The wolf pup killings have incensed wildlife advocates in Idaho, where state wildlife officials have been ordered to take extraordinary measures to shrink the state’s re-introduced wolf population amid complaints from the livestock industry and big game hunting outfitters.

A law passed five years ago by the Republican-dominated state legislature loosened restrictions on hunting seasons, removed restrictions on killing methods and allowed people to contract third parties to kill wolves. Individual hunters and trappers are able to buy an unlimited number of permits to kill wolves, which cost $14 each for state residents and $32 for non-residents.

In 2021, Idaho game officials also entered into an agreement with the Foundation for Wildlife Management, a non-profit devoted to reducing wolves to help boost deer and elk numbers, to reimburse expenses to any hunter and trapper who provides proof of killing a wolf. The program pays for a wide range of expenses, including truck payments, fuel, ammunition and outdoor clothing.

The reimbursement program paid $2,000 per wolf kill through the hunting season that ended in June, including the 12 pups, records from the state’s fish and game agency show. The program is funded with a mix of taxpayer money, hunting license sales and contributions from the Foundation for Wildlife Management. .

“It’s an abomination,” said Brooks Fahy, director of the advocacy group Predator Defense. “I think most people, even in Idaho, if they actually understood the depth of this, the fact that taxpayer dollars are paying for this – they would be appalled.”

“Let’s call this what it is – it’s a goddamned bounty,” Fahy said. “What kind of receipts are you going to show for 12 pups who weigh 12lbs? It’s ridiculous on its face and the state of Idaho should be ashamed.”

Neither the foundation nor the Idaho wolf depredation control board, a government entity that oversees payments for third-party wolf killings, responded to requests for comment.

Over the course of a decade, seven women say they gave birth to children fathered by Gary Alton Matthews Jr., resulting in five often contentious child support cases in Texas and Louisiana — and more than $200,000 in unpaid child support.

The women allege Matthews engaged in reproductive cooercion and even falsfified his DNA for paternity tests. This saga, full of twists and turns, is not just a tale of deceit. It is a story about a pattern of behavior that left a trail of financial hardship, abandoned children and broken homes in its wake. And it is a story about a group of women who banded together, after enduring shame and shock, to advocate for themselves and their children.

Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.

Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up, in what is believed to be the same method used in last month's incident that hit hundreds of French supermarkets.

Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time.

Stephan Moelans, the CEO of Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize's systems, on Monday told the Belga news agency that the incident was a cyber-attack and that the company had been "working all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network".

He said since the French attack in early October, the company had been working to "protect our customers fridges against this vulnerability" but that the units needed physical modifications, not just software updates.

Most supermarkets across Europe are linked to the internet, and maintenance and troubleshooting can be done remotely.

"The simplest solution is to manage the fridges over a secure internet connection. Most of our customers switched to that after the attack in France," Moelans added.

The temperature of freezers in several shops across Europe reportedly rose to as high as 50C (122F).

When Sandra Birchmore was found dead in her Massachusetts home, police quickly decided it was a suicide. From the start, her friends didn’t believe it.

The 23-year-old had recently learned she was pregnant — and was thrilled about it, they told police. The person upset about the pregnancy, they said, was the married police detective she’d been seeing, Matthew Farwell.

Five years later, Farwell, 40, is on trial in federal court, charged with killing Birchmore and staging her death to look like a suicide to hide that he had begun sexually abusing her when she was 15.

Also on trial, in a sense, is the original police investigation.

State police troopers working in the Norfolk County district attorney’s office never wavered from their judgment that Birchmore’s death was a suicide, according to federal prosecutors. Farwell was interviewed for just 15 minutes in a parking lot, they said. Investigators didn’t take notes, examine him for injuries or sample his DNA. Police did look at Farwell’s phone, but only after he’d deleted his texts with Birchmore.

“Not only did they not investigate, they very quickly told others, including the medical examiner, that this was definitively a suicide and there was no foul play,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Torey Cummings told jurors.

Men accused of sexually assaulting a woman whose then husband drugged her for years and allowed her to be abused have described being invited to the couple’s home via online adverts and a swinging website.

One of those accused of assaulting Joanne Young, who has waived her legal right to anonymity, as she lay restrained and blindfolded said he was a young man “trying out things” and had no idea she was drugged.

A second said there was a large “cuckold community” of men who watched their wives having sex, claiming his encounter was “just a sex meet” and she seemed “fine”.

Philip Young, 50, has pleaded guilty to multiple charges of drugging and sexually abusing his former wife, 49, at their home in Swindon, Wiltshire, over a number of years. The prosecution has said he advertised his wife online and “loaned” her out to other men.

The most recent assault allegedly happened at the Alpha Epsilon Pi house on Saturday, Oct. 10, where a woman reported being assaulted in a bathroom.

Chicago police later identified a person of interest who is not a student and that person was banned from campus, but has not been criminally charged.

One week later, a woman referred to as “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit alleging she was sexually assaulted at Alpha Delta Phi back in February.

The lawsuit claims the university was aware of similar incidents and did nothing about them.

“For my first two years of college, I was the chair of the Sexual Assault and Awareness Committee here in student government. I was definitely not surprised. I know these things happen across our campus for many years,” University of Chicago student Destiney Samare said.

According to Samare, five rapes were reported on campus last year.

Rally organizers laid out disturbing details from the university’s own public disciplinary action records of previous sexual assault perpetrators.

“The university committee found a student responsible for sexual assault and abuse. The perpetrator was allowed to return to school after a three-quarter suspension. The university found the perpetrator responsible for two additional instances of sexual assault after allowing them to return to school,” University of Chicago student Jadyn Lewis said.

Ahead of Wednesday’s protest, organizers held a sit-in session at 4 p.m. with members of the Crown School of Social Work to air out frustrations and brainstorm demands.

DoorDash said the Instacart brand name and app will remain, and Instacart shoppers can continue fulfilling orders for Instacart. Grocers can also choose to work with Instacart or DoorDash. Instacart customers will now have access to 50,000 additional stores covered by DoorDash, the company said.

Instacart, founded in 2012, specializes in grocery and convenience store delivery in the U.S. and Canada. Its 600,000 “shoppers” — who are independent contractors — completed 338 million orders last year, according to company filings. Instacart has a market value of $14 billion.

DoorDash, founded in San Francisco in 2013, began as a restaurant delivery business but has expanded to pet food and electronics. Operating in 40 countries, it completed more than 3 billion orders last year using a network of 9 million independent delivery workers. It has a market value of $73 billion.

DoorDash began delivering groceries in 2020 amid a surge in pandemic-era demand. Grocers were initially cautious. Kroger partnered with the San Francisco company in 2022 but initially allowed the company to deliver only flowers, sushi and prepared meals from a limited number of stores.

The partnership with one of the nation’s largest grocery chains expanded last fall, and DoorDash now lists the full inventory of all 2,700 U.S. Kroger stores in its online marketplace. DoorDash scored another coup last month when it added delivery from Costco.

Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, said the acquisition will combine Instacart’s expertise in grocery with DoorDash’s expertise in logistics and delivery.

Dolores Huerta, who rose to national prominence as the co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association and was known for her advocacy for women farmworkers, died on Wednesday. She was 96.

Long recognized for her lifelong dedication to farmworkers, Huerta’s fight against injustice — and the sacrifices she made in that fight – reemerged in the wider public consciousness this year when she spoke of being sexually assaulted and raped by César Chávez, the farmworker movement’s most visible leader. Her revelation was just one more act of speaking out in a life dedicated to justice.

Huerta was born in New Mexico but spent most of her life in California’s Central Valley, an agricultural hub where a quarter of the country’s food is grown.

Trevor Chandler, the firm’s senior director of public affairs, made the stunning revelation during a presentation earlier this month to a group of Suffolk County pols and conceded the cameras can help “reconstruct” people’s movements, which would include under circumstances involving abortion.

But he noted that states can opt out of the searches, which New York does.

“Every agency that utilizes Flock in New York has our reproductive-health search filter turned on,” Chandler said as he was grilled by legislators on how the controversial tech works.

“This prevents any searches related to reproductive health to make sure that no searches are made out of compliance with state law,” the representative insisted.

The company added in a statement, “Certain states have enacted laws restricting the use of [license-plate-reader] data in connection with immigration enforcement or reproductive health investigations.”

But otherwise, police departments in states that do not opt out can potentially pinpoint people seeking the procedure through a simple license-plate search.

And since departments can share Flock data with other police across the nation, officers in states with bans could potentially track women who cross state lines to get an abortion in states where it remains legal — and cops currently don’t need a warrant to look through Flock’s database.

Hunter Foster, the Mississippi police officer who shot into a vehicle and killed one-year-old Kohen Wiley, has resigned from the Senatobia police department. Earlier this week, Mississippi’s attorney general, Lynn Fitch, announced that the shooting was “justified”.

The Senatobia board of aldermen accepted Foster’s resignation on 21 October and the resignation took effect immediately. Foster was placed on leave on 16 June, days after the 14 June shooting. Yesterday, the Mississippi department of public safety released body-camera and surveillance footage from the shooting, at a Walmart in Senatobia, during which the toddler died in his mother’s arms after being shot.

In the footage, Foster is seen running out of a Walmart with other officers after an employee said shoplifters were fleeing. Officials have alleged that Kohen’s mother and a friend stole diapers from the Walmart; neither woman has been charged.

Within seconds of leaving the store, Foster aimed his gun at a vehicle in which Kohen, his mother and another woman were. Three shots were fired, all from Foster’s gun, though several officers drew their guns. Foster hit and injured the driver of the vehicle, and killed Kohen.

At a press conference on Thursday, the prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Kohen’s family, called for a federal investigation into the shooting. He is also calling for Foster to be decertified, which would prevent him from serving as a police officer anywhere else.

“The bullet that killed Kohen Wiley was not justified,” Crump said. “This decision sends a message that a Black baby boy, his life, is not as valuable as the white diapers that he is wrapped in.”

Kohen would have turned two on 1 November.

For every 1,000 women, aged 15-44, approximately 53 gave birth last year - down from 54 the previous year, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Birth rates decreased among those up to age 29 but increased for women aged 30-44, the CDC found.

The findings are indicative of a broader U.S. trend in recent decades and one that the Trump administration and its MAGA allies, including Elon Musk, have sought to reverse.

...

However, there are multiple factors complicating efforts to reverse the trend. Greater access to IUDs and birth control have helped reduce teen births, which has long been a goal for U.S. policymakers because of the complications young mothers with underdeveloped bodies face during pregnancy.

“People are able to avoid having kids at points in their life when they don’t feel it’s the right time,” Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told NBC News Wednesday.

A shift in women’s education has also had a major impact. Women now make up the majority of the college-educated workforce, according to the Pew Research Center.

Those with college degrees generally have fewer children, 2022 University of Pennsylvania research shows. That’s largely because of a focus on establishing careers, traveling or finding a romantic partner.

But many women who want to have children are facing major headwinds - economic ones. The average cost of raising a child in the U.S. has ballooned to more than $300,000, the financial marketplace LendingTree says, rising nearly 2 percent from a year ago. That’s increased from $230,000 in 2000, the bank SoFi says.

And while marriage could help distribute some of that financial burden between two, fewer women are heading to the altar. The marriage rate has fallen 60 percent over the last five decades, according to 2023 research.

“Examining age-specific fertility rates, marriage rates and trends in women’s educational attainment, it is clear many women are delaying fertility and ultimately having fewer children,” the university said.

Laura Danbom, a Seattle-based worker who is still employed by Amazon, said Wednesday that the manager raped her following a cocktail reception hosted by Amazon on a 2023 business trip to New York. She said she reported the alleged assault to the police, colleagues, and Amazon’s Human Resources Department in the aftermath.

The lawsuit accuses Amazon of creating a hostile work environment by requiring Danbom to continue working with the manager. It also claims Amazon violated Washington’s Silenced No More Act, which prevents employers from blocking employees from speaking about their sexual assaults. Danbom said Human Resources leaders told her not to discuss the incident with other employees.

“ I was so heartbroken that my company of seven years, at the time, wouldn't protect me and actually wanted to cause more harm, it felt like, to have to work with him and interact with him and not move him,” she said in an interview with KUOW. “It just shattered me.”

According to Danbom, Amazon leadership investigated her allegations and said they did not find sufficient evidence to prove them. She said the colleagues she told about the incident were not interviewed.

Her attorney, Jay Free, said he spoke with the New York Police Department and learned Amazon had not requested the police report associated with Danbom’s case. It included DNA evidence from a condom that Danbom provided the police, though a sample from the accused was never collected for comparison, according to the lawsuit.

Amazon did not respond to detailed questions about the allegations in the complaint. Instead, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel provided the following written statement:

"We take any allegation of this nature extremely seriously, and we have zero tolerance for workplace sexual misconduct or violence of any kind. We thoroughly investigate each report we receive and take appropriate action, up to and including termination, against those who are found to have violated our policies. We have robust policies and trained investigators in place to ensure each concern is heard and addressed with the proper care. While we don't have more to share about the specifics of this pending litigation at this time, we continue to follow our rigorous processes and to hold all employees to the same high standards."

Following the investigation, Danbom said she was asked to move into a new role that would require more contact with the senior manager. She said she transferred to another department at the company to avoid him, walking away from a promotion in the process.

“ This shouldn't happen to anybody,” she said. “You shouldn't be subjected to working with your rapist. I just know they can do better. They have the resources, and I encourage women to come forward, feel safe in doing so at Amazon and that these issues come to light."

Moments before a Mississippi police officer fired at a car in June, killing a toddler inside, five officers rushed out to a Walmart parking lot in pursuit of two women who were accused of stealing diapers and baby clothes.

Newly released videos show a gray sedan, carrying 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, his mother and another woman, reversing and slamming into a parked vehicle as police officers run toward the car and order the driver to stop.

As the car stops, the officers approach and surround the vehicle before the driver accelerates and lurches left, appearing to travel toward at least one of the officers before passing between two of them. At least one officer shoots into the vehicle.

The chaotic scene in Senatobia, captured on body cameras worn by two of the five officers and by surveillance cameras, provides the first glimpse of a shooting that has rocked the tiny city and raised questions about whether the officer was justified in opening fire at the vehicle.

The Mississippi attorney general’s office, which declined to comment on the video, announced on Monday that it would not bring criminal charges against the officer who fatally shot Kohen.

The compilation of several body-cam and surveillance clips was first published by a Mississippi news outlet, Darkhorse Press. A law enforcement official confirmed its authenticity on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to provide information about sensitive matters. A video analysis by The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News showed the footage matched portions of video of the shooting captured by a bystander.

The body-cam footage released Tuesday is from the perspective of two of the law enforcement officers who responded to the scene in June, but not from the officer who fired. It does not show the entirety of the police response, nor does it clearly show Kohen, his mother and the other woman driving the vehicle.

The body-cam footage begins from the perspective of one of the officers, whose identity is unknown. It shows him rushing toward the gray sedan.

The footage then shows the vehicle move in reverse and hit a parked S.U.V. as officers approach, yelling at the driver to stop. When the sedan moves forward, at least one officer appears to be in front of it on the passenger’s side; a second officer also stands near the vehicle, closer to the driver’s side. Both have their guns drawn. As the vehicle approaches them, at least one of the officers opens fire. The officer appears to fire three more times while standing to the side of the vehicle.

Grainy surveillance footage included in the compilation published by Darkhorse Press also captures the moments from more of a bird’s-eye view. In that footage, two women — one holding a child — are seen running toward a vehicle and reversing in it as law enforcement officers chase them.

More video of the incident has yet to be seen by the public. Kohen’s family is scheduled to view it Thursday morning. Veronica Roberson, the toddler’s grandmother, said state officials had informed the family that the footage included surveillance videos from Walmart, along with five body-worn cameras.

Polymarket has removed a contract from its prediction market platform that allowed users to wager on whether any of the seven men accused of raping a Cornell student in 2024 will be charged with a felony sex crime.

WATCH: Fraternity culture under scrutiny in wake of Cornell allegations

The market was made available on Sept. 30 and was slated to close on Jan. 31. It had more than $450,000 in volume before it was taken off Polymarket's international platform. The company's U.S. exchange is regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which bans trading related to "activity that is unlawful under Federal or State law."

"Our primary goal at Polymarket is to bring objective, data-driven insight to the most important questions of our time," a Polymarket spokesperson said Tuesday. "This market addressed whether the government would take action — a process that deserves scrutiny, particularly in a case of such serious concern. That said, we believe in the wisdom of crowds, have heard them loud and clear, and removed the market."

Front Office Sports was the first to report on the contract.

Some outcry over the Polymarket contract has been aimed at its celebrity promoters. Philadelphia 76ers star LeBron James has an endorsement deal with Polymarket, and he recently appeared in a star-studded commercial that also included cameos by Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Sue Bird and several celebrities.

Messages were left by the AP on Tuesday with representatives for James, Jeter, Manning and Bird.

Polymarket also has partnership agreements with the NHL, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the UFC and ATP Tour. Messages were left by the AP seeking comment from each organization.

A spokesman for Spike Lee, who also appeared in the Polymarket commercial with James, said the director had no comment. Messages also were left with representatives for actors Craig Robinson, John Leguizamo and Alexandra Daddario — who were also part of the commercial with James.

A woman identified in court documents by the pseudonym Jane Doe filed a lawsuit last month alleging that seven fraternity members sexually assaulted or exploited her in October 2024 and that Cornell mishandled her complaints. All of those men have denied her allegations, saying either that their interactions were consensual or that they weren't involved.

Online critics characterized the Polymarket contract as degrading and questioned why celebrity ambassadors would associate themselves with the company. An online petition singled out James, Manning, Daddario and model Emily Ratajkowski while calling on other famous endorsers to cut ties with the company.

It is a testament to the deeply misogynistic nature of social media that, shortly after the horrifying sexual misconduct allegations against seven Cornell frat members made news last month, people on the internet immediately started trying to dox the victim.

Over the past few weeks, right-wing provocateurs and random troll accounts alike have attempted to publicly identify Jane Doe, the anonymous former Cornell student who accused seven Chi Phi fraternity members of sexually assaulting her in 2024. The drive to publicize her name and other personal details is stomach-turning—but according to Mary Anne Franks, in the context of the history of social media and sexual assault, it’s all too common.

Franks is a professor at George Washington University Law School specializing in the intersection of civil rights, free speech, and technology. She is also the president and legislative tech policy director at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, where she has spent years fighting online abuse and image-based sexual abuse. For decades, Franks has had a front-row seat to the myriad ways in which men on the internet have been abusive toward women, as well as some of the constitutional arguments invoked by independent commentator Michael Tracey, who has argued that his doxing of Jane Doe is legal under the First Amendment.

“When you have a cultural fetishization of an abstract notion of free speech, one thing that it does is it disembodies a conversation,” Franks says. “Somehow physical safety becomes oppositional to this supreme value of speech.”

The police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley as he sat in his mother’s lap in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Miss., in June “was justified,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office announced on Monday.

“Today, the Office of the Attorney General announced it has completed the review of a June 14, 2026 incident in Senatobia involving one officer with the Senatobia Police Department,” the Republican attorney general’s statement said. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified. Pursuant to Section 45-1-6 of the Mississippi Code, the review followed an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”

Officers were responding to a shoplifting call alleging that Wiley’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and Latoya Ferrell had stolen a pack of diapers. The women exited the store with the child as officers arrived, entered their vehicle and began to leave the parking lot. Officers drew their weapons, and Vellesiya Wiley lifted her son up to show the officers that a child was in the car. One officer fired into the vehicle, killing the baby as she held him. A bullet also wounded Ferrell.

A Chinese organized crime group hacked into retail giant Staples, used that access to fraudulently issue millions of dollars worth of gift cards for stores like Target and Sephora, then went on a nationwide shopping spree, shipping many of the stolen electronics and other products back to China as part of a massive retail theft operation, 404 Media has learned.

The finding, based on a review of court records, reveals the scale at which some organized crime groups are fleecing U.S. retailers, with entire warehouses dedicated to housing the merchandise. The hack of Staples, which has not been previously reported, signals just how sophisticated some of these operations have become.

In October 2023, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) received information from an office supply company, saying that hackers had targeted the company and issued more than 15,000 gift cards worth over $5 million, according to a search warrant application unsealed last week. The document does not name the company, but 404 Media determined it was Staples based on various clues: the document says the victim company is headquartered in Massachusetts; uses a company called Blackhawk Network to fulfill its giftcard orders; and the hacked company has an internal customer support system called Nexus. All of those identifying features match Staples, and 404 Media found a reference to Nexus on a former Staple’s executive’s LinkedIn profile.

Staples did not respond to requests for comment.

The document says Staples believed Nexus was only accessible to the company’s internal computers, but that the hackers found a way to access it from the outside. The hackers performed multiple heap dump requests, which is a way to capture all of the data held in an app’s memory at a particular point in time, according to the document. Using the returned information, the hackers were then able to hijack the sessions of logged in Staples customer service representatives to then issue the massive wave of gift cards, it adds.

The hackers sent the giftcards to various email accounts they controlled. After this, members of the gang went and spent many of the gift cards on electronics at stores like Target. In one example, Target found 35 of the gift cards sourced from the Staples hack were used at a Target in New Hampshire for Apple, Bose, and Powerbeats products in just one hour. Those purchases included gift cards from the hack and other sources too, according to the document. Surveillance footage showed four men “appearing one after another, occasionally interacting with one another and the cashiers.”

The video was of a purported stand-up comic named Aylen Skye, a buxom blond with leonine cheekbones and 250,000 Instagram followers. In the clip, Skye, wearing a crop top and Daisy Dukes, tells a joke about renting out a room in her two-bedroom apartment to a cute guy. To Jasunas’ shock, it was, verbatim, her joke, down to the “ums” and “ahs.”

Whoever Skye was, she didn’t appear to be a comic; the website she advertised in her video, AylenTV.com, redirected to NSFW content on Fanvue, a subscription-based OnlyFans competitor that markets itself as the “No1 AI monetisation platform for creators.” And not only did she appear to not be a comic, she also didn’t seem to be real. After looking at Skye’s comments section, Jasunas was fairly convinced she was AI.

“You look at any female comic’s comments section and you’ll see all these men berating her, objectifying her body, saying she’s not funny or the joke is bad,” she says. But with Skye, all of the comments were positive. “That’s how I knew she was fake,” she deadpans.

Investigators still don’t know why family patriarch Matthew Stone Sr. gunned down his wife, their three children, two grandchildren and two women who had rushed to the home and were shot outside, Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said at a news conference.

Lorah painted a picture of a family living in a home in isolated, filthy conditions. He said the authoritarian behavior of Stone, 45, started after his wife became pregnant with their first child more than two decades ago.

The adult victims of the Oct. 9 shooting previously were identified as Stone’s wife, Michelle Stone, 44; their daughter, Angelina Stone, 24, who was due to give birth Monday, three days after the shooting; sons Jonathan Stone, 19, and Matthew Stone Jr., 21; and two women who lived at other addresses: Lora Roberts, 37, and Twila Tanner, 51. Roberts was Michelle Stone’s sister.

A 5-year-old boy and a 22-month-old girl who were identified by relatives as Angelina Stone’s children also were killed. State law prevented authorities from releasing their names.

Family members told detectives that the elder Stone “restricted when family members could leave the residence or spend time with relatives,” Lorah said. In addition, Michelle Stone “stopped maintaining contact with friends.”

The elder Stone also kept a tight grip over the family’s money, including supplemental government income received for one of the grandchildren, Lorah said.

In 2019, Stone was arrested and charged with threatening his wife with the same .40-caliber handgun that he used in the Oct. 9 shootings. However, at a preliminary hearing, Michelle Stone “changed her original statement and those charges were withdrawn,” Lorah said.

The woman, identified in court documents as A.P., is a UW sorority member, according to her attorneys. Her lawsuit against the university and Wyatt Ohara was filed in King County Superior Court last year.

The lawsuit alleges UW knew about a temporary civil restraining order involving Ohara and another woman before A.P. was raped, but failed to adequately regulate, monitor, or restrict him to protect other students.

UW disputes the significance of that allegation.

In a statement to KIRO 7, UW said court records show the temporary civil restraining order was issued before Ohara and the other woman enrolled at UW and was no longer in effect by the time they began attending the university.

“The University was not aware of any active court-approved restraining or protective orders in effect against the respondent student when he was admitted or when he enrolled,” UW spokesperson Victor Balta said.

According to the lawsuit, the earlier order had been obtained by another woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe 2. A.P.’s attorneys say the order prohibited Ohara from attending the same parties as that woman.

...

According to the lawsuit, filed Nov. 19, 2022, and brought against the fraternity member and the University of Washington, A.P. attended two parties at the fraternity house – a brunch and later a tailgate dubbed Pi Kappa “live-out” – where she was served “excessive amounts of alcohol as a minor.”

A.P. and the fraternity member did not know one another. During the tailgate event, the fraternity member allegedly provided A.P. with excessive amounts of alcohol, prior to which she did not appear intoxicated. “However, after drinking on the balcony with the frat member, A.P. was intoxicated to the point where she could not stand on her own nor verbally complete full sentences,” the lawsuit states.

The frat member then took A.P. from the Pi Kappa live-out to the fraternity house where he proceeded to sexually assault her while she was completely unconscious, according to the lawsuit. Fellow students eventually gained access to the room, despite the locked door, where they observed A.P. impaired and noted her blood in the fraternity member’s bed, the lawsuit states.

Following, the frat member admitted to engaging in sexual intercourse with A.P., and on Nov. 22, 2024, pled guilty to rape in the third degree.

Just seven weeks into the fall semester, the university’s Dean of Students Office was investigating multiple misconduct reports involving nearly half the school’s Interfraternity Council chapters, Dean Chrissy Lieberman said Monday in a letter to the school’s fraternities and sororities announcing the suspension.

The reports follow misconduct findings against some interfraternity chapters in the spring and multiple criminal investigations, according to the letter.

“The number of cases under investigation and the severity of the concerns is egregious,” Lieberman wrote.

University spokesman Nick Prevenas did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the criminal investigations on Wednesday.

Grocery store chain Kroger said it will lay off 3,000 corporate employees over the next three years as it ramps up its use of artificial intelligence to streamline operations.

“Technology is reshaping what’s possible,” CEO Greg Foran wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “The way work gets done is changing across every industry; we must adapt and take advantage of technology. We need to adopt capabilities, reduce duplicative work and look closely at where work is best fit to be done.”

Kroger last month outlined its AI strategy, meant “to improve the customer experience, make work easier for associates and produce better business outcomes.”

Cincinnati-based Kroger is the largest standalone U.S. supermarket chain with 409,000 employees and more than 2,700 stores operating under various brands, including Ralphs, King Soopers, Smith’s and Fred Meyer.

Kroger named former Walmart executive Foran CEO in February, 11 months after the abrupt resignation of its previous CEO.

Foran has a reputation for being tech-savvy and detail-oriented. He led Walmart’s U.S. division from 2014 to 2019, where he focused on cleaning up stores, ensuring items were in stock and improving the fresh produce selection. He also introduced online ordering and pickup, and accelerated Walmart’s digital capabilities.

Walmart has become a larger challenge to Kroger and other traditional grocers as Americans increasingly pick up their groceries along with other general goods that Walmart sells.

Kroger has also felt pressure from fast-growing discount chains like Aldi and Lidl and online behemoths like Amazon.

Kroger proposed a merger with Albertsons in 2022 as a way to better compete with its rivals. But the Federal Trade Commission and two states — Washington and Colorado — sued to block the merger in 2024, saying it would raise prices and lower workers’ wages by eliminating competition. Judges ultimately ruled that the merger should not proceed.

A day after their merger collapsed, Albertsons filed a lawsuit against Kroger, seeking a $600 million termination fee as well as billions of dollars in legal fees and lost shareholder value.

According to analysis by the non-profit Protect Our Care, 52 maternity wards have closed since the HR1 bill was announced in July 2025, with a further eight having announced their upcoming closure.

The bill, which will fully come into effect in the new year, will result in many adults covered through Medicaid having to meet new work requirements and being subject to more frequent eligibility checks, while there will be less federal funding for states for Medicaid.

Hospitals which have already permanently closed their maternity wards include the Centra Southside Community hospital in Virginia and St Mary’s Sacred Heart hospital in rural north-east Georgia, which both cited upcoming federal policy changes to Medicaid as a reason.

Experts are expecting to see more closures of maternity units in the run-up to and after the federal changes to Medicaid come into effect in the new year.

“We’re deeply concerned that these changes already have and will continue to worsen an already serious maternity care crisis,” said Erin Jones, senior director of legislative and strategic counsel of the non-profit March of Dimes. “Reduced funding and restrictions on how states finance Medicaid will put additional pressure on state budgets and hospitals, increasing the risk that communities lose essential maternity services and specialized providers close to home.”

Dear Cornell community,

I am deeply sorry for the harm Jane Doe suffered in 2024, and appalled that this act of sexual violence occurred within our Cornell community. It is clear that women on our campus continue to question whether they are safe. We must meet this moment by acknowledging where we have fallen short and taking meaningful action.

I have spent the past weeks listening to students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and trustees, who have shared their feelings of deep connection and sympathy with Jane Doe, anger and frustration that this could happen at Cornell, and outrage at the broader prevalence of sexual violence against women in our society.

These conversations, and campus protests, have underscored my deep conviction that we must do better: that the time for meaningful and lasting change at Cornell, and at campuses across the country, is now. The independent review led by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates will look at all related Cornell policies and practices, and provide actionable ways that we can improve. However, it is clear that we cannot wait for these findings to take action.

After gathering input from across all parts of our university community, I am implementing, effective immediately, the following measures to strengthen campus safety, better support survivors, and begin addressing the social context of sexual violence at Cornell:

• Strengthen Campus Safety. All parties and social events in Interfraternity Council (IFC) houses at Cornell will be suspended for the remainder of the 2026-2027 academic year. These measures will provide time for a thorough review of fraternity life at Cornell to determine whether and how it can safely continue.

There will be zero tolerance for violations of this directive. Any fraternity holding an in-house party or social event will receive an immediate emergency suspension.

We will immediately engage students and faculty experts in the development of safe social alternatives and invest university resources in their establishment.

• Better Support for Survivors. We will strengthen our systems of support for survivors of sexual assault in three important ways:

We will add staff to the Cornell Office of Civil Rights, including the appointment of a dedicated Case Manager who will help individuals who report sexual misconduct navigate other university processes (such as financial aid, academic accommodations, housing, and bursar) as needed.

We are working with the New York State Police to allow their experienced, trauma-informed criminal investigators, who are independent of Cornell University, to investigate allegations of sexual assault on campus. These individuals will interview survivors who elect to pursue criminal charges and will prepare comprehensive investigative summaries for the appropriate law enforcement agency. This would be in place for the duration of the independent review.

Student support staff will be added beyond the Presidential Task Force recommendations to provide additional Victim Advocate support in the Sexual Harassment & Assault—Response & Education (SHARE) office and prevention-focused programs across campus. This is in addition to an existing plan for investment in additional mental health resources.

• Changing the Social Culture at Cornell. Research has shown that campus sexual assault is not limited to the fraternity system. At its core is the specific context of social behavior and a deeply disturbing prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse. While this is not a problem unique to Cornell, we are committed to setting a higher standard for education, oversight, and enforcement of safe social behavior and citizenship. We will accelerate the implementation of the recommendations of the Presidential Task Force on Sexual Assault and expand the scope and nature of the recommendations by engaging the campus community. Leaning on faculty expertise in the area of sexual assault and rape culture, and actively engaging and listening to the Cornell community, we will re-form and re-focus the Presidential Task Force on Sexual Assault on expanded opportunities for safe and healthy social engagement and further ways to reduce risks. We will enhance existing education and programming to address the bystander effect and the duty of care we owe each other.

To provide further support and momentum for this effort, we will engage national sexual violence prevention expertise and community safety organizations to examine the factors leading to campus sexual violence and strategies to promote responsible sexual citizenship.

We will put the knowledge gained from this initiative into practice, and invest the resources required to sustain real change into the future.

These are first steps toward systemic change on our campus. We will take all necessary steps to address the conditions that led to Jane Doe’s experiences, and those of other survivors. Cornell must be a place where safety is not an open question. I am committed to doing that work, and to seeing it through. It will take all of us working together, however, to build a Cornell culture of community, trust, and respect.

Sincerely,

Michael I. Kotlikoff President

According to interviews with more than two dozen workers, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their employment, publishers are now using LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT to email literary agents, write publicity and back-cover copy, design cover art, and generate marketing materials, often at the direction of their executives.

At the same time, multiple editorial staffers say the widely publicized cases of authors accused of using LLMs to help write their books—like Hachette’s horror novel Shy Girl or Macmillan’s crime thriller Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body—are just the tip of the iceberg. “Every single imprint has a story of someone very esteemed who had a book canceled because of blatant AI use” without ever making the news, one editor says.

At HarperCollins senior leaders purchased Claude licenses from Anthropic months ago “but very quickly realized they didn’t know how to implement them,” according to a current employee. Dozens of junior- and senior-level staff were then “voluntold” to become “AI Champions” and were tasked with discovering use cases in monthly brainstorming sessions with staff across the company.