Articles by Associated Press

Health

At least 18 dead after explosion at chemical factory in Pakistan

At least 18 people were killed and 21 were injured Friday when a boiler exploded at a glue factory in eastern Pakistan, collapsing the building, damaging nearby homes and triggering a massive fire that sent panic through the neighborhood, officials said. Police said they arrested the factory manager and were looking for the factory owner, who fled shortly after the explosion at the industrial facility in Faisalabad, a city in Punjab province. The cause of the explosion, was not immediately known, according to Usman Anwar, the Punjab police chief. Police later said a gas leakage may have caused it. It was not clear how many of the 18 dead were factory workers and how many were local residents. Earlier reports said at least 15 workers were killed. Local administrator Raja Jahangir said an investigation was underway to determine how construction permits allowed the factory to be built in a residential area of Faisalabad, in violation of building laws. The explosion "completely flattened” the factory, Jahangir said, adding that rescuers spent hours pulling bodies and survivors out of the rubble. Several of the injured were in critical condition. Witnesses said the blast was so powerful that it collapsed nearby homes and hurled debris across the streets. Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif expressed her condolences and ordered authorities to ensure the best possible medical care for the injured. Muhammad Iqbal, one of the injured at the local hospital, said it felt "like an earthquake” and that ”roofs and walls of nearby houses collapsed.” He said his wife and son were also injured, but they were in a stable condition. Nadeem Zafar, 45, said he rushed out of his home after hearing a deafening boom and described the scene of chaos that ensued. "I saw flames and thick smoke rising,” he told The Associated Press over the phone. "People were screaming, running in every direction, calling for help." Ambulances and rescuers arrived quickly and began pulling bodies out of the rubble in the Malikpur neighborhood, he said, adding that many around him initially thought it was a bomb or some sort of projectile. Poor safety standards are a frequent cause of industrial accidents and factory fires in Pakistan. In 2024, a dozen workers were injured in a similar boiler explosion at a textile mill in Faisalabad. Also last week, a blast at a firecrackers factory in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi killed four people.

51 minutes ago

Technology

Swiss police hunt 2 men after gold heist at museum, in echoes of Louvre robbery

Swiss authorities were searching on Friday for two robbers who overpowered a security guard at an ancient Rome-themed museum in Lausanne, smashed a display case and made off with dozens of gold coins that had been displayed inside. City police said the suspects had bought tickets and waited until other visitors had left shortly before closing time on Thursday. “The two individuals assaulted and overpowered the guard. They then broke into a secured display case and stole several gold coins that were displayed inside,” before fleeing, the police statement said. The 64-year-old guard had activated the museum’s panic alarm, triggering a rapid response by law enforcement, police said. The monetary value of the loot was not immediately revealed, but police said the coins had “archaeological value”. “At this stage, an inventory is under way to determine the exact number of items stolen and to identify any other missing items,” the statement said. The theft comes at a time when gold prices have soared in global markets this year – even if they have dropped off their highs lately – and a high-profile robbery at the Louvre in Paris exposed vulnerabilities and security lapses at museums. Officials said the Lausanne museum employee, a Swiss national, was interviewed by investigators and that he was not injured in the incident. No other people – staff or visitors – were on hand at the time. State prosecutors have opened an investigation. Lausanne city officials filed a legal complaint for damage to the museum, and the regional government – the owner of the gold coins – announced plans to file a criminal complaint. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

1 hours ago

Politics

Ukraine weighs risks to dignity and key ally in response to US peace plan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that his country must choose between protecting its dignity and risking the loss of a vital partner as it considers how to answer a U.S. peace proposal to end Russia’s war. "This is one of the most difficult moments in our history," Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation. "Currently, the pressure on Ukraine is one of the hardest. Ukraine may now face a very difficult choice, either losing its dignity or the risk of losing a key partner." He said Ukraine would "work calmly with America and all partners," as he vowed to work constructively. Zelenskyy spoke earlier by phone with the leaders of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, who assured him of their continued support, as European officials scrambled to respond to U.S. peace proposals that apparently caught them unaware. The U.S. plan contains many of Russian President Vladimir Putin's longstanding demands, including Ukrainian territorial concessions, while offering limited security guarantees to Ukraine. Wary of antagonizing U.S. President Donald Trump, the European and Ukrainian responses were cautiously worded and pointedly commended American peace efforts. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer assured Zelenskyy of "their unchanged and full support on the way to a lasting and just peace" in Ukraine, Merz's office said. The four leaders welcomed U.S. efforts to end the war. "In particular, they welcomed the commitment to the sovereignty of Ukraine and the readiness to grant Ukraine solid security guarantees," the statement added. "They agreed to continue pursuing the aim of protecting vital European and Ukrainian interests in the long term," the statement said. "That includes the line of contact being the point of departure for an agreement and that the Ukrainian armed forces must remain in a position to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine effectively." Starmer said the right of Ukraine to "determine its future under its sovereignty is a fundamental principle." European countries see their own futures at stake in Ukraine's fight against Russia's full-scale invasion and have insisted on being consulted in peace efforts. "Russia's war against Ukraine is an existential threat to Europe. We all want this war to end. But how it ends matters," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in Brussels. "Russia has no legal right whatsoever to any concessions from the country it invaded. Ultimately, the terms of any agreement are for Ukraine to decide." The plan foresees Ukraine handing over territory to Russia, something Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out, reduces the size of it army and blocks its route to NATO membership. Zelenskyy said the leaders discussed the plan and appreciated the efforts of Trump and his team, although he added that they are "working on the document." "We are closely coordinating to ensure that the principled positions are taken into account," Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post. The proposals come at a difficult time for Zelenskyy, who is grappling with a push on the battlefield by Russia's bigger army and a major domestic corruption scandal. A European government official said that the U.S. plans weren't officially presented to Ukraine's European backers. Many of the proposals are "quite concerning," the European government official said, adding that a bad deal for Ukraine would also be a threat to broader European security. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly. European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she also would call Zelenskyy to discuss the 28-point plan. "Important is a key principle we have always upheld, and that is nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine," she said at a G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. European Council President Antonio Costa in Johannesburg said of the U.S. proposals: "The European Union has not been communicated (about) any plans in (an) official manner." Ukrainian officials said they were weighing the U.S. proposals, and Zelenskyy said he expected to talk to Trump about it in coming days. "We are fully aware that America's strength and America's support can truly bring peace closer, and we do not want to lose that," Zelenskyy said on Telegram late Thursday. The Kremlin offered a reserved reaction, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that Moscow has not officially received the U.S. peace plan. "No, we haven't received anything officially. We're seeing some innovations. But officially, we haven't received anything. And there hasn't been a substantive discussion of these points," Peskov told reporters without elaborating further. He claimed U.S.-Russian diplomatic contacts are "ongoing," but "nothing substantive is currently being discussed." A U.S. team began drawing up the plan soon after U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Rustem Umerov, a top adviser to Zelenskyy, according to a senior Trump administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that Umerov agreed to most of the plan, after making several modifications, and then presented it to Zelenskyy. Umerov on Friday denied that version of events. He said he only organized meetings and prepared the talks. He said technical talks between the U.S. and Ukraine were continuing in Kyiv. Ukrainian officials are "carefully studying all the partners' proposals, expecting the same respectful attitude toward the Ukrainian position." "We are thoughtfully processing the partners' proposals within the framework of Ukraine's unchanging principles - sovereignty, people's security, and a just peace," he said. Meanwhile, a Russian glide bomb slammed into a residential district in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing five people, officials said Friday, as Moscow's forces continued to hammer civilian areas of Ukraine. The overnight attack also injured 10 people, including a teenage girl. The powerful glide bomb damaged some high-rise apartment blocks for the third time since the war began and also wrecked a local market, according to the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov. A Russian drone assault on the southern city of Odesa also struck a residential area during the night, injuring five people, including a 16-year-old boy. The attacks came two days after a Russian drone and missile barrage on Ukraine's western city of Ternopil killed 31 people, including six children, and injured 94 others, including 18 children. Emergency services say 13 people are still unaccounted for after the attack crushed the top floors of apartment blocks and started fires.

2 hours ago

Technology

Border Patrol monitoring drivers, detaining for 'suspicious' travel

By BYRON TAU and GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found. The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement. Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar. Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years. The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show. This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars. This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports. The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels. The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border. And it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. In one example, AP found the agency has placed at least four cameras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles from the Mexican frontier, beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles from a land or sea border. The AP also identified several camera locations in metropolitan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana border to capture traffic headed towards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby destinations. Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.” “For national security reasons, we do not detail the specific operational applications,” the agency said. While the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 miles of the border, it is legally allowed “to operate anywhere in the United States,” the agency added. While collecting license plates from cars on public roads has generally been upheld by courts, some legal scholars see the growth of large digital surveillance networks such as Border Patrol’s as raising constitutional questions. Courts have started to recognize that “large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches, said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University. Today, predictive surveillance is embedded into America’s roadways. Mass surveillance techniques are also used in a range of other countries, from authoritarian governments such as China to, increasingly, democracies in the U.K. and Europe in the name of national security and public safety. “They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.” ‘We did everything right and had nothing to hide’ In February, Lorenzo Gutierrez Lugo, a driver for a small trucking company that specializes in transporting furniture, clothing and other belongings to families in Mexico, was driving south to the border city of Brownsville, Texas, carrying packages from immigrant communities in South Carolina’s low country. Gutierrez Lugo was pulled over by a local police officer in Kingsville, a small Texas city near Corpus Christi that lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Mexican border. The officer, Richard Beltran, cited the truck’s speed of 50 mph in a 45 mph zone as the reason for the stop. But speeding was a pretext: Border Patrol had requested the stop and said the black Dodge pickup with a white trailer could contain contraband, according to police and court records. U.S. Route 77 passes through Kingsville, a route that state and federal authorities scrutinize for trafficking of drugs, money and people. Gutierrez Lugo, who through a lawyer declined to comment, was interrogated about the route he drove, based on license plate reader data, per the police report and court records. He consented to a search of his car by Beltran and Border Patrol agents, who eventually arrived to assist. They unearthed no contraband. But Beltran arrested Gutierrez Lugo on suspicion of money laundering and engaging in organized criminal activity because he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash — money his supervisor said came directly from customers in local Latino communities, who are accustomed to paying in cash. No criminal charges were ultimately brought against Gutierrez Lugo and an effort by prosecutors to seize the cash, vehicle and trailer as contraband was eventually dropped. Luis Barrios owns the trucking company, Paquetería El Guero, that employed the driver. He told AP he hires people with work authorization in the United States and was taken aback by the treatment of his employee and his trailer. “We did everything right and had nothing to hide, and that was ultimately what they found,” said Barrios, who estimates he spent $20,000 in legal fees to clear his driver’s name and get the trailer out of impound. Border Patrol agents and local police have many names for these kinds of stops: “whisper,” “intel” or “wall” stops. Those stops are meant to conceal — or wall off — that the true reason for the stop is a tip from federal agents sitting miles away, watching data feeds showing who’s traveling on America’s roads and predicting who is “suspicious,” according to documents and people interviewed by the AP. In 2022, a man from Houston had his car searched from top to bottom by Texas sheriff’s deputies outside San Antonio after they got a similar tipoff from Border Patrol agents about the driver, Alek Schott. Federal agents observed that Schott had made an overnight trip from Houston to Carrizo Springs, Texas, and back, court records show. They knew he stayed overnight in a hotel about 80 miles (129 kilometers) from the U.S.-Mexico border. They knew that in the morning Schott met a female colleague there before they drove together to a business meeting. At Border Patrol’s request, Schott was pulled over by Bexar County sheriff’s deputies. The deputies held Schott by the side of the road for more than an hour, searched his car and found nothing. “The beautiful thing about the Texas Traffic Code is there’s thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for,” said Joel Babb, the sheriff’s deputy who stopped Schott’s car, in a deposition in a lawsuit Schott filed alleging violations of his constitutional rights. According to testimony and documents released as part of Schott’s lawsuit, Babb was on a group chat with federal agents called Northwest Highway. Babb deleted the WhatsApp chat off his phone but Schott’s lawyers were able to recover some of the text messages. Through a public records act request, the AP also obtained more than 70 pages of the Northwest Highway group chats from June and July of this year from a Texas county that had at least one sheriff’s deputy active in the chat. The AP was able to associate numerous phone numbers in both sets of documents with Border Patrol agents and Texas law enforcement officials. The chat logs show Border Patrol agents and Texas sheriffs deputies trading tips about vehicles’ travel patterns — based on suspicions about little more than someone taking a quick trip to the border region and back. The chats show how thoroughly Texas highways are surveilled by this federal-local partnership and how much detailed information is informally shared. In one exchange a law enforcement official included a photo of someone’s driver’s license and told the group the person, who they identified using an abbreviation for someone in the country illegally, was headed westbound. “Need BP?,” responded a group member whose number was labeled “bp Intel.” “Yes sir,” the official answered, and a Border Patrol agent was en route. Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement shared information about U.S. citizens’ social media profiles and home addresses with each other after stopping them on the road. Chats show Border Patrol was also able to determine whether vehicles were rentals and whether drivers worked for rideshare services. In Schott’s case, Babb testified that federal agents “actually watch travel patterns on the highway” through license plate scans and other surveillance technologies. He added: “I just know that they have a lot of toys over there on the federal side.” After finding nothing in Schott’s car, Babb said “nine times out of 10, this is what happens,” a phrase Schott’s lawyers claimed in court filings shows the sheriff’s department finds nothing suspicious in most of its searches. Babb did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AP. The Bexar County sheriff’s office declined to comment due to pending litigation and referred all questions about the Schott case to the county’s district attorney. The district attorney did not respond to a request for comment. The case is pending in federal court in Texas. Schott said in an interview with the AP: “I didn’t know it was illegal to drive in Texas.” ‘Patterns of life’ and license plates Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt. Border Patrol’s parent agency got authorization to run a domestic license plate reader program in 2017, according to a Department of Homeland Security policy document. At the time, the agency said that it might use hidden license plate readers ”for a set period of time while CBP is conducting an investigation of an area of interest or smuggling route. Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” the document states. But that’s not how the program has operated in practice, according to interviews, police reports and court documents. License plate readers have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region. In a budget request to Congress in fiscal year 2024, CBP said that its Conveyance Monitoring and Predictive Recognition System, or CMPRS, “collects license plate images and matches the processed images against established hot lists to assist … in identifying travel patterns indicative of illegal border related activities.” Several new developer jobs have been posted seeking applicants to help modernize its license plate surveillance system in recent months. Numerous Border Patrol sectors now have special intelligence units that can analyze license plate reader data, and tie commercial license plate readers to its national network, according to documents and interviews. Border Patrol worked with other law enforcement agencies in Southern California about a decade ago to develop pattern recognition, said a former CBP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Over time, the agency learned to develop what it calls “patterns of life” of vehicle movements by sifting through the license plate data and determining “abnormal” routes, evaluating if drivers were purposely avoiding official checkpoints. Some cameras can take photos of a vehicle’s plates as well as its driver’s face, the official said. Another former Border Patrol official compared it to a more technologically sophisticated version of what agents used to do in the field — develop hunches based on experience about which vehicles or routes smugglers might use, find a legal basis for the stop like speeding and pull drivers over for questioning. The cameras take pictures of vehicle license plates. Then, the photos are “read” by the system, which automatically detects and distills the images into numbers and letters, tied to a geographic location, former CBP officials said. The AP could not determine how precisely the system’s algorithm defines a quick turnaround or an odd route. Over time, the agency has amassed databases replete with images of license plates, and the system’s algorithm can flag an unusual “pattern of life” for human inspection. The Border Patrol also has access to a nationwide network of plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, documents show, and was authorized in 2020 to access license plate reader systems sold by private companies. In documents obtained by the AP, a Border Patrol official boasted about being able to see that a vehicle that had traveled to “Dallas, Little Rock, Arkansas and Atlanta” before ending up south of San Antonio. Documents show that Border Patrol or CBP has in the past had access to data from at least three private sector vendors: Rekor, Vigilant Solutions and Flock Safety. Through Flock alone, Border Patrol for a time had access to at least 1,600 license plate readers across 22 states, and some counties have reported looking up license plates on behalf of CBP even in states like California and Illinois that ban sharing data with federal immigration authorities, according to an AP analysis of police disclosures. A Flock spokesperson told AP the company “for now” had paused its pilot programs with CBP and a separate DHS agency, Homeland Security Investigations, and declined to discuss the type or volume of data shared with either federal agency, other than to say agencies could search for vehicles wanted in conjunction with a crime. No agencies currently list Border Patrol as receiving Flock data. Vigilant and Rekor did not respond to requests for comment. Where Border Patrol places its cameras is a closely guarded secret. However, through public records requests, the AP obtained dozens of permits the agency filed with Arizona and Michigan for permission to place cameras on state-owned land. The permits show the agency frequently disguises its cameras by concealing them in traffic equipment like the yellow and orange barrels that dot American roadways, or by labeling them as jobsite equipment. An AP photographer in October visited the locations identified in more than two dozen permit applications in Arizona, finding that most of the Border Patrol’s hidden equipment remains in place today. Spokespeople for the Arizona and Michigan departments of transportation said they approve permits based on whether they follow state and federal rules and are not privy to details on how license plate readers are used. Texas, California, and other border states did not provide documents in response to the AP’s public records requests. CBP’s attorneys and personnel instructed local cities and counties in both Arizona and Texas to withhold records from the AP that might have revealed details about the program’s operations, even though they were requested under state open records laws, according to emails and legal briefs filed with state governments. For example, CBP claimed records requested by the AP in Texas “would permit private citizens to anticipate weaknesses in a police department, avoid detection, jeopardize officer safety, and generally undermine police efforts.” Michigan redacted the exact locations of Border Patrol equipment, but the AP was able to determine general locations from the name of the county. One page of the group chats obtained by the AP shows that a participant enabled WhatsApp’s disappearing messages feature to ensure communications were deleted automatically. Transformation of CBP into intelligence agency The Border Patrol’s license plate reader program is just one part of a steady transformation of its parent agency, CBP, in the years since 9/11 into an intelligence operation whose reach extends far beyond borders, according to interviews with former officials. CBP has quietly amassed access to far more information from ports of entry, airports and intelligence centers than other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. And like a domestic spy agency, CBP has mostly hidden its role in the dissemination of intelligence on purely domestic travel through its use of whisper stops. Border Patrol has also extended the reach of its license plate surveillance program by paying for local law enforcement to run plate readers on their behalf. A federal grant program called Operation Stonegarden, which has existed in some form for nearly two decades, has handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to buy automated license plate readers, camera-equipped drones and other surveillance gear for local police and sheriffs agencies. Stonegarden grant funds also pay for local law enforcement overtime, which deputizes local officers to work on Border Patrol enforcement priorities. Under President Donald Trump, the Republican-led Congress this year allocated $450 million for Stonegarden to be handed out over the next four fiscal years. In the previous four fiscal years, the program gave out $342 million. In Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels said Stonegarden grants, which have been used to buy plate readers and pay for overtime, have let his deputies merge their mission with Border Patrol’s to prioritize border security. “If we’re sharing our authorities, we can put some consequences behind, or deterrence behind, ‘Don’t come here,’” he said. In 2021, the Ward County, Texas, sheriff sought grant funding from DHS to buy a “covert, mobile, License Plate Reader” to pipe data to Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector Intelligence Unit. The sheriff’s department did not respond to a request for comment. Other documents AP obtained show that Border Patrol connects locally owned and operated license plate readers bought through Stonegarden grants to its computer systems, vastly increasing the federal agency’s surveillance network. How many people have been caught up in the Border Patrol’s dragnet is unknown. One former Border Patrol agent who worked on the license plate reader pattern detection program in California said the program had an 85% success rate of discovering contraband once he learned to identify patterns that looked suspicious. But another former official in a different Border Patrol sector said he was unaware of successful interdictions based solely on license plate patterns. In Trump’s second term, Border Patrol has extended its reach and power as border crossings have slowed to historic lows and freed up agents for operations in the heartland. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, for example, was tapped to direct hundreds of agents from multiple DHS agencies in the administration’s immigration sweeps across Los Angeles, more than 150 miles (241 kilometers) from his office in El Centro, California. Bovino later was elevated to lead the aggressive immigration crackdown in Chicago. Numerous Border Patrol officials have also been tapped to replace ICE leadership. The result has been more encounters between the agency and the general public than ever before. “We took Alek’s case because it was a clear-cut example of an unconstitutional traffic stop,” said Christie Hebert, who works at the nonprofit public interest law firm Institute for Justice and represents Schott. ”What we found was something much larger — a system of mass surveillance that threatens people’s freedom of movement.” AP found numerous other examples similar to what Schott and the delivery driver experienced in reviewing court records in border communities and along known smuggling routes in Texas and California. Several police reports and court records the AP examined cite “suspicious” travel patterns or vague tipoffs from the Border Patrol or other unnamed law enforcement agencies. In another federal court document filed in California, a Border Patrol agent acknowledged “conducting targeted analysis on vehicles exhibiting suspicious travel patterns” as the reason he singled out a Nissan Altima traveling near San Diego. In cases reviewed by the AP, local law enforcement sometimes tried to conceal the role the Border Patrol plays in passing along intelligence. Babb, the deputy who stopped Schott, testified he typically uses the phrase “subsequent to prior knowledge” when describing whisper stops in his police reports to acknowledge that the tip came from another law enforcement agency without revealing too much in written documents he writes memorializing motorist encounters. Once they pull over a vehicle deemed suspicious, officers often aggressively question drivers about their travels, their belongings, their jobs, how they know the passengers in the car, and much more, police records and bodyworn camera footage obtained by the AP show. One Texas officer demanded details from a man about where he met his current sexual partner. Often drivers, such as the one working for the South Carolina moving company, were arrested on suspicion of money laundering merely for carrying a few thousand dollars worth of cash, with no apparent connection to illegal activity. Prosecutors filed lawsuits to try to seize money or vehicles on the suspicion they were linked to trafficking. Schott warns that for every success story touted by Border Patrol, there are far more innocent people who don’t realize they’ve become ensnared in a technology-driven enforcement operation. “I assume for every one person like me, who’s actually standing up, there’s a thousand people who just don’t have the means or the time or, you know, they just leave frustrated and angry. They don’t have the ability to move forward and hold anyone accountable,” Schott said. “I think there’s thousands of people getting treated this way.” Tau reported from Washington, Laredo, San Antonio, Kingsville and Victoria, Texas. Burke reported from San Francisco. AP writers Aaron Kessler in Washington, Jim Vertuno in San Antonio, AP video producer Serginho Ro​​osblad in Bisbee, Arizona, and AP photographers Ross D. Franklin in Phoenix and David Goldman in Houston contributed reporting. Ismael M. Belkoura in Washington also contributed. Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

1 days ago

Health

CDC website is changed to raise suspicions of a vaccines-autism link

By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Medical Writer NEW YORK (AP) — A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to contradict the longtime scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism, spurring outrage among a number of public health and autism experts. The CDC “vaccine safety” webpage was updated Wednesday, saying “the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.” The change is the latest move by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to revisit — and foster uncertainty about — long-held scientific consensus about the safety of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products. It was immediately decried by scientists and advocates who have long been focused on finding the causes of autism. “We are appalled to find that the content on the CDC webpage ‘Autism and Vaccines’ has been changed and distorted, and is now filled with anti-vaccine rhetoric and outright lies about vaccines and autism,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement Thursday. Widespread scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link between vaccines and autism. “The conclusion is clear and unambiguous,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement Thursday. “We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations,” she said. The CDC has, until now, echoed the absence of a link in promoting Food and Drug Administration-licensed vaccines. But anti-vaccines activists — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who this year became secretary of Health and Human Services — have long claimed there is one. It’s unclear if anyone at CDC was actually involved in the change, or whether it was done by Kennedy’s HHS, which oversees the CDC. Many at CDC were surprised. “I spoke with several scientists at CDC yesterday and none were aware of this change in content,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who was part of a group of CDC top officials who resigned from the agency in August. “When scientists are cut out of scientific reviews, then inaccurate and ideologic information results.” The updated page does not cite any new research. It instead argues that past studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities. “HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links. Additionally, we are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science,” said HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon, in an email Thursday. A number of former CDC officials have said that what CDC posts about certain subjects — including vaccine safety — can no longer be trusted. Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who also resigned from the agency in August, told reporters Wednesday that Kennedy seems to be “going from evidence-based decision making to decision-based evidence making.” U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, earlier this year played a decisive role in approving Kennedy’s nomination for HHS secretary. Cassidy initially voiced misgivings about Kennedy, but in February said Kennedy had pledged — among other things — not to remove language from the CDC website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism. The new site continues to have a headline that says “Vaccines do not cause autism,” but HHS officials put an asterisk next to it. A note at the bottom of the page says the phrasing “has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.” Cassidy’s spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

1 days ago

Politics

Watch live: A bipartisan show of respect for Dick Cheney’s funeral

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington National Cathedral on Thursday hosted a bipartisan show of respect and remembrance for Dick Cheney, the consequential and polarizing vice president who in later years became an acidic scold of fellow Republican President Donald Trump. Trump, who has been publicly silent about Cheney’s death Nov. 3, was not invited to the 11 a.m. memorial service. Two ex-presidents came: Republican George W. Bush, who is to eulogize the man who served him as vice president, and Democrat Joe Biden, who once called Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history” but now honors his commitment to his family and to his values. Moments before the service began, figures of recent but now receded power mingled: Bush and Biden and their wives sitting in a row together, former Vice Presidents Kamala Harris and Mike Pence chatting side by side in their pew with Al Gore and Dan Quayle together behind them. Biden greeted Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Senate leader, and his wife, former labor and transportation secretary Elaine Chao. Behind them sat Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker. Daughter Liz Cheney, a former high-ranking House member whose Republican political career was shredded by Trump’s MAGA movement, will join Bush in addressing the gathering at the grand church known as “a spiritual home for the nation.” Others delivering tributes at Thursday’s funeral are Cheney’s longtime cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner; former NBC News correspondent Pete Williams, who was Cheney’s spokesman at the Pentagon; and the former vice president’s grandchildren. Hundreds of guests were expected. Trump’s vice president was not among them. JD Vance, on stage at another event in the morning, was asked about Cheney and said: “Obviously there’s some political disagreements there but he was a guy who served his country. We certainly wish his family all the best in this moment of grieving.” Cheney had lived with heart disease for decades and, after the Bush administration, with a heart transplant. He died at age 84 from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said. The White House lowered its flags to half-staff after Cheney’s death, as it said the law calls for, but Trump did not issue the presidential proclamation that often accompanies the death of notable figures, nor has he commented publicly on his passing. The deeply conservative Cheney’s influence in the Bush administration was legendary and, to his critics, tragic. He advocated for the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of what proved to be faulty intelligence and consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush credited him with helping to keep the country safe and stable in a perilous time. After the 2020 election won by Biden, Liz Cheney served as vice chair of the Democratic-led special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. She accused Trump of summoning the violent mob and plunging the nation into “a moment of maximum danger.” For that, she was stripped of her Republican leadership position and ultimately defeated in a 2022 Republican primary in Wyoming. In a campaign TV ad made for his daughter, Dick Cheney branded Trump a “coward” who “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.” Last year, it did not sit well with Trump when Cheney said he would vote for the Democrat, Harris, in the presidential election. Trump told Arab and Muslim voters that Cheney’s support for Harris should give them pause, because he “killed more Arabs than any human being on Earth. He pushed Bush, and they went into the Middle East.” Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

1 days ago

Technology

Starbucks union says 30 more US stores are joining week-old strike

By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press Business Writer Starbucks’ union is expanding its week-old strike against the company. Starbucks Workers United said baristas from 30 more stores in 25 U.S. cities planned to join the strike Thursday, including stores in Cleveland; Memphis, Tennessee; Springfield, Missouri, and Albany, New York. That brings the total number of stores with striking workers to 95 in 65 cities, the union said. The strike began last Thursday on Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, which is typically one of its busiest days of the year. Since 2018, Starbucks has given out free, reusable cups on that day to customers who buy a holiday drink. Starbucks said the strike has caused minimal disruption to its operations, and noted that this year’s Red Cup Day was the strongest in the company’s history in terms of sales and store traffic. Placer.ai, a location data company, said Starbucks’ foot traffic jumped 44.5% last Thursday compared to this year’s daily average. Starbucks said only 49 of the 65 stores that the union vowed to strike last week experienced any disruption, and 29 of those have reopened. Around 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned U.S. stores are unionized. Starbucks also has 7,000 licensed locations in places like airports. “As we’ve said, 99% of our 17,000 U.S. locations remain open and welcoming customers, including many the union publicly stated would strike but never closed or have since reopened,” Starbucks spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said. Striking workers are protesting a lack of progress in labor negotiations with the company. They say they are seeking better pay, improved staffing in stores and a resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges filed against the company. There is no date set for the strike to end, and more stores are prepared to join if Starbucks doesn’t reach a contract agreement with the union, organizers said. Starbucks said it is prepared to talk when the union is ready to return to the bargaining table. Negotiations between the two sides ended in April.

1 days ago

Technology

Nvidia earnings will shed a light on whether Big Tech is fueling an AI boom or bubble

Computer chipmaker Nvidia is poised to release a quarterly earnings report today that is expected to either deepen a recent downturn in the US stock market or prompt a sigh of relief among investors increasingly worried that the world's most valuable company is perched atop an artificial intelligence bubble that's about to burst. Nvidia's report, due after the US market closes at 8am AEST, has turned into a pulse check on an AI boom that began three years ago when OpenAI released ChatGPT. That breakthrough transformed Nvidia from a mostly under-the-radar chipmaker — best known for making graphics chips for video games — into an AI bellwether because its unique chipsets have become indispensable for powering the technology underlying the craze. READ MORE: Cyclone Fina set to make U-turn for NT as category 2 storm bringing destructive wind gusts As OpenAI and longtime "big tech" powerhouses — such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta Platforms — buy more and more of Nvidia's chips, its annual revenue has surged from $US27 billion ($41 billion) in 2022 to a projected $US208 billion this year. That rapid run-up has fuelled a 10-fold increase in Nvidia's market value, which now stands at $US4.5 trillion, surpassing Apple, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, currently valued in the $US3 trillion to $US4 trillion range. “Saying this is the most important stock in the world is an understatement,” Jay Woods, chief market strategist of investment bank Freedom Capital Markets. READ MORE: 'So surreal': Steph lost both parents to this disease a year apart. Survival rates have not changed in years As the meteoric rise in its market value suggests, Nvidia has made a habit of reassuring investors with quarterly reports peppered with numbers surpassing analyst projections and salted with bullish comments from chief executive Jensen Huang indicating the company remains in the early stages of a growth trajectory likely to last another decade despite challenges such as President Donald Trump's trade war. But in the past few weeks, more investors are starting to wonder if the AI craze has been overblown, even as big tech companies such as Alphabet increase their budgets for building more AI factories. That's why Nvidia's market value has fallen by more than 10 per cent — a reversal known as a correction in investors' parlance — just three weeks after it became the first company to be valued at $US5 trillion. READ MORE: eSafety Commissioner called on to testify to US Congress “Skepticism is the highest now than anytime over the last few years,” said Nancy Tengler, chief executive of money management Laffer Tengler Investments. Despite the recent worries, it's widely assumed that Nvidia's quarterly numbers will at least mirror the analyst forecasts that steer investor reactions. The Santa Clara, California, company is expected to earn $US1.26 per share on revenue of $US54.9 billion, which would be a 59 per cent increase from the same time last year. But the bar has been raised so high for Nvidia and AI that the company will likely have to deliver even more robust growth to ease the bubble worries. Investors also are likely to be parsing Huang's remarks about the past quarter and the current market conditions — an assessment that has become akin to the State of the Union for the AI boom. ALDI wins Canstar award for Australia's best supermarket meats

1 days ago

World

Appeals court pauses California law requiring companies to report climate-related financial risk

By SOPHIE AUSTIN SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday paused a California law set to take effect in January requiring large companies to report every two years on how climate change could hurt them financially. Another new law requiring major companies to annually disclose their carbon emissions can stay in place for now, the court ruled. The policies would be the most sweeping of their kind in the nation, and proponents say they would increase transparency and encourage companies to assess how they can cut their emissions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the 9th Circuit to pause the laws, which were set to take effect next year, arguing they violate the companies’ First Amendment rights. The group also asked the Supreme Court last week to weigh in. “We look forward to continuing our appeal and securing an injunction of both climate disclosure laws, which result in massive compliance costs for companies and their supply chains,” Chamber of Commerce lawyer Daryl Joseffer said of Tuesday’s ruling. “One state should not have the ability to impose this kind of burden on the entire country.” Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, which is drafting rules to implement the laws, said the agency was reviewing the ruling and could not comment further. The state has argued that the laws don’t violate the First Amendment because commercial speech isn’t protected the same way under the Constitution. The financial risk disclosure law, which Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2023, applies to companies making more than $500 million a year that do business in California. The Air Resources Board estimates more than 4,100 businesses will have to comply with the legislation. The emissions reporting law, which the state passed the same year, applies to businesses that make more than $1 billion a year and do business in the state — which covers roughly 2,600 companies, according to state air regulators. They will have to report planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels directly, as well as releases from activities such as delivering products from warehouses to stores and employee business travel. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule last year requiring some public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, but the agency paused the regulation amid litigation.

2 days ago

World

UN approves the Trump administration's plan for the future of Gaza

UNITED NATIONS — The Trump administration’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza won strong approval at the United Nations on Monday, a crucial step that provides international support for US efforts to move the devastated territory toward peace following two years of war.The US resolution that passed the UN Security Council authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority to be overseen by President Donald Trump and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.“This will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations, will lead to further Peace all over the World, and is a moment of true Historic proportion!” Trump posted on social media.The vote endorses Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan and builds on the momentum of the fragile ceasefire he helped broker with allies. It marks a key next step for American efforts to outline Gaza’s future after the Israel-Hamas war destroyed much of the territory and killed tens of thousands of people.The proposal calls for a yet-to-be-established Board of Peace as a transitional authority that Trump would head. It also provides a wide mandate for the international stabilization force, including overseeing the borders, providing security and demilitarizing the territory. Authorization for the board and force expire at the end of 2027.Arab and other Muslim countries that expressed interest in providing troops for an international force had signaled that UN authorization was essential for their participation.Russia, which had circulated a rival resolution, abstained along with China on the 13-0 vote after fears Moscow might use its veto in the Security Council.However, Hamas opposed the resolution, saying in a statement that it does not meet the “Palestinian people’s political and humanitarian demands and rights.”Stronger language on Palestinian state helps get the US plan over the finish lineUS Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said the resolution “represents another significant step towards a stable Gaza that will be able to prosper and an environment that will allow Israel to live in security.”It came about following nearly two weeks of negotiations, when Arab nations and the Palestinians pressed the United States to strengthen language about Palestinian self-determination.But the proposal still gives no timeline or guarantee for an independent state, only saying it’s possible after advances in the reconstruction of Gaza and reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which now governs parts of the West Bank.The US revised the resolution to say that after those steps, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”“The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence,” it adds.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes Palestinian statehood and repeated that position Sunday at a time when his hard-line governing partners have expressed concern about the resolution’s endorsement of a “pathway” to Palestinian independence.Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters before the vote that Israel was grateful to Trump “for leading peace to the Middle East.”Algeria’s UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council, thanked Trump for his instrumental role in bringing about the ceasefire, but said “genuine peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without justice, justice for the Palestinian people.”A key to the resolution’s adoption was support from Arab and other Muslim nations that had been critical to the ceasefire and potentially could contribute to the international force. The US mission to the United Nations distributed a joint statement Friday with Qatar, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey calling for “swift adoption” of the US proposal.Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow took note of that support but abstained because the resolution did not include a role for the Security Council or emphatically support Palestinian statehood.The vote shores up hopes that Gaza’s fragile ceasefire will be maintained following a war set off by Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people. Israel’s offensive has killed over 69,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority are women and children.What else the US proposal saysTrump said the members of the Board of Peace will be named in the coming weeks, along with 'many more exciting announcements.'The US resolution calls for the stabilization force to ensure “the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip” and “the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.”A big question has been how to disarm Hamas, which said Monday that giving the force a role inside Gaza that includes disarmament “strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”The resolution authorizes the force “to use all necessary measures to carry out its mandate” in compliance with international law, which is UN language for the use of military force.It says the stabilization troops will help secure border areas, along with a Palestinian police force that they have trained and vetted, and they will coordinate with other countries to secure the flow of humanitarian assistance. It says the force should closely consult and cooperate with neighboring Egypt and Israel.As the international force establishes control, the resolution says Israeli forces will withdraw from Gaza “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization.” These must be agreed to by the stabilization force, Israeli forces, the U.S. and the guarantors of the ceasefire, it says.

3 days ago

Politics

Former Bangladesh leader Hasina sentenced to death for crackdown on uprising that ousted her

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and one of her close aides were sentenced to death Monday over her crackdown on a student uprising last year that killed hundreds of people and led to the toppling of her 15-year rule.The International Crimes Tribunal based in Dhaka, the capital, passed sentence on Hasina and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan for their involvement in the use of deadly force against protesters.Hasina and Khan, who fled to India last year, were sentenced in absentia. India has so far declined to extradite them, making it unlikely that they would ever be executed or imprisoned.Hasina, who was convicted on five charges of crimes against humanity, was also sentenced to prison until natural death for making inflammatory remarks and ordering the extermination of student protesters through the use of helicopters, drones, and lethal weapons.A third suspect, a former police chief, was sentenced to five years in prison after becoming a state witness against Hasina and pleading guilty.More than 800 people were killed and about 14,000 were injured in the student-led uprising in July and August of 2024, according to the health adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government. However, the United Nations in February estimated as many as 1,400 people were killed.Hasina's responseHasina said the charges were unjustified, arguing that she and Khan “acted in good faith and were trying to minimize the loss of life.”“We lost control of the situation, but to characterize what happened as a premeditated assault on citizens is simply to misread the facts,” she said Monday in a statement denouncing a verdict she called “biased and politically motivated.'Her Awami League party called for a national shutdown on Tuesday to protest the verdict.Hasina, 78, cannot appeal the verdict unless she surrenders or is arrested within 30 days of the judgment.Bangladesh is still grappling with instability after Hasina was ousted on Aug. 5, 2024. Political bickering, the rise of Islamists, and violations of human and political rights have overshadowed aspirations for a more democratic Bangladesh, human rights groups say.Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as the head of an interim government three days after her fall. He has vowed to punish Hasina and banned the activities of the Awami League ahead of elections set for February.A three-member tribunal, headed by Justice Golam Mortuza Mozumder, announced the ruling in a live broadcast that lasted for several hours.Some of those in the packed courtroom cheered when Mazumder said Hasina was sentenced to death. He admonished them, telling them to express their feelings outside the courtroom.Families of some of those killed or injured during the uprising waited for hours outside.Exile in IndiaIn a media statement Monday, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs urged India to send both Hasina and Khan back soon, something New Delhi has so far refused to do.Separately, Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry in a statement said it would be extremely unfriendly and demeaning to justice for any other country to grant asylum to these individuals convicted of crimes against humanity.“We urge the Indian government to immediately hand over these two convicts to the Bangladeshi authorities. It is also a legal obligation for India as per the existing extradition treaty between the two countries,' it said.India’s foreign ministry in a statement acknowledged the verdict but did not say whether it would hand the pair over to Dhaka.“As a close neighbor, India remains committed to the best interests of people of Bangladesh, including in peace, democracy, inclusion and stability in that country. We will always engage constructively with all stakeholders to that end,” it said.India's failure to extradite the pair has created some tensions between the neighboring nations.Yunus and Hasina’s archrival hail the verdictIn a statement, Yunus said the verdict offered justice to the thousands who were harmed in the uprising: “No one, regardless of power, is above the law.'Ordering the use of lethal force against young people and children, whose only weapons were their voices, violated laws and the basic bond between government and citizens, Yunus added.The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, headed by Hasina’s archrival, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, hailed the verdict.BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said in a Facebook post that it wasn’t just a judgment on Sheikh Hasina’s crimes, but a “burial of all forms of dictatorship on this country’s soil.”Arson and bomb attacksNearly 50 arson attacks, mostly targeting vehicles, and dozens of crude bombs explosions were reported nationwide over the past week. Two people were killed in the arson attacks, local media reported.Authorities at the Supreme Court, in a letter to army headquarters on Sunday, requested the deployment of soldiers around the tribunal premises ahead of the ruling. Paramilitary border guards and police were deployed in Dhaka and many other parts of the country.Even as judges were still reading out the verdict, police elsewhere in Dhaka charged with batons and used stun grenades to disperse crowds.Her son Sajeeb Wazed, currently in the United States, said in a message to The Associated Press that the “verdict is a joke and meaningless. My mother is safe in India. The trials were so legally flawed they won’t survive any challenge once rule of law returns to Bangladesh.”A few kilometers away from the tribunal, Hasina’s opponents gathered outside the home of her father, Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, that is now a museum. They brought two excavators to finish the demolition of the building, which was looted and damaged during earlier protests.By the time evening fell, more than 300 people were still there and burned tires on the streets in Dhanmondi neighborhood while police and soldiers failed to convince them to leave the area.The uprising began with weeks of student-led protests voicing discontent over a quota system for allocating government jobs that critics said favored those with connections to Hasina’s party.Hundreds of people were killed as security forces cracked down on the demonstrations — violence that only fueled them, even after the quota system was dramatically scaled back.

3 days ago

Business

Future data centers are driving up forecasts for energy demand. States want proof they’ll get built

By MARC LEVY HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The forecasts are eye-popping: utilities saying they’ll need two or three times more electricity within a few years to power massive new data centers that are feeding a fast-growing AI economy. But the challenges — some say the impossibility — of building new power plants to meet that demand so quickly has set off alarm bells for lawmakers, policymakers and regulators who wonder if those utility forecasts can be trusted. One burning question is whether the forecasts are based on data center projects that may never get built — eliciting concern that regular ratepayers could be stuck with the bill to build unnecessary power plants and grid infrastructure at a cost of billions of dollars. The scrutiny comes as analysts warn of the risk of an artificial intelligence investment bubble that’s ballooned tech stock prices and could burst. Meanwhile, consumer advocates are finding that ratepayers in some areas — such as the mid-Atlantic electricity grid, which encompasses all or parts of 13 states stretching from New Jersey to Illinois, as well as Washington, D.C. — are already underwriting the cost to supply power to data centers, some of them built, some not. “There’s speculation in there,” said Joe Bowring, who heads Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog in the mid-Atlantic grid territory. “Nobody really knows. Nobody has been looking carefully enough at the forecast to know what’s speculative, what’s double-counting, what’s real, what’s not.” Suspicions about skyrocketing demand There is no standard practice across grids or for utilities to vet such massive projects, and figuring out a solution has become a hot topic, utilities and grid operators say. Uncertainty around forecasts is typically traced to a couple of things. One concerns developers seeking a grid connection, but whose plans aren’t set in stone or lack the heft — clients, financing or otherwise — to bring the project to completion, industry and regulatory officials say. Another is data center developers submitting grid connection requests in various separate utility territories, PJM Interconnection, which operates the mid-Atlantic grid, and Texas lawmakers have found. Often, developers, for competitive reasons, won’t tell utilities if or where they’ve submitted other requests for electricity, PJM said. That means a single project could inflate the energy forecasts of multiple utilities. The effort to improve forecasts got a high-profile boost in September, when a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member asked the nation’s grid operators for information on how they determine that a project is not only viable, but will use the electricity it says it needs. “Better data, better decision-making, better and faster decisions mean we can get all these projects, all this infrastructure built,” the commissioner, David Rosner, said in an interview. The Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of for-profit electric utilities, said it welcomed efforts to improve demand forecasting. Real, speculative, or ‘somewhere in between’ The Data Center Coalition, which represents tech giants like Google and Meta and data center developers, has urged regulators to request more information from utilities on their forecasts and to develop a set of best practices to determine the commercial viability of a data center project. The coalition’s vice president of energy, Aaron Tinjum, said improving the accuracy and transparency of forecasts is a “fundamental first step of really meeting this moment” of energy growth. “Wherever we go, the question is, ‘Is the (energy) growth real? How can we be so sure?’” Tinjum said. “And we really view commercial readiness verification as one of those important kind of low-hanging opportunities for us to be adopting at this moment.” Igal Feibush, the CEO of Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, a data center developer, said utilities are in a “fire drill” as they try to vet a deluge of data center projects all seeking electricity. The vast majority, he said, will fall off because many project backers are new to the concept and don’t know what it takes to get a data center built. States also are trying to do more to find out what’s in utility forecasts and weed out speculative or duplicative projects. In Texas, which is attracting large data center projects, lawmakers still haunted by a blackout during a deadly 2021 winter storm were shocked when told in 2024 by the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, that its peak demand could nearly double by 2030. They found that state utility regulators lacked the tools to determine whether that was realistic. Texas state Sen. Phil King told a hearing earlier this year that the grid operator, utility regulators and utilities weren’t sure if the power requests “are real or just speculative or somewhere in between.” Lawmakers passed legislation sponsored by King, now law, that requires data center developers to disclose whether they have requests for electricity elsewhere in Texas and to set standards for developers to show that they have a substantial financial commitment to a site. Electricity bills are rising, too PPL Electric Utilities, which delivers power to 1.5 million customers across central and eastern Pennsylvania, projects that data centers will more than triple its peak electricity demand by 2030. Vincent Sorgi, president and CEO of PPL Corp., told analysts on an earnings call this month that the data center projects “are real, they are coming fast and furious” and that the “near-term risk of overbuilding generation simply does not exist.” The data center projects counted in the forecast are backed by contracts with financial commitments often reaching tens of millions of dollars, PPL said. Still, PPL’s projections helped spur a state lawmaker, Rep. Danilo Burgos, to introduce a bill to bolster the authority of state utility regulators to inspect how utilities assemble their energy demand forecasts. Ratepayers in Burgos’ Philadelphia district just absorbed an increase in their electricity bills — attributed by the utility, PECO, to the rising cost of wholesale electricity in the mid-Atlantic grid driven primarily by data center demand. That’s why ratepayers need more protection to ensure they are benefiting from the higher cost, Burgos said. “Once they make their buck, whatever company,” Burgos said, “you don’t see no empathy towards the ratepayers.” Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter.

3 days ago

Politics

UN is set to vote on the US plan for next steps in Gaza

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council on Monday approved a U.S. plan for Gaza that authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security in the devastated territory and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state. Russia, which had circulated a rival resolution, abstained along with China on the 13-0 vote. The U.S. and other countries had hoped Moscow would not use its veto power on the United Nations’ most powerful body to block the resolution’s adoption. The vote was a crucial next step for the fragile ceasefire and efforts to outline Gaza’s future following two years of war between Israel and Hamas. Arab and other Muslim countries that expressed interest in providing troops for an international force had signaled that Security Council authorization was essential for their participation. The U.S. resolution endorses President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, which calls for a yet-to-be-established Board of Peace as a transitional authority that Trump would head. It also authorizes the stabilization force and gives it a wide mandate, including overseeing the borders, providing security and demilitarizing the territory. Authorization for the board and force expire at the end of 2027. U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz called the resolution “historic and constructive,” saying it starts a new course in the Middle East. “Today’s resolution represents another significant step towards a stable Gaza that will be able to prosper and an environment that will allow Israel to live in security,” he said. He stressed that the resolution “is just the beginning.” Stronger language on Palestinian state helps get the US plan over the finish line During nearly two weeks of negotiations on the U.S. resolution, Arab nations and the Palestinians had pressed the United States to strengthen language about Palestinian self-determination. But the proposal still gives no timeline or guarantee for an independent state, only saying it’s possible after advances in the reconstruction of Gaza and reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which now governs parts of the West Bank. The U.S. revised the resolution to say that after those steps, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” “The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence,” it adds. That language angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had vowed to oppose any attempt to establish a Palestinian state. He has long asserted that creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas and eventually lead to an even larger Hamas-run state on Israel’s borders. A key to the resolution’s adoption was support from Arab and Muslim nations pushing for a ceasefire and potentially contributing to the international force. The U.S. mission to the United Nations distributed a joint statement Friday with Qatar, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey calling for “swift adoption” of the U.S. proposal. Russia had floated its own plan The vote took place amid hopes that Gaza’s fragile ceasefire would be maintained after a war set off by Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people. Israel’s more than two-year offensive has killed over 69,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority are women and children. Russia last week suddenly circulated a rival proposal with stronger language supporting a Palestinian state alongside Israel and stressed that the West Bank and Gaza must be joined as a state under the Palestinian Authority. It also stripped out references to the transitional board and asked U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide options for an international force to provide security in Gaza and for implementing the ceasefire plan, stressing the importance of a Security Council role. What else the US proposal says The U.S. resolution calls for the stabilization force to ensure “the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip” and “the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.” A big question is how to disarm Hamas, which has not fully accepted that step. It authorizes the force “to use all necessary measures to carry out its mandate” in compliance with international law, which is U.N. language for the use of military force. The resolution says the stabilization troops will help secure border areas, along with a Palestinian police force that they have trained and vetted, and they will coordinate with other countries to secure the flow of humanitarian assistance. It says the force should closely consult and cooperate with neighboring Egypt and Israel. As the international force establishes control and brings stability, the resolution says Israeli forces will withdraw from Gaza “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization.” These must be agreed to by the stabilization force, Israeli forces, the U.S. and the guarantors of the ceasefire, it says.

3 days ago

World

Iran’s foreign minister says his nation is no longer enriching uranium

Asked what it would take for Iran to continue negotiations with the U.S. and others, Araghchi said that Iran’s message on its nuclear program remains “clear.” “Iran’s right for enrichment, for peaceful use of nuclear technology, including enrichment, is undeniable,” the foreign minister continued. “We have this right and we continue to exercise that and we hope that the international community, including the United States, recognize our rights and understand that this is an inalienable right of Iran and we would never give up our rights.” Iran’s government issued a three-day visa for the AP reporter to attend a summit alongside other journalists from major British outlets and other media. Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, also attended the summit and told those gathered there that Tehran had been threatened over potentially accessing the bombed enrichment sites. Satellite pictures analyzed by the AP over the months since the attack show that Iran hasn’t done any major work at the sites at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz. “Our security situation hasn’t yet changed. If you watch the news, you see that every day we are being threatened with another attack,” Eslami said. “Every day we are told if you touch anything you’ll be attacked.” Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels — after U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Tehran long has maintained its atomic program is peaceful, though the West and the IAEA say Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003. European nations also pushed through a measure to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran over the nuclear program in September. The IAEA’s Board of Governors is set to meet this week, during which there could be a vote on a new resolution targeting Iran over its failure to cooperate fully with the agency. But Araghchi left open the possibility of further negotiations with the U.S. should Washington’s demands change. He told journalists at the summit that the U.S. administration’s approach does not suggest they are ready for “equal, fair negotiations to reach mutual interests.”

5 days ago

Politics

Trump’s Republican Party insists there’s no affordability crisis and dismisses election losses

By STEVE PEOPLES NEW YORK (AP) — Almost two weeks after Republicans lost badly in elections in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia, many GOP leaders insist there is no problem with the party’s policies, its message or President Donald Trump’s leadership. Trump says Democrats and the media are misleading voters who are concerned about high costs and the economy. Republican officials aiming to avoid another defeat in next fall’s midterms are encouraging candidates to embrace the president fully and talk more about his accomplishments. Those are the major takeaways from a series of private conversations, briefings and official talking points involving major Republican decision-makers across Washington, including inside the White House, after their party’s losses Nov. 4. Their assessment highlights the extent to which the fate of the Republican Party is tied to Trump, a term-limited president who insists the economy under his watch has never been stronger. That’s even as an increasing number of voters report a different reality in their lives. But with few exceptions, the Trump lieutenants who lead the GOP’s political strategy have no desire to challenge his wishes or beliefs. “Republicans are entering next year more unified behind President Trump than ever before,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Kiersten Pels said. “The party is fully aligned behind his America First agenda and the results he’s delivering for the American people. President Trump’s policies are popular, he drives turnout, and standing with him is the strongest path to victory.” Trump’s approval is similar to former Presidents Barack Obama, a Democrat, and George W. Bush, a Republican, at the same point in their terms, however. Their parties had major losses in midterm elections. Trump insists there is no affordability problem Since the election, the White House has quietly decided to shift its message to focus more on affordability. Much of the first year of Trump’s second term has been dominated by his trade wars, his crackdown on illegal immigration, his decision to send National Guard troops into American cities and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Trump has talked more about affordability in the days since Election Day. On Friday, he slashed tariffs on beef and other commodities that consumers say cost too much. But Trump’s primary message is that the economy is better and consumer prices lower than as reported by the media. It’s much the same message that Democratic President Joe Biden and his allies spent years pushing, with little success. In a social media post Friday, Trump said costs are “tumbling down.” “Affordability is a lie when used by the Dems. It is a complete CON JOB,” Trump wrote. “Thanksgiving costs are 25% lower this year than last, under Crooked Joe! We are the Party of Affordability!” A few days earlier, on Fox News, he asserted, “We have the greatest economy in history.” Trump’s numbers about the cost of Thanksgiving dinners are off. Grocery prices are 2.7% higher than they were in 2024. Economic worries were the dominant concern for voters in this month’s elections, according to the AP Voter Poll. Republican strategist Doug Heye said Trump’s approach is not necessarily helpful for the Republican Party or its candidates, who already face a difficult political environment in 2026 when voters will decide the balance of power in Congress. Historically, the party occupying the White House has significant losses in nonpresidential elections. “Republicans need to relay to voters that they understand what they’re going through and that they’re trying to fix it,” Heye said. “That can be hard to do when the president takes a nonmetaphorical wrecking ball to portions of the White House, which distract so much of Washington and the media.” “Candidates cannot afford to be distracted,” Heye added. “As we saw in the recent elections, especially in Virginia, if you’re not talking about what voters are talking about, they will tune you out.” A view from a key governor’s race The reality outside Washington suggests that not every Republican candidate shares Trump’s outlook. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a House Republican leader who began a campaign for governor last week, said there is no question about the top issue for her constituents: affordability. She also played down her party’s focus on conservative cultural priorities, including transgender athletes, which was a top Republican focus in the recent Virginia governor’s race. “Certainly I support women and girls sports and protecting them, but as you see in all of our messaging, we’re focused on the top issues, which every conversation with voters is about the high taxes and spending, the unaffordability,” Stefanik told The Associated Press. She offered a nuanced perspective on Trump’s leadership, unwilling to criticize any of his major policies or governing decisions, but also unwilling to say her party is fully unified behind him. “My sense is our party is fully united behind firing Kathy Hochul,” Stefanik said of New York’s Democratic governor, when asked about her party’s support for Trump. “I am laser focused on delivering for New Yorkers and putting New Yorkers first.” While Stefanik said it is important for the governor to have “an effective working relationship” with Trump, she declined to say whether she would support a hypothetical Trump move to send the National Guard to New York City, as he has threatened. “It wouldn’t need to happen if there was a Republican governor,” she said. Stefanik’s comments reflect the challenge ahead for Republican candidates running in a challenging political terrain. Defiant talking points The Republican National Committee, which serves as the political arm of Trump’s White House, issued a series of talking points that shrug off the recent election losses as a byproduct of Democratic voter advantage in the states where the top races played out. The talking points, obtained by The Associated Press, ignore Republican losses in Georgia and Pennsylvania. They also overstate Trump’s political strength, claiming that he is more popular than Obama and Bush were at the same time in their tenures. The claim has been echoed across conservative media in recent days. An AP polling analysis finds that Trump’s approval is not higher than Obama’s or of Bush at a similar point in their second terms. Trump’s approval, at 36% in a November poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research is slightly higher than it was at this point in his first term. But both Obama and Bush has approval ratings were in the low 40s at this point in their second terms, according to Gallup polling, which is similar to where Trump landed in Gallup’s latest approval poll in October. For Obama and Bush, their parties had big losses in the midterm elections that followed. The Republican messaging crafted by Trump’s team, however, doubles down on supporting the president and his policies. The recent elections “were not a referendum on President Trump, Republicans in Congress, or the MAGA Agenda,” the RNC talking points state. To win in 2026, “Make America Great Again” voters “will need to show up at the ballot box; President Trump and Republicans are going to make that happen.” Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

5 days ago

Politics

Immigration crackdown inspires uniquely Chicago pushback that’s now a model for other cities

By SOPHIA TAREEN and CHRISTINE FERNANDO CHICAGO (AP) — Baltazar Enriquez starts most mornings with street patrols, leaving his home in Chicago’s Little Village on foot or by car to find immigration agents that have repeatedly targeted his largely Mexican neighborhood. Wearing an orange whistle around his neck, the activist broadcasts his plans on Facebook. “We don’t know if they’re going to come back. All we know is we’ve got to get ready,” he tells thousands of followers. “Give us any tips if you see any suspicious cars.” Moments later, his phone buzzes. As an unprecedented immigration crackdown enters a third month, a growing number of Chicago residents are fighting back against what they deem a racist and aggressive overreach of the federal government. The Democratic stronghold’s response has tapped established activists and everyday residents from wealthy suburbs to working class neighborhoods. They say their efforts — community patrols, rapid responders, school escorts, vendor buyouts, honking horns and blowing whistles — are a uniquely Chicago response that other cities President Donald Trump has targeted for federal intervention want to model. “The strategy here is to make us afraid. The response from Chicago is a bunch of obscenities and ‘no,’” said Anna Zolkowski Sobor, whose North Side neighborhood saw agents throw tear gas and tackle an elderly man. “We are all Chicagoans who deserve to be here. Leave us alone.” The sound of resistance Perhaps the clearest indicator of Chicago’s growing resistance is the sound of whistles. Enriquez is credited with being among the first to introduce the concept. For months Little Village residents have used them to broadcast the persistent presence of immigration agents. Furious blasts both warn and attract observers who record video or criticize agents. Arrests, often referred to as kidnappings because many agents cover their faces, draw increasingly agitated crowds. Immigration agents have responded aggressively. Officers fatally shot one man during a traffic stop, while other agents use tear gas, rubber bullets and physical force. In early November, Chicago police were called to investigate shots fired at agents. No one was injured. Activists say they discourage violence. “We don’t have guns. All we have is a whistle,” Enriquez said. “That has become a method that has saved people from being kidnapped and unlawful arrest.” By October, neighborhoods citywide were hosting so-called “Whistlemania” events to pack the brightly colored devices for distribution through businesses and free book hutches. “They want that orange whistle,” said Gabe Gonzalez, an activist. “They want to nod to each other in the street and know they are part of this movement.” Midwestern sensibilities and organizing roots Even with its 2.7 million people, Chicago residents like to say the nation’s third-largest city operates as a collection of small towns with Midwest sensibilities. People generally know their neighbors and offer help. Word spreads quickly. When immigration agents began targeting food vendors, Rick Rosales, enlisted his bicycle advocacy group Cycling x Solidarity. He hosted rides to visit street vendors, buying out their inventory to lower their risk while supporting their business. Irais Sosa, co-founder of the apparel store Sin Titulo, started a neighbor program with grocery runs and rideshare gift cards for families afraid of venturing out. “That neighborhood feel and support is part of the core of Chicago,” she said. Enriquez’s organization, Little Village Community Council, saw its volunteer walking group which escorts children to school, grow from 13 to 32 students. Many also credit the grassroots nature of the resistance to Chicago’s long history of community and union organizing. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said Chicago area residents were so familiar with their rights that making arrests during a different operation this year was difficult. So when hundreds of federal agents arrived in September, activists poured energy into an emergency hotline that dispatches response teams to gather intel, including names of those detained. Volunteers would also circulate videos online, warn of reoccurring license plates or follow agents’ cars while honking horns. Protests have also cropped up quickly. Recently, high school students have launched walkouts. Delilah Hernandez, 16, was among dozens from Farragut Career Academy who protested on a school day.She held a sign with the Constitution’s preamble as she walked in Little Village. She knows many people with detained relatives. “There is so much going on,” she said. “You feel it.” A difficult environment More than 3,200 people suspected of violating immigration laws have been arrested during the so-called “ Operation Midway Blitz.” Dozens of U.S. citizens and protesters have been arrested with charges ranging from resisting arrest to conspiring to impede an officer. The Department of Homeland Security defends the operation, alleging officers face hostile crowds as they pursue violent criminals. Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who’s brought controversial tactics from operations in Los Angeles, called Chicago a “very non permissive environment.” He blamed sanctuary protections and elected leaders and defended agents’ actions, which are the subject of lawsuits. But the operation’s intensity could subside soon. Bovino told The Associated Press this month that U.S. Customs and Border Protection will target other cities. He didn’t elaborate, but Homeland Security officials confirmed Saturday that an immigration enforcement surge had begun in Charlotte, North Carolina. DHS, which oversees CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has said operations won’t end in Chicago. Interest nationwide Alonso Zaragoza, with a neighborhood organization in the heavily immigrant Belmont Cragin, has printed hundreds of “No ICE” posters for businesses. Organizers in Oregon and Missouri have asked for advice. “It’s become a model for other cities,” Zaragoza said. “We’re building leaders in our community who are teaching others.” The turnout for virtual know-your-rights trainings offered by the pro-democracy group, States at the Core, doubled from 500 to 1,000 over a recent month, drawing participants from New Jersey and Tennessee. “We train and we let go, and the people of Chicago are the ones who run with it,” said organizer Jill Garvey. Awaiting the aftermath Enriquez completes up to three patrol shifts daily. Beyond the physical exertion, the work takes a toll. Federal agents visited his home and questioned family members. A U.S. citizen relative was handcuffed by agents. His car horn no longer works, which he attributes to overuse. “This has been very traumatizing,” he said. “It is very scary because you will remember this for the rest of your life.”

5 days ago

Sports

Devils leading scorer Jack Hughes out two months after finger surgery

WASHINGTON — New Jersey Devils leading scorer Jack Hughes is expected to be out two months after undergoing surgery to repair a finger injury. The team announced Saturday that Hughes had the operation at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Hughes’ expected return-to-play timeline is eight weeks, and he’ll be reevaluated at the six-week mark. It was not clear which finger or which hand Hughes had surgery on. Hughes injured his hand Thursday night and did not travel with the Devils to Washington, where they are set to face the Capitals on Saturday night. In a statement, they called it a non-hockey-related injury. The 24-year-old center is one of the biggest reasons for the Devils’ strong start to the season. He has 10 goals and 10 assists for 20 points to put them atop the Eastern Conference. Hughes missed the final six weeks of last season and the playoffs after crashing right shoulder-first into the boards. He underwent surgery not long after. His long-term absence puts Hughes’ status for the U.S. Olympic team in doubt, as he is not expected to play before the Dec. 31 roster deadline. Hughes has been considered nearly a lock to make it and could be on the initial roster and replaced if needed.

5 days ago

Technology

Anthropic warns of first reported AI-driven hacking campaign linked to China

A team of researchers has uncovered what they say is the first reported use of artificial intelligence to direct a hacking campaign in a largely automated fashion. The AI company Anthropic said this week that it disrupted a cyber operation that its researchers linked to the Chinese government. The operation involved the use of an artificial intelligence system to direct the hacking campaigns, which researchers called a disturbing development that could greatly expand the reach of AI-equipped hackers. While concerns about the use of AI to drive cyber operations are not new, what is concerning about the new operation is the degree to which AI was able to automate some of the work, the researchers said. “While we predicted these capabilities would continue to evolve, what has stood out to us is how quickly they have done so at scale,” they wrote in their report. The operation targeted tech companies, financial institutions, chemical companies and government agencies. The researchers wrote that the hackers attacked “roughly 30 global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases”. Anthropic detected the operation in September and took steps to shut it down and notify the affected parties. Anthropic noted that while AI systems are increasingly being used in a variety of settings for work and leisure, they can also be weaponised by hacking groups working for foreign adversaries. Anthropic, maker of the generative AI chatbot Claude, is one of many tech companies pitching AI “agents” that go beyond a chatbot’s capability to access computer tools and take actions on a person’s behalf. “Agents are valuable for everyday work and productivity – but in the wrong hands, they can substantially increase the viability of large-scale cyberattacks,” the researchers concluded. “These attacks are likely to only grow in their effectiveness.” A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the report. Microsoft warned earlier this year that foreign adversaries were increasingly embracing AI to make their cyber campaigns more efficient and less labour-intensive. The head of OpenAI’s safety panel, which has the authority to halt the ChatGPT maker’s AI development, recently said he was watching out for new AI systems that give malicious hackers “much higher capabilities.” America’s adversaries, as well as criminal gangs and hacking companies, have exploited AI’s potential, using it to automate and improve cyberattacks, to spread inflammatory disinformation and to penetrate sensitive systems. AI can translate poorly worded phishing emails into fluent English, for example, as well as generate digital clones of senior government officials. Anthropic said the hackers were able to manipulate Claude, using “jailbreaking” techniques that involve tricking an AI system to bypass its guard rails against harmful behaviour, in this case by claiming they were employees of a legitimate cybersecurity firm. “This points to a big challenge with AI models, and it’s not limited to Claude, which is that the models have to be able to distinguish between what’s actually going on with the ethics of a situation and the kinds of role-play scenarios that hackers and others may want to cook up,” said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at Citizen Lab. The use of AI to automate or direct cyberattacks will also appeal to smaller hacking groups and lone wolf hackers, who could use AI to expand the scale of their attacks, according to Adam Arellano, field CTO at Harness, a tech company that uses AI to help customers automate software development. “The speed and automation provided by the AI is what is a bit scary,” Arellano said. “Instead of a human with well-honed skills attempting to hack into hardened systems, the AI is speeding those processes and more consistently getting past obstacles.” AI programmes will also play an increasingly important role in defending against these kinds of attacks, Arellano said, showing how AI and the automation it allows will benefit both sides. Reaction to Anthropic’s disclosure was mixed, with some seeing it as a marketing ploy for Anthropic’s approach to defending cybersecurity and others who welcomed its wake-up call. “This is going to destroy us – sooner than we think – if we don’t make AI regulation a national priority tomorrow,” wrote US Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, on social media. That led to criticism from Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, an advocate of the Facebook parent company’s open-source AI systems that, unlike Anthropic’s, make their key components publicly accessible in a way that some AI safety advocates deem too risky. “You’re being played by people who want regulatory capture,” LeCun wrote in a reply to Murphy. “They are scaring everyone with dubious studies so that open source models are regulated out of existence.”

6 days ago

World

Zanzibar’s ‘solar mamas’ are trained as technicians to help light up communities

By JACK DENTON ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (AP) — When darkness came, so did the smoke. Hamna Silima Nyange, like half of the 2 million people in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, did not have a house connected to the electricity grid. After sunset, she would turn to smoky oil lamps that provided the only light for her eight children to study. ”The light was too weak,” Nyange said. “And the smoke from the lamp hurt my eyes.” Then one day a neighbor, Tatu Omary Hamad, installed solar panels and bulbs that lit her home with help from the strong sunlight along the Indian Ocean coast. “Today we have enough light,” Nyange said. Training women to be solar technicians Hamad is one of dozens of “solar mamas” trained in Zanzibar by Barefoot College International, a global nonprofit, through a program that brings light to rural communities and provides jobs for local women. So far in Zanzibar, it has lit 1,845 homes. The program selects middle-aged women, most with little or no formal education, from villages without electricity and trains them over six months to become solar power technicians. It is one of a small number of programs in Africa including Solar Sister. The women return to their communities with at least 50 sets of household solar panel kits as well as the skills and equipment to set them up and keep them running. Barefoot College International focuses on middle-aged women because they tend to have the strongest links to their communities while not often involved in intensive child care. “We want to train women who become change makers,” said Brenda Geofrey, the director of Barefoot College International Zanzibar. The Zanzibar campus is in its 10th year of teaching local women. Before that, it sent women for training in India, where Barefoot College International was founded. One was Khazija Gharib Issa, who had been an unemployed widow. Now she is a master trainer. “I got a job. I got a place to stay. Before, I didn’t have one,” Issa said. The importance of health Improving health is at the heart of the program’s mission. Alongside its flagship solar power course, Barefoot College International offers programs for women in tailoring, beekeeping and sustainable agriculture. Every woman who completes a program is trained in general health knowledge that they are expected to take back to their villages. The “solar mamas” are health catalysts in another way, by replacing harmful light sources like kerosene. “Using kerosene has many problems,” said Jacob Dianga, a health care worker at a local clinic who is familiar with the group’s work. The fuel can irritate the eyes, while inhaling its smoke can cause long-term lung damage. It’s also a fire hazard in cramped homes and shops, and can poison children who mistake it for a drink. “Clean energy is very important,” Dianga said. “It helps protect our health.” Challenges remain Barefoot College International has scaled up across Africa, with other campuses in Madagascar and Senegal. In recent years, women have been brought to Zanzibar from Malawi and Somaliland, and this year some are being recruited from Central African Republic. Funding remains a challenge as major donors, notably the United States and European ones, cut foreign aid and projects face more competition for money that remains. Barefoot College International is run with public and private donations and revenue generated by its social enterprises. Another challenge is resistance in local communities, where some people find it hard to accept the women technicians in a radical new gender role. While the solar training program recruits with the approval of village leadership, who put forward candidates, some husbands have stopped their wives from training. “In most African communities, women are pictured as somebody who is just at home,” Geofrey said. But the solar mamas say the results often speak for themselves. “People used to say this work is for men. They were surprised and laughed at me,” Issa said. “But now they see how important my work is. I have become an example.” For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Nov 14, 2025

Politics

Trump administration repealing protections for key swaths of Alaska petroleum reserve

By BECKY BOHRER JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday it is rescinding federal rules that were aimed at protecting from future oil and gas leasing vast swaths of a petroleum reserve in Alaska that provide key habitat for migrating birds, caribou and other wildlife. The U.S. Interior Department said the final rule would be published next week but announced it is repealing rules put in place last year. Those rules restricted future leasing and industrial development in areas within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska designated as special for wildlife, subsistence or other values. Thursday’s announcement is in line with an Alaska-specific executive order President Donald Trump signed upon his return to office. The order sought to unravel policies put in place by his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, that state political leaders complained had limited Alaska’s ability to develop its vast energy resources, including oil and gas. The Biden-era rules also had called for the Interior Department to evaluate regularly whether to designate new special areas or to boost protections in those areas. They cited rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic — such as melting permafrost and changes in plant life and wildlife corridors — due to climate change. The agency under Biden said the rules would not affect existing leases or operations, including the large Willow oil project, but would “raise the bar” for future development. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in June said the Biden-era rules were at odds with a leasing program mandate for the petroleum reserve and prioritized “obstruction over production.” There has been longstanding debate over where oil and gas should be developed within the reserve. Supporters cite the petroleum reserve’s name to underscore their point that it’s a place for drilling. But opponents say federal law requires a balancing act for managing the reserve that includes environmental considerations and protections. The reserve, roughly the size of Indiana, was set aside more than a century ago as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy. It’s been overseen by the Interior Department since the 1970s. Biden had angered many environmentalists when his administration approved Willow in the northeast portion of the reserve in 2023. Development of that project has being ongoing. The most recent lease sale for the reserve was in 2019. A law passed earlier this year by Congress calls for at least five sales within the reserve over a 10-year period. Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an advocacy group that includes leaders from Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope, has seen responsible development as important for the economic wellbeing of communities in the region. Members expressed concerns during the Biden administration that their views weren’t being heard, and lauded Thursday’s announcement. Josiah Patkotak, North Slope Borough mayor, in a statement called repealing the rules “a meaningful step toward restoring a federal process that respects local knowledge and leadership.” But environmentalists criticized the administration’s decision as short-sighted. Erik Grafe, an attorney with Earthjustice, in a statement called it “another example of how the Trump administration is trying to take us back in time with its reckless fossil fuels agenda.” “This would sweep aside common-sense regulations aimed at more responsibly managing the Western Arctic’s irreplaceable lands and wildlife for future generations,” he said.

Nov 14, 2025