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THE US has arrested 538 illegal immigrant criminals, including a suspected terrorist, and several illegals convicted of sex crimes against minors, the White House has said...

Four people have died, and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses are without power in Texas following severe storms that struck the Houston area on Thursday night.

Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña reported that two people were killed by fallen trees and one in a crane accident, though these causes are preliminary and not officially confirmed. No details were provided about the fourth death.

FBI special agents shot and killed a Utah man Wednesday while attempting to arrest him for allegedly making threats against President Joe Biden ahead of the president’s trip to the state.

The man, Craig Robertson, was facing three federal charges, including threats against the president as well as influencing, impeding and retaliating against federal law enforcement officers by threat. Investigators noted that Robertson appears to owns “a sniper rifle” and several other firearms.

Some of the threats happened just ahead of Biden’s planned trip to Utah on Wednesday evening.

“I HEAR BIDEN IS COMING TO UTAH,” one threat read, according to prosecutors. “DIGGING OUT MY OLD GHILLE SUIT AND CLEANING THE DUST OFF THE M24 SNIPER RIFLE. WELCOM, BUFFOON-IN-CHIEF!”

Robertson also posted online threats in recent months against other Democratic politicians and prosecutors who have brought cases against former President Donald Trump. The case comes amid heightened vitriol aimed at national and local leaders in the lead-up to the 2024 election and what FBI Director Christopher Wray has called an “unprecedented” level of threats against FBI agents.

In a post on Monday Robertson said, “Hey FBI, you still monitoring my social media? Checking so I can be sure to have a loaded gun handy in case you drop by again.”

Delivering a win for abortion rights advocates, Ohio’s Issue 1 will fail, the Associate Press projects. The Republican-backed ballot initiative would have increased the threshold to amend the state's constitution, making it more difficult for a measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state's constitution to pass later this year.

A "yes" vote on Issue 1 meant that constitutional amendments, including the abortion amendment, would have needed 60% support, rather than the existing minimum of 50% plus one. The increased threshold would have been put into place immediately if Issue 1 had passed.

Issue 1 also would have created more strict signature requirements for citizen-led measures to appear on the ballot. Currently, organizers must collect a number of signatures equal to 5% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election from half of Ohio’s 88 counties. If Issue 1 had passed, organizers would have needed signatures from all 88 counties.

The German prosecutor’s office found messages of illegal content, including Nazi symbolism, in chats involving five officers from three different police districts. These violations were uncovered during investigations in the North Rhine-Westphalia region.

According to Annet Milk, the lead prosecutor in the investigation, these five individuals, aged 22 and 25, are suspected of exchanging Nazi symbolism in chats and possessing child pornography during their training. Three of the accused belong to the police department in Recklinghausen and one each to the police departments in Kleve and Borken.

Milk stated that the chats were discovered during an investigation involving a sixth suspect. The prosecutor’s office has charged a former police officer with exchanging far-right extremist symbolism in chats and with possession and distribution of child pornography. He had worked at the police headquarters for some time after completing his training.

Searches were conducted at the homes of three police officers last week.

Air pollution is helping to drive a rise in antibiotic resistance that poses a significant threat to human health worldwide, a global study suggests.

The analysis, using data from more than 100 countries spanning nearly two decades, indicates that increased air pollution is linked with rising antibiotic resistance across every country and continent.

It also suggests the link between the two has strengthened over time, with increases in air pollution levels coinciding with larger rises in antibiotic resistance.

“Our analysis presents strong evidence that increasing levels of air pollution are associated with increased risk of antibiotic resistance,” researchers from China and the UK wrote. “This analysis is the first to show how air pollution affects antibiotic resistance globally.” Their findings are published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the fastest-growing threats to global health. It can affect people of any age in any country and is already killing 1.3 million people a year, according to estimates.

A voting rights group in Florida filed a lawsuit against the rightwing governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, saying his administration created a maze of bureaucratic and sometimes violent obstacles to discourage formerly incarcerated citizens from exercising their right to vote.

Florida voters in 2018 overwhelmingly passed a constitutional referendum, called amendment 4, that lifted the state’s lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions.

Yet what ensued in the years since 2018 was an aggressive campaign, led by DeSantis, to sow confusion and fear among formerly incarcerated people. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), which championed amendment 4, said state officials have continued to disenfranchise 1.4 million Florida residents – roughly a quarter of the state’s eligible Black voters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“OK, just,” Feinstein replied.

“Aye,” Murray repeated once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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