The Rebrew Intelligencer

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Oct. 19. The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Cleveland Guardians 7 to 3 at Tropicana Field on Monday night in the sixth game of the American League Championship Series and won it four games to two. Cleveland had led the series 2 to 1. The Rays won the last three, two of them in Cleveland. It is their third American League pennant and their first since 2020. Freddy Peralta was named the series' most valuable player.

They will play the Milwaukee Brewers, who won 103 games in the regular season and swept the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League pennant. The Brewers have the home field. The first game is Friday, Oct. 23, at American Family Field in Milwaukee. Neither club has ever won a World Series: the Brewers lost in 1982, and the Rays in 2008 and 2020.

PARIS, Oct. 19. Nationwide protests on Saturday against the cost of living and against conditions and cuts in the schools gave way, in Paris and other cities, to clashes with police, looting and fires set by masked groups. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said about 1,200 people had been arrested and more than 150 police officers injured. France 24 later reported at least 2,400 arrests, and Paris police put the arrests in the capital region at 855. All figures are the officials' own and are subject to change.

President Emmanuel Macron said there was no place for violence in France, and that those who attacked prefectures and shops would be prosecuted and punished. The weekend has opened a debate in France over how the police handle large crowds.

SPARTANBURG, S.C., Oct. 14. Scout Motors chief executive Scott Keogh announced on Oct. 14 that seven suppliers in the Upstate will invest a combined $82 million and add about 200 jobs to make parts for the Scout Traveler sport utility vehicle and Scout Terra pickup, which are to be assembled at the company's plant at Blythewood. The suppliers are expanding facilities they already operate, in Spartanburg, Duncan and Piedmont.

Spartanburg Steel is the largest at $40 million and 60 jobs, for stamping components. Magna Drive follows with $15 million and 30 jobs, and KV Final with $14 million and 50. Rochling Automotive and Magna Mirrors put in $5 million and 15 jobs each, Cooper Standard $3 million and 15 jobs, and Bant Boru, the smallest, $270,000 and 15 jobs.

BUSAN, South Korea, Oct. 13. A shark about 3.5 metres long, first seen in a narrow canal at the city's North Port on Sept. 18, has stayed there through two failed attempts to guide it back to sea, one with water jets and one with a net that was abandoned after a two-hour chase for fear it would snag on rocks. The city has since stopped trying, officials saying the water should stay warm enough for the animal through October. On Sept. 29 Busan named it an honorary public relations ambassador, after a poll on the city's Instagram account in which 91 per cent of about 8,000 voters approved, and Korean newspapers report more than a million visitors to the canal.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19. The National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo reported Monday that their index of builder confidence fell three points in October to 29, the lowest reading since June 2012. Of the builders surveyed, 43 per cent cut prices this month, up from 38 per cent in September and 35 per cent in August, and the average cut was 6 per cent. Some 65 per cent used sales incentives, the 19th straight month at 60 per cent or more.

The association blamed mortgage rates that have climbed well above 7 per cent, higher energy and material costs, and worse conditions for labor and lots. Its measure of prospective buyer traffic fell five points to 18, and sales expectations for the next six months fell five points to 32. Current sales conditions fell two points to 33. Apart from the first weeks of the pandemic in 2020, traffic at new-home communities is at its lowest since April 2012.

The rates are the lender's doing as much as the builder's. Freddie Mac's latest weekly average on a 30-year mortgage was 7.40 per cent, and the 10-year Treasury yield on which lenders price such loans closed Monday above 5.1 per cent. By regions, on three-month averages, the Northeast stood at 38, the Midwest at 40, the South at 30 and the West at 26.

We read that a gentleman left Chile on foot in 1998, crossed twenty-nine countries and some thirty thousand miles, and was refused leave to walk the last of it through the Channel tunnel, whereupon he swam. We have walked to Pelzer. We know what it is to be told that the road is not meant for pedestrians, and we know also that the pedestrian is generally right.

Slow and steady wins the race, we remarked at breakfast, as Ecclesiastes teaches. Mrs. Langston set down her teacup and said the text is 'the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' Ecclesiastes, ninth chapter, and that it says nothing about slow and steady, and nothing whatever about tortoises. We have taken the point.

We hold the tunnel's refusal a poor way to treat a man bound for his mother's house, and the operator is owed a letter. We shall write it as soon as we have found out whose railroad it is.

Dear Editor: I pulled in on Main Street to post a letter and found that the meter would take my money only through a telephone program, which wished first to know my name, my address and whether I would like to hear about offers. I had wanted forty minutes and a stamp. I paid with a coin I found in the car, and the machine did not know what to make of it. [We would have walked. ED.]

A Postal Patron, Augusta Road

A reliable forecast for Greenville could not be had by press time. The barometer, back on its nail, reads Change, as it has every day since it came home, and the Editor holds that on this point it has never been wrong.