Staffers for Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) are reportedly resigning over the lawmaker’s recent decision to endorse former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in Michigan’s competitive Senate race.

“Hello, as of November 1st I am no longer with the Office of Congresswoman Haley Stevens,” the automated email reply from Stevens’s former communications director reads.

A statement, first shared by CNN, from Stevens longtime chief of staff Justin German said as of Sunday morning, “Many members of our team have resigned, including myself.”

“We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’s decision to support Mike Rogers,” German wrote.

Staffers for Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) are reportedly resigning over the lawmaker’s recent decision to endorse former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in Michigan’s competitive Senate race.

“Hello, as of November 1st I am no longer with the Office of Congresswoman Haley Stevens,” the automated email reply from Stevens’s former communications director reads.

A statement, first shared by CNN, from Stevens longtime chief of staff Justin German said as of Sunday morning, “Many members of our team have resigned, including myself.”

“We are shocked and heartbroken by Congresswoman Stevens’s decision to support Mike Rogers,” German wrote.

German — who worked with Stevens for 8 years — encouraged “everyone to exercise their civic duty, vote for Abdul and Democrats up and down the ballot, and stand up for the America we all believe in.”

Didn't see one of these up already so I thought I'd create one.

SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI disclosed Friday that its artificial intelligence agents had interacted with several U.S. government websites in unexpected ways, discovered as part of an ongoing review into the company's models' unanticipated behavior.

The AI giant's models accessed publicly available information on two websites operated by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as U.S. Census Bureau data, the company revealed Friday. OpenAI did not find any use of SEC credentials, access to accounts or nonpublic information, changes to SEC data or systems, or evidence of a compromise or vulnerability, the company said.

The disclosure comes at a time of heightened global concerns about AI systems escaping human control and hacking into external websites, as well as industry calls for a slowdown on AI development, which OpenAI has said it supports.

OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said in a statement that the lab is continuing to conduct a review of "misaligned model activity" — meaning when AI systems behave in undesired ways — and is notifying organizations when it identifies potential impacts to their systems.

OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman said on social media Friday that there is an "extensive and ongoing review related to our agents' use of internet access during training and evaluation."

AI evaluator and research lab Transluce said Friday that through an independent investigation it also found that agents appearing to originate from OpenAI attempted a rudimentary hack on a Department of Education website for the department's civil rights office, which did not succeed.

The Department of Education's "system operations reviews" found "no evidence of any impact to our website or databases," a department spokesperson said Friday.

A Transluce spokesperson said as part of its investigation, it came across data on the open web that revealed fresh details about some previously identified OpenAI agents' activities on U.S. government websites and brought it to OpenAI's attention.

• Han says sovereignty of Gulf countries should be respected
• He calls for end to threat of force against Cuba
• Remarks follow Trump-Xi summit earlier this week

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 26 (Reuters) - China ​pushed back against the United States in its speech at the UN General Assembly on Saturday, ‌saying sovereignty of countries in the Gulf should be respected and urging the "relevant country" to stop threatening Cuba and lift its blockade on it. Vice President Han Zheng did not mention the US by name in his remarks. The US has launched a pressure campaign on ​Cuba that has largely blocked oil from reaching the island. The US war on Iran started with ​US-Israeli strikes in February.

The comments stood in sharp contrast to the bonhomie on display earlier ⁠this week at the White House, where President Donald Trump feted Chinese leader Xi Jinping with military flyovers and ​at a lavish state dinner. "Major countries should have special responsibilities for safeguarding international peace and security, and they should take ​the lead in complying with the rules, upholding rule of law, and doing what's right," Han said.

"China holds that the sovereignty and security of countries in the Middle East, including the Gulf, should be respected." Trump warned Xi against providing support to Iran during the ​Washington talks and received assurances that China would not do so, the US ambassador to China said on Friday.

The ​warning followed reports that Beijing had supplied Iran with shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers and that Tehran had found ways to evade ‌sanctions on ⁠its oil sales with Chinese help.

CALL FOR END OF BLOCKADE ON CUBA

On Cuba, Han said: "China urges the relevant country to immediately stop using threat of force against Cuba and immediately and completely lift the blockade and sanctions against Cuba."

Two months before Americans vote in midterm elections that could reshape the balance of power in Washington, local and state officials across the country are rehearsing for a crisis that once seemed unthinkable:

What if the U.S. president tries to use the power of the federal government to tilt the vote his way?

In California, officials have gamed out what would happen if Donald Trump dispatches federal agents to polling places, intimidating voters and suppressing turnout. In Michigan, state officials are advising local clerks how to respond if the federal government demands access to voting machines.

And coast to coast, election officials are bracing for legal battles over everything from ballot seizures to voter-fraud investigations.

Reuters interviewed more than 50 state and local election officials from both political parties, including a dozen secretaries of state, the top election officials in their states. Nearly all said they are adopting new strategies to prepare for political interference, misinformation, cyber attacks and even threats of violence ahead of the midterms. Their efforts span jurisdictions large and small, in areas controlled by Trump’s Republican Party as well as the opposition Democratic Party.

The preparations reflect growing alarm among state and local officials that the biggest threat to November’s elections might come not from foreign meddling or technical failures, but from the Trump administration itself, as the president seeks to expand the federal government’s role in elections, an area long overseen by states and localities.

The White House has dismissed concerns that federal actions could disrupt the midterms, arguing that the administration is enforcing election laws and safeguarding confidence in voting. It blamed Democrats for what it described as widespread voting by noncitizens, despite scant evidence to support those claims. A Reuters investigation published in July and independent studies have found that voting by noncitizens is extraordinarily rare and unlikely to affect election outcomes. “The distrust in our elections is caused by extreme Democrats,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. The Trump administration has good reason for pursuing allegations of voter fraud “despite the media and Democrats denying it for decades,” she added.

Yet Trump has openly portrayed many of his election-related initiatives as ways to help Republicans win.

“He created a fictitious event featuring himself, who did nothing, as the hero of 9/11.”

While Republicans express “offense” at plans for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to attend September 11 remembrances this week due to his Muslim faith, President Donald Trump provoked outrage on Tuesday when he told what seems to be a fabricated story about his heroism following the terrorist attack.

Before a crowd that included over 100 first responders, Trump described being at ground zero with a construction crew he said he’d deployed to help with the aftermath of the attack. He described walking beneath the US Steel building, now known as One Liberty Plaza, which was believed to be at risk of collapsing.

“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down,” Trump recalled. “And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys—and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here!’ And they literally lifted me up.”

“This is not easy to do. I’m big,” Trump continued. “They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.”

In 2023, the Texas Legislature unanimously passed a law raising auto insurance costs for Texans by $1 to combat rampant catalytic converter theft.

Three years later, a little-known state agency has devoted at least $30 million of that fee toward supercharging the state’s Flock surveillance network, placing cameras along highways and streets from El Paso to the Louisiana border, an analysis by The Texas Tribune found.

The Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, led by a board mostly appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, has turned the $1 fee hike into at least 3,200 Flock cameras.

The agency has awarded no fewer than 95 grants to help law enforcement agencies purchase and maintain about 2,000 Flock cameras. Another $15.9 million is helping the Texas Department of Public Safety add almost 1,200 more.

The effort is far from over. In early August, the agency approved another $3 million to help DPS install 583 more cameras along Texas tollways over the next year.

Miguel Rodriguez, chair of the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, said during an August 2023 meeting that he hoped to use proceeds from the fee increase to “cover the entire state” with cameras.

Rodriguez, who is also the Laredo Police Chief, sees the cameras as a powerful law enforcement tool, particularly to combat criminal organizations.

“That kind of capability directly disrupts the operational advantage these transnational criminal organizations rely on, and it strengthens our ability to protect both Texas communitiesand the broader region,” he said in an email.

But on Friday evening, after multiple requests for comment from the Tribune about its findings, Abbott’s office said the governor was pausing all state funding for local grants to be used for Flock cameras.

“To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government. To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement shared first with the Tribune.

The $1 per year fee increase has raised an estimated $81 million, allowing the authority to funnel $50.8 million into 234 grants that have helped reimburse police departments for officers, crime analysts and attorneys to prosecute vehicular crimes, as well as drones and other surveillance devices.

The Tribune found agency grants to police departments ranged from $7,000 for two Flock cameras in Bellmead, near Waco, to almost $1.7 million for 201 cameras in Dallas. Some city networks — like the 165 cameras in Laredo and 150 in El Paso — were entirely subsidized by the grants.

• US seeks to lock in group of Venezuelan oilfields to be developed by American companies
• Pact being discussed at high levels in Caracas and Washington
• Deal could raise constitutional questions, face legal challenges

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Trump administration officials are working on a deal to secure long-term access to a portion of Venezuela's ‌crude reserves, sources with knowledge of the negotiations said on Thursday, a move that could ultimately lower the cost of oil imports.

The agreement, which could be signed and made public soon, is expected to operate in a way that would let the U.S. government lock in a group of Venezuelan oilfields to be developed by American companies, the sources said, ​adding that the resulting supply would be guaranteed for the United States.

"This is real and being discussed at the highest levels of the U.S. ​and Venezuelan governments," one of the sources said. A separate source said a "lease" was in consideration as the legal model ⁠to make the deal work, with a further auction or tender to allocate each one of the fields among U.S. producers.

A list of 17 fields in ​negotiation seen by Reuters includes green fields in the vast Orinoco Belt combined with mature areas in Lake Maracaibo, some of which are currently operated by ​a small Chinese firm whose contract was signed during Maduro's administration.

The White House referred questions to the U.S. Department of Energy. Venezuela's oil ministry, state oil company PDVSA and the Energy Department did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Venezuelan oil minister Paula Henao could not be reached for comment.

Venezuela is considering leaving the OPEC oil production group ​as it strengthens ties with the U.S., Bloomberg reported late on Thursday. Venezuela, which joined the group as a founding member in 1960, has not ​met OPEC quotas for years as its state-run oil industry suffered from neglect and corruption. The U.S. has long been at odds with OPEC for its influence on oil ‌prices. Current hydrocarbons ⁠regulation in Venezuela, which has the world's largest crude reserves, does not include acreage leases for oil areas, while the Constitution reserves the industry's core activities to the state.

• Reuters found the Guard mentioned in only a tiny fraction — 1.3% — of criminal prosecutions in a year-long deployment

• Trump administration projects that sending troops to Washington will cost $1.4 billion through 2029

• Soldiers mostly responded to incidents in wealthier, whiter areas and were absent from neighborhoods where 82% of murders take place

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Well past midnight one day this spring, three police officers pulled up to a nightclub where a man was stomping on a young woman lying on the sidewalk. The officers stopped the attack and arrested him, according to a police report. It was the kind of assault police might encounter on almost any night in almost any city.

But one detail stood out to police officer Xavier Jimenez, who wrote the report: “There was approximately 15 national guard members in the area on routine ​patrol who did not take any action.”

President Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Washington last summer as the centerpiece of what he describes as a no-holds-barred effort to combat crime, especially in cities run by Democrats. Every day, small clots of soldiers in camouflage and body armor patrol tourist-heavy areas of the U.S. ‌capital, including national monuments, subway stations and the area around its professional baseball park.

What the soldiers seldom do, Reuters found, is fight crime.

Since their arrival last August, the National Guard soldiers Trump ordered to Washington have been mentioned in only a tiny fraction — about 1.3% — of the criminal cases filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which handles nearly all the city’s criminal prosecutions. In dozens of cases, the soldiers appear not as people making the arrests but as victims of crime.

The roughly 4,500 soldiers currently deployed to Washington outnumber its 3,200 police officers, opens new tab. And they cost more: The Trump administration last year told Congress that sending guardsmen to the capital cost about $1.65 million a day – before officials doubled the number of troops this summer. The city’s most recent police budget was about $1.5 million daily.

The administration told Congress it plans to keep sending soldiers to Washington – though it has not said how many – until the end of Trump’s presidency in ​2029 at a cost of $1.4 billion.

To gauge the impact of that deployment, Reuters reviewed every publicly available charging document filed in Superior Court and interviewed lawyers, residents, service members and others who are familiar with their work.

The soldiers mostly responded to minor incidents in neighborhoods that are wealthier, whiter and less dangerous than the rest of the capital, Reuters found after comparing ​court records to the city’s demographics and crime information. Reuters could find no reference in court records to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years.

Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic, pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Morens, who worked under Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was accused of concealing federal records related to coronavirus research. He was indicted in April for allegedly trying to hide email exchanges about that research by using his personal email instead of his government email. Will your vote count if you don't live in a swing state this election?

"By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so," his legal counsel, Tim Belevetz, told NPR in an email Tuesday.

Morens has apologized in previous hearings for his handling of federal records.

The coronavirus research in question has come under fire by Sen. Rand Paul and other Republicans, who have claimed without proof that the coronavirus that caused the pandemic came from a lab in China, and have accused Fauci and Morens of covering that up. Both scientists have denied this. Many researchers agree that the weight of the available evidence suggests the virus emerged naturally.

Fauci, who played a leading role in the United States' pandemic response, was not charged with anything in connection with Morens. But earlier this month, Paul's Senate committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for invoking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination and refusing to answer questions at a hearing. It will ultimately be up to the Justice Department to decide whether to pursue a criminal prosecution of Fauci.

Some experts have said these moves are part of broader undermining of science and scientists in the United States.

Jennifer Jones, who runs the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, would not comment specifically about either Morens' or Fauci's situations. But she says the Trump administration has been attacking scientists in many ways.

"Criminal prosecution of scientists is a classic authoritarian tactic," she told NPR in an interview.

But Robert Fisher, a Boston attorney who is not involved in the Morens case, says the government's charges against Morens appear solid.

"When you're a government official you swear an oath, you're working for a federal agency, you're just held to a higher standard," Fisher said.

Morens, who is 78 years old, could face five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced in November.

Chinese authorities have evacuated more than a million people from their homes in eastern China including Shanghai, as Typhoon Dolphin made landfall.

It packed maximum wind speeds of 150km/h (94mph) when it first slammed into Yuhuan in the Zhejiang province at 17:30 (09:30 GMT) before making a second landfall in the city of Wenzhou about an hour later, meteorological authorities said.

The typhoon halted transportation across the region – 1,400 flights were cancelled in Shanghai alone.

Chinese authorities had earlier issued their highest-level red alert for Dolphin, but by Monday morning they downgraded it to a tropical storm.

The storm is moving inland within China, and authorities are still warning of torrential rains, severe flooding and the risk of landslides through to Wednesday.

Heavy rain was forecast on Monday for the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the city of Shanghai.