SINGAPORE (AP) — Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says any claims the team would favor Kimi Antonelli over George Russell in the Formula 1 title race are “brainless”.
Wolff was responding after engine failure for Russell at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia last week took his teammate Antonelli a big step closer to becoming F1's youngest-ever champion.
“They’re brainless, whoever thinks that. I mean, it’s completely nonsensical. We’ve had it in the past with Lewis (Hamilton) fans. I mean, literally, I don’t know what’s going on,” Wolff said Friday ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix.
“Do they think I have a button that says, “George engine failure now”, or disadvantaging one driver against the other when we are fighting for a constructors’ championship, when we have always had the mindset of providing everybody equal material? But I guess this is maybe where social media goes today.”
Wolff said he found it funny to be painted as a villain on social media — “I'm Satan, I've heard” — but frustrating to be criticized by fans who, he said, don't appreciate how well he and Russell get on away from the track.
“Really zero understanding and respect for people who come up with these things. They should, rather than watching Formula 1, they should do (kids' TV show) Teletubbies or some Mickey Mouse,” he said.
Russell's engine trouble in Malaysia means he has a grid penalty in Singapore for going over his allocation of power units for the season.
He's dropped 84 points behind Antonelli, who could in theory win the title at the United States Grand Prix later this month, if other results go his way.
Russell has said his plan for this week is “all-out attack”, even though overtaking is difficult on the Singapore street circuit.
Wolff said the team would continue with its strategy of favoring whichever driver is quicker at the time, rather than allowing Antonelli and Russell to battle on track and potentially help another team.
“Even if it is now that it’s more realistic for Kimi to win a championship in sheer mathematical probability, we would still give George the same opportunities, and that’s important,” he said.
“That’s the ethos and the integrity on which the team has operated since 2013, since I came, and we are going to stick to that. And then people can think what they want.”
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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff arrives at the track ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli of Italy, left, and his teammate George Russell of Britain steer their cars out from the garage during the qualifying session for the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sepang, Malaysia, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. (Annice Lyn/Pool via AP )
President Donald Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 and Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
Also, a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said.
An irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage, and spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city.
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The Trump administration has imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal the U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Friday after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African prosecutor Navi Pillay, who had led investigations into potential ICC charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move, however, long predated the Nobel Prize announcement.
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”
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President Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 that Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
The extraordinary move follows a Supreme Court ruling in June that Cook could keep her job after Trump sought to fire her last year. That ruling found Cook should have had notice and an opportunity to respond to the charges.
Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.
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The lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s intent to livestream the execution must be halted.
“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.
Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan should face the death penalty, he said, “but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting.”
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, said: “We can seek justice in this country without glorifying violence and turning an execution into a grotesque public spectacle.”
“Kids watch what our leaders do and say, is this kind of bloodshed really what we want them seeing?” she asked in a statement. “The Pentagon must revoke this decision immediately.”
Mullin said ICE agents weren’t aware the child was in the car at the time. But he said Belgal “was aware” and chose to evade officers.
He didn’t answer a question about how officers wouldn’t know that, saying only that it’s an investigation.
Mullin also revealed that the officers involved in the incident were wearing body cameras “and they were on.”
Mullin spent much of the news conference criticizing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for resisting and denouncing ICE. An irate Mamdani on Thursday night called ICE “rotten to its core” and said he saw no justification for the shooting.
“Well, mayor, if you abolish ICE, who’s going to take criminals off the streets of your own town?” Mullin said Friday. “The mayor speaks with political tone. His words are dangerous and incite hostility. It doesn’t help.”
Marcos Charles, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement removal and operations division, said ICE officials attempted to arrest the Dominican man, whom officials have identified as Oscar Belgal, and attempted to use their vehicles to block him in.
Speaking to reporters, Charles said Belgal “refused to exit his vehicle” and accelerated, smashing into two government vehicles and moving toward officers, which prompted officers to fire weapons.
Facing backlash after a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy in New York on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin doubled down on the Trump administration’s criticism of so-called sanctuary cities.
There’s no clear definition of sanctuary jurisdictions, but the term is generally applied to state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Sanctuary politicians and cities “create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe,” Mullin said in a news conference Friday.
For about nine decades, executions in the U.S. have been private affairs, often shrouded in secrecy. The stunning Pentagon announcement Thursday that the first military execution in more than 65 years will be livestreamed could change that.
Allowing the world to watch Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan face the firing squad in December would make it the first public execution since two hangings in the 1930s in Kentucky and Missouri drew crowds.
In 1936, a man who reportedly confessed to the rape and murder of a woman was hanged in front of thousands in Owensboro, Kentucky, while the following year, hundreds watched a man in Missouri be hanged.
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Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States.
Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident that an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.
For weeks, Trump has been threatening that a post-midterm election escalation in the seven-month-old war remains a viable option, despite his initial promises to Americans of a military campaign that would last a matter of weeks.
But Trump in a social media post on Thursday said the U.S. “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.”
Trump added that his team has been “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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A federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security said it was seeking to arrest the man in a “targeted enforcement operation,” but protesters and local officials decried it as an example of the dangers of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
DHS said in a statement that it was seeking to arrest a “criminal illegal alien” with a grand larceny conviction and a history of other arrests. But an irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage.
The mayor said he had spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, to no avail, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city. He said that late Thursday night, federal authorities removed the man from the hospital and took him away.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, said in a statement that she had delivered a similar message to Trump and Mullin by phone.
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FILE - Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook leaves the Supreme Court in Washington, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks during a news conference near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
