news

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into Memphis and its police department for its use of force, searches and arrests and potential discriminatory policing.

Officials for the DOJ announced the launch of the civil inquiry Thursday saying the goal of the pattern or practice investigation was to find out if there are systemic violations of the Constitution or federal law by the Memphis Police Department.

"Every person is entitled to constitutional and non-discriminatory policing in our country," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement. "Based on an extensive review of publicly available information and information provided to us, there are grounds to open this investigation now."

She said this information included reports that Memphis police officers made racially discriminatory stops of Black people for minor violations.

"The Justice Department will conduct a thorough and objective investigation into allegations of unlawful discrimination and Fourth Amendment violations. Unlawful policing undermines community trust, which is essential to public safety," she said.

This all comes more than seven months after the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, who was beaten by officers from the Memphis Police Department.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein had to be corrected and told to vote during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday.

The California Democrat, who has been in frail health following a shingles diagnosis in the spring, has appeared confused at times since her return to the Capitol.

Feinstein, who at 90 is the oldest member serving in the US Senate, has faced questions about her health in recent years, and members of her own party called on her to resign her Senate seat after an extended absence earlier this year following the shingles diagnosis. She returned to Washington in June.

During Thursday’s hearing, Feinstein was meant to cast her vote on the Defense Appropriations bill, requiring her to say “Aye” or “Nay,” when her name was called. When she didn’t answer, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state tried to prompt her.

“Say aye,” she said, repeating herself three times to Feinstein.

Feinstein then started to read from prepared remarks, and was interrupted by an aide whispering in her ear.

“Yeah,” Murray said once again. “Just say ‘aye.’”

“OK, just,” Feinstein replied.

“Aye,” Murray repeated once more.

Then Feinstein sat back in her chair. “Aye,” she said, casting her vote.

A Feinstein spokesperson later said, “Trying to complete all of the appropriations bills before recess, the committee markup this morning was a little chaotic, constantly switching back and forth between statements, votes, and debate and the order of bills.”

“The senator was preoccupied, didn’t realize debate had just ended and a vote was called,” the spokesperson said. “She started to give a statement, was informed it was a vote and then cast her vote.”

Feinstein announced earlier this year that she will not run for reelection in 2024. During her absence this spring, Democrats publicly worried her absence would slow the process of confirming nominees through the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Feinstein is a member. At the time, Feinstein disputed that characterization, saying that judicial nominations had not been significantly delayed.

Trump says DoJ gave 'no indication of notice' to his lawyers

Donald Trump said his attorneys had a “productive” meeting with the Department of Justice this morning, and that “no indication of notice” was given during the meeting.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote:

My attorneys had a productive meeting with the DOJ this morning, explaining in detail that I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers, and that an Indictment of me would only further destroy our Country. No indication of notice was given during the meeting — Do not trust the Fake News on anything!

It was reported earlier today that Trump’s lawyers were seen entering the offices of special counsel Jack Smith, a week after the former president said he had received a target letter from Smith. According to NBC, Trump’s attorneys were told to expect an indictment against him.

Summary: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900,000 AI Job As Hollywood executives insist it is "just not realistic" to pay actors more, they are spending lavishly on AI programs. ~ In one case, Netflix is offering as much as $900,000 for a single AI product manager. ~ Just after the actors' strike was authorized, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced "a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses for SAG-AFTRA members." The offer prompted comparisons to an episode of the dystopian sci-fi TV series "Black Mirror," which depicted actress Salma Hayek locked in a Kafkaesque struggle with a studio which was using her scanned digital likeness against her will.

Among the striking actors' demands are protections against their scanned likeness being manipulated by AI without adequate compensation for the actors. "They propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation," the chief negotiator for the actors' union, SAG-AFTRA, said.

Entertainment writers, too, must contend with their work being replaced by AI programs like ChatGPT that are capable of generating text in response to queries. Writers represented by the Writers Guild of America have been on strike since May 7 demanding, among other things, labor safeguards against AI. A screenwriter for films like "Big Fish" and "Charlie's Angels," explained that the WGA wants to make sure that "ChatGPT and its cousins can't be credited with writing a screenplay." ~ $300 for two hours of work "express[ing] different emotions" and "improvis[ing] brief scenes" to "train an AI database to better express human emotions."

The posting is specially catered to attract striking workers, stressing that the gig is for "research" purposes and therefore "does not qualify as struck work". ~ "The 'research' side of this is largely a red herring." ~ "OpenAI is the nonprofit that created AI programs like ChatGPT and DALL-E. "Download everything on the internet and no worries about copyrights, because it's a nonprofit and research. ~ "Netflix's posting for a $900,000-a-year AI product manager job makes clear that the AI goes beyond just the algorithms that determine what shows are recommended to users. ~ "Artificial Intelligence is powering innovation in all areas of the business," including by helping them to "create great content."

A research section on Netflix's website describes its machine learning platform, noting that while it was historically used for things like recommendations, it is now being applied to content creation. "Historically, personalization has been the most well-known area, where machine learning powers our recommendation algorithms. We're also using machine learning to help shape our catalog of movies and TV shows by learning characteristics that make content successful. ~ In another job posting, Netflix seeks a technical director for generative AI in its research and development tech lab for its gaming studio.

Generative AI is the type of AI that can produce text, images, and video from input data — a key component of original content creation but which can also be used for other purposes like advertising. Generative AI is distinct from older, more familiar AI models that provide things like algorithmic recommendations or genre tags. "All those models are typically called discriminatory models or classifiers: They tell you what something is". ~ "Generative models are the ones with the ethics problems, explaining how classifiers are based on carefully using limited training data to generate recommendations. Netflix offers up to $650,000 for its generative AI technical director role. Video game writers have expressed concerns about losing work to generative AI, with one major game developer, Ubisoft, saying that it is already using generative AI to write dialogue for nonplayer characters. ~ Crime Stories," centered around crime stories, "uses generative AI to help tell them." ~ In one, the entertainment giant is looking for a senior AI engineer to "drive innovation across our cinematic pipelines and theatrical experiences." ~ "In fact, we're already starting to use AI to create some efficiencies and ultimately to better serve consumers, as recently reported by journalist Lee Fang. ~ While striking actors are seeking to protect their own IP from AI so is Disney.

"AI isn't bad, it's just that the workers need to own and control the means of production!"

The White House condemned Fox News on Tuesday over remarks made by one of its top hosts about the holocaust, denouncing the comments as a “horrid, dangerous, and extreme lie” that “insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils” committed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

The comments, made by prime time host Greg Gutfeld, came during a discussion Monday on “The Five” about Florida’s new Black history standards that requires instruction for students include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Jessica Tarlov, a liberal-leaning co-host on “The Five,” expressed disapproval of the new history standards and questioned whether arguments used to defend them would ever be made in regard to the Holocaust.

“I’m not Black, but I’m Jewish,” Tarlov said. “Would someone say about the Holocaust, for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews? That while they were hanging out in concentration camps, they learned a strong work ethic? That maybe you learned a new skill.”

Gutfeld replied, asking if Tarlov had read the “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a bestselling book written by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who was imprisoned during the Holocaust and described the atrocities committed in concentration camps. In his book, Frankl detailed how people can cope with suffering and find meaning in the most horrific of circumstances.

“Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful,” Gutfeld told Tarlov. “Utility! Utility kept you alive!”

Gutfeld’s assertion immediately ignited criticism, including from the Auschwitz Memorial, which said in a statement, “Being skilled or useful did not spare [Jewish people] from the horrors of the gas chambers.”

On Tuesday, the White House weighed in, blasting the right-wing channel over its silence on Gutfeld’s comments.

“What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity,” Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement to CNN.

“In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust,” Bates continued.

“Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: there was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust. Full stop,” Bates added. “Americans deserve to be brought together, not torn apart with poison. And they deserve the truth and the freedom to learn, not book bans and lies.”

A spokesperson for Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

Fox News has faced criticism in recent years for giving air to extreme rhetoric. The Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly — and sharply — criticized the network for mainstreaming “fringe” rhetoric. During the presidency of Donald Trump, the network trafficked in right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories — including giving air to dangerous lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Fox News debuted its revamped prime time lineup just last week, after inexplicably firing Tucker Carlson earlier this year. The new lineup, featuring a bloc of pro-Trump hosts, features Gutfeld helming the 10 p.m. ET hour.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy in recent weeks has heard similar advice from both a senior House Republican and an influential conservative lawyer: prioritize the impeachment of President Joe Biden over a member of his Cabinet.

Part of the thinking, according to multiple sources familiar with the internal discussions, is that if House Republicans are going to expend precious resources on the politically tricky task of an impeachment, they might as well go after their highest target as opposed to the attorney general or secretary of homeland security.

And McCarthy – who sources said has also been consulting with former House GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich on the issue – has warmed up to an idea that has long been relegated to the fringes of his conference. This week, he delivered his most explicit threat yet to Biden, saying their investigations into the Biden family’s business deals appear to be rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, McCarthy signaled that Republicans have yet to verify the most salacious allegations against Biden, namely that as vice president he engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national in order to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s career, an allegation the White House furiously denies. But he said that launching an impeachment inquiry would unleash the full power of the House to turn over critical information, mirroring an argument advanced by House Democrats when they impeached then-President Donald Trump in 2019.

“How do you get to the bottom of the truth? The only way Congress can do that is go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said Tuesday, stopping short of formally moving to open such a probe.

A Republican-backed spending bill threatens to end national access to mail-order abortion pills and cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provides low-income families with food benefits.

The legislation is part of a spate of appropriations bills that lawmakers will debate this month, and which Congress must reach a decision on by the end of September in order to pass a budget for the 2024 fiscal year and avoid a federal shutdown. It was already approved by a House appropriations subcommittee in May, while being condemned by Democrats and causing internal rifts among Republicans. Republicans have added several provisions to the bill that would have wide-ranging effects on reproductive rights, health policy and benefits. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, at the Capitol in May.

The food and agriculture spending bill is the latest front in the rightwing campaign against reproductive rights. In the year since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Republicans have passed bills in more than a dozen states that ban or severely restrict abortion access. Ending access to mail-order pills that induce abortions would complicate and limit efforts from abortion rights groups and physicians to provide care for people in states with abortion bans.

Specifically, the bill would reverse a 2021 Food and Drug Administration policy that allowed people to get the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone – which can be used up to 10 weeks after conception – through the mail rather than via in-person visits to providers. The FDA had temporarily lifted restrictions on the drug during the Covid-19 pandemic, before later making those changes permanent. But the drug, which is widely used for abortion and can also be used for managing miscarriages, has been the center of legal challenges and rightwing attempts to prevent its use ever since.

House Republicans’ messaging on the bill claims that their provision “reins in wasteful Washington spending” and “protects the lives of unborn children”. The bill would also decrease the Snap benefit program – formerly known as food stamps – by $32bn compared with 2023 levels, as well as prevent the health and human services department from putting limits on the maximum amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

The approaching fight over spending bills has echoes of the standoff over debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year, when Democrats accused Republicans of holding the government hostage in an attempt to exact sweeping cuts to federal programs. Hardline Republicans similarly pushed to shift their party towards far-right policies during those negotiations as well.

Democrats are eager to prevent a government shutdown such as the one in 2018 during the Trump administration that left about 800,000 government workers without pay and lasted longer than any previous closure in US history. But some have called for establishing red lines around what compromises they are willing to make, with a number of House Democrats such as the Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern pushing back against attempts to cut Snap funding and other conservative provisions in recent legislation. House Democrats previously tried to add two amendments to the food and agriculture spending bill that would have eliminated the anti-abortion provision, but both failed.

Several Republicans have also spoken out against the food and agriculture bill, including the New York representative Marc Molinaro, who told Politico he will vote against the legislation if it comes to the floor. Molinaro, along with another New York Republican lawmaker, previously denounced a conservative Texas judge’s ruling that threatened to remove FDA approval of mifepristone.

Molinaro’s opposition to the bill highlights a rift within the Republican party over just how far to push an anti-abortion agenda that has proven nationally unpopular and contributed to electoral losses in many states. skip past newsletter promotion

Start the day with the top stories from the US, plus the day’s must-reads from across the Guardian Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Abortion policy has divided the GOP as hard-right Republicans, as well as powerful Christian conservative activist groups, have demanded far-reaching bans on abortion access. Others, such as the South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace, have warned that Republicans need to “read the room” on abortion or face defeat in elections.

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has meanwhile been left scrambling to manage the different factions of his party as votes on must-pass appropriations bills loom. In addition to limiting abortion access and benefits, far-right Republicans have sought to use spending bills to greatly reduce military aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from earlier this year saw that support for abortion access was at an all-time high, and included a finding that about one-third of Republicans also broadly back the right to abortion access.

A vital ocean current system that helps regulate the Northern Hemisphere's climate could collapse anytime from 2025 and unleash climate chaos, a controversial new study warns.

The Atlantic Meridional Ocean Current (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, governs the climate by bringing warm, tropical waters north and cold water south.

But researchers now say the AMOC may be veering toward total breakdown between 2025 and 2095, causing temperatures to plummet, ocean ecosystems to collapse and storms to proliferate around the world. However, some scientists have cautioned that the new research comes with some big caveats.

The AMOC can exist in two stable states: a stronger, faster one that we rely upon today, and another that is much slower and weaker. Previous estimates predicted that the current would probably switch to its weaker mode sometime in the next century.

Related: Gulf Stream could be veering toward irreversible collapse, a new analysis warns

But human-caused climate change may push the AMOC to a critical tipping point sooner rather than later, researchers predicted in a new study, published Tuesday (July 25) in the journal Nature Communications.

"The expected tipping point — given that we continue business as usual with greenhouse gas emissions — is much earlier than we expected," co-author Susanne Ditlevsen, a professor of statistics and stochastic models in biology at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science.

"It was not a result where we said: 'Oh, yeah, here we have it'. We were actually bewildered."

Kavasutra is a dimly lit bar in Lantana, Florida, with a rotating cast of characters: the magician, the repo man, the metalhead picking Slipknot on his unplugged Stratocaster. On a recent Friday night, there's about a dozen other patrons drinking, flirting, swiping at their phones.

What's not here is booze. The bar serves only nonalcoholic botanical drinks. And tonight, like most nights, one drink is clearly winning out: jumbo plastic cups filled with icy kratom tea.

Kavasutra is among thousands of U.S. businesses that sell kratom, an herbal supplement that's spurring debate in statehouses and courtrooms nationwide over how it should be classified and regulated.

And there are dozens of wrongful death lawsuits that have been filed over the product and how it is marketed. Last week, a jury in Washington state awarded a $2.5 million verdict in the first kratom wrongful death trial in the U.S.

The US Department of Justice has sued the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, over his refusal to remove a floating barrier placed on the Rio Grande to stop migrants entering the US from Mexico.

Texas state troopers watch as migrants cross the Rio Grande near the site where large buoys to be used as a border barrier are being deployed near Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023. Advocates have raised concern that the barriers may have an adverse environmental impact. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) Texas trooper says they were told to push children into Rio Grande and deny migrants water Read more

The move is the latest in a growing political spat between Abbott and the Biden administration, heightened by Republican attempts to scaremonger over immigration as the 2024 presidential election looms.

The lawsuit filed by the federal government asks a court in Texas to force the state to remove the roughly 1,000ft line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns.

The suit also says Texas unlawfully installed the barrier without permission, near the border city of Eagle Pass.

The suit was filed on Monday, after Abbott refused to comply with instructions to remove the barrier.

“Texas will fully utilise its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused,” Greg Abbott wrote to Joe Biden in a letter reported by CNN and other outlets.

“Texas will see you in court, Mr President.”

It was the latest confrontational move by a governor who for more than two years has escalated measures to stop migrants entering the US, pushing legal boundaries along the 1,200-mile border with Mexico.

Blowback over the tactics is widening, including from within Texas and particularly in light of a state trooper’s account of razor wire leaving asylum seekers bloodied and officers denying migrants water in 100F (37.7C) heat and being told to push children into the river.

Last week, the US justice department told Texas to remove the river barriers, citing federal laws against obstructing waterways and imposing a Monday deadline. On Monday, Abbott said that in refusing to comply, he was “assert[ing] Texas’s sovereign interest in protecting [its] borders” in his role as the “commander-in-chief of [the] state’s militia”.

Repeating a common Republican talking point, the governor also wrote to Biden: “If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws. By doing so, you can help me stop migrants from wagering their lives in the waters of the Rio Grande.”

Saying migrants could attempt to use legitimate ports of entry, Abbott said: “While I share the humanitarian concerns noted in your lawyers’ letter, Mr President, your finger points in the wrong direction. Neither of us wants to see another death in the Rio Grande … Yet your open-border policies encourage migrants to risk their lives by crossing illegally through the water, instead of safely and legally at a port of entry. Nobody drowns on a bridge.”

A White House spokesperson said Abbott’s behavior was “ making it hard for the men and women of border patrol to do their jobs of securing the border and putting both migrants and border agents in danger”.

Biden’s border enforcement plan, the spokesperson added, had “led to the lowest levels of unlawful border crossings in over two years. Governor Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining that effective plan.

“If Governor Abbott truly wanted to drive toward real solutions, he’d be asking his Republican colleagues in Congress why they voted against President Biden’s request to increase funding for the Department of Homeland Security and why they’re blocking the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures that would finally fix our broken immigration system.”

The White House also said Republicans “have no plan and are just playing political games”.

Criticism of Abbott is growing within his own state.

Speaking to the Associated Press, David Donatti, an attorney for the Texas American Civil Liberties Union, said: “There are so many ways that what Texas is doing right now is just flagrantly illegal.”

Aron Thorn, a Texas Civil Rights Project attorney, described “a very strong correlation” between Abbott’s border policy and “the Trump and post-Trump era in which most of the Trump administration’s immigration policy was aggressive and extreme and very violative of people’s rights and very focused on making the political point.

“The design of this is the optics and the amount of things that they sacrifice for those optics now is quite extraordinary.”

In Eagle Pass, Jessie Fuentes, a kayaker, has filed his own lawsuit over work done on the river. On Monday that suit, Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team v State of Texas, was cited in the suit filed by the federal government.

Citing measures including floating barriers and shipping containers and razor wire placed along riverbanks cleared of vegetation, Fuentes recently told the Eagle Pass city council: “The river is a federally protected river by so many federal agencies, and I just don’t know how it happened.”

A member of the Eagles Pass council, Elias Diaz, told the AP: “I feel like the state government has kind of bypassed local government … and so I felt powerless at times.”

Hugo Urbina, a farmer whose land abuts the river, said he supported efforts to reduce border crossings via the Rio Grande. But Urbina said Abbott and his administration “do whatever it is that they want … breaking the law and … making your citizens feel like they’re second-hand citizens”.

The Texas land office has said it will permit “vegetation management” on the banks of the river as part of anti-migration efforts. The state military department has cleared out carrizo cane, which the land office has called an invasive plant. Environmental experts are concerned changes to the landscape will affect the flow of the river.

Tom Vaughan, co-founder of the Rio Grande International Study Center, said: “As far as I know, if there’s flooding in the river, it’s much more severe in Piedras Negras” – on the Mexican side – “than it is in Eagle Pass because that’s the lower side of the river.

“And so next time the river really gets up, it’s going to push a lot of water over on the Mexican side, it looks like to me.”

It was a legitimate surprise when the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court ordered Alabama’s conservative-dominated state government last month to redraw its congressional map and include either a second majority-Black congressional district or something quite close to it.

It may be equally surprising that Alabama appears to have said no.

Instead of simply complying with the Supreme Court’s order in the Allen v. Milligan case, Alabama’s legislature redrew the congressional map to lower the Black voting-age population in the existing Democratic seat held by Rep. Terri Sewell from about 55% to just over 50% and then increased a second district’s Black population percentage to about 40%.

The new map approved by Alabama’s legislature and governor will go before federal courts for review in August, so this story is far from over.

And it will combine with fights over congressional maps in other states, especially New York, in such a way that control of the House could very much be at stake.

Spain appears destined for painful political negotiations after Sunday’s elections, when no single party won enough parliamentary seats to form a government. Prospects for coalition-building now remain uncertain.

With over 99% of the vote counted, the center-right Partido Popular (PP) is set to come in first, winning 136 seats. The upstart far-right Vox party, a possible coalition partner to PP, is forecast to win 33 seats.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s ruling center-left Socialist party meanwhile is on course to win 122 seats, with likely coalition partners Sumar at 31 seats.

WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has recaptured half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced "a very hard fight" to win back more.

"It's already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized," Blinken said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

"These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough," he said, adding: "It will not play out over the next week or two. We're still looking I think at several months."

Late last month, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that the counteroffensive's progress against Russian forces was "slower than desired."

Ukraine has recaptured some villages in the south and territory around the ruined city of Bakhmut in the east, but has not had a major breakthrough against heavily defended Russian lines.

When asked if Ukraine will get U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, Blinken said he believed it would. "And the important focus is on making sure that when they do, they’re properly trained, they’re able to maintain the planes, and use them in a smart way."

A coalition of 11 nations will start training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 fighter jets in August in Denmark, and a training center will be set up in Romania.

Ukraine has long appealed for the Lockheed Martin-made (LMT.N) F-16s, but U.S. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan, said last month there was no final decision on Washington sending the aircraft. U.S. officials have estimated it would take at least 18 months for training and delivery of the planes.

The United States has given Ukraine more than $41 billion in military aid since Russia invaded in February 2022. Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

A 13-year-old kidnapping victim was rescued in Southern California after making a “Help Me!” sign to alert passersby, which then led to the arrest of a Texas man.

Steven Robert Sablan, 61, is now facing federal kidnapping charges for the incident in which he is alleged to have pulled a gun on the girl as she walked along a sidewalk in San Antonio, Texas, earlier this month.

“If you don’t get in the car with me, I am going to hurt you,” Sablan told the victim, according to court documents.

Once inside the car, Sablan is alleged to have repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl as he drove her from Texas to California, as outlined in the affidavit.

Sablan was indicted by a grand jury this week on one count of kidnapping and one count of transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges later this month, the US Department of Justice announced on Thursday. CNN is seeking comment from Sablan’s legal representation.

Police said that while Sablan went into a laundromat in Long Beach, California, on July 9 the girl flashed her “Help Me!” sign from inside the suspect’s parked vehicle, prompting a good Samaritan to call 911. Long Beach Police officers said the girl was “visibly emotional and distressed” upon their arrival.

After running the vehicle’s license plate, officers learned that Sablan was wanted on a burglary charge in Fort Worth, Texas, and considered armed and dangerous, according to the affidavit, which also notes Sablan’s prior convictions for robbery and drug possession.

A black handgun, later determined to be a BB gun, a switchblade, and handcuffs, were found in Sablan’s vehicle, according to the federal affidavit.

If convicted on both charges, Sablan could face a sentence of up to life in prison.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Artificial intelligence has surged to the forefront of Hollywood’s labor fights. Standing alongside more traditional disputes over pay models, benefits and job protections, AI technology is the wild card in the contract breakdowns that have led actors and writers unions to go on strike.

The technology has pushed negotiations into unknown territory, and the language used can sound utopian or dystopian depending on the side of the table. Here’s a look at what the unions and their employers each say they want.

Former President Donald Trump's trial into his handling of classified documents is set for May 20, 2024. It's one of several criminal and civil cases Trump faces as he runs for president.

Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the documents case, called it an "empty hoax."

The Justice Department wanted the trial to start in December; Trump's legal team wanted to push it past the 2024 election.

Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia Law School, said U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's order Friday setting a May 20, 2024, trial date was "an appropriate and reasonable effort to balance the legitimate needs of the defendants against the need to move the case forward as expeditiously as possible."

But the legal complexities involved, the quantity of classified evidence, and Cannon's lack of experience in such a case could contribute to lingering delays and headaches for prosecutors, Richman and other legal experts told NPR.

"[Cannon] doesn't have any experience in criminal cases involving classified information. She hasn't actually presided over a lengthy jury trial. They've all been short," Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law school professor and former Justice Department official, said of Cannon's trial background. "On another hand, she might bring, as a younger judge, energy to this. But I think this is the kind of case where experience really does matter."

Donald Trump faced a deadline of midnight on Thursday to say if he would appear before a Washington grand jury convened by the special counsel Jack Smith to consider federal charges over his election subversion and incitement of the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.

Late on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter, the Guardian reported that prosecutors had assembled evidence to charge Trump with three crimes.

They were: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and an unusual statute that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights.

Obstruction of an official proceeding is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Conspiracy to defraud the United States carries a maximum five-year sentence. The civil rights charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

By Thursday afternoon, all indications were that Trump would not agree to testify.

Indictments regarding Trump’s attempted election subversion are expected soon – not only at the federal level but also in Fulton county, Georgia, where a grand jury to consider charges was recently formed. Elsewhere, this week saw charges brought against 16 people in a “false electors” scheme in Michigan, another battleground state.

On Thursday morning, meanwhile, Politico reported that Trump had extracted a promise from the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, to hold votes on expunging Trump’s two impeachments.

Trump was impeached first for withholding military aid in an attempt to extract political dirt from Ukraine, then for inciting the Capitol attack. In both cases, Senate Republicans ensured his acquittal at trial.

Trump reportedly got the promise of an expungement vote, which Politico said McCarthy “made reflexively to save his own skin”, after the speaker provoked outrage from Trump allies by declining to endorse the former president in the Republican presidential primary for the 2024 election, citing an obligation to remain neutral.

An expungement vote would be purely symbolic. It also would not be guaranteed to succeed. Republicans control the House by a very slim majority. Two sitting GOP congressmen, David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington state, voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot. Republicans in swing districts, particularly in heavily Democratic north-eastern states, already face uphill fights to keep their seats.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, McCarthy denied making a promise, saying “There’s no deal” with Trump, but added: “I’ve been very clear from long before – when I voted against impeachments – that [Democrats] put them in for purely political purposes. I support expungement but there’s no deal out there.”

In polling averages for the Republican primary, Trump leads by about 30 points. He has maintained that lead even while facing 34 criminal charges in New York, over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels; 37 federal charges over his retention of classified documents; the prospect of state and federal indictments over his election subversion; a $5m fine after being held liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll; and ongoing investigations of his business affairs.

Denying all wrongdoing, Trump has pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges.

Nonetheless, polling regarding a notional general election shows him in a close race with Joe Biden. Earlier this week, Miles Taylor, who was a US homeland security official when in 2018 he wrote a famous anonymous New York Times column warning of Trump’s unfitness for office, told the Guardian Trump could yet return to the White House.

“There’s been a number of polls that show the ex-president beating Joe Biden by several points,” Taylor said. “It would be hubris to say, ‘Oh, no, we would beat him again a second time.’ Actually, I don’t think that. If the election was held today, I think Donald Trump would defeat Joe Biden, and that really concerns me.”

Start the day with the top stories from the US, plus the day’s must-reads from across the Guardian Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Taylor also pointed to the supine nature of the Republican party, saying McCarthy, the House speaker, “thought Trump was a buffoon and a danger and I’m sure Kevin still thinks that privately” but is unwilling, or unable, to move in any way against him.

Taylor said: “Those people publicly, because they’re afraid, are still supporting the man. That collective anonymity is putting us in pretty seriously great danger.”

Trump revealed on Tuesday that Smith had told him he faced potential charges. According to the New York Times, since then Trump has consulted with Washington allies including McCarthy and the New Yorker Elise Stefanik, chair of the Republican House conference and a staunch supporter who many observers think is eyeing selection as Trump’s running mate next year. Miles Taylor seen in Washington DC, shortly after revealing his authorship of a famous New York Times column and book. ‘Trump can beat Biden’: White House whistleblower Miles Taylor returns with fresh warning Read more

Trump’s closest challenger for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, this week mildly criticised Trump for his inaction on 6 January 2021, as the Capitol was attacked, but also said charges against the former president over his election subversion would not “be good for the country”.

Court dates are set to clash with the Republican primary calendar. Trump faces three civil trials in New York, one to begin in October and two in January.

In the criminal cases, Smith, the special counsel, has asked for trial over the classified documents charges to begin later this year. In the hush-money case, the trial is scheduled for March – in the thick of the Republican primary. Lawyers for Trump are attempting to delay both trials until after the general election next year, when Trump or another Republican president could order all cases dropped.

On Thursday, Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican elections lawyer, told the Washington Post the US was “in as precarious a situation as we’ve ever been”.

“I don’t know what the chances are of things really going off the rails,” Ginsberg said, “but no question that there is a toxic mix unprecedented in the American experiment.”

What is it? The FIFA Women's World Cup started today in Australia and New Zealand, with new countries and more teams than ever.

The group stage of the international soccer tournament starts today with 32 teams. It's the biggest the tournament has ever been, with eight teams making their World Cup debut: Haiti, Republic of Ireland, Morocco, Panama, Philippines, Portugal, Vietnam and Zambia.

The first match started Thursday on a somber note – just hours before New Zealand and Norway kicked off the tournament, a gunman killed three people and injured six others at a nearby construction site.

The teams from New Zealand and Australia secured the first wins in the first day of group play. Everyone will compete in a round-robin tournament before the top 16 teams advance to the first elimination round.

What's the big deal? FIFA expects this year's tournament to be the most attended stand-alone women's sporting event in history.

Last week, FIFA said over one million tickets had been sold. In a social media post, FIFA president Gianni Infantino wrote: "The future is women - and thanks to the fans for supporting what will be the greatest FIFA Women's World Cup ever!"

Reigning champions of the last two World Cups, the U.S. team is ranked first in the world and favored to take the title again. Nine players on the U.S. roster were a part of the 2019 championship team, but American star player Megan Rapinoe has said she'll be retiring after this season.

Despite the U.S. team's dominance over the last decade, it's a crowded field of tough competition, said soccer writer Sophie Downey:

"It's going to be really interesting with the USA because, you know, for so many years, they've been the front-runners, and they've been the out-and-out favorites. And I do think the playing field has leveled a bit...European countries have invested highly. They've brought their game up another level."

July will likely be Earth’s hottest month in hundreds if not thousands of years, Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters on Thursday, as a persistent heatwave baked swaths of the US south.

Schmidt made the announcement during a meeting at Nasa’s Washington headquarters that convened agency climate experts and other leaders, including Nasa administrator Bill Nelson and chief scientist and senior climate adviser Kate Calvin. I used to ride private planes. Now I’d rather get arrested protesting them Read more

The meeting came during a summer that has put the climate crisis on full display. Deadly floods have struck New England. Canadian wildfire smoke has choked US cities. And tens of millions of people have been placed under heat advisories, with areas across the US south and west breaking temperature records.

“We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world,” Schmidt said.

Though the changes may feel shocking, they are “not a surprise” to scientists, he added. “There has been a decade-on-decade increase in temperatures throughout the last four decades.”

Earth saw its hottest June on record, according to Nasa’s global temperature analysis, the agency announced last week.

All this heat, Schmidt said, is “certainly increasing the chances” that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. While his calculations show Earth has a 50% chance of setting that record this year, other models say there is as much as an 80% chance, he said.

Scientists anticipate that 2024 will be even hotter than 2023, as an El Niño weather pattern – known for a tendency to boost global temperatures – will likely peak toward the end of this year.

The last major El Niño, from 2014 to 2016, led to each of those years successively breaking the global temperature record, and 2016 is currently the Earth’s hottest year ever recorded, Schmidt said.

Experts at the meeting raised the alarm about the changes Earth is experiencing and said they are directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions, though they stopped short of naming the source of the majority of those emissions: fossil fuels.

“What we know from science is that human activity and principally greenhouse gas emissions are unavoidably causing the warming that we’re seeing on our planet,” said Calvin. “This is impacting people and ecosystems around the world.”

The agency leaders touted its many climate-focused initiatives, which they said can help governments better mitigate the climate crisis and also prepare for its effects. skip past newsletter promotion

The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

“You think of Nasa as a space agency, you think of Nasa as an aeronautical research agency,” said Nelson. “Nasa is also a climate agency.”

Its newest initiative, the Earth Information Center, will make climate data from Nasa’s 25 satellites available to view in real time. An in-person exhibit in the agency’s headquarters opened to the public last week, and next week an online version will launch on Nasa’s website, Nelson said.

Leaders detailed an array of other projects tracking environmental changes, including ones that track air pollution, methane emissions, and tropical cyclones and hurricanes. And they said the agency is aiming to help curb planet-warming pollution as well, for instance by researching lower-carbon forms of air travel.

Some rightwing lawmakers are attempting to curtail funding to climate-related projects, including some of Nasa’s.

Nasa’s earth science division director Karen St Germain said the agency does not merely want to accelerate scientific discovery. It also wants to make sure new research boosts climate preparedness, “ranging from a farmer assessing what to do with a single field, to global leaders weighing decisions impacting the entire world”.

“Our goal is to put scientific information and understanding out in ways that help the public,” she said.