Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green pushed back this week on what he described as a widespread misconception about LeBron James’ recent contract with the Philadelphia 76ers, arguing that the four-time NBA champion’s steep pay cut cannot simply be recouped through endorsements or outside business ventures.

James signed a two-year, $8 million contract with a player option with Philadelphia on Friday, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, who reported that Klutch Sports Group CEO Rich Paul confirmed the deal to ESPN’s Shams Charania. The agreement, worth $4 million annually, represents the largest single-season pay cut in NBA history for a player of James’ stature, according to widespread reporting following the signing.

A roster built around new additions

James’ arrival in Philadelphia comes after the 76ers made a series of aggressive moves to build what the organization views as a legitimate championship contender over the next two seasons. Philadelphia’s most notable acquisition prior to signing James was landing Jaylen Brown in a trade with the Boston Celtics, a deal that came together as Brown’s relationship with the Celtics organization had reportedly deteriorated. Adding James to a core that already includes Brown and center Joel Embiid gives the 76ers a roster with championship aspirations heading into the coming seasons.

Bleacher Report characterized the magnitude of James’ financial sacrifice in stark terms following the signing, posting, “LeBron took the largest pay cut EVER to join the 76ers. The King just wants to win.”

Green explains why the math doesn’t work in James’ favor

While much of the public reaction to James’ contract focused on the veteran star’s willingness to sacrifice earnings in pursuit of another championship, Green used his podcast to directly challenge the assumption that James would simply make up the difference through sponsorships, endorsements or other outside income streams.

“There’s this common misconception like, oh well, like for instance, we’ll use LeBron James as an example,” Green said. “LeBron took a $4 million deal. He can go make the 40 million somewhere else. No the fu*k he can’t. He can go make 40 somewhere else, but it ain’t that same 40 that he just gave up.”

Green went on to lay out the financial logic behind his argument in more specific terms, illustrating how a player’s total on-court and off-court earnings compound differently depending on their base salary. “Like, so say next year, all right, that 40 takes him in total for a year 60 million make on a year. Well, the other 40 would have taken him to 100. Like, you don’t just go make that money up somewhere else,” Green said.

A friendship built through years of rivalry

Green’s comments carry particular weight given his long history with James, both as a fierce on-court rival and, in more recent years, as a close friend. The two have faced off in some of the league’s most memorable playoff matchups over the past decade, including multiple NBA Finals series between James’ teams and Green’s Warriors. Their mutual respect, built through those high-stakes showdowns, has often translated into candid public commentary from Green about James’ career and decisions, including his willingness to defend James against what he views as oversimplified takes on the financial realities of professional sports contracts.

Context for James’ unprecedented pay cut

James, 41, enters his 24th NBA season with Philadelphia, an NBA record for career longevity at the league’s highest level. His new deal represents a dramatic departure from the maximum-value contracts he has commanded for most of his career, reflecting both his advancing age and a deliberate decision, according to reporting on the signing, to prioritize a final shot at another championship over maximizing his final years of guaranteed compensation.

The scale of the pay cut has drawn significant attention across the league, in part because James has historically been one of the NBA’s most business-savvy players, building an extensive off-court portfolio that includes ownership stakes, production ventures and long-term endorsement partnerships. Green’s comments push back specifically against the assumption that this off-court business acumen can simply substitute for the lost basketball income, arguing that the two revenue streams do not scale interchangeably in the way some fans and commentators have suggested.

What it means for James’ legacy calculus

James’ willingness to accept such a steep reduction in pay has been framed by some in the sports media as evidence of his singular focus on adding to his championship résumé rather than his career earnings, particularly as questions continue to swirl about where he ranks in the NBA’s broader debate over the greatest player of all time. A championship run with Philadelphia would make him the first player in league history to win a title with three different franchises, having previously won championships with the Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers.

Green’s remarks add another layer to the ongoing conversation about the true cost of James’ decision, framing it not just as a symbolic sacrifice but as a genuinely significant financial one that cannot easily be offset through his substantial off-court business interests. Whether that sacrifice translates into another championship for James remains to be seen as the 76ers begin building their new-look roster around Brown, Embiid and their newly signed 41-year-old superstar heading into the coming season.

According to White, working families on low incomes not only struggle to pay their bills, but miss out on schemes such as free school meals and subsidised holiday clubs.

“When I talk to families, the cost of living keeps cropping up,” she says.

“As the years have gone on, everything’s become more expensive.

“But we are not earning enough. Families just can’t keep up.”

White says that while the charity deals with families who are on benefits, staff also support families who are “just above the threshold to claim”.

“They are being hit hard,” she says.

“They are working and getting no help from anywhere.

“One parent said she puts her child in breakfast club, which costs £6 a day, so she can go to work.

“It’s cost upon cost for working families.”

NBC has implemented tighter security measures at its “Today” show studios following an incident in which an intruder gained access to a restricted area and allegedly confronted co-anchor Craig Melvin with a racial slur, an episode that occurred while the network’s staff continued to cope with the unsolved disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother earlier this year.

The security changes were outlined in an internal memo obtained by Variety in late July, with the memo’s authenticity later confirmed by NBC sources. Under the revised policy, guests appearing on the show can now be accompanied by no more than two support personnel, a category that includes stylists, spokespersons, social media aides and similar staff.

How the intrusion unfolded

According to reports, a 41-year-old man identified as Andrew Truelove, described as homeless, allegedly slipped onto the “Today” set while reportedly searching for weather anchor Al Roker. Instead of finding Roker, Truelove encountered Melvin inside a vestibule located within a secure area of the studio and allegedly confronted him using a racial slur.

A review of broadcast footage from that morning reportedly showed a man matching Truelove’s description and clothing appearing repeatedly in the background during the show’s 8 a.m. hour, suggesting he may have been present on or near the set for an extended period before the confrontation with Melvin took place.

An NBC spokesperson said in July that the network was reviewing the incident along with its broader security procedures, adding that NBC remained committed to maintaining a safe environment for staff and visitors at its studios. Specific additional details of the network’s enhanced security measures beyond the two-person guest policy have not been made public.

Charges and legal history

Truelove faces charges connected to the studio incident, including felony burglary and misdemeanor menacing, with hate-crime allegations also reportedly under consideration. As with any pending criminal case, the charges represent allegations that have not been proven in court, and Truelove is entitled to a presumption of innocence unless and until guilt is established through legal proceedings.

Reports indicate Truelove has a documented history with law enforcement dating back nearly two decades. He was reportedly convicted in 2007 of attempting to abduct an 8-year-old child from a school in Norfolk, Virginia. More recently, court records in New York reportedly show a man with the same name and age facing several additional pending cases, including an alleged assault at the NYPD’s 5th Precinct in January, trespassing and reckless endangerment allegations connected to the city’s transit system in May, and a 12-count criminal mischief indictment from the previous year. As with the studio incident, these additional cases remain allegations pending resolution in court.

A network still coping with an unsolved family tragedy

The security overhaul comes against the backdrop of an already difficult year for the “Today” show’s on-air team. Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, was reported abducted from her home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, on Feb. 1. Her whereabouts remain unknown more than seven months later, and authorities have not publicly identified a suspect or announced an arrest in connection with her disappearance.

While NBC’s updated studio security measures are a separate matter from the ongoing investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s case, the timing has added another layer of strain for a “Today” show team already navigating an emotionally difficult period. The studio intrusion occurred while staff and anchors were still processing the unresolved abduction, according to reporting on the incident.

Savannah Guthrie has continued to speak publicly about her mother’s case throughout the year, including marking milestones tied to how long Nancy has been missing and continuing to appeal for information that could help investigators locate her. The FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department have continued working the case jointly, though no arrest has been made as of this report.

Broader questions about studio security

The intrusion involving Truelove has prompted broader scrutiny of how someone with an extensive documented history of erratic and potentially threatening behavior was able to bypass security and access a restricted portion of one of the country’s most closely watched live television studios. Some coverage of the incident has raised questions about gaps between the mental health system and private security protocols that may have allowed Truelove to move freely despite his reported history of prior legal encounters.

For “Today” show staff, the randomness of the encounter, in which Truelove reportedly sought out Roker specifically but instead confronted Melvin, has added an unsettling dimension to an already tense working environment. NBC’s response, formalized through the July memo, reflects an effort to more tightly control studio access moving forward, though the network has not detailed the full scope of changes beyond the limit on guest support personnel.

The criminal case against Truelove related to the studio incident, along with his additional pending cases in New York, will proceed through the court system, where the various allegations against him will need to be resolved through standard legal proceedings. Meanwhile, the search for Nancy Guthrie continues without a named suspect or arrest, leaving Savannah Guthrie and her family in an extended period of uncertainty that has now stretched well past the seven-month mark since her mother’s disappearance.

NBC’s tightened security protocols at the “Today” show studio are expected to remain in place as the network continues to evaluate its procedures following the intrusion, even as the broader investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s case remains active and ongoing under the joint oversight of the FBI and local Arizona authorities.

Three of the most fiercely competitive figures in artificial intelligence found unlikely common ground Saturday, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk publicly backed a call from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to deliberately slow the pace of frontier AI development, citing mounting concern that capabilities are advancing faster than researchers can understand or control.

Amodei laid out his position in a lengthy essay published Saturday on his personal website, warning that the industry’s current trajectory carries escalating risks that require a more cautious approach going forward.

Amodei’s warning centers on self-improving AI

In the essay, Amodei pointed to a specific and recent shift in how quickly AI systems are advancing. “My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI,” Amodei wrote.

He framed the broader challenge facing the industry as a balancing act between two competing risks. “Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless,” Amodei wrote. “We have sought a middle way. But over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence.”

Amodei has previously said he worries that swarms of rogue AI agents could become capable of “taking over the entire internet” within a window of six to 12 months if current trends continue unaddressed. As part of his proposal, Amodei said Anthropic will commit to giving outside evaluators full access to verify the company’s safety practices and report any incidents. He described plans to bring these “embedded evaluators” directly into Anthropic’s offices, giving them desks, badges, company laptops and what he called “permissions mostly comparable to what internal risk assessment teams have.” Amodei added that further steps beyond Anthropic’s own commitments would require coordination across the wider industry.

Rivals Altman and Musk quickly echo the call

Altman, whose company OpenAI competes directly with Anthropic for both talent and market share, voiced support for Amodei’s position shortly after the essay was published. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” Altman wrote, adding that OpenAI would also provide access to external evaluators as part of its own response.

Musk, who leads the AI company xAI and has a lengthy history of public disagreements with both Amodei and Altman, offered a brief but pointed endorsement of his own. “Dario is right,” Musk wrote on X. Notably, Anthropic is currently a major customer of Musk’s for data center capacity, an existing business relationship that adds another layer to his public agreement with Amodei’s position.

Altman’s comments came the same day he told Fortune in a separate interview that OpenAI would not pursue an initial public offering this year, calling such a move “ill-advised” given growing concerns about AI safety. That decision pushes back one of the most closely watched anticipated IPOs in the technology sector until at least 2027, after OpenAI’s own chief financial officer, Sara Friar, had told employees as recently as last month that a public listing could come as early as 2027 if the company’s business continued to “inflect.”

A rare moment of alignment among fierce competitors

Analysts and industry observers described the joint show of concern as highly unusual given the intensity of competition among the three executives’ companies. Altman and Musk in particular have a long and public history of friction, dating back to Musk’s departure from OpenAI in 2018 after his co-founders, including Altman, declined his proposal to take over the organization. The two have continued to trade barbs publicly in the years since, including during Musk’s unsolicited bid to acquire OpenAI’s nonprofit arm, which Altman previously dismissed as an attempt to “slow us down.”

Despite that history, all three executives now appear to be converging around a similar idea: that frontier AI development should continue, but not necessarily at the fastest pace technically achievable. Altman had signaled a similar sentiment as far back as July, acknowledging the difficulty of pacing AI development industry-wide without creating regulatory capture or running afoul of antitrust concerns around coordination between competing labs. OpenAI has also previously backed a broader “Pacing the Frontier” initiative calling for internationally coordinated mechanisms, led by the U.S., to deliberately slow AI development when necessary.

Skepticism remains about motives and follow-through

Not everyone has taken the executives’ statements at face value. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya offered a more skeptical read of Amodei’s essay, suggesting its underlying purpose was as much strategic as it was safety-driven. “Dario makes the case to stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic,” Palihapitiya wrote on X.

Similar skepticism has previously been directed at Musk’s own history of AI safety statements. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told Bloomberg in an earlier interview that he believed Musk’s rhetoric around slowing AI development may be tied to competitive positioning rather than purely safety-driven concerns, saying, “I 80% suspect his call to slow down AI development was so he could catch up.”

An industry facing pressure from multiple directions

The public alignment among Amodei, Altman and Musk arrives amid broader anxiety across the AI sector, following the high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher who left the industry entirely over concerns that leading AI companies were moving too aggressively toward increasingly autonomous, self-improving systems. Whether the rare display of agreement among three of the industry’s most competitive leaders translates into a meaningful, coordinated slowdown in practice remains uncertain, given the enormous financial incentives at stake and continued competitive pressure from AI developers both within the U.S. and internationally, including firms based in China.

Fans of The New York Times’ popular word-grouping game Connections can find the full breakdown of Sunday’s puzzle here, including hints, category themes and the complete answer key for Connections #1190, published Sept. 13, 2026.

Connections challenges players to sort 16 seemingly unrelated words into four groups of four, with each group sharing a hidden connection. The puzzle presents categories in ascending order of difficulty, color-coded yellow, green, blue and purple, with yellow typically the most straightforward and purple reserved for the trickiest wordplay or most obscure connections.

Today’s four categories

Sunday’s puzzle grouped its 16 words into the following categories: Lacking in Firmness, U.S. Presidents, Words That Sound Like Two Letters, and Ending in Elevated Landforms.

The yellow group, Lacking in Firmness, consisted of DROOPY, FLACCID, SAGGING and SLACK, four words describing something limp or without rigidity.

The green group, U.S. Presidents, included CLEVELAND, GARFIELD, GRANT and MADISON, a straightforward category built around the surnames of former American commanders in chief.

The blue group, Words That Sound Like Two Letters, contained EMPTY, EXCESS, KEWPIE and ODIE. Each word, when spoken aloud, phonetically resembles a two-letter combination: EMPTY sounds like “MT,” EXCESS sounds like “XS,” KEWPIE sounds like “QP,” and ODIE sounds like “OD.”

The purple group, the day’s most challenging category, was Ending in Elevated Landforms, made up of DOUBLESPEAK, HEATHCLIFF, PARAMOUNT and PORRIDGE. Each word conceals a landform term related to height at its end: DOUBLESPEAK ends in “peak,” HEATHCLIFF ends in “cliff,” PARAMOUNT ends in “mount,” and PORRIDGE ends in “ridge.”

A puzzle built around a clever misdirection

Puzzle recaps published after Sunday’s answers went live noted that the grid was designed to lure players toward an incorrect grouping early on. Several solvers reported initially assuming that GARFIELD referred to the cartoon cat character rather than the 19th-century American president, a mistake compounded by the presence of HEATHCLIFF, another well-known comic-strip cat, elsewhere in the grid.

That overlap led some players to briefly attempt grouping GARFIELD, HEATHCLIFF, DROOPY and CLEVELAND together as a set of cartoon animal characters, a red herring that the puzzle’s creators appeared to have built in deliberately. One recap described noticing the word “cliff” embedded at the end of HEATHCLIFF as the moment that unlocked the actual purple category, since it revealed the broader pattern of hidden landform words ending each entry in that group.

Puzzle outlets flagged the absence of a true cartoon-character category as a notable departure from typical Connections misdirection, with one recap specifically calling out that Sunday’s grid included “no cartoon animals today” as its actual answer set, despite multiple words that might otherwise suggest one.

Hints offered ahead of the reveal

Before publishing full answers, several outlets released layered hints designed to guide players without immediately spoiling the puzzle. Early clues described the yellow category as relating to “limp or flimsy” qualities, the green category as pointing toward “commander in chief,” the blue category as something solvers should “sound out” to understand, and the purple category as connected to “high altitude” imagery.

Other outlets offered slightly different phrasing for the same categories, describing the yellow group as relating to “words that describe the same physical state,” the green group as tied to “leaders of a certain country often favoured by Connections,” the blue group as words that “phonetically, could be much shorter,” and the purple group as containing “hidden landscape words.”

A puzzle with a Connections Bot rating of 4 out of 5

According to difficulty ratings compiled using the New York Times’ own Connections Bot scoring system, Sunday’s puzzle registered a 4 out of 5 on the platform’s difficulty scale, reflecting the added challenge created by the Garfield-Heathcliff misdirection built into the grid’s presidential and landform categories.

How Connections works

Connections has become one of the Times’ most popular daily word games since its debut in 2023, trailing only Wordle in overall popularity among the paper’s puzzle offerings, according to recaps tracking the game’s ongoing user engagement. Players select four words at a time from the 16-word grid and submit them as a guess; correct groupings lock into place with their designated color, while incorrect guesses count against a limit of four total mistakes before the puzzle ends unsolved.

The game’s structure, moving from simple, concrete categories in yellow up through increasingly abstract or wordplay-driven categories in green, blue and finally purple, has made it a daily habit for many puzzle enthusiasts who track personal win streaks similarly to how many players approach Wordle.

Where to find daily coverage

A range of outlets, including Parade, TechRadar, Forbes, GameDaily, Try Hard Guides and TheGamer, have built dedicated recurring coverage around Connections, offering daily hint breakdowns alongside full-answer reveals for readers who want either a nudge or an immediate solution. Most of these guides follow a consistent format, offering general category hints first before revealing individual example words and, finally, the complete four-category answer key.

Looking ahead

A new Connections puzzle will be published Monday, continuing the game’s daily rotation of categories spanning wordplay, pop culture, history and language patterns. Players looking to avoid spoilers for future puzzles are generally advised to complete each day’s grid before checking hint sites, since most outlets publish hints and complete answers together within the same daily post shortly after each puzzle becomes available to solve.

Tesla announced Saturday that it will finally unveil the second-generation Roadster on October 1, ending months of speculation over when the company’s long-delayed sports car would make its public debut nearly nine years after it was first shown to the world.

The electric vehicle maker posted a brief teaser on X, writing simply “Go for launch” alongside a graphic displaying the date “10.01.” The image also appeared to hint at cold-gas thrusters developed by SpaceX, the rocket company also run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, technology long rumored to give a high-performance version of the Roadster the ability to briefly lift off the ground. According to reporting from The Information, the reveal is set to take place in Waco, Texas.

A vehicle nearly a decade in the making

Tesla first showed the second-generation Roadster to the public in November 2017 during an event centered on the Tesla Semi. At the time, Musk promised extraordinary performance figures: a 0-to-60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and a range of 620 miles, specifications the company still lists on its official Roadster webpage. Production was originally targeted for 2020.

That timeline has slipped repeatedly in the years since, pushed back through 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 as Tesla redirected engineering and manufacturing focus toward other priorities, including the Cybertruck launch, the ramp-up of the Tesla Semi, and more recently the company’s pivot toward artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous driving technology through projects like the Cybercab and its Optimus humanoid robot.

At Tesla’s shareholder meeting on Nov. 6, 2025, Musk set a demonstration date of April 1, 2026, for the Roadster, while acknowledging the timing choice gave him what he called “deniability because I can say I was just kidding.” He also said at the time that production would likely begin 12 to 18 months following the reveal, placing an actual delivery timeline in 2027 or 2028, and described the finished car as being “very different from what was shown previously.” Musk further called the planned unveiling the “most exciting, whether it works or not, demo ever of any product.”

That April date came and went without an event. Musk had already begun shifting the timeline in mid-March, posting on X that the unveiling would come “hopefully next month” and would be “a banger next-level” reveal, before saying it would “probably” happen in late April instead. By the company’s April 22 earnings call, Tesla described the Roadster as still being in design development, with Musk estimating the reveal was “a month or so” away pending further testing and validation.

A public dispute over reservation costs

The Roadster’s repeated delays became the subject of a public back-and-forth last year between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who had placed a reservation for the vehicle years earlier. Altman said on social media that “7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait” after paying a $50,000 reservation fee for the car, a comment Musk pushed back on by asserting that Altman had actually received a refund on his deposit.

Reservations for the Roadster have ranged from $50,000 for the base configuration up to $250,000 for a limited “Founders Series” edition, with tens of thousands of early depositors from 2017 and 2018 still waiting for concrete answers about the car’s final specifications, pricing and delivery timeline. Asked previously whether Founders Series customers who paid the higher reservation amount would be invited to attend the eventual reveal event, Musk said, “Sure, absolutely. It’s the least we can do for our long-suffering Roadster reservation holders.”

What Saturday’s teaser suggests about the design

Close observers of Tesla’s teaser image noted that the silhouette shown does not appear to match the rear profile of the original 2017 concept car, lending some support to Musk’s past statements that the finished production vehicle will differ meaningfully from what was originally displayed. Commentary from the widely followed Tesla-focused account Whole Mars Catalog characterized the teaser as hinting at “an all new design,” a reading consistent with Musk’s earlier remarks describing the eventual production Roadster as a significant departure from the prototype shown nearly a decade ago.

The teaser’s imagery, along with earlier reporting from The Information, has also reinforced longstanding expectations that Tesla may demonstrate a SpaceX-derived cold-gas thruster package as part of the October event, potentially as an optional performance upgrade available on a limited version of the car. Whether that system is fully functional and road-legal in various markets remains an open question that the October event is expected to help clarify.

Key questions heading into October

For the many depositors who have waited years for updates, Saturday’s announcement sets up several unresolved questions that the October 1 event will likely need to address. Chief among them is whether the finished production specifications still match Tesla’s original 2017 promises of a sub-two-second 0-to-60 time, a top speed above 250 mph and 620 miles of range, or whether the car ultimately exceeds or falls short of those figures. Pricing also remains unclear, with the original $200,000 base price target for the production model not yet reconfirmed by the company.

Delivery timing remains similarly uncertain. Musk has floated both “late 2026” and 2027 as possible windows at different points over the past year, and any unveiling that fails to include a firm production and delivery schedule would likely be viewed skeptically given the vehicle’s long history of missed deadlines.

Tesla has not released additional details beyond the October 1 date and the accompanying teaser imagery, leaving open questions about the event’s format, location logistics in Waco, and whether the automaker will use the occasion to finally lock in a firm production timeline after years of shifting targets. For now, the announcement marks the most concrete signal in months that Tesla intends to move the long-awaited Roadster from concept to public reveal, even as questions about an actual delivery date to paying customers remain unresolved heading into the fall.