ICE official, who was sleeping on man’s lawn and appeared ‘intoxicated’, faces felony charges, California police say

A 72-year-old man shot an off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in California early on Friday morning after the “intoxicated and agitated” official assaulted him and his daughter on their property, local authorities allege.

The Fresno police department said that the ICE official was receiving medical care after being shot in the midsection. The official, identified as David Gonzalez, is facing felony charges for assaulting the father-daughter duo, Fresno police said.

It was not immediately clear for how Gonzalez had been with ICE and what exactly he did for ICE. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, referred all questions about Gonzalez to Fresno police.

CEO Dana White has long been an ally of President Donald Trump and his administration. Agents would be trained in hand-to-hand combat.

The FBI plans to offer the Ultimate Fighting Championship an exclusive one-year contract to train its special agents in hand-to-hand combat, according to a document released by the agency in September.

The UFC, according to the bureau, is “the sole qualified vendor” capable of providing tactical training that meets FBI standards. The justification for the contract cited the “expertise” the multibillion-dollar global media business has in mixed martial arts, striking techniques, grappling and takedowns.

The bureau said that market research determined that “no other vendor can provide comprehensive training encompassing all required skills at the necessary expertise level within the required timeframe.”

Regulator looks to expand loophole to allow dangerous compounds in food as long as they’re not carcinogenic

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing to expand a controversial loophole to allow some of the world’s most toxic chemicals to be added directly to food without a safety review.

The “threshold of regulation” (TOR) exemption currently allows dangerous compounds to be used without review in food contact materials, such as packaging or processing equipment, if they are not carcinogenic, and are added at levels below 0.5 parts per billion (ppb).

But campaigners say many chemicals, especially hormone disruptors linked to brain damage and reproductive harm in children, are considered dangerous at levels far below 0.5ppb. Even in its limited form, the loophole has already raised alarm. One TOR exemption that allows the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate to be used in grain bags dramatically increased the amount of the compound found in kids’ cereal, which advocates say could cause brain damage.

A contractor linked to Super Micro Computer, opens new tab has pleaded guilty in a scheme to illegally export computer servers containing advanced ​Nvidia, opens new tab AI chips to China, a federal court filing showed on Friday.

Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun pleaded ‌guilty to four counts, including conspiracies to violate US export controls, smuggle goods from the US, defraud the country and obstruct justice. He entered the plea on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The United States and ​China are competing for dominance in AI, with both investing billions of dollars in ​a technology seen as critical to economic growth, national security and military capabilities.

Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court on Friday to wade into his years long legal battle with former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and ex-Justice Department officials over the 2016 election, appealing a case that a lower court concluded was “frivolous.”

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 against Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and dozens of other people and entities he said conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by falsely tying him to Russia.

A federal district court dismissed the suit and ultimately ruled that Trump’s attorneys were liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions. The Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision last year.

With less than a month until voters determine whether his party will retain control of the House, Senate and governorships in nearly every state, Donald Trump appears increasingly detached from reality amid a political landscape that is growing increasingly perilous for him and his allies.

Trump is embarking on what aides are calling an all-out blitz of campaign rally appearances in support of Republican candidates in states across the country, even in places where Republicans would normally be heavily favored.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation giving Donald Trump broad powers to impose sanctions on Russia and tariffs of up to 100% on countries that buy Russian oil and gas. It will now go to Trump to be signed into law.

Thieves stole about 30,000 bottles of some of Italy’s most prized wines worth an estimated 5 million euros ($5.8 million) from a winery in Tuscany, in what the producer described Friday as the country’s largest wine theft on record.

The theft targeted Marchesi Antinori’s facility near Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, where a group of at least seven thieves on Saturday night made off with bottles of some of Italy’s most sought-after wines, including Solaia, Tignanello and Guado al Tasso. The theft was discovered Monday, but the company made it public on Friday to avoid interfering with the investigation.

Chief Executive Renzo Cotarella said the thieves disabled the winery’s alarm system and surveillance cameras before entering with two large trucks. Using the company’s forklifts, they loaded the vehicles with wine and fled during the night.

Judge says justice department policy of checking state voter rolls against a federal immigration database is unlawful

A federal judge ruled on Friday that the US justice department’s policy of collecting states’ unredacted voter rolls to check them against a federal immigration database is unlawful.

The ruling, by the US district judge Sparkle Sooknanan, was a setback for Donald Trump, who has pushed his administration to ramp up investigations into non-citizen voting ahead of the November midterm elections, with control of Congress at stake.

The department’s list maintenance policy, adopted to comply with the president’s election integrity executive order, violated privacy laws and risked disenfranchising voters, Sooknanan said.

OpenAI said on Friday that it fired three safety researchers for a “breach of trust," defending the dismissals after the trio accused the company of putting its corporate interests before safety as the reason for removing them.

The ChatGPT maker said in a post on X that it “parted ways” with the researchers after an investigation found “they violated clear policies on handling sensitive information.”

The statement comes after the three researchers, Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang and Mikita Balesni, posted a letter to OpenAI's various safety oversight groups detailing the circumstances around their firings and their concerns about AI.

Some 78% of Americans blame Donald Trump's policies for rising prices that are outpacing their earnings, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found majorities of Republicans and Democrats citing the cost of living as their top concern ​ahead of next month's midterm elections.

57% of Trump's Republicans said that costs have been growing faster than their paychecks, a stark example of how his pursuit of import tariffs, war with Iran ‌and other policies have clashed with a central 2024 campaign promise to kill inflation and lower prices "on day one."

Inflation instead has increased, to the point where the US Federal Reserve has pivoted to rate hikes to quell price increases policymakers have attributed to a variety of factors, including rising global energy costs following the start of the Iran war, and the administration's imposition of aggressive import taxes.