Let’s hope the rumors are true. Israel and Hamas negotiated an unofficial ceasefire Wednesday, the BBC reports. Apparently, the truce was negotiated with Egypt’s help, though the terms and duration are unknown. Fighting began Monday, when Hamas’s military wing began firing dozens of rockets into Israel, injuring five. Israel quickly retaliated with “targeted attacks,” which killed four militants. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, is currently visiting the region in an attempt to revitalize the stalled peace attempts between Israel and the Palestinians.

With two weeks to go until the big day, the presidential race is closer than ever. Gone are the days of Romney’s wide lead or Obama’s wide lead—a Washington Post/ABC News poll found the race almost tied at 49 percent for Romney and 48 percent for Obama (and within the poll’s margin of error). The key battlefield seems to be Ohio, where a Time magazine poll along with a CBS News/Quinnipiac poll showed Obama holding a 5-point lead. Another survey out today by Gallup gave Romney a lead of 3 points countrywide, just outside the 3-point margin of error.

Pakistan has announced that they’ve arrested six men suspected of being involved with the almost-fatal shooting of 15-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai. The main suspect, Atta Ullah Khan—who’s a 23-year-old chemistry student—remains at large, though police have detained his mother, brother, and fiancée. Yousafzai, an outspoken Taliban critic, remains in stable condition and is making progress in a hospital in England after being shot twice at close range. The Taliban has taken responsibility for the attack and have sworn to kill her if she recovers.

Where were Fannie and Freddie on this one? Federal prosecutors hit Bank of America with a $1 billion lawsuit Wedesday, accusing the bank of mortgage fraud that contributed to the housing crisis. Bank of America became entangled in the scheme—known as “High-Speed Swim Lane” or “Hustle”—when it purchased Countrywide Financial in July 2008, just as the economy was slipping into recession. Countrywide, a mortgage lending giant, was already known for approving risky loans when it introduced its “Hustle” program to churn out more loans, effectively eliminating a system that ensured the mortgages were being made to buyers who could afford them. A top U.S. attorney said the bank’s fraud was “spectacularly brazen in scope.”

What does the president really think? An off-the-record interview forThe Des Moines Register gave him a chance to say it, and on Wednesday, the president agreed it could be published. In the interview, Obama says he’s confident immigration reform will be completed next year because Republicans will be interested in the growing Latino vote. “And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt,” he said. “Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.” He also said he expects a bipartisan agreement over budget cuts and corporate tax reform in a second term.

Police in Colorado have arrested a 17-year-old suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Jessica Ridgeway, they announced on Wednesday. Austin Reed Sigg was arrested on Tuesday night after his mother reportedly turned him in. Sigg will face two counts of first-degree murder and a second-degree kidnapping charge. Police also plan to charge him for the attempted abduction of an adult jogger on May 28. Sigg is reportedly a student at Arapahoe Community College and lives about a mile and a half away from where Ridgeway disappeared.

Don’t be fooled by the mild fall temperatures, East Coast. A snowstorm/hurricane hybrid could be headed this way. Hurricane Sandy is expected to impact the area between Florida and Maine next week, and with a predicted snow storm, the region might be in for a rare weather scenario. There is potential for several inches of snowfall on or around New York City, and with a potential 3.4 impact, one meteorologist has called Sandy “a potential billion-dollar storm for the Mid-Atlantic and New England.” The Wall Street Journal’s weather blog predicts two-out-of-three odds that Greater New York will be significantly impacted by the storm. 

Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison Wednesday for leaking corporate secrets to a hedge-fund manager during the financial crisis. Gupta was also ordered to pay a $5 million fine and will undergo a year of supervised release after his time in prison. Prosecutors had argued that Gupta should get up to 10 years in prison. Judge Jed Rakoff said, “I think the record, which the government really doesn’t dispute, bears out that he is a good man. But the history of this country and the history of the world, I’m afraid, is full of examples of good men who do bad things.”

This is certainly a letdown. Donald Trump asked the president on Wednesday to release all of his personal documents—school records, passport application, etc.—and if the president concedes, the real-estate mogul said he would donate $5 million to a charity of Obama’s choosing. Calling Obama “the least transparent president in the history of our county,” Trump said he is “very honored that I got the president to release his long-form birth certificate, or whatever it was.” Trump said he would donate the $5 million within one hour of Obama’s releasing the documents, although Trump added the caveat that the release had to be before Oct. 31. Does Trump even have $5 million to back this claim up?

Another day in the courtroom and more accusations from Sam Lutfi, Britney Spears’s former manager who is suing the pop star for breach of contract. Lutfi claims Brit’s dad, Jamie, lunged at him and chased him around her gated Beverly Hills mansion. “He cornered me in the kitchen, punched me in the solar plexus, and threatened to kill me,” Lutfi testified. The incident allegedly took place in January 2008, around the time Britney was being involuntarily committed to UCLA’s psych ward for the second time in a month. The Spears family, in return, alleges that Lutfi cut her phone lines to keep control over her money.

Although he appears without his trusty empty chair, Clint Eastwood is featured in a new Mitt Romney ad paid for by American Crossroads, Karl Rove’s super PAC. “When someone doesn’t get the job done, you have to hold them accountable,” Eastwood explains. “Obama’s second term would be a rerun of the first and our country just couldn’t survive that. We need someone who can turn it around fast and that man is Mitt Romney. There’s not much time left and the future of our country is at stake.” The ad is part of a $12.6 million ad campaign to run in key swing states. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have spent more than $63 million in this election.

Robert F. Kennedy’s nephew Michael Skakel was denied parole on Wednesday, the first time he has applied for it since being convicted in 2002. Skakel is currently serving a sentence of 20 years to life for the 1975 murder of his neighbor Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn. They were both 15 years old at the time. Skakel was tried and convicted of the crime 27 years later. He is now 52 and has served 10 years of his sentence. Skakel still claims he is innocent.

Britney Spears’s former manager, Sam Lufti, testified Tuesday that the pop star shaved her head in 2007 because she worried her hair would test positive for drugs. “She told me she wanted to get clean, but she was struggling with it,” Lufti said. “I told her it was very difficult to kick a drug habit … but I told her she needed to do it. I explained to her that society is not going to tolerate a mother with two kids abusing drugs.” Lufti is suing Spears and her family for libel, defamation, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and breach of contract after the publication of Spears’s mother’s memoir.

At least he’s consistent. Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin was arrested at least three times at abortion protests during the 1980s, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Tuesday. The Republican congressman has publicly admitted to being arrested once. The previously undisclosed arrests, in 1985, were for criminal trespass and resisting arrest at abortion-clinic protests in St. Louis and Illinois. The arrests have stayed hidden because Akin was arrested under the name William, his legal first name, but he has since started going by his middle name, Todd. Akin is running a fierce campaign against incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, and was thrust into the national spotlight after claiming that victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant.

Will it outsell Rielle Hunter? Herman Cain’s former mistress Ginger White says she is writing a tell-all about her time with the onetime Republican presidential candidate. White said she hopes the book will help Cain “to be a little more honest with his wife, because the details that I share, only she would know.” White acknowledged that she was receiving “all this help from Herman Cain”—up to $6,000 a month—but she emphatically declared she is not a “hooker.” Cain ended his bid for the Republican nomination for president in December amid allegations by White and several other women that he had extramarital affairs and amid accusations of sexual harassment against several women.

Four Palestinian militants were killed Wednesday after Israeli forces fired rockets and mortars at Gaza City, while more than 50 rockets and mortar shells were fired in Israel overnight, according to the Israel Defense Forces. At least one Israeli soldier was injured by a bomb blast near the Gaza border fence, one day after two militants died in an air strike. The violence comes as Qatar’s emir visited Gaza, the first head of state to come to the region since the Islamist militants Hamas came to power in 2007.

Police said on Wednesday that a man’s body found in Alabama may be linked to four murders in Tennessee. On Monday, Tennessee officials found three women and an 18-month-old boy dead in Lincoln County, about 100 miles south of Nashville. One day later, authorities found the body of Warren Vincent Crutcher, whose 3-year-old son survived the attacks, in Alabama. The 3-year-old boy had called relatives on Monday morning, saying he couldn’t wake anyone up in his house. When authorities arrived, they found the bodies of his mother, Chabreya Campbell, 22, and her 18-month-old son, Rico Ragland, as well as Amber McCaulley, 21, of Huntsville, Ala. Hours later, the body of 21-year-old Jessica Brown was found at her home in Fayetteville, Tenn. The cause of death for all four is still unknown.

Sometimes what happens across the Atlantic doesn’t stay across the Atlantic. The New York Times’s public editor publicly wondered whether the incoming chief executive is fit to take the company’s top job over questions of his role in the BBC’s Jimmy Savile controversy. Mark Thompson, who is set to take over as CEO on Nov. 12, was director-general of the BBC when investigative journalists from Newsnight  discovered there had been hundreds of claims of sexual abuse of minors by Savile, a beloved BBC broadcaster for decades before his death last year. The Newsnight piece was subsequently killed, and the broadcaster instead aired a tribute to Savile.

How do they feel about horses and bayonets? The third-party presidential candidate debate was Tuesday night in Chicago, with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode, and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson participating. Larry King and Christina Tobin served as moderators, kicking off the night by asking candidates their opinions on the “top two” system of selecting candidates—a method that most, unsurprisingly, opposed. The Democratic and Republican parties are putting a “stranglehold on our democracy,” Anderson said, with Johnson labeling Obama and Romney “Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

Is Psy or Ban Ki-moon the world’s most famous South Korean? The United Nations secretary-general met with pop star Psy in New York on Tuesday, and even tried Psy’s trademark dance, gangnam style. Psy, real name Park Jae-Sang, was star-struck upon meeting his fellow South Korean, and laughed as Ban said the world’s peace-keeping mission could take on their own dance, “U.N. style.” Ban also met with daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who recently dove from space.

Richard Mourdock recently had an epiphany. During a debate Tuesday, the Indiana Republican running for Senate explained, “I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Naturally this didn’t sit well with everyone, and Mitt Romney, who’s trying to win a presidential election for God’s sake, was quick to disassociate himself from his fellow Republican, his campaign issuing a statement confirming that the former Massachusetts governor “disagrees with Richard Mourdock’s comments, and they do not reflect his views.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, however, is more focused on a GOP takeover of the Senate and was happy to jump to Mourdock’s defense. “To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief [that life is a gift from God] is irresponsible and ridiculous,” Cornyn said. 

An international mediator said Wednesday that the Syrian government has agreed to a ceasefire during the Muslim holiday Eid ul-Adha, which starts on Thursday. Lakdar Brahimi said some Syrian rebel groups had agreed to the truce in principal. Meanwhile, a senior Russian general said the Syrian rebels have U.S.-made weapons, including surface-to-air missiles. Russia is the biggest supplier of arms to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Syrian artillery gunners on Tuesday shelled a packed bakery in Aleppo, killing at least 20 and wounding more than 30.

There’s a joke about Paul Ryan and cutoff T-shirts somewhere in here. BuzzFeed reports that a “knowledgeable source” says Mitt Romney is fan of the spray tan. Apparently, Mitt ups his orange before speeches, debates, interviews, and other TV-worthy campaign stops. Since he pays for it out of pocket—tans can cost upward of $500—the expense remains off campaign-finance reports. Romney also allegedly gets sprayed in his home or hotel suite. The Romney campaign’s response to the exposé: “Not true.”

Another housing-data release, another positive data point. The Census Bureau reported sales of new single-family homes in September at an annual rate of 389,000. This is a 5.7 percent jump from the August 2012 figure of 368,000 and a 27.1 percent increase from September 2011, which came in at a 306,000 annual rate. The median sale price for new homes in September was $242,000, and there is now a 4.5-month supply of new homes at the current sales rate.

Will this inspire a fern-covered dress?  Botanists at Duke announced on Wednesday that they have named a new genus of fern after Lady Gaga.  “We wanted to name this genus for Lady Gaga because of her fervent defense of equality and individual expression,” said Kathleen Pryer, director of Duke’s herbarium and professor of biology.  The ferns themselves gave even more reasons for the namesake: Gaga germanotta (the singer’s last name) and Gaga monstraparva (a shoutout to Gaga’s fans, “little monsters”) have “somewhat fluid definitions of gender” and include the sequence GAGA in their DNA base pairs.

The White House and the State Department knew that an Islamic militant group had claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, emails obtained by Reuters on Wednesday revealed. The emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack as it was happening to U.S. officials in Washington. How much the White House knew about the attack has been questioned, especially after administration officials had maintained for days that the attack had come after a spontaneous protest over an anti-U.S. film and administration officials have said early intelligence briefings were mixed. Although some of the information in the emails was redacted, a government source said the emails were sent to the White House Situation Room.

It looks like the Israeli-Palestinian flare-up has ensnared at least one nearby country. Sudan has accused Israel of airstrikes that caused an explosion at an arms factory in the country’s capital overnight. Officials said no one died in the explosion, though nearby buildings were reportedly damaged. A Sudanese minister said the airstrikes appeared to come from the east, where Israel and Palestine have been exchanging crossfire in recent days. In 2009 an airstrike targeting a weapons convoy in northeastern Sudan was widely believed to be carried out by Israel, which suspected the weapons shipment was en route to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Israel never denied the attack.

Mark Zuckerberg made some friends. Facebook shares are on track to have their biggest daily gain since the initial public offering in May. The stock rose 21 percent to $23.57 in midday trading on Wednesday. The surge comes a day after the company announced a surprising increase in third-quarter revenue from sales of mobile ads. The mobile ads accounted for 14 percent of total revenue, an increase from none a year earlier. Through Tuesday the stocks had fallen 47 percent from the IPO price of $38. Bank of America analysts wrote that Facebook “can effectively grow revenues while usage transitions to mobile platforms from [personal computers].”

It’s been 20 years since A Few Good Men hit theaters, but Tom Cruise’s desires haven’t changed: He wants the truth! Life & Style magazine had better be prepared to handle it, too, since Cruise is suing the gossip rag for $50 million for “claiming falsely that he has ‘abandoned’ Suri, his 6-year-old daughter,” a press release said Wednesday. “Tom is a caring father who dearly loves Suri,” the statement says. “To say he has ‘abandoned’ her is a vicious lie.” Should he win a libel judgment, Cruise says he will give the money to charity.

Gloria Allred has an “October surprise” for Mitt Romney. Her latest client, the ex-wife of Staples founder Tom Stemberg, is ready and willing to reveal to the public a testimony Mitt Romney gave on behalf of her husband during their 1990s divorce trial. Romney’s Bain Capital was an early investor in Staples and frequently touts the company’s success as an example of Mitt’s leadership skills. It’s unclear what Allred and the former Mrs. Stemberg are trying to accomplish by unsealing this testimony, as it reportedly just includes Romney vouching for his former colleague’s abilities as a father. Regardless, the Romney camp doesn't seem to care, as one of his lawyers told Time magazine: “This is a decades-old divorce case in which Mitt Romney provided testimony as to the value of a company. He has no objection to letting the public see that testimony.”

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock publicly apologized—sort of—Wednesday for comments during a debate implying that pregnancy caused by rape may be “intended” by God. “I did not intend to suggest that God wants rape,” Mourdock said during the presser, clarifying that he’s not apologizing for what he said but for how it was interpreted. “I spoke from my heart.” The Romney campaign has distanced itself from Mourdock's comments, but says they will continue backing the candidate. "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him," the campaign said in a statement.

It’s about to get chilly in Brooklyn. The New York Islanders will reportedly pack up its pucks and hockey sticks and relocate to the Barclays Center—the home of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. The move, which is expected to happen by 2015, will take Long Island’s hockey franchise away from its crumbling arena. You may not remember, but the Islanders won four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980 to 1983. It remains to be seen whether Jay-Z will try to purchase a small part of the team.

The international peace plan for a four day ceasefire in Syria during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday has hit a roadblock, after an Islamic militant group rejected the proposal Wednesday. The U.N.-Arab League envoy had said earlier that government and rebel leaders had agreed to the truce, which would have begun on Friday. But the extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, said in a statement, “There will be no truce between us and the prideful regime and shedder of the blood of Muslims.” The Syrian government has also now denied agreeing to a ceasefire.

Mitt Romney isn’t leaving it up to the critics to decide who won the presidential debates—he’s making an executive decision. “You know they have really propelled our campaign,” Romney told a crowd in Nevada on Wednesday. “We’re seeing that across the country. People are coming together. At the same time, I think, in some respects, they’ve diminished the president’s campaign.” The GOP contender went on to say that his jobs plan is what will clinch the deal for him and asserted that he would win this election. An ABC News/Washington Post poll this week showed Romney with a slight lead over Obama at 49–48.