Reba McEntire fought back tears as she remembered stepson Brandon Blackstock on The Voice.

For those unaware, Brandon, a talent manager, succumbed to melanoma at the age of 48 on August 7, 2025. He was the son of Narvel Blackstock, the ex-husband of Reba.

Brandon left behind his four children, Savannah and Seth, whom he welcomed with his ex-wife Melissa Ashworth and River and Remy with Kelly Clarkson before getting divorced in 2022.

On Monday, October 27 episode of the NBC singing competition show The Voice season 28, the 70-year-old American singer and actress became emotional when a contestant from her team, Aubrey Nicole, beautifully sang I’m Gonna Love You Through It, a song by Martina McBride.

Notably, the song chronicles the story of a couple who faces life after a cancer diagnosis and Aubrey dedicated the song to her father, who was previously diagnosed with the disease but is now in remission.

Commenting on her performance, coach Snoop Dogg quipped he was not aware of the song but his eyes teared up, to which Reba said, “I do know this song. Martina’s — I’ll need it, thank you, Snoop,” as Snoop gave her a tissue to wipe her eyes.

“Martina’s a good friend of mine. I lost my oldest son because he did not win with cancer. That was a real reminder that life goes on, and we sing songs about it so we can remember the ones around us that we love so much, that we lean on at times like this. You did a great job,” the Happy’s Place star added, referring to Brandon.

• Minister Khalid urges PIF to make way for the private sector.
• PIF chairman said last year fund would focus on domestic projects.
• Project sits at heart of Vision 2030 with $900 billion in assets.

Saudi Arabia’s investment minister on Tuesday urged the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to ease its spending on domestic projects and make way for more investments from the private sector, as the fund prepares to draft a new strategic plan.

“It is time for us to maybe scale back on this government or PIF spend to prove and to seed some of these value chains and clusters and let the private sector start investing,” Khalid al-Falih said on Tuesday as financial titans gathered in Riyadh for the country’s flagship investment conference.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic plan has led to hundreds of billions in spending on projects that are designed to transform the kingdom’s economy away from its dependence on hydrocarbons.

At last year’s edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference, PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan said the fund would tap more of its resources to fund plans domestically to wean the economy off oil and said the fund planned to cut its overseas investments.

But many of the plan’s flagship projects have been delayed amid low oil prices and a budget deficit that has forced Saudi Arabia to prioritise and downsize.

Saudi Arabia’s PIF, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds with more than $900 billion in assets, sits at the heart of Vision 2030. The fund’s initial strategy for 2021-2025 ends this year, and it is due to announce an updated strategy.

Foreign investment into the country has grown 24% in 2024 to $31.7 billion, Rumayyan said earlier on Tuesday as he opened the event, where attendees include Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Blackrock’s Larry Fink, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, and Citi’s Jane Fraser.

Falih later added that 90% of that foreign direct investment was into Saudi Arabia’s non-oil sector, without mentioning specifics.

“We just did a transaction here in the kingdom, and we had five times more demand than we could provide. It was for a pipeline in Jafurah, and the amount of money that was interested in investing here in the kingdom was at a record level,” Fink said on a panel.

“To me, this is just an indication of the transformation here in the kingdom, but more importantly, in the whole region, and I do believe we’re seeing more and more, as the GCC, becoming one of the major destinations for capital.”

That Jafurah deal, which raised $11 billion for Saudi state oil giant Aramco upfront in exchange for payments over 20 years to the investors, is in the exact sector the kingdom is trying to reduce its reliance on.

Challenging directly to the established world of online knowledge, Elon Musk’s company xAI launched Grokipedia on Monday, October 27.

Grokipedia is an AI-generated encyclopedia that developed its brand-identity as a truth-seeking alternative to what Musk alleges as the “left-biased” and “activist-controlled” wikipedia.

As mentioned on the original site, “version 0.1” went live with over 885,000 articles which is just a fraction of Wikipedia’s more than seven million English entries.

However, Musk builds its hype by citing on X (formerly known as Twitter) that “even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia” and promising that “Version 1.0 will be 10X better.”

The launch builds on the years of criticism from Musk directed at Wikipedia. Musk repeatedly alleged that the non-profit free online encyclopedia is actually managed by “far-left activists” and has an “extremely left-biased” editorial content.

The SpaceX CEO previously urged his followers to defund it.

“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal,” he added.

This declaration highlights a significant clash in how knowledge is curated.

Wikipedia, founded in 2001, is supported by a global community of human volunteers who write and edit articles following strict “neutral point of view” policy. The source of Wikipedia’s funding is majorly donations.

On the other hand, Grokipedia is entirely curated and “fact-checked” by xAI’s assistant, Grok. The approach is already under criticism as AI-based models are previously known to “hallucinate” or invent facts,

As of now, the site doesn’t enable human editing unlike Wikipedia. But Musk cited that ultimately Grokipedia will allow people to modify articles with the AI having the final say.