Great leaf-peeping weather ahead this weekend as autumn sunshine abounds

Kymberlee O’Brien is an assistant professor of psychology at William James College and founder of NeuraLight Consulting. Every October, New England’s back roads fill with people who have passed thousands of perfectly good trees to reach the right ones. They crawl along at 15 miles per hour and queue for the same overlook as everyone else. Vermont’s tourism department estimates that 2.5 million visitors spend about $500 million during its foliage season each year. Nobody plans a trip like that for something they merely like. As a psychophysiologist, I’m often asked for the brain science behind the pull. The honest answer starts with an admission: To my knowledge, no study has put people in a brain scanner while they look at autumn foliage. What we have is more modest and more fascinating. Start with color. Psychologists Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss’s ecological valence theory proposes that we like a color in proportion to how we feel about the things we associate with it. Ripe fruit, firelight, and the harvest table all carry warm associations, and so do the colors they’re made of. Palmer, Schloss, and their colleagues then tested people across the calendar.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two weeks from the midterm elections, Democratic Party leaders are suing in federal court to block President Trump’s administration from usurping states’ authority to administer elections or trying to intimidate state and local election officials into complying with illegal demands. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Washington, seeks a court order barring the administration from purging legally registered voters from statewide voter registration lists or denying ballots to legally registered voters. The plaintiffs, including Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, also ask for a ruling that the administration has illegally threatened state election officials with prosecution before the Nov. 3 election. The lawsuit cites the Justice Department’s recent actions in California, where it sued to block state election officials from counting mail-in ballots cast by people whom the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed. “For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the suit says.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney is not ruling out giving Alberta more authority over immigration along the lines of a deal Ottawa signed with Quebec in the early 1990s. Reporters on Parliament Hill asked the prime minister on Wednesday if Ottawa could reach an agreement on immigration powers with Alberta similar to the one with Quebec. “We’ll see,” Carney replied in French. He added that “Quebec is distinct” because of its culture and language and said Ottawa will also talk with the other provinces about immigration levels. Following the failure of the Meech Lake accord, the federal government signed an agreement with Quebec in 1991 which granted the province the power to set its own economic immigration targets. Carney’s comments come after just over a million Albertans voted yes on a referendum question calling for more provincial control over immigration policy to reduce the number of newcomers to “sustainable levels.” Story continues below advertisement

Suspicious PackageLive streaming newscasts, breaking news, weather & original, local programming. ByABC7 Chicago Digital Team Wednesday, October 21, 2026 8:44PMCHICAGO (WLS) -- More suspicious letters were sent to Illinois congressional offices on Wednesday, including representatives Jan Schakowsky, Mike Quigley and Brad Schneider, officials said. The incident come after more suspicious letters were sent to some of the same offices last week. ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watchSchakowsky confirmed Wednesday her office in Skokie received a suspicious letter for the second time in less than a week. Schneider's office said another letter was also sent to them in Lincolnshire Wednesday, and the office was evacuated. A hazmat response was called Wednesday at Quigley's office in Chicago, officials said. Federal and local authorities are now investigating. On Monday, Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez was one of the latest elected officials to receive a suspicious envelope in the mail. Similar mail arrived at government offices around the country last week. No hazardous substances have been found. Copyright © 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.

Witkoff’s talks with Putin about Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine took place as U. S. President Donald Trump pushed Kyiv to make a deal that stops the fighting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted that only a summit of leaders can break the impasse. The two armies remain locked on the battlefield, and the countries pummel each other with daily long-range strikes. Get Starting PointA guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter EmailRepresentatives of the three countries held three rounds of negotiations early this year, meeting twice in Abu Dhabi in January and February, followed by further talks in Geneva in February. However, little progress was reported beyond exchanges of prisoners of war as Moscow and Kyiv stuck to their longstanding basic demands. Latest proposals to end the war have little of value, Kremlin saysThe discussion in St. Petersburg lasted about three hours, the Kremlin said, and came a day after Witkoff met with Zelensky and some European leaders in Norway’s capital, Oslo.