Record crowd turns out for Doggone Halloween costume contest

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgarians headed to the polls on Sunday to elect their next president in a campaign centered on growing economic hardship and drone attacks on Black Sea shipping. The vote will also be the first major test for the Moscow-friendly Progressive Bulgaria party of Prime Minister Rumen Radev after its triumph in parliamentary elections in April. Despite a record number of candidates, the race is expected to be decided in a runoff between incumbent President Iliana Yotova, backed by Radev’s party, and former caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov, who is backed by pro-Western opposition parties. The campaign has focused heavily on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the widening hostilities in the Black Sea, where recent drone attacks on commercial vessels off Bulgaria’s coast have heightened security concerns in the European Union and NATO member country. The strikes have raised concerns over Russia’s intentions to escalate the conflict and prompted the government to ask Bulgaria’s partners for assistance to strengthen its maritime security.

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“One-way flight to Austin” (Page A1, Oct. 15) presents the Texas city’s growth through the eyes of two young professionals who moved from Boston, kept their existing jobs, and received 10 weeks of free rent in a luxury apartment building. Their experience may illustrate professional mobility, but it should not be mistaken for broadly shared prosperity. What is missing is sustained attention to the people who were already there. The article acknowledges that redevelopment displaced generations of Mexican-American residents, yet quickly treats this as the “pain” Austin accepted in exchange for cheaper housing and economic growth. The newcomers receive the story’s aspirations, personalities, and future. The displaced residents receive a few paragraphs explaining the cost. This is class and professional privilege viewed through the gentrifier’s gaze. It is an immigrant-success narrative that celebrates climbing the economic ladder without asking whether that ladder remains available to people with fewer resources, less mobility, or no Boston salary to bring with them. Get College TownA weekly newsletter packed with insights about higher ed from Globe journalist Hilary Burns.

Terrific op-ed by Matthew Gilbert (“A streamed public execution? Blame reality TV,” Opinion, Oct 20), but I’m surprised that he didn’t trace the origins of today’s obsession with antisocial behavior as entertainment to “The Jerry Springer Show” and its ilk. My sense as a psychotherapist during that era was that his show and other similar daytime talk shows gave viewers permission to lash out at others in anger even it it included perpetrating physical violence. In 1998 it was the top-rated daytime talk show. I believe it gave birth to the violence and incivility that today we call entertainment. Susan L. PerryDartmouthThere has long been an interest in sensationalist TV trash; I’m thinking back to the early ’90s and Jerry Springer. The lust for public celebration of violence goes back at least to ancient Rome with its animal fights, executions, and gladiators. But the modern world took a distinctly downward turn when Donald J. Trump brought his exaggerated, aggressive “Apprentice” character into politics and pulled his fans together into a political movement featuring macho cruelty and violence. As many have said, the cruelty really is the point.

LOS ANGELES -- Local election officials across California are confused and frustrated after receiving letters from President Donald Trump's Justice Department demanding that county registrars sequester ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizen voters ahead of the midterm elections. The letters, which were sent on Friday, ask for sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, on roughly 20,000 voters. It is illegal for noncitizens to register to vote or cast a ballot. The administration has insisted that immigrants voting is a major problem nationwide, when in fact it is quite rare, as even its own investigations have shown. "All of this is simply meant to raise huge doubts about the integrity of this election," said John Tuteur, the registrar of voters for Napa County in California's wine country. Tuteur and other election officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday said they have already started to count ballots that have trickled in from the state's 23 million registered voters. "We're not changing anything we're doing. We're proceeding with the election," he said.