Start your week smart: Tight presidential race, Gaza talks resume, abusive boarding schools, suitcase murder, oldest American

By CNN Newsource

Published October 27, 2024 6:58 AM

By Andrew Torgan and Daniel Wine, CNN

(CNN) — Caring for a family member with dementia can be heartbreaking and difficult in so many ways. One of the hardest tasks may be protecting them from ruining their finances as their condition deteriorates. Research shows that those with dementia often show signs of financial trouble years before diagnosis. Left unchecked, their unpaid bills, gratuitous spending or willingness to give away their money whenever asked can drain their savings and push them into debt. Here’s how you can protect a loved one in cognitive decline from financial harm.

And here’s what else you need to know to Start Your Week Smart.

The weekend that was

• The race for the White House rests on a razor’s edge in the final nationwide CNN poll before votes are counted, with 47% of likely voters supporting Kamala Harris and 47% backing Donald Trump. Harris is launching new ads targeting men in battleground states, while Trump will hold a rally today at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Iran had severely damaged its defense capabilities. Meanwhile, talks aimed at restarting hostage and ceasefire negotiations for Gaza resumed for the first time in two months. Follow live updates.
• President Joe Biden formally apologized to Native Americans for what he described as “one of the most horrific chapters in American history,” government-funded boarding schools that abused indigenous children and forced them to assimilate over a 150-year period.
• A Florida woman was found guilty of second-degree murder after authorities said she zipped her boyfriend up in a suitcase and left him for dead in 2020. Sarah Boone told authorities her boyfriend got trapped in a suitcase and died during a game of hide-and-seek.
• Known as “Queen Elizabeth of Houston,” Elizabeth Francis died at age 115, making her the oldest person in the United States and the third-oldest person in the world.

The week ahead

Monday
Apple will reportedly release iOS 18.1, the first version of its iPhone operating system with Apple Intelligence — the company’s first attempt at AI. The update is expected to include enhanced writing tools and a new Siri user interface, among other features. You will need to have an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16, however, to access all the new functionality.

Tuesday
Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a final-stretch closing argument at the same location her rival delivered a fiery speech on January 6, 2021, that set in motion the attack by his supporters at the US Capitol. The speech at the Ellipse, a park just outside the South Lawn of the White House, will amount to a high-profile denunciation of former President Donald Trump’s fitness for office and a warning about the chaos she says he would bring to the Oval Office should he win.

Steve Bannon, the right-wing podcaster and former Trump aide, is set to get out of federal prison. Bannon’s legal defense team made repeated attempts to have him released early and moved to home confinement, but the Bureau of Prisons informed him last week that he would have to serve out his full 120-day sentence for contempt of Congress behind bars.

Tuesday also marks one week until Election Day.

Thursday
Happy Halloween! Still looking for a costume? Here are some ideas.

Friday
We wrap up the week with the final look at the job market before the election — the October employment report. In September, the US economy added a staggering 254,000 jobs, blowing past economists’ expectations, while the unemployment rate ticked lower to 4.1%. October’s jobs number is forecast to take a significant hit due to at least 44,000 striking workers — 33,000 of which are Boeing machinists — and the ripple effects of two major hurricanes.

Listen in

One Thing: 🎧 Dementia donations investigation
In this episode of the “One Thing” podcast, CNN’s Kyung Lah and Yahya Abou-Ghazala explain how their team uncovered that Republicans and Democrats are taking millions of dollars in donations from elderly dementia patients to fuel their campaigns. Listen here.

Photos of the week

Check out more images from the week that was, curated by CNN Photos.

What’s happening in entertainment

TV and streaming
Pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo brings her “GUTS” World Tour to Netflix in a new concert special on Tuesday. Released in September 2023, “GUTS” spawned hits like “Vampire,” “Bad Idea, Right?” and “Get Him Back!”

In theaters
Opening on Friday is “Absolution,” starring Liam Neeson as an aging gangster who attempts to reconnect with his children and rectify the mistakes in his past. However, as in all bad-guy-tries-to-make-good movies, the mob is not willing to let him just walk away. “Absolution” comes on the heels of last year’s Neeson action flick “Retribution.” At this point, just about all the cool action movie titles have already been “Taken” …

“Here” reunites Tom Hanks and Robin Wright (Forrest Gump and Jenny) in a film that digitally de-ages the two actors back to teenagers in a budding romance, then follows their lives as they marry, raise a family and grow old together.

What do you get when you cross a buddy comedy/road trip movie with the Holocaust? You get “A Real Pain,” starring Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg. The film, which was written and directed by Eisenberg, follows two cousins on a trip to Poland following the death of their grandmother, a Jew who survived Hitler’s concentration camps.

What’s happening in sports

At a glance …
It’s Week 8 of the NFL season and the Kansas City Chiefs are still unbeaten. Here are five things to know heading into today, including the return of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa from his most recent concussion, which he suffered during Week 2.

In baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers survived a late comeback attempt by the New York Yankees to take a 2-0 lead in the World Series. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani suffered an apparent shoulder injury. Game 3 is Monday at Yankee Stadium.

The New York City Marathon is one week from today.

For more of your favorite sports, head on over to CNN Sports as well as Bleacher Report, which — like CNN — is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

Quiz time!

Looking for a challenge to start your week? Take CNN’s weekly news quiz to see how much you remember from the week that was! So far, 41% of fellow quiz fans have gotten eight or more questions right. How will you fare?

Play me off …

‘Vampire’
It wouldn’t be Halloween week without at least one vampire, right? (Click here to view)

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