(Corrects timing of shooting to earlier this year in first paragraph)

By Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – US authorities arrested a person in Washington state on Tuesday who they accuse of providing advice and offering to live stream a deadly mass shooting carried out earlier this year in Canada.

James Cody Bryant, 30, was detained on a charge of conspiracy to murder people in a foreign country in connection to the shooting at Tumbler Ridge, according to the Department of Justice. The charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

Bryant was in repeated contact with the shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, offering technical advice, sending money, including for the shoes to be used during the attack, and agreeing to live stream the event, law enforcement officials said.

“James Cody Bryant had the information and ability to alert law enforcement and even discussed that possibility with the shooter, but he chose not to, and he encouraged and offered assistance to a murderer,” Acting US Attorney for the Western District of Washington Neil Floyd told reporters.

Court records did not immediately list an attorney for Bryant.

Nine people, primarily children, were killed in the school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, in one of Canada’s worst mass shootings.

Van Rootselaar, 18, who had suffered a series of mental health problems, killed her mother and stepbrother at home before shooting dead a teacher and five young students at her former school in Tumbler Ridge, a settlement of around 2,400 in the Canadian Rockies, according to police. Van Rootselaar, who police said was born a male but began identifying as a woman, then died by suicide.

Bryant, who officials said they understood was also born a man but identified as female, agreed to live stream a feed of the attack and broadcast it “in a way that would maximize notoriety for the shooter,” Mike Herrington, FBI Seattle special agent in charge, said.

The live stream on Twitch was shut down after about 20 seconds, officials said.

“Without Bryant’s misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the live stream, we don’t ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime,” Herrington said.

“We certainly know the shooter was concerned that not enough people would see the live stream without Bryant broadcasting it, and was depending on Bryant to amplify the live stream because the shooter did not have many followers on social media.”

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by Michelle Nichols and David Gregorio)

By Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was thinking about suspending the federal gas tax as high gas and diesel prices pose a risk to his Republican Party heading into the November midterm US elections.

DETAILS AND QUOTES:

• “We’re thinking about that,” Trump said when asked if the federal gas tax should be suspended, without providing more details.

• Trump has also previously expressed support for suspending the US gas tax in recent months.

• Trump’s comments came a day after he signed an executive order to expand access to tax-exempt diesel that he unveiled from a rally stage in Nebraska.

• High gas and diesel prices are a risk to Trump ahead of the midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake.

• Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the Senate and House of Representatives.

• Waiving the ‌18.4-cent federal gasoline tax requires Congress to pass legislation.

• Fuel prices have risen in response to the US-Israeli war on Iran and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the conflicts having led to attacks on refineries in the Middle East and Russia.

• Trump’s approval rating has held at a record low 32% in recent days, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday, with Americans most concerned about the high cost of ​living, spurred by soaring gasoline and diesel prices.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Michelle Nichols)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Tuesday that it will rewrite its vehicle lighting standards to address concerns about headlight glare and allow for the latest safety-improving lighting technologies.

NHTSA said it plans to improve rules for LEDs, dusk sensors, automatic high beams and replaceable light sources. The agency will also evaluate headlamp height and aim and how they impact driver visibility and address headlight glare and make appropriate changes.

Complaints about glare from headlights have increased and some lawmakers have urged the government to set a maximum headlight brightness standard. A growing number of taller trucks and SUVs on roads has also led to more complaints about glare.

LEDs, which now account for most headlights in new cars, are much brighter than traditional halogen headlights.

“Today’s standards do not allow automakers to deploy the latest safety-improving lighting technologies, so we are bringing key experts and stakeholders together to modernize our standards and address potential causes of glare,” said NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison.

The issue still accounts for a small number of nighttime crashes, according to a study last year from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The study noted that headlight glare contributes to far fewer crashes than insufficient visibility. From 2015 to 2023, headlight glare was cited as a factor in only one or two out of every 1,000 nighttime crashes across 11 US states, the study shows.

Federal headlight standards for minimum and maximum brightness have not changed since 1997, IIHS noted. The study found that drivers older than 70 appear to be most affected by headlight glare.

In 2022, NHTSA said it would allow automakers to install adaptive driving beam headlights on new vehicles. The devices adjust the headlight beam pattern to dim portions directed at other vehicles.

NHTSA will use a negotiated rulemaking process to update its vehicle lighting standards. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will appoint up to 18 people from vehicle lighting manufacturers, motor vehicle equipment associations, safety organizations, research institutions, and engineering associations to take part.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter and Aurora Ellis)

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – The US trade deficit widened more than expected in August as imports jumped to a record high against the backdrop of robust domestic demand, keeping trade on track to again subtract from economic growth in the third quarter.

The deterioration reported by the Commerce Department on Tuesday was despite President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs on imports, which he has argued are meant to shrink the trade gap. The nation posted record goods trade deficits with at least three countries, including Mexico.

Economists have long argued that the US did not have the capacity to produce enough goods to meet its consumption needs. Some lowered their gross domestic product growth estimates for the July-September quarter.

“The administration’s trade policies have largely been a failure, trade tariffs have done nothing to reduce America’s reliance on the import of foreign-produced goods,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS. “The cost of American labor is simply too high to produce goods here cheap enough for consumers to even think about purchasing. Even if US manufacturers were willing, the factories could not be built here fast enough to produce the goods that consumers depend on.”

The trade shortfall increased 13.7% to $105.6 billion, the largest since March 2025, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the deficit would be $102.0 billion.

The trade deficit was at $79.8 billion when Trump was elected for a second term in November 2024. August’s deterioration was flagged by data last week that showed an import-driven surge in the goods trade deficit, and part of the increase reflected higher prices.

Domestic demand increased at its fastest pace in more than 3-1/2 years in the second quarter, reflecting robust consumer spending and business spending on equipment, mostly related to AI. The trend appears to have spilled over into the third quarter, with data last month showing strong consumer spending in August as well as orders and shipments of nondefense capital goods, excluding aircraft.

But businesses are relying on imports to meet demand. Imports increased 4.3% to an all-time high of $420.8 billion in August. Goods imports jumped 5.3% to $342.2 billion, partly due to businesses replenishing inventories, which have been drawn down for five straight quarters.

They were boosted by a $9.1 billion increase in industrial supplies and materials, which include petroleum. Crude oil imports rose $3.3 billion while nonmonetary gold increased $3.1 billion. Nonmonetary gold imports and exports are excluded in the calculation of GDP.

Capital goods imports soared $6.2 billion to a record high $146.4 billion, driven by semiconductors and other industrial machinery, reflecting the AI infrastructure buildout. Though imports of computer accessories decreased $1.6 billion, they totaled $158.5 billion in the first eight months of the year compared to $89.5 billion during the same period in 2025.

TRADE SET TO WEIGH ON GDP GROWTH

Exports rose 1.4% to $315.2 billion. Goods exports increased 2.2% to $205.7 billion, reflecting a $6.3 billion rise in industrial supplies and materials, mostly nonmonetary gold, crude oil and fuel oil.

Economists at Goldman Sachs said the rise in oil exports appeared to have been driven largely by drawdowns in both commercial inventories and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve rather than an increase in domestic production.

Capital goods exports rose $1.3 billion, lifted by semiconductors and computers. But exports of civilian aircraft fell $1.0 billion. Consumer goods exports dropped $2.2 billion, pulled down by a $2.4 billion decline in pharmaceutical preparations.

The goods trade deficit increased 10.3% to $136.6 billion in August. When adjusted for inflation, it widened $8.7 billion, or 8.2%, to $114.7 billion. Trade has subtracted from GDP for three straight quarters, and economists estimate it could cut as much as 2.5 percentage points from GDP in the third quarter.

Goldman Sachs economists trimmed their third-quarter GDP growth estimate to a 3.1% annualized rate from a 3.4% pace. The economy grew at a 2.2% pace in the second quarter.

In addition to being a drag on GDP growth, the trade deficit also has inflation implications as it underscores excess demand. Economists said it supported their expectations that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates again this year.

“The Fed had better pay good attention to all this excess demand stuff,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “Underlying the price shock from elevated energy prices, there is a demand-driven inflation challenge in the US economy. Energy prices are just an overlay onto that.”

The US central bank last month raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by 25 basis points to the 3.75%-4.00% range, its first hike in three years, and flagged further increases in borrowing costs ahead.

Services imports rose less than $0.1 billion to $78.5 billion in August, amid a small gain in transport. Charges for the use of intellectual property fell as did travel.

Exports of services also advanced by less than $0.1 billion to $109.5 billion. There were modest increases in charges for the use of intellectual property and other business services. Travel and financial services both declined.

The nation had record goods trade shortfalls with Mexico, Vietnam and Malaysia. It maintained deficits with Taiwan, China, the European Union, South Korea and India among other trade partners. The shortfall with Canada jumped $4.1 billion, with strong growth in imports likely reflecting businesses front-loading orders to avoid higher tariffs. The US and Canada are locked in a trade war.

The US, however, posted a record goods trade surplus with Belgium, while maintaining surpluses with the Netherlands, South and Central America, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Brazil, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

“Trade with Canada may remain volatile for a few months due to large swings in energy goods and as new tariffs come into effect amidst rising trade uncertainty,” said Veronica Clark, an economist with Citigroup.

​

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao and Andrea Ricci)

Oct 6 (Reuters) – The Television Academy and Amazon’s Prime Video on Tuesday announced a six-year deal making the streaming service the exclusive global home of the Emmys, ending the awards show’s rotation among US broadcast networks.

The deal will take effect with the 2027 ceremony and ends the traditional “Wheel Deal” rotation under which the telecast alternated among broadcast networks ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, concluding with this year’s show.

Traditional television networks face growing competition from streaming services, which have increasingly taken on major live events and awards shows as viewing habits shift toward digital platforms.

Organizers of the annual Academy Awards said last year that the Oscar telecast was moving from the ABC broadcast network to stream live on YouTube around the world starting 2029.

The Emmy Awards ceremony will continue to air live in September but will be available free to viewers worldwide, with no Prime Video subscription required, Amazon said.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For Prime Video, the agreement adds another high-profile live entertainment property to a service that has expanded through original films and television shows, sports and other streaming partnerships.

The Emmys, first held in 1949, honor achievements in television acting, production and writing, among other areas. The awards have traditionally served as a major promotional and cultural event for the US television industry.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)

(Grand Island, NE) — President Trump heads to Maryland today after visiting deep-Red Nebraska on Monday for another rally ahead of the midterm elections. He spoke in Grand Island in support of Senator Pete Ricketts and other Republicans running in the state. Trump warned about turning power over to Democrats, saying again this is one of the most important midterm elections ever. Later today, the president will be in Baltimore. He’s scheduled to speak at the Sparrows Point Shipyard at an event hosted by defense technology firm Anduril Industries.

By Will Dunham

Oct 5 (Reuters) – U.S. televangelist Jim Bakker, who built a multimillion-dollar empire and lived in opulence before being disgraced by a sex scandal, fraud conviction for bilking followers and divorce from television co-host Tammy Faye, died on Monday at age 86.

The death of Bakker, whose journey from the TV pulpit to a prison cell in the 1980s inspired comparisons to the corrupt character of the fictional preacher-huckster Elmer Gantry, was revealed on social media by his second wife, Lori Bakker.

“It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening,” she wrote on the Facebook and Instagram pages of her husband’s latest television ministry.

She paid tribute to Bakker as a “pioneer of Christian television,” but the cause and circumstances of his death were not revealed.

Bakker revived his career as a television preacher after prison with a new wife and new television show in 2003, later becoming a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, who was known for his own brand of right-wing populism.

Bakker had been among the most popular of the Christian preachers who thrived on U.S. television in the 1980s, achieving fame on the show “The PTL Club.” PTL stood for “Praise The Lord” and “People That Love.”

Detractors, pointing to his unabashed daily exhortations to viewers for donations to his ministry, said PTL should have stood for “pass the loot.”

Bakker spent 4-1/2 years in prison after being convicted in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1989 of defrauding followers in a scheme involving vacations at his Heritage USA Christian theme park and resort.

Prosecutors painted him as a selfish and petty con man driven by greed and lust for power.

“Those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests,” Judge Robert Potter told Bakker before sentencing him.

Bakker had quit the PTL ministry in 1987 after revelations of a 1980 sexual encounter with Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary who later posed nude in Playboy magazine, and a subsequent $265,000 payoff with ministry funds to gain her silence. Bakker was later defrocked.

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, his first wife, had started with a small TV ministry and eventually created a multimillion-dollar operation with 2,000 employees and the 2,300-acre (930-hectare) Heritage USA complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

At its peak, the PTL ministry drew 13 million viewers on 200 TV stations and raked in $129 million a year.

With his working-class upbringing, the affable Bakker related well to common folk.

He did not deliver fire-and-brimstone sermons like other televangelists, instead offering a friendly Christian message – although it was larded with requests for money donations.

Tammy Faye was more much more flamboyant, with her enthusiastic singing and penchant for tears that left her heavy makeup smeared on her face.

‘I HAVE SINNED’

Bakker was convicted after a six-week trial in federal court on all 24 fraud and conspiracy charges brought against him.

Prosecutors said he defrauded followers of $158 million by selling promises of lifetime annual vacations that he could not provide.

They said he siphoned $3.7 million to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included several homes, luxury cars, mink coats, diamonds, servants – and an air-conditioned dog house.

The judge ordered Bakker to 45 years in prison but the sentence was later reduced. “I have sinned,” Bakker told the court. “I have made mistakes. But never in my life did I intend to defraud anyone.”

Bakker’s chief aide, Richard Dortch, served 18 months of an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to reduced charges in exchange for testifying against Bakker.

Tammy Faye was never charged. She stood by Bakker at the trial – even singing to reporters after his conviction – but divorced him in 1992 while he was in prison. She died of cancer in 2007.

Bakker started his life over after leaving prison in 1994, renouncing the “prosperity gospel” he once preached and writing a book titled “I Was Wrong.”

“I’ve had a second chance at life. And I have a beautiful wife who loves me,” Bakker told CNN in 2000, referring to his second wife, Lori, who he married in 1998.

They started a TV ministry together in 2003. In 2008, they began taping “The Jim Bakker Show” at a 600-acre (240-hectare) development called Morningside near the tourism city of Branson, Missouri, that bore similarities to Heritage USA.

Bakker once again pleaded with his followers for donations.

In 2020, he drew the ire of state and federal officials for selling a false treatment for COVID-19 during the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Bakker also said in 2017 that Christians would launch a civil war if Trump were to be impeached. Trump later became the first U.S. president to be impeached twice.

James Orson Bakker was born on January 2, 1940, the son of an auto parts factory worker in Muskegon, Michigan, who maintained a strict fundamentalist Christian household.

He met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis and they married in 1961. Both dropped out of school to become traveling evangelists as he pursued the career of a minister of the Pentecostalist Assemblies of God denomination.

Their big break came in 1964, when televangelist Pat Robertson aired a children’s religious puppet show with them on his fledgling TV network.

Setting out on his own in the 1970s, Bakker used the emerging world of cable and satellite TV to build an empire.

(Reporting and writing by Will Dunham in Washington; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill Trott and Clarence Fernandez)

By Phil Stewart and Steve Gorman

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has ordered the use of a firing squad to execute the former US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in a 2009 shooting spree the gunman later described as retaliation for US wars in the Muslim world, the Pentagon said on Monday.

Putting former US Army Major Nidal Hasan to death by Army firing squad was approved by Trump at the recommendation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X.

Parnell noted that Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” — God is greatest in Arabic — during the attack, which killed 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman, and wounded 32 others.

The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution, Parnell said, adding, “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come.”

Death by firing squad was one of several forms of capital punishment the Trump administration recently added to permissible forms of execution for the gravest of federal crimes, along with electrocution and gas asphyxiation.

The number of federal execution options was expanded in part because of increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which have also proved challenging to carry out for other reasons at times. 

Plans by the state of Tennessee to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years went awry last week when prison personnel botched an attempt to administer a lethal injection, leaving the death-row inmate, Christa Pike, alive but unconscious and hospitalized on life support.

Pike’s lawyers had previously urged that the Tennessee Department of Correction to consider an alternative to lethal injection, such as hanging or firing squad, in anticipation of the trouble executioners faced in establishing a sound intravenous line.

A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013, after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder for opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas military base. 

The shooting came weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan. He was left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair from being shot by police upon his arrest. 

In a statement responding to Trump’s decision, the group Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said: “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.”

Military executions are rare, and under the Uniform Code of Military Justice a death sentence imposed by court-martial may not be carried out “until approved by the president.” 

If Hasan is put to death, it would mark the first military execution since 1961, the group said. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the 1961 execution was carried out by hanging. The apparent last known execution by a US military firing squad was one carried out “by musketry” in November 1945, the center reported. 

At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – The family of an 18-year-old Black man whose body was found on a Mississippi barrier island following a Fourth of July trip with friends called on Monday for a federal investigation into his death after a grand jury declined to indict anyone.

Here are some details:

• Last month, a grand jury unanimously declined to indict anyone in the death of the Black teenager Nolan Wells.

• Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said there was no evidence to support allegations that Wells’ disappearance and death were racially motivated.

• Wells’ family pushed back on the grand jury’s findings that there was no evidence of criminal conduct, saying they did not get answers about what happened.

• US civil rights advocates and prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump sought a comprehensive investigation and transparency from authorities on Wells’ death.

• Wells’ body was found on July 6 on the northwest end of ‌Horn Island, ⁠a barrier island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, after he went missing during a Fourth of July weekend trip with friends from nearby Ocean Springs.

• The case of Wells’ death developed from a local investigation into an incident drawing national scrutiny.

• Although authorities had not alleged foul play, questions were raised in the weeks after his death by family members, civil rights leaders and others about transparency, accountability and disparities in attention to cases involving Black victims.

• “Our son was found on federal land and we are asking the FBI to step in and do a full investigation,” said Elmore Wonsley, Wells’ father, on Monday.

• Florida US Representative Frederica Wilson, a Democrat, earlier called on the National Park Service to investigate Wells’ death on Horn Island, which is overseen by the NPS.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Thomas Derpinghaus)

By Nate Raymond

Oct 5 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday blocked efforts by the Trump administration to impose fines of up to $1.8 million on migrants who fail to leave the US after receiving final deportation orders.

US District Judge George O’Toole in Boston issued the ruling in a class-action lawsuit filed last year by two of the thousands of migrants who have been assessed civil penalties by the Department of Homeland Security.

He said the administration imposed the fines unlawfully. Halting the penalty-related policies was necessary, O’Toole said, because collecting the fines would likely drive the plaintiffs into insolvency.

“The plaintiffs live in an economically precarious position even without the imposition of the government’s exorbitant fines,” he wrote.

DHS had no immediate comment.

As recently as July, the department said it had issued more than 103,000 fines to migrants amounting to about $84 billion in total since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year.

While Congress authorized civil penalties under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, no administration sought to impose them until Trump’s first term.

Starting last year, Trump’s second administration began levying fines of $998 per day for migrants who failed to leave the US after a deportation order. Those fines have been imposed retroactively for up to five years, for a maximum penalty of $1.8 million.

In July 2025, DHS and the US Department of Justice implemented a new process they said would streamline the assessment of fines by eliminating a 30-day notice period and shortening the process for challenging penalties.

The plaintiffs, who also included the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, challenged that policy as well as what they described as a practice by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS agency, of issuing fines using boilerplate forms without independently assessing whether someone’s failure to depart was “willful” or “voluntary.”

O’Toole, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, sided with the plaintiffs, holding that the fines were unlawful and violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the forms lacked specific allegations explaining why an individual’s conduct warranted a penalty.

He also found the administration had failed to comply with rulemaking processes in adopting its streamlined fine-imposition process because it did not provide the public a chance to comment on the policy change first.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)