The Rebrew Intelligencer

Brent crude oil, October 2025 to October 2026. The latest reading is $115.22, on Oct. 20, 2026.

Chart by the Intelligencer from figures by the Energy Information Administration, via FRED

The Dow fell 652.82 points, or 1.23 per cent, on Friday to close at 52,215.16, but finished the week 0.4 per cent higher, its third weekly gain in a row. The S&P 500 lost 39.75 points, or 0.52 per cent, to 7,623.68, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 53.52 points, or 0.21 per cent, to 25,955.34, its second weekly loss. Oil set the tone. Brent crude rose about 3.1 per cent to $116.72 a barrel, its highest settlement since late April, after new Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and energy was the only group of stocks to finish clearly higher.

Bloomberg reported that SpaceX is in talks with at least one large tower owner, Crown Castle, for access to at least 80,000 cell sites, which would help it build a fourth national wireless carrier. That is half of the 158,500 purpose-built cell towers operating in the United States last year, according to the Wireless Infrastructure Association. Crown Castle did not confirm the talks. AT&T and T-Mobile each fell more than 6 per cent, while Crown Castle rose more than 9 per cent and American Tower about 4 per cent. Tower shares had been held down by the fear that satellites would make towers unnecessary, and a Truist analyst said the report cut against that view.

American Express fell about 3.7 per cent although it raised its forecast for the year, as it also said it would cut about 5 per cent of its workforce and take a charge of $336 million. SLB, the oilfield services company, rose about 7 per cent after its adjusted earnings of 64 cents a share beat the 62 cents expected, and it pointed to a stronger 2027 as work in the Middle East recovers.

A rendering of the pool courtyard at NorthPointe Apartments in Greenville.

Courtesy of ECI Group

GREENVILLE, S.C., Oct. 20. Canyon Partners Real Estate, a private investment firm, has made a $48 million senior loan to refinance NorthPointe Apartments, a 286-unit building completed in 2021 about a mile north of downtown, where Wade Hampton Boulevard, East Stone Avenue and Church Street meet. The borrower is a joint venture of the developers, ECI Group and Central Realty Holdings, and Walker & Dunlop arranged the loan. The property also has nearly 21,400 square feet of shops on the ground floor and 597 garage spaces. The refinancing is cash-neutral, which means the new loan pays off the old one and puts no money in the owners' pockets. The rate and term were not disclosed.

Canyon said it was drawn by a high-quality building that has performed well despite a difficult supply backdrop, and said this is its fifth transaction with ECI. Canyon says it has capitalized about $7.6 billion of projects in the Southeast.

The 10-year Treasury yield, the benchmark for most commercial mortgages, climbed to about 4.99 per cent on Friday as rising crude prices revived worries about inflation, according to market reports. The Federal Reserve meets on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Muhammad Ali Pate, now Nigeria's health minister, at a World Economic Forum meeting in Tianjin, China, in 2012.

Photograph by World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

ABUJA, Nigeria, Oct. 20. Nigeria's Health Ministry confirmed on Tuesday the country's first case of Ebola in the present outbreak, in a woman who arrived from Uganda. Her symptoms began on Oct. 7, and she was admitted to a private hospital in Abuja on Oct. 11, where the disease was later diagnosed. Health Minister Muhammad Pate said 44 contacts had been identified and were being traced. Uganda's Health Ministry said the woman is Nigerian, had been on a business trip to eastern Congo and only passed through Uganda; Nigerian authorities have not disclosed her nationality.

The outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment. It began in Congo in mid-May, and more than 9,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths have been reported there, figures that are subject to change. Kenya has confirmed nine cases, all in a single cluster, according to its Ministry of Health.

Cheesemakers stretching buffalo mozzarella of Campania by hand.

Photograph by Antsalvati, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

ROME, Oct. 22. Road blockades by truckers protesting the price of diesel in southern Italy have halted the making of mozzarella di bufala Campana, the consortium that protects the cheese's name said this week. The buffaloes must be milked whether or not the dairies are working, but farmers cannot get the milk to them, and because the rules of the name require the milk to become mozzarella within 60 hours, many dairies have closed. The consortium's director, Pier Maria Saccani, called for urgent action by the government to prevent panic, and supermarkets were already short of the cheese.

Retailers said on Wednesday that the protest was causing wider food shortages, Reuters reported, and the Conad group said large quantities of perishable goods, including milk and meat, were stranded on trucks and in warehouses. The truckers blame diesel prices that have climbed with the war involving Iran. The government has discussed a cap on the price of diesel, and Italy has set aside about 1 billion euros this year to help truckers meet the cost of fuel.

Jacob Misiorowski pitching for the Milwaukee Brewers in June 2025.

Photograph by Drovetochicago, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

MILWAUKEE, Oct. 23. The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 3 to 2 on Friday night at American Family Field and lead the World Series one game to none. Jacob Misiorowski's first pitch of the night was measured at 103.5 miles an hour, the fastest pitch thrown in a World Series since pitches began to be tracked in 2008. He pitched five innings and allowed one run on four hits. Christian Yelich tripled home the first run in the first inning, and William Contreras singled him in, both off the Rays' starter, Nick Martinez.

Tampa Bay scored off Misiorowski, and Jackson Chourio drove in a run for Milwaukee in the seventh. In the ninth Trevor Megill loaded the bases with one out, and a grounder by Liam Hicks that was first ruled a game-ending double play was overturned at second base, so a run scored. Megill then struck out Jonny DeLuca to end it. Logan Henderson pitches for Milwaukee and Drew Rasmussen for Tampa Bay in the second game, in Milwaukee on Saturday night.

The apparatus in Gerald Gabrielse's laboratory at Northwestern.

Courtesy of Gerald Gabrielse, Northwestern University

EVANSTON, Ill., Oct. 21. Physicists at Northwestern University led by Gerald Gabrielse reported in Physical Review Letters on Wednesday that they had caught a single positron, the antimatter twin of the electron, and held it for months in a trap cooled to 300 millikelvins, about three-tenths of a degree above absolute zero. Electric and magnetic fields keep the particle suspended in a vacuum, away from the walls, where it would meet ordinary matter and annihilate. The positrons come from radioactive sodium-22 and are slowed by passing through a single crystal of tungsten, and most of them do not survive the trip.

The team cooled the positron to its lowest quantum energy state and moved it between energy levels one step at a time with tuned microwaves, which the researchers call the first one-positron quantum cyclotron. The purpose is to measure the positron's magnetic moment and compare it with the electron's. The Standard Model of physics predicts the two are equal, and any difference could help explain why the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter.

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Film by WPXI-TV News Pittsburgh, on YouTube

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 20. Two brown pelicans, Joey and Felicity, which live at the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium because wing injuries keep them from flying high enough to dive for fish, flew out of their hilltop exhibit on Saturday when strong gusts gave them enough lift to take off despite clipped wings, the zoo's chief executive, Dr. Jeremy Goodman, said. Both came down on the Allegheny River, where Joey was rescued near Sharpsburg by 4 p.m. and Felicity was back in the zoo's care at about 4:46. The zoo said it is considering more frequent wing trims, habitat changes and keeping the birds indoors on windy days.

Meta said this week that it will create a class of stock with no vote, called Class C, and give every shareholder one of the new shares for each share already owned, beginning in January. The company said such shares may later be used to raise money, pay employees and buy other companies. It made the announcement in the same report that showed its spending on data centers had run past the cash its business produced in the quarter.

A company that needs money can earn it, borrow it or sell a piece of itself. Meta earned $32.79 billion from its operations in the quarter and spent more than that. It can borrow, at whatever rate the bond market asks. Selling ordinary shares has a cost peculiar to Meta. Mark Zuckerberg owns less than half of the company's value and controls it through Class B shares that carry extra votes, so every new voting share sold to the public would thin his control a little. Class C lets the company raise money and pay in stock without spending any of his votes.

This has been done before. Google created nonvoting Class C shares in 2014 for the same purpose, so that its founders could keep control as their share of the company shrank. Shareholders sued in Delaware, and Google settled by promising to compensate holders of the new shares if their value differed from that of the voting shares by more than 1 per cent. Both sides treated one per cent as the line worth fighting over, which tells a reader how little an outside vote is worth in a company its founders already control.

That is the sound part of Meta's plan. A buyer of Meta's stock has known for years that his vote would decide nothing, and a share that admits as much is honest dealing. The weak part is that the plan removes a quiet discipline. When a founder issues voting shares, every one costs him a little control, which gives him a reason to issue few. Class C costs him nothing in control. Each issue still thins every owner's slice of the profits, his included, but his grip on the company stays where it was, and the only restraint left on the issuing is his own judgment.

Meta says it will spend $135 billion to $145 billion this year, much of it on the machinery of super intelligence, and the stock is worth what that machinery earns. We think the Class C plan is lawful, plainly disclosed and probably cheap, and we would still wait for the spending to show a return before buying. An owner without a vote can be heard in only one way, which is by selling, and he ought to keep that right in good order.

Dear Editor: I read your piece on Tesla and SpaceX with care. I am told that I own both companies through a fund at my bank, and in all these years neither has once asked my opinion. If committees are to bargain on my behalf, I should like at least a postcard telling me how it went. [The fund votes your shares, madam, and it owes you an answer if you ask it how. ED.]

A Shareholder, East North Street.

Billy Crystal opened 860, a one-man show directed by Scott Ellis, at the Imperial Theatre on Wednesday for a limited engagement of 14 weeks, through Jan. 3. The show tells of the aftermath of the Palisades fire of 2025, which destroyed Mr. Crystal's house in California, and its title is the house's address.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Luke 14:28.