ITALY: In her first address to Italy's parliament, new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — the first woman to hold that post — said she supported the European Union and had "never felt sympathy or closeness" to fascism. Meloni, who is the country's first far-right leader since the end of World War II, began her career in a political party formed just after that war — by a chief of staff to fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

WAR: Ukraine's military continued to push back Russian forces in the south and east of the country while Ukraine's state-run nuclear enterprise said Russia is building something in secret — the enterprise "assumes" it is to prepare for a dirty bomb, a weapon that Russia's defense minister alleged Ukraine was readying.

As a breast cancer survivor, Cheddar News' General Manager Kristin Malaspina is marking Breast Cancer Awareness month by sharing what she learned on her journey with the disease. The third segment in her conversation with reporter Lawrence Banton centers on how her diagnosis and treatment reshaped her daily outlook and what she would tell someone who was just diagnosed themselves, as an estimated 287,000 women in the U.S. will be this year.

VROOM: General Motors has been selling a lot more vehicles recently. A 24% jump in U.S. sales is good news for GM, of course, but it may also be a sign that the industry is finally overcoming pandemic supply shortages, reports Cheddar News' Chloe Aiello. Reporting quarterly earnings, the automaker's executives said they remain confident in GM’s growth and that broader economic conditions have not dented the demand for cars.

NOT SO VROOM: Consumer confidence fell in October after rising in August and September, according to the Conference Board's monthly report. The index that gauges consumers' short-term outlook for business, labor and income slipped further into territory "associated with recession," according to a press release.

ALPHABET: Proof that brands are pulling back on digital advertising: Even Alphabet is making less money. The parent company of Google and YouTube missed analyst estimates on revenue and earnings per share, reports Cheddar News' Michelle Castillo. "When Google stumbles," said analyst Evelyn Mitchell, "it's a bad omen for digital advertising at large.”

AMAZON+VENMO: Amazon has announced a new way for you to give it money: the same way you pay back your friends. By Black Friday, customers will be able to use Venmo to buy things at the world's largest online retailer, reports Cheddar News' Alex Vuocolo, and could become a game-changer for the app by breaking it out of the "closed loop" of peer-to-peer payments.

After a judge denied her appeal Tuesday, Brittney Griner has one more chance in the Russian courts to overturn her conviction and nine-year prison sentence for possessing a small amount of cannabis oil. Civil rights groups and the Biden administration have condemned Russia for treating Griner as a political pawn, but her lawyers say she hopes to be freed in a prisoner swap similar to one in April.

PENGUINS THREATENED: Emperor penguins are officially a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the Antarctic sea ice, where the birds live most of the year, is shrinking. All but 1% of the species will disappear by 2100 if climate change is not addressed, scientists say.

AMERICAN OPINIONS: More than six in 10 Americans want the government to do more about climate change, according to an AP-NORC poll, but roughly the same number know little or nothing about the climate change provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed in August. A similar proportion of Americans — 62% — say companies are making climate change worse by refusing to reduce their energy use, and about half of respondents said it is very important for the government to make companies restrict their consumption.

The share of U.S. households with a bank account increased during the pandemic, reports Alex Vuocolo at Cheddar News. That's according to an FDIC survey, which found the most common reason for the decline in so-called unbanked households was socioeconomic changes like an increase in education or income. On the other hand, the most common reason that 5.9 million households remain without an account is not having enough money to meet the minimum balance. Unbanked households face the stress of keeping all their cash safe and relying on check-cashing businesses that take a cut of their money.

The former defense secretary's legacy is being discussed after his death from a heart attack at age 68. Carter, who held the military's top job for the last two years of the Obama administration, removed bans on women serving in combat roles and on transgender people serving in the military, among many other career achievements.

In today's entertainment headlines, Lewis Hamilton's new production company is already drawing A-listers. Meanwhile, Kim Petras makes history atop the Billboard Hot 100, though Harry Styles need not worry, darling, with As It Was still near the top after 30 weeks.

With Halloween less than a week away, you could be forgiven for presuming a creepy explanation for the sudden knocking noises on Ryan Phillips' window in the middle of the night. But instead of a burglar or something supernatural, the nighttime visitor is actually Jenna, a cow at Phillips' farm animal sanctuary in Williamsburg, Va. “She will knock with her horns to let us know she wants me to come out and give her a hug,” Phillips told The Dodo. “Sometimes she wants carrots or sees the extra-ripe bananas through the window and knows those are hers.”

How did a background trope in Westerns become a villain of modern life in the actual American West?