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Oct. 24, 2025, 5:30 AM EDTBy Steve Kopack and Rob WileThe Bureau of Labor Statistics is slated to publish September inflation data on Friday morning, in spite of a government shutdown that has paralyzed federal reporting and has no end in sight. The Consumer Price Index for September will be released at precisely 8:30 a.m. ET and will mark the first time a major economic report has been issued since the shutdown began Oct. 1.Economists surveyed by Dow Jones and Bloomberg expect the overall annual inflation rate to rise to 3.1% for the 12 months ending in September.Month over month, that would be the same stubborn pace that has persisted for more than two years. An inflation rate north of 3% is also significantly higher than the Federal Reserve’s target annual rate of 2%.Earnings have also continued to climb along with prices, hitting a new post-pandemic high in the second quarter of this year.But for consumers, higher wages on paper do not appear to have eased the sting of rising prices, according to several recent surveys.Prices and inflation edged out tariffs to become consumers’ most reported concerns in the Conference Board research group’s September survey. The University of Michigan’s closely watched surveys found overall consumer sentiment in October was down 22% from the same month a year ago.On Wall Street and Main Street, the Trump administration’s global trade and tariffs policy continues to loom large. “We continue to expect tariffs to remain a source of goods price inflation over the next few quarters,” economists with Bank of America wrote in a client note earlier this week. They also predicted that a decline in used-car prices would dent the overall pace of inflation that shows up in Friday’s report.Analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote that they expect “an acceleration in headline inflation, largely driven by higher seasonally adjusted gasoline prices.” They also anticipate that “food inflation will remain elevated,” according to a client note. Whatever the CPI data reveals, many analysts expect it to have an outsized impact on U.S. markets because it lands in the middle of a weeks long blackout on government economic data. It also arrives less than a week before the Fed’s policy meeting Oct. 28-29. There, committee members will discuss whether to lower interest rates again, which they are widely expected to do. The latest CPI data will help to inform the Fed’s assessment of the U.S. economy. It will also prove a key factor in determining the Social Security Administration’s annual cost-of-living adjustment for 2026, known as the COLA. Inflation data from July, August and September specifically are used as benchmarks to help set the COLA for the coming year. Like the CPI data, the Social Security Administration had initially planned to release the 2026 COLA in mid-October, but it was delayed by the government shutdown. Steve KopackSteve Kopack is a senior reporter at NBC News covering business and the economy.Rob WileRob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.

- Latest News - October 24, 2025

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is slated to release September’s Consumer Price Index report of inflation, which was delayed by the government shutdown.

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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 24, 2025, 5:01 AM EDTBy Andrew Greif and Rohan NadkarniThe arrests of two well-known NBA figures Thursday in a nationwide federal investigation into internal gambling and high-tech scam poker — especially a sitting head coach and former Finals Most Valuable Player — have roiled the league, from players to front offices to agents, sources told NBC News.The arrests, particularly that of Hall of Famer and Portland head coach Chauncey Billups, altered the tenor of this week’s conversations around the NBA, whose new season had started only two days earlier.The mood, a front office executive for one team said, went from fanfare to “fear.”Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups after his federal court appearance in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 23, 2025.Jenny Kane / AP“Who else is involved?” the executive said. “It’s a nightmare for the league.”Reactions to the extraordinary news spread quickly, ranging from surprise to anger at the league itself, according to five people who work inside or closely with the NBA, all of whom were granted anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the matter.“Surprised they got caught,” a player agent said. “But not surprised, as [gambling] is happening everywhere.”Terry Rozier was indicted as part of an investigation into insider sports betting. A separate investigation into what law enforcement officials described as Mafia-organized rigged poker games led to charges for Billups. Jones was named in both indictments.“Shocking day,” Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who is also the president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, said Thursday before a game. Carlisle said he contacted Billups and his representatives to ask how Billups was doing but did not hear back. FBI: Mafia involved in NBA gambling scandal02:52“This is a very serious situation,” Carlisle said. “The irony, I guess, from my perspective, was yesterday was a day when our general counsel came down and read us all the regulations on gambling and warned our coaching staff, our players, our support staff about all these different things.”Billups’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment.Jones, in addition to the rigged poker games, was also accused of disclosing privileged information to bettors about the injury status of a player before a game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Milwaukee Bucks in February 2023. That player was LeBron James, according to multiple reports, though he is not named in the indictment or accused of any wrongdoing. Jones was also accused of telling the same bettors on Jan. 15, 2024, that another Lakers player would miss the game because of injury, before that knowledge was public. The only player fitting the indictment’s description is Anthony Davis. Coach Damon Jones looks on during the 2025 G League Elite Camp in Chicago on May 11.Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images fileBillups, while he is not named in the Rozier indictment, is seemingly implicated, however. The indictment refers to a person named “Co-Conspirator 8,” who is described as an Oregon resident who played in the NBA from 1997 to 2014 and has been a coach since 2021. (Billups was drafted in 1997 and last played in 2014, and he became a head coach in 2021.)Co-Conspirator 8 is accused of giving bettors inside information about a Trail Blazers game in March 2023, when Billups was their head coach. Co-Conspirator 8 is alleged to have told another defendant in the case that Portland would be “tanking” the game and that several of the team’s players would be held out with injuries. Other defendants in the case are alleged to have used the information to place bets against the Trail Blazers.The “fear” from the potential fallout, or expansion, of the investigations came after FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference that investigations into gambling continue and Christopher Reya, an FBI assistant director in charge of the New York field office, called the indictments “just the tip of the iceberg.”The league has dealt with gambling scandals before. Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned for life last year for violating the league’s gambling rules after a league investigation determined he had disclosed information about his participation to bettors for financial gain. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court and is set to be sentenced in December. Last season, the NBA said in a statement that it was aware of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office related to Rozier.Official: Investigation into alleged gambling scheme dubbed ‘Operation Royal Flush’01:47A culture of gambling has existed in the NBA for years, multiple people said. Inside locker rooms, it is not uncommon to hear discussions of a recent game of poker or bourré, a trick-taking card game similar to spades that is popular among basketball players. A longtime team employee said that wagering and the competition that fueled it were so pervasive that nearly every team flight he was on had multiple high-dollar games taking place at once, often one between players and another between coaches. J.J. Redick, the Los Angeles Lakers’ head coach, who also played in the league for 15 years, once told a story on his podcast about nearly coming to blows with a teammate because of gambling. After he referred to bourré as the “greatest gambling game” because of how the pot can grow “exponentially,” Redick said “the closest I ever came to a teammate punching me” was over a card game on a team flight. In January 2010, former All-Star Gilbert Arenas was arrested in violation of gun control laws after he and a teammate, Javaris Crittenton, took firearms to the Washington Wizards’ locker room as a result of a gambling dispute. Arenas has since said the dispute started over a game of bourré. (Arenas avoided jail time but was sentenced to two years of supervised probation in that case.)A league source told NBC News it is not uncommon for players to separate into different groups based on their salaries. A younger player, for example, may not gamble right away with a superstar on a max contract. But as salaries have increased in the NBA — the league’s highest-paid player will make over $59 million this season — the stakes on team flights have only gotten higher. Outside of flights, players also often set up with or are invited to high-stakes poker games, with cities such as Los Angeles and Houston cited as popular for gamblers, according to a source. (Arenas was arrested in July as part of a separate Justice Department investigation into illegal poker games in the Los Angeles area. He has pleaded not guilty.)Redick, who has coached the Lakers since 2024, told reporters Thursday that the team had gone through meetings that day about the league’s anti-gambling rules. “It’s obviously on the front of everyone’s awareness,” Redick said. Although gambling and the NBA have long been intertwined, Thursday’s arrests put the league on a different type of alert, an agent said, because it involved not lower-level players but Rozier, who has made more than $150 million in his career, and someone with the stature of Billups, a former NBA Finals MVP who was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame only last year and is widely respected around the league. The Trail Blazers deferred comment to the NBA and announced that an assistant coach, Tiago Splitter, would assume head coaching responsibilities. The NBA first investigated Rozier after it was alerted in March 2023 to what a league spokesperson later said was unusual betting activity related to his performance. Such bets on individual occurrences during games, not on the outcomes of the games themselves — called “prop bets” — have become extremely popular. Concerned that such bets could also give players incentives to manipulate their performances for financial gain after Porter was banished last year, the NBA last year persuaded sportsbooks to no longer offer “under” bets for players on 10-day or two-way contracts, who generally make the least amount of money. Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, told NBC News on Thursday that Rozier had been “cleared by the NBA.” The league never went quite that far publicly, however, saying in January 2024 only that its investigation “did not find a violation of NBA rules.” Asked at a news conference in July about the NBA’s investigation and whether he was comfortable with the findings, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that federal investigators “have more resources at their disposal than the league office does when we do an investigation.”However, because many interpreted Rozier to have been cleared by the league, only to be arrested later, a high-ranking team executive said Thursday that he was concerned that “people will lose faith in the NBA’s ability to investigate these things.” The executive added that he, too, had become dubious about what the NBA’s investigatory arm would turn up from investigations it handles or outsources to outside law firms, such as the ongoing probe into whether the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the salary cap.“This thing is not about Terry Rozier or Chauncey Billups,” the executive said. “It’s about that we trust the NBA to uphold the integrity of what’s happening on the basketball court.” The NBA said in a statement Thursday that it continues to review federal indictments and allegations, which it took “with the utmost seriousness.” Billups was arrested less than nine hours after Portland’s season-opening season-opening loss at home, a game notably attended by the team’s current owner and a financier in the process of buying the franchise. Billups was asked whether the change in ownership added pressure to his job.“I do the best I can,” he said, “and let the chips fall where they may.”Andrew GreifAndrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital. Rohan NadkarniRohan Nadkarni is a sports reporter for NBC News. 

- Latest News - October 24, 2025

The arrests of two well-known NBA figures Thursday in a nationwide federal investigation into internal gambling and high-tech scam poker — especially a sitting head coach and former Finals Most.

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Oct. 24, 2025, 4:27 AM EDTBy The Associated PressMONTGOMERY, Ala. — Statues of Rosa Parks and Helen Keller, pivotal figures who fought for justice and inspired change across the world, will be unveiled Friday on the grounds of the Alabama Capitol.The monuments honoring the two famed native Alabamians — one who fought against racial segregation and one who fought for the rights of people with disabilities — will be the first statues of women on the lawn of the Alabama Capitol. The additions will reflect a broader history of the state as they are added to the grounds that also include several tributes to the Confederacy, which was formed at the site in 1861.While inside the Capitol there is a bust of former Gov. Lurleen Wallace, the state’s first female governor who died in office in 1968, there were no monuments to famous women on the Capitol grounds.Rep. Laura Hall, who sponsored the 2019 legislation that authorized the monuments, said it is important that visitors to the Capitol, “see the full picture, the history and the impact that women have played.”“Helen Keller and Rosa Parks just seemed to be the image that — whether you were Black or white, Democrat or Republican — you could identify with and realize the impact that they had on history,” Hall said.Known as the mother of the modern civil rights movement, Parks was arrested on Dec. 1, 1955 when she refused to leave her bus seat for a white passenger. Her action ignited the yearlong boycott of the segregated city bus system by Black passengers and helped usher in the civil rights movement.Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She became deaf and blind after a serious illness shortly before her second birthday. With the help of tutor Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to communicate through sign language and Braille. Keller went on to become a well-known writer and lecturer. She championed the rights of workers, the poor, women, and people with disabilities around the world.The statue of Parks sits by the Alabama Capitol steps facing Dexter Avenue, the street where Parks boarded the bus and made history in 1955. The statue honoring the civil rights icon sits across from a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.The statue of Keller sits facing the Alabama Statehouse.The statue presentation on Friday has been more than six years in the making.Alabama lawmakers in 2019 approved Hall’s legislation to place the monuments to Parks and Keller on the grounds of the state Capitol. The Alabama Women’s Tribute Statue Commission has been quietly at work, commissioning the statues and finalizing the displays.The Associated PressThe Associated Press

- Latest News - October 24, 2025

Statues of Rosa Parks and Helen Keller, pivotal figures who fought for justice and inspired change across the world, will be unveiled Friday on the grounds of the Alabama Capitol.

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