 35 mph above the expansive fields around Pueblo, a city near the Front Range mountains. He soars over a highway, a water tower and finally the airport while listening to his favorite music.

Before taking off, Hutzler calls the tower where he works and lets his colleagues know he’s coming. Once airborne, he keeps them updated on where he’s at and how high he’s flying.

“I’m very small and I don’t show up on radar,” Hutzler said, “so they’ll want to kind of keep track of my location and get updates on my progress.”

As the airport comes into view, he waits for the OK to land on the airport’s ramp. Pulling down on toggles to slow down the paramotor, he lets his feet dangle and meets the ground with a brief jog. He packs up the wing, strips off his jacket to reveal his collared work shirt and begins his shift telling planes when it’s safe to land and take off.

‘A view that almost nobody gets to experience’

For someone who has been fascinated with flying since childhood, it’s a particularly satisfying commute. Hutzler says it’s as close as you can get to flying like a bird.

“In a paramotor, you have a view that almost nobody gets to experience,” he said. “You have no cockpit, nothing in front of you. You’re just sitting there in the air and total freedom to go wherever you want.”

His grandfather used to take him up in a small four-seat aircraft. In college, Hutzler put in about 20 hours toward getting a pilot’s license, but the costs were too high for him to continue.

Everything changed when he came across a viral video of a man flying a paramotor to McDonald’s and eating his hamburger on the flight home.

“After I saw that, I was like, ‘I’m sold,’” he said. “I gotta do that.”

Flying became a family affair

Hutzler started training to fly the contraption — also known as powered paragliding — in 2021 in Florida and later became an instructor.

Part of the appeal is just how accessible paramotors are. There’s no license required and the price tag is a fraction of the cost of many other forms of flying. However, they’re still subject to federal rules on ultralight vehicles, including that they can only be operated during the day and fliers must avoid congested cities and towns.

The sport became a part of Hutzler’s life story. He trained the woman he would go on to marry, and when he was ready to propose he used fake engine trouble on his paramotor to lure her to the contraption, where he had left a ring. On their wedding day, their paramotors were with them at the altar. Now he’s looking forward to the day their 2½-year-old daughter is old enough to go on a tandem ride.

But after Hutzler started working in air traffic control earlier this year, his job left him less time to fly.

The solution: Start flying to work.

He approached his manager about commuting by paramotor and they went through the rule book and made sure he’d have two-way communication with the tower when he entered their airspace. He made his first flight to work in June and has been doing it ever since, weather permitting.

But paramotoring is a very fair-weather sport. It only takes about 10 mph of wind — basically a light breeze — to keep Hutzler on the ground. It can also be problematic if the sun heats the ground and causes updrafts — making for an extremely bumpy ride.

The airborne commute isn’t actually faster

With the time needed to set up the paramotor and put away all the gear, the trip takes slightly longer than driving to work. But, he said, it’s so much more fun.

“You could be having your favorite song playing in your headphones, and you just can relax and take in this awesome experience,” he said.

Golden reported from Seattle. Associated Press transportation writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.

​ Orange County Register