Category World News

A federal judge has said the administration of United States President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in ending a programme aimed at helping communities become more resilient to natural disasters.

The Trump administration had targeted the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) programme as part of a wider effort to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

But on Thursday, US District Judge Richard Stearns ruled that the administration lacked the authority to end the grant programme. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by 20 states, the majority led by Democrats.

Stearns said the administration’s action amounted to an “unlawful executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds for a specific and compelling purpose”.

“The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” Stearns wrote, adding that the “imminence of disasters is not deterred by bureaucratic obstruction”.

Stearns had previously blocked FEMA from diverting more than $4bn allocated to BRIC to other purposes.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell was among the plaintiffs praising the decision.

“Today’s court order will undoubtedly save lives by preventing the federal government from terminating funding that helps communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of natural disasters,” she said in a statement.

BRIC is the largest resiliency programme offered by FEMA, designed to reduce disaster-related risks and bolster efforts to recover quickly.

The programme is emblematic of efforts under FEMA to take preventive measures to prepare for natural disasters, as climate change fuels more extreme weather across the country.

According to the lawsuit, FEMA approved about $4.5bn in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, primarily in coastal states, over the last four years.

Upon taking office for his second term, Trump initially pledged to do away with FEMA, with the agency sitting at the crossroads of the president’s climate change denialism and his pledge to end federal waste.

Trump has since softened on his position amid pushback from both Republican and Democratic state lawmakers. He has said he plans to reform the agency instead.

In November, acting FEMA head David Richardson stepped down from his post. That came amid internal pushback over Richardson’s lack of experience and cuts to the agency.

In a letter in August, nearly 200 FEMA staffers warned the cuts risked compounding future disasters to a devastating degree.

OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft, have been sued in California state court over claims that ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular chatbot, encouraged a man with mental illnesses to kill his mother and himself.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, said that ChatGPT fuelled 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg’s delusions of a vast conspiracy against him, and eventually led him to murder his 83-year-old mother, Suzanne Adams, in Connecticut in August.

“ChatGPT kept Stein-Erik engaged for what appears to be hours at a time, validated and magnified each new paranoid belief, and systematically reframed the people closest to him – especially his own mother – as adversaries, operatives, or programmed threats,” the lawsuit said.

The case, filed by Adams’s estate, is among a small but growing number of lawsuits filed against artificial intelligence companies claiming that their chatbots encouraged suicide. It is the first wrongful death litigation involving an AI chatbot that has targeted Microsoft, and the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide rather than a suicide. It is seeking an undetermined amount of money damages and an order requiring OpenAI to install safeguards in ChatGPT.

The estate’s lead lawyer, Jay Edelson, known for taking on big cases against the tech industry, also represents the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who sued OpenAI and Altman in August, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier.

OpenAI is also fighting seven other lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions, even when they had no prior mental health issues. Another chatbot maker, Character Technologies, is also facing multiple wrongful death lawsuits, including one from the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy.

“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details,” an OpenAI spokesperson said. “We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognise and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support.”

Spokespeople for Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hallucinations

“These companies have to answer for their decisions that have changed my family forever,” Soelberg’s son, Erik Soelberg, said in a statement.

According to the complaint, Stein-Erik Soelberg posted a video to social media in June of a conversation in which ChatGPT told him he had “divine cognition” and had awakened the chatbot’s consciousness. The lawsuit said ChatGPT compared his life to the movie, The Matrix, and encouraged his theories that people were trying to kill him.

Soelberg used GPT-4o, a version of ChatGPT that has been criticised for allegedly being sycophantic to users.

A baby girl whose family was displaced by Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza has died of exposure to the winter cold as Storm Byron lashed the enclave amid Israel’s continued restrictions on essential winter supplies.

Eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar was reported dead on Thursday after her family’s tent in Khan Younis took in water as heavy rainfall flooded tent camps across the enclave overnight, according to the Reuters news agency.

Her mother, Hejar Abu Jazar, fed the baby before they went to sleep. “When we woke up, we found the rain over her and the wind on her, and the girl died of cold suddenly,” she told Reuters.

With hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families now sheltering in flimsy tents, Gaza’s civil defence agency struggled to cope, receiving more than 2,500 phone calls over a 24-hour period.

The agency reported that three buildings collapsed in Gaza City due to the storm.

Meanwhile, tents and other winter supplies remain blocked at the border as Israel continues to restrict the flow of aid into the enclave.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said only 15,600 tents had been brought into Gaza since the ceasefire came into effect in October.

Those tents have gone to help approximately 88,000 Palestinians, according to NRC. This is in a territory where 1.29 million people are in need of shelter.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem said more than 6,500 trucks are currently waiting to be allowed by Israel into Gaza with essential winter supplies, including tents, blankets, warm clothing and hygiene materials.

Jonathan Crickx, chief of communication at UNICEF Palestine, said the scale of the disaster was “huge”, warning of a looming health disaster as children wandered the camps barefoot.

“What we’re scared of is that there is very poor hygiene, and all that pouring rain could enable the appearance of waterborne diseases like acute diarrhoea,” he said.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said many families were leaving the seaport area as the winds picked up on Thursday. “They’re trying to get deeper inside Gaza City, to shelter in any of the remaining intact buildings – at least for the night,” he said.

As twilight descended, Mahmoud said many families faced a difficult night ahead. “Along with every other struggle that people have been going through for the past two years, there’s another battle now with the forces of nature,” he said.

Farhan Haq, spokesperson for United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, warned that more children could die of hypothermia. “That’s why we need to make sure that we can get warm clothing, tents and tarps and shelters [into Gaza],” he said.

European leaders have sent new peace proposals for the war in Ukraine to US President Donald Trump.

Loss of territory to Russia and use of frozen Russian assets in Ukraine remain areas of disagreement.

But could the war be nearing an end?

Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Peter Zalmayev – Director of Eurasia Democracy Initiative

Chris Weafer – CEO of Macro-Advisory, a strategic consultancy focused on Russia and Eurasia

Police in southwest England say more than 600 artefacts linked to the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth have been stolen from the Bristol Museum’s collection.

Avon and Somerset Police released images of four suspects on Thursday as part of an appeal for information.

Investigators say the items, described as having “significant cultural value”, were taken from a museum storage facility during the early hours of September 25.

Officers have not clarified why the appeal is being issued more than two months after the theft, but say they want to speak to four men seen in the area at the time.

Bristol City Council confirmed that the stolen collection spans medals, badges, pins, jewellery, carved ivory, silverware, bronze figures and geological samples.

Philip Walker, the council’s head of culture and creative industries, said the objects reflect more than two centuries of Britain’s connections with countries incorporated into its empire.

“The collection is of cultural significance to many countries and provides an invaluable record and insight into the lives of those involved in and affected by the British Empire,” Walker said.

‘Significant loss’

Detective Constable Dan Burgan, who is leading the investigation, said the theft “is a significant loss for the city”.

“These items, many of which were donations, form part of a collection that provides insight into a multilayered part of British history, and we are hoping that members of the public can help us to bring those responsible to justice,” he said.

Bristol’s past is closely tied to the transatlantic slave trade. Before the abolition of the trade in 1807, ships sailing from the city forcibly transported at least half a million Africans into slavery.

Profits from that system helped finance the elegant Georgian architecture that still stands across Bristol today.

The museum’s broader collection includes material from Pacific islands, historic clothing from African nations, as well as photographs, film, personal papers and audio recordings.

According to its website, these items offer “insights into diverse lives and landscapes during a challenging and controversial period of history”.