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‘Who Has a Say in the History Children Learn?’ Texas Standards Fight Draws Laurie Cardoza-Moore   Cardoza-Moore says state education standards offer a powerful way to shape how millions of students learn about American history, Israel, antisemitism, and Judeo-Christian values   By Felice Friedson / The Media Line   Laurie Cardoza-Moore went to a Texas education hearing prepared to talk about American history. What caught her attention instead was who else had come to testify—and what they wanted children to learn.   The question of who shapes a schoolbook had been on her mind since 2012, when, she said, a parent in Tennessee brought her a textbook. The woman’s son, an evangelical Christian who had previously been homeschooled, was in his first year of high school when he came home with a question about the Land of Israel. His mother asked him what the Bible said, but he rejected her response. “And he said, no, Mom, I know what the Bible says, but who has legitimate rights to the Land of Israel? That’s where it started.”   Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Leo Marchandon Oct 1 (Reuters) – Bull, the state-owned French maker of Europe’s fastest supercomputers, reopened an expanded factory on Thursday to double its production capacity, executives told Reuters, as Europe bolsters its AI computing capacity. The European Union has committed €7 billion ($7.87 billion) over 2021-2027 to a network of supercomputers, aiming to close a compute gap with the United States and China. Bull’s plant in Angers, France, is the only factory in Europe dedicated to building these machines, and its expansion is meant to support that goal. Chief Executive Emmanuel Le Roux said Bull has received more orders this year than ever before, and has won 15 of the 18 tenders issued by EuroHPC, the EU body that co-funds Europe’s network of supercomputers with member states, competing against companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Airbus inaugurated Bull-built supercomputers in Toulouse and Hamburg this year, in a five-year deal worth close to €100 million that tripled the planemaker’s simulation capacity. Cloud operator OVHcloud and European Commission-backed Domyn are both attempting to train frontier-class AI models on Bull’s JUPITER supercomputer alongside other companies Bull declined to name.  OUTPUT COULD EXPAND AGAIN IN 2027 The Angers expansion cost €80 million, Bull executives said. Output has already doubled, from six racks a month previously to 12 now, and the plant can boost output to 24 next year on demand it expects to keep growing. France’s order from Bull, a supercomputer named after computer scientist Alice Recoque, accounts for 94 racks, and is being assembled in parallel with LUMI-AI, Finland’s €388 million system and Bull’s biggest-ever contract. The two orders could not have been built alongside each other before the expansion, executives said. France completed its purchase of Bull from debt-laden IT group Atos on March 31, valuing the company at up to €404 million. The original motive was strategic, Le Roux said. In the 1980s, after the United States stopped shipping supercomputers to the CEA, France’s nuclear agency, France turned to Bull to build the machines that were used to simulate nuclear tests. Bull built JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale machine, the fastest class of supercomputers, now running at the Juelich centre in Germany. Alice Recoque, ordered for the CEA, is due for delivery in stages from the end of this year, at a cost of €554 million to the French government and European Union. The Angers factory assembles systems using Nvidia, AMD and Intel processors, or European parts, depending on customer demands. European-made components account for 70% of the machines being built, up from 20% to 30% five years ago. Under a partnership signed in June, Bull and Taiwan’s Foxconn <2317. TW> will also manufacture Nvidia’s NVL systems at a plant in the Czech Republic, with final assembly in the Angers factory. ($1 = 0.8894 euros) (Reporting by Leo Marchandon; editing by Kenneth Li and Rod Nickel) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Field Level Media Oct 01 (Field Level Media) – The Anaheim Ducks and defenseman Tristan Luneau have agreed to a six-year extension through the 2032-33 season, the club announced Thursday. Published reports peg the deal at $43.2 million. Luneau, 22, received the lucrative pact despite having played in just 14 NHL games. He had two goals and two assists in brief stints over the past three seasons. He scored a goal in his lone game with Anaheim last season. “Signing Tristan to a long-term contract was a priority as we see him as a top-four defenseman for years to come,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said in a news release. “Getting the deal done before the season started was a key part of our planning for now and the future.” A second-round pick by Anaheim in 2022, Luneau has stood out with AHL affiliate San Diego over the past two seasons. He had nine goals and 52 points in 59 games for San Diego during the 2024-25 season and had 10 goals and 41 points in 70 games last season. The 93 combined points were third-most among AHL defensemen over the past two seasons. (–Field Level Media) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Anousha Sakoui and Echo Wang LONDON/NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) – M&A activity in the last three months totalled $993 billion, down 41% compared to the second quarter of 2026, marking the first quarter to fall below $1 trillion since the second quarter of 2025, according to LSEG data. Banca Monte dei Paschi’s $32 billion bid for Banco BPM and Gold Fields $25.7 billion bid for Northern Star Resources were among the 10 deals over $10 billion announced in the third quarter, the lowest number of quarterly megadeals since the fourth quarter of 2024. While the boom in artificial intelligence and data centre building has lifted the outlook for economic growth, surging energy costs have been fanning inflation and pushing expectations higher about where interest rates will settle. The ​benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield hit 5.34% on Thursday, its highest level since 2002, after posting the biggest quarterly rise this century in the three months to September. “At the margins [higher yields] makes valuations sometimes a little tougher,” said John Collins, global head of M&A at Morgan Stanley. “That said, the impact is hard to quantify, so I’m not ready to call a slowdown based on what we are seeing.” So far this year worldwide M&A is up 28% to $3.9 trillion, the highest level in the period since 2001, while the number of deals fell 8%, levels not seen since 2020. “Corporates are still looking for scale or access to markets and technologies they are not in,” said Carsten Woehrn, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of M&A in Europe, Middle East and Africa. He sees total deal value exceeding the 2021 peak if the pace continues. “Megadeals are continuing and we’ve seen significant activity since the summer,” Woehrn said. “Boards feel a greater urgency to pull the trigger on strategic deals.” Historic levels of investment in the technology sector have bolstered deals, with strategic stake purchases in those companies accounting for about one quarter of global M&A so far this year. Earlier this year, both Claude maker Anthropic and ChatGPT maker OpenAI raised tens of billions of US dollars from investors. While US and European dealmaking fell sharply in the last three months, Asia Pacific M&A totalled $242 billion, up 8% from the second quarter and up 36% from the same period last year. This has been the strongest year to date for global private equity-backed dealmaking by value since records began in 1980, but the third quarter also saw a slowdown versus the same period last year. Cross-border dealmaking remains a strong theme this year to date, up 32% on the same period last year. “We’re seeing a fair amount of appetite from US companies thinking about acquisitions in Europe for the first time, taking advantage of a strong dollar. In reverse, you’re seeing people considering investment in the U.S. to take advantage of the potentially higher growth opportunity in the country,” said Charlie Bouckaert, JPMorgan’s global head of M&A. TRILLION DOLLAR IPOs AND DEALMAKING New listings, particularly in the technology sector, have fuelled M&A giving the companies new currency to buy up rivals. SpaceX acquired AI coding startup Cursor just days after its blockbuster Nasdaq debut, which saw its valuation surge to more than $2 trillion. “One of the drivers of activity is that being larger may help companies navigate transition in AI better,” Collins said. The June IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX helped drive $215 billion worth of initial public offerings, excluding SPACs, priced globally in the year to date, the highest level since 2021, from a lower number of deals than in the same period last year. In the last three months, stock sales raised US$284 billion, 26% less than the proceeds raised across equity capital markets during the second quarter, though marking a 39% increase from third quarter of 2025, thanks to offerings from SK Hynix and Intel. Some bankers did sound a note of caution however that some investors were taking more of a pause when approaching some technology and AI-related deals. “Until about 10 days ago, no one seemed to worry about the midterms, but with rising diesel prices and rates and a risk of a change in political direction, it is prompting caution, ” said Andreas Bernstorff, global head of equity capital markets at BNP Paribas. In recent weeks some IPOs have been delayed as higher interest rates and setbacks in the data center ecosystem threaten to derail a slew of new issues from the sector. Even with the uncertainty ahead, bankers remain confident. “Strong secular trends (such as AI) are driving activity, and we expect 2027 to be another robust year,” Bouckaert said. ​ ​ (Reporting by Anousha Sakoui in London and Echo Wang in New York. Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Aurora Ellis) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

By Mike Stone WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) – RTX’s Raytheon unit won a multiyear contract worth up to $24.4 billion to produce Standard Missile-6 interceptors for the US Navy, the service said on Thursday, as the Pentagon pushes to replenish munitions stockpiles depleted by conflicts in the Middle East. The five-year contract, which includes two additional option years, the Navy said, is meant to provide a steady and reliable supply of the SM-6, a missile that can carry out both offensive strikes and missile defense missions. The SM-6 award is the latest in a series of large munitions contracts the Pentagon has pursued this year to pressure contractors into ramping up output faster. It follows a $20.7 billion provisional multiyear deal for Raytheon’s AMRAAM air-to-air missiles in late September and a $58.6 billion Patriot interceptor deal awarded to Lockheed Martin in July. The production agreements are designed to entice contractors to. move faster on increasing output. They are part of a broader push by the Trump administration to prioritize weapons production over shareholder returns. Industry executives have warned that Congress has not yet appropriated funding for the deals, meaning contractors may be unable to invest at scale in components and facilities until lawmakers act. RTX has said it has invested heavily to keep up with rising demand. It has expanded its skilled workforce, strengthened partnerships across the defense industrial base and automated production, with the aim of significantly increasing output for near- and long-term needs. Raytheon says the SM-6 is the only combat-proven weapon that can perform anti-air warfare, anti-surface warfare and ballistic missile defense. It has been fired from a range of Navy ships as well as from land-based launchers. (Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Nia Williams and Stephen Coates) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com