Woman alleging frat-house rape has privacy and safety issues outweighing need to publicly identify her, judge says

The woman at the center ⁠of rape allegations against students at Cornell University can continue using a pseudonym in ⁠her lawsuit, a ⁠judge ​has ruled.

The New York state judge Phaedra Perry-Bond ruled on Friday that the woman’s ⁠privacy interests – particularly concerns for her safety – outweighed any need to publicly disclose her identity ⁠in court proceedings.

USDA says screwworm found in elk in Texas, and warns hunters and ranchers to be vigilant to help stop spread

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Wednesday it had ⁠confirmed the ⁠first detection ​of flesh-eating parasite the New World screwworm in US wildlife in an ⁠elk in Pecos county, Texas.

The elk was located on a game ⁠ranch and was reported after being harvested by ​a hunter, the ‌USDA said ‌in a statement.

Six Flags says nine rollercoasters across six amusement parks temporarily closed after reported fatal incident on Goliath ride in Georgia

Theme park company Six Flags temporarily closed nine rollercoasters across six amusement parks on Monday after one person died and several others were injured in an incident involving a coaster in Georgia.

A spokesperson for the park said they closed similar attractions across their parks “out of an abundance of caution” after the incident at Six Flags Over Georgia, about 15 miles (24km) north-west of Atlanta.

Timothy Broglio says Catholics on army firing squad should ask to be excused since it clashes with church teachings

The archbishop who oversees the spiritual care of Catholics serving in the US military condemned the Pentagon’s proposed plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan later this year.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio also stipulated in a Monday statement that any Catholic soldier assigned to the US army firing squad should ask to be excused from that duty, which he described as contrary to the teachings of the church. He joins other Catholic leaders in speaking out against the death penalty and the live stream plans.

New York attorney general brought in by governor after recent questions raised over university’s 2024 investigation

Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, said on Thursday she is appointing Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, as special prosecutor to investigate the alleged gang-rape at Cornell University.

“The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued,” Hochul said in a statement. “This action will ensure that the matter is fully and thoroughly investigated without conflict or bias, and handled independently with the rigor that this matter demands.”

Two months before hacking Hugging Face, malicious packages authored by internal OpenAI agents were uploaded to RubyGems

Agents being tested by OpenAI uploaded hundreds of malicious packages in a cyberattack on software service RubyGems in May, two ⁠months ​before they hacked open-source platform Hugging Face, the company confirmed Friday.

It’s the latest revelation of cyberattacks linked to major artificial intelligence developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The hacks or attempts to access external systems have spooked the public and heightened concerns over the increasing abilities of AI models – and whether developers can contain them.

Storm didn’t make direct hit but fierce winds downed trees and caused widespread power outages on Kauai

Damaging winds and heavy rains from Hurricane Lowell caused significant damage on Hawaii’s western islands, knocking out power to thousands, ripping up stretches of road and drenching homes and stores with mud.

Fierce winds downed trees and caused widespread power outages on the island of Kauai, home to 73,000 residents. The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative reported that nearly all of its roughly 35,000 members were without power on Tuesday. About 30,500 customers remained affected by outages as of Wednesday afternoon.

‘Civilian-contracted aircraft’ crashes in western Alaska killing two pilots and six passengers, officials say

A charter aircraft that crashed at a remote radar site in western Alaska on Thursday, killing all eight people onboard, was making its second runway approach in heavy fog when it lost contact, authorities said Friday.

The Cessna’s two pilots could not see the gravel airstrip and were flying solely by instruments when the plane crashed about midday Thursday, Clint Johnson, the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska region chief, told a virtual news conference.

Small skiff ran out of fuel off Alaska and was helped by cruise ship even though Meta CEO’s vessel was closer

• Zuckerberg faces questions over why superyacht reportedly declined to help stranded boat

The crew of a yacht owned by Mark Zuckerberg did not hear a radio call for a maritime assist from a small skiff that ran out of fuel off the coast of Alaska, and by the time it did, another nearby ship had already rendered assistance, a spokesperson for the Meta CEO said.

The Alaska Beacon news outlet reported that the skiff had issued a call for assistance through the US Coast Guard last week and a nearby small cruise ship, the Wilderness Legacy, towed it into nearby Farragut Bay in south-east Alaska and refueled it.

Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission maintains mail-voter registration form, among other duties

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

Move follows supreme court refusal to hear Trump’s appeal of civil case verdict in sexual abuse and defamation case

The New York journalist E Jean Carroll asked a judge on Tuesday to mandate that Donald Trump pay her the $5m she is owed from a jury verdict that found the US president liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and defaming her after she publicly described in 2019 being attacked by him in a city department store.

Lawyers for Carroll filed papers in a federal court in Manhattan one day after the US supreme court refused to hear Trump’s appeal of the civil case verdict in 2023.

Company says it cannot shield customers from memory and storage chip costs – and iPhone hikes could be next

Apple raised iPad and MacBook prices on Thursday, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory and storage chip costs driven by the AI industry’s data center buildout.

The move does not affect Apple’s cash cow, the iPhone. But it would take the starting price of the ⁠Neo, its lowest-priced laptop, from $599 to $699 mere months after launch.

Midland police reported that the suspected shooter was dead after a two-hour standoff

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A shooting on Friday in Midland, Texas, has killed one person and sent a further nine to the hospital with injuries, according to the city’s authorities.

The possible suspect was in a standoff with officers for around two hours but later on Friday afternoon was reported deceased, police and the city’s mayor said.

Republican states rebrand June as ‘nuclear family month’ or ‘fidelity month’ in latest attack on LGBTQ+ communities

June is widely marked as gay Pride month – when LGBTQ+ communities march to protest discrimination and celebrate their identities in the month that the modern US gay liberation movement was born out of the 1969 uprising at New York’s Stonewall Inn – although not so much in certain Republican-led states this year.

Some Republican governors have suddenly come up with alternative labels for the month, which both supporters and opponents view as counterprogramming.

Weinstein has been convicted of other crimes in the US and is already behind bars but move leaves rape charge in limbo

Harvey Weinstein’s retrial in New York on a rape charge ended in a mistrial on Friday after the jury deadlocked in the closely watched criminal case that another jury had already failed to decide last year.

The disgraced former Hollywood mogul has been convicted of other sex crimes on the US east and west coasts and is already in jail. But Friday’s declaration of another mistrial leaves the New York rape charge in limbo after three trials.

OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and others agreed to ‘any lawful use’ of their tech. Anthropic, feuding with Pentagon over potential AI misuse, was not included

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The Pentagon said on Friday it had reached agreements with seven leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies: SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

“These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Pentagon said in statement.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, allegedly stormed the White House correspondents’ association dinner

The man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump by rushing the black-tie press gala in Washington DC at the weekend where the US president was a guest, agreed on Thursday to remain in custody while his federal criminal case moves forward.

The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, was not planning immediately to contest prosecutors’ arguments that he was a danger to the community and should remain in jail, his attorney, Tezira Abe, said during a federal court hearing in the capital.

Company also launches tools to spot scammers as Thai police arrest 21 people

Meta disabled more than 150,000 accounts and Thai police arrested 21 people in a sweeping international crackdown on south-east Asian criminal scam centers that targeted people around the world, the social media company said Wednesday.

The operation was led by Thailand’s Royal Thai police anti-cyber scam center, alongside the FBI and the US justice department’s scam center strike force, with Meta investigators acting on intelligence shared in real time by law enforcement.

Christopher Moynihan pleads guilty to misdemeanor charge over threats last October to kill congressman

A rioter who was pardoned by Donald Trump for the felony he was convicted of in the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 has pleaded guilty to a harassment charge over threats to kill the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries.

Christopher Moynihan, 35, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor harassment charge in a hearing in Clinton, New York, prosecutors said, and will be sentenced in April. His representative could not immediately be reached.

Before wild feline was caught, authorities had advised residents to slowly back away if they encountered it

Wildlife officials in San Francisco captured a young mountain lion that was spotted roaming the streets of the city.

Authorities issued a warning to residents late on Monday, saying a mountain lion had been seen walking the streets in the Pacific Heights neighborhood and advised people to slowly back away from the animal if they encountered it.