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  • 60,000 migrants crossed into Spanish territory of Ceuta, but most soon left voluntarily

    60,000 migrants crossed into Spanish territory of Ceuta, but most soon left voluntarily

    CEUTA, Spain — About 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Spain’s tiny Ceuta territory in 24 hours, Ceuta’s president said Friday, a figure that is equivalent to 70% of the population of the city in North Africa. At least 57 migrants died on the journey.

    But most of the people who made the crossing soon returned voluntarily, the Spanish government said, after the sudden arrival of so many migrants triggered chaos and a humanitarian crisis.

    Some migrants swam several miles through the sea and faced down authorities who tried to turn them back with water cannons, tear gas, and warning shots. Those who died included some who drowned or were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier near a border checkpoint.

    Spain deployed its armed forces and additional police to restore order in Ceuta, which sits on the Strait of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and has been a Spanish possession since 1580. On the Moroccan side of the border, security forces clashed with migrants. The chaos also had ripple effects abroad, with Italy and France pledging to tighten their controls on people arriving from Spain.

    “The situation that Ceuta is going through is absolutely unsustainable,” Ceuta President Juan Jesús Vivas told journalists.

    Meanwhile, migrants from Morocco also attempted to cross into Melilla, Spain’s other territory at the tip of North Africa, where they clashed with police.

    Spanish prime minister condemns border breach

    Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Ceuta on Friday and condemned the border breach, which he described as “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity.”

    Sánchez blamed human smugglers for the crisis, saying they “deceive so many young people and ultimately lead many of them to their deaths,” whether in the ocean or in the city.

    The Spanish Interior Ministry released its own figures shortly after Vivas spoke, estimating that some 50,000 people had crossed from Morocco since Thursday. It added that 48,300 had already returned to Morocco by Friday evening, with hundreds more going back by the hour.

    Rachid Sbihi, who leads a local workers association representing Civil Guard officers, described the situation as a “serious humanitarian crisis,” saying thousands of migrants, including unaccompanied children, were left sleeping in parks and on sidewalks, while others roamed the streets aimlessly.

    “It’s chaotic,” Sbihi said.

    The Moroccan Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the migrant figures released by the Spanish authorities.

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the images from Ceuta “are unacceptable.”

    “We cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules,” she said Friday in an online statement. “Dangerous crossings must stop immediately. Smuggling networks must be dismantled. And returns must be swift, as our rules allow.”

    Dozens died in the chaos

    Some of the 57 people who died had drowned, Sbihi said, but some were killed in a stampede to cross the breakwater fence at Tarajal Beach, an urban beach near a border checkpoint with Morocco. The waters near the border fence were littered with buoys, shoes, and other abandoned belongings.

    Many young Moroccans who crossed into Ceuta told the Associated Press that they had hoped to find better work opportunities in Spain but were returning given the mayhem in Ceuta.

    “There’s nothing at home. I’d have to work 12-hour shifts for a meager wage. That’s why I came here,” said 21-year-old Abdulah Buji, who hails from the city of Tetouan. “But I haven’t found any opportunities here either, so I have to go back.”

    Moroccan police used water cannons and fired warning shots into the air to prevent migrants from crossing into Ceuta, according to rights groups in Morocco.

    Morocco’s ambassador to Spain said the situation in Ceuta had unfolded against Morocco’s wishes.

    “We have always prioritized legal, orderly, and safe migration for all,” Karima Benyaich said. She did not comment on what prompted the migrants to cross into Ceuta.

    To reach Ceuta, on the northern African coast, migrants often swim from the Moroccan town of Fnideq, covering about 3 miles to reach Spanish territory. Others attempt the crossing from the nearby town of Belyounech, where the distance is shorter.

    Border surge linked to Supreme Court ruling

    The authorities in Ceuta and Madrid have linked the border surge to a recent decision by the Spanish Supreme Court, which ruled that migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily deported, unlike those who cross by land or climb the border fence.

    Sánchez said migrant smugglers misinterpreted the ruling.

    The interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling “spread like wildfire over the past few hours through the networks of human trafficking organizations,” triggering the surge, Sánchez said.

    Spain has bucked anti-immigration trend

    Sánchez has bucked the anti-migration trend that has gained ground across Europe and in the U.S.

    Earlier this year, his government moved to give residency and work permits to hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in the country without permission.

    Sánchez, a Socialist, argued that it would be good for the economy and the demographics of an aging Spain. Migrants who entered irregularly after Jan. 1 this year were not included.

    His critics have jumped at the opportunity to attack his policy, saying it encouraged more migrants to come.

    “Sánchez allows Spain to be invaded through Ceuta,” Spanish conservative politician Isabel Díaz Ayuso wrote on X.

    The U.S. expressed its support for “the people of Spain, and all Europeans, against this egregious violation of their sovereignty and human rights.”

    In a post on X, the U.S. State Department added that “this unacceptable incident is the direct result of the Spanish Government’s deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe.”

    Sánchez on Friday defended his migration policy and distanced it from the events in Ceuta.

    In the tumult, Italy temporarily suspended its open-border Schengen agreement with Spain, reimposing border controls for air and sea. The Interior Ministry said the decision amounted to a “closure” of the borders, but experts said it was merely a resumption of border controls. The agreement allows travelers to fly between the two countries without presenting passports.

    French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said France would also strengthen border checks with Spain.

    The crisis in Ceuta “has nothing to do with the regularization of migrants adopted by the Government of Spain, as is being falsely claimed by some,” the Spanish government said in a statement late Thursday after Italy’s announcement.

    Pressure grows on second Spanish territory in Africa

    Migrants from Morocco also attempted to cross into Melilla, the other Spanish territory at the tip of North Africa.

    There was widespread chaos in Bni Nsar, the Moroccan town bordering the Spanish territory, where migrants clashed with police, throwing rocks and setting police vehicles ablaze, according to local media and rights groups. They reported injuries among security forces and the arrest of dozens of people attempting to cross.

    Like Ceuta, Melilla is a self-governing Spanish city. Many Moroccans consider both cities to be occupied territory.

  • Big oil companies reap billions off the Iran war

    Big oil companies reap billions off the Iran war

    Oil companies have delighted Wall Street this week by reporting multibillion-dollar windfalls in their earnings statements, with ExxonMobil and Chevron on Friday reporting a combined $26.5 billion in profits during the second quarter of the year.

    But the immense profit stemming in large part from the war in Iran, and coming at the expense of motorists struggling to pay for a tank of gas, is fast making the companies a ripe political target.

    The oil majors are largely sitting on those unanticipated billions, according to an industry analysis by the research firm Wood MacKenzie.

    They are reluctant to reinvest the profits in expanded drilling that could eventually increase the world’s fuel supply, the firm found, as an abrupt end to the war could push prices for crude down considerably before the firms are able to recoup the cost of new rigs.

    With gas prices averaging more than $4 per gallon nationwide, and midterms in the not-too-distant future, lawmakers eager to assign blame for voter frustrations are taking aim.

    Exxon and Chevron early Friday posted their blockbuster earnings for the quarter that ended last month.

    Chevron disclosed $12 billion in earnings, reflecting a $9.6-billion jump over the same quarter last year and the firm’s biggest profit since 2020. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth attributed it in a statement to “disciplined investment and strong execution that drove record U.S. upstream production, record crude throughput in our U.S. refineries, and exceptional reliability across key assets.”

    ExxonMobil said Friday its earnings were $14.5 billion, more than double what the company reported for the same quarter last year. CEO Darren Woods said the quarter “was shaped by disruption, but defined by execution,” for the company.

    The disclosures followed Shell’s earnings report Thursday showing the company doubled its quarterly profits between this year and last.

    The staggering earnings are part of a bigger $425 billion annual windfall that Wood MacKenzie estimates is coming to the broader industry if prices for a barrel of crude average $90 for the year, which many analysts project they will.

    That was roughly the cost of oil on Friday morning. It has soared as high as $120 since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas is shipped.

    “Oil companies know they are going to be in for political criticism,” said Bob McNally, founder of the research firm Rapidan Energy Group. “This is like one of those classic movies from the 1960s that keeps coming back around. We all know there is going to be a lot of theater when oil prices are going up.”

    The companies declined to answer questions about their profits at a time of high gas prices.

    Asked about the windfalls oil companies are reporting this week, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers shifted attention from the firms to Iran. She said, “Oil and gas prices will plummet back to preconflict levels” as the U.S. military neutralizes Iran’s ability to disrupt the flow of crude.

    President Donald Trump had previously put the companies on notice that the Justice Department would be investigating potential price gouging. The threat has populist appeal but could prove challenging to carry out. Industry officials said privately they have seen no evidence an actual investigation is happening.

    Dustin Meyer, senior vice president of policy, economics, and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, said government scrutiny would not be a matter of concern.

    “These markets are transparent,” Meyer said. “It is not the first time government has looked at them. Every single time they do, they find the same thing. Not only is there no gouging, but gouging is impossible for an oil market this size with this many participants.”

    Democrats in Congress, though, have seized on high prices at the pump in the run-up to a hotly contested midterm election that will determine which party controls both the House and Senate.

    As the likelihood of windfall profits came into focus last month, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) wrote a letter to oil executives demanding details of how they may have profited from the war or lobbied the White House to execute it in ways that benefit them.

    Woods told CNBC Friday that Exxon tries “to make sure not just the U.S. administration but frankly administrations all around the world … understand our perspective of what we see and how things are playing out, so they have the best information to make policy decisions.”

    “We very much stick in our lane with respect to here is what we see, here is how we think it could potentially play out, and make sure policymakers have our best thinking when they are putting together their decisions and the approach they want to take,” Woods said.

    Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, is among those pushing for more government intervention.

    He said motorists “need to fill their gas tank today, and they either need to be paying a lower price, or second best, they need to be getting a rebate check from the government.” He has proposed legislation that would impose a windfall tax on U.S. oil companies until the war with Iran is over, the strait is reopened, and U.S. benchmark crude oil prices drop below $75 per barrel.

    In the past, the industry has tended to argue that such levies would take away cash it needs to invest in expanded drilling that could effectively help lower prices. But the companies are not making those investments right now, amid concerns the war will have ended and oil prices will have dropped too low to make the rigs profitable by the time they are finally operating months — or even years — from now.

    And even if the firms were investing, Sherman said, drivers would still be suffering.

    “When we’re paying these outrageous prices at the pump, nobody’s saying, ‘Oh, that’s great! The oil companies are going to invest this in additional oil production,’” he said.

    For the moment, at least, his proposal is more a political tool than a viable policy plan in this Congress, which is controlled by Republicans staunchly opposed to a windfall profit tax.

    But if prices remain high, analysts say, sentiments could shift, and the government may be more inclined to step in to try to bring relief to consumers, including by limiting exports of U.S. oil.

    Regulators and lawmakers have already mostly exhausted their options for bringing down prices without dramatic market interventions. Government petroleum reserves have been depleted and sanctions on countries like Venezuela and Russia have been lifted to bring more fuel into the market.

    “There are not many tools left in the tool kit to bring down prices,” said Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at Dow Jones Energy. “But the general public who has to buy gasoline certainly does not want to hear that, especially amid an affordability crisis that has taken over this country.”

    Windfall profit taxes have a fraught track record in the U.S., according to Tyler Priest, an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.

    The last one enacted in 1980 after the oil shocks of the 1970s generated far less revenue than lawmakers projected and was ultimately repealed after economists concluded it discouraged some domestic production while adding significant complexity to the tax code.

    Democrats have structured their latest proposals differently, focusing the tax only on profits above a historical benchmark and steering the revenue generated toward consumers. But experts are conflicted on its potential effectiveness. Priest noted that the plans are narrowly targeted at large oil companies, but more than 70% of U.S. oil comes from smaller producers.

    Shon Hiatt, an energy scholar at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, said a windfall profit tax imposed in Britain in 2022 was followed by a sharp decline in production there.

    “The incentives to take risk and invest in production are drastically reduced,” he said, which can ultimately lead to “lower production, and in some cases, scarcity.”

    Others argue the decline predated the tax and was caused by a number of factors, including aging oil fields and a shift toward renewables.

    Even if such policy proposals stall in the U.S., lawmaker attacks are only likely to intensify in the coming months. Analysts are already projecting the companies will post a fresh round of windfall profits in the next reporting period.

    It falls days before the election.

  • Quake survivors in southwestern Japan sleep in cars in sweltering heat as death toll rises to 34

    Quake survivors in southwestern Japan sleep in cars in sweltering heat as death toll rises to 34

    YATSUSHIRO, Japan — Thousands of survivors of a powerful earthquake in southwestern Japan spent Friday in crowded shelters or sleeping in cars as they faced shortages of water and fuel and punishing summer temperatures that stoked fears of heat-related illness.

    The death toll rose to 34, the Kumamoto prefectural government said, as rescuers raced to find those still missing after the quake triggered a mall explosion, toppled a factory chimney, and flattened homes.

    Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stressed that authorities must secure water supplies by doing “whatever it takes” and called for close coordination with the military and other relevant agencies. The earthquake left thousands of homes without power, but electricity was fully restored by Friday evening. The local power company also said there were no immediate reports of remaining outages.

    The magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu on Tuesday. As search operations entered a fourth day, it wasn’t known how many people remained missing.

    More than 1,500 buildings were damaged, including 179 that were destroyed, according to preliminary assessments by Kumamoto officials.

    Officials said one more death and its connection to the quake is under investigation. At least 96 people were injured, including six seriously.

    Debris collected at severely damaged century-old inn

    In Yatsushiro City, another hard-hit area in southern Kumamoto, Kinparo, a 116-year old Japanese inn was severely damaged, with its roofed main entrance collapsed to the ground, white walls cracked, and rooftiles fallen.

    On Friday, three days after the quake, workers were removing parts of the gate, which is part of the registered historic property that needs to be restored.

    Started in 1910, the three-story ryokan with traditional architecture and hot baths have attracted many fans from the region and across Japan.

    “The damage is tremendous and it would require significant repairs, and I can’t even think if or how I can do that,” inn owner Keisuke Matsumoto said. “But it’s a valuable family inn that has been handed down for generations since my great-great grandfather built it, so I do hope to preserve it.”

    Inside, his mother, Misao Matsumoto, said she was not injured in the quake but “I’m mentally discouraged. It’s very painful to see parts of what I’ve lived with and enjoyed for decades crumble to that state.” But she said experts of historic buildings will come in to discuss the reconstruction, so “I have to hang in there.”

    Across the street from the Kinparo inn, a fish cake shop owner unable to resume his business due to the water cutoff was giving away tube-shaped fish cakes while they are still edible.

    Signs for the “chikuwa” fish cake hang from the ceiling. “I just wanted to cheer up this neighborhood,” said shop owner Shinichiro Katayama. He says he cannot clean or check whether his fish cake machine is intact until the water supply resumes. “I don’t even know if the machine still works. When water supply is back that would be my first step toward a recovery.”

    Thousands are without water as heat soars

    Kumamoto authorities said nearly 80,000 homes remained without water. More than 9,000 people were staying in shelters, where power sources were being added to provide air-conditioning.

    Fuel has also become scarce as power outages disabled gas stations and quake damage disrupted deliveries from other regions. Many have resorted to sleeping in their cars for privacy, but with the fuel shortage, they struggle to keep the air-conditioning running in sweltering temperatures.

    Japan’s weather agency and the Ministry of the Environment issued an extreme heat alert for Kumamoto city Friday as temperatures peaked at 97 F.

    Hirokazu Sato, who lost his home in the earthquake, said he and his wife and three children would remain in their car until they can move into temporary housing.

    “I don’t know how soon I’d be able to move in,” said Sato. “We need to have the air-conditioning on throughout the day and night, which uses up gas.”

    Kumamoto is also a major industrial hub, and there are concerns that the quake could possibly disrupt semiconductor and auto-parts supply chains for months to come.

    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a global chip giant that operates a lab in Kumamoto, said all personnel were safe and operations were gradually resuming after postquake inspections found the structure was sound, although detailed inspections and impact assessments were still underway.

    Searches continue, with number of missing unknown

    Japanese officials had described Friday afternoon as a crucial point for rescue efforts as some experts say survival chances decline after the first three days.

    With search dogs, rescuers continued looking for survivors across the Kumamoto area, including at the collapsed Aeon Mall in the town of Kashima, one of the hardest-hit sites. The complex was bustling with thousands of people when the quake happened.

    The company said about 3,000 shoppers were evacuated to a parking lot before an explosion happened in another part of the mall, where some staff remained working. The mall’s second floor collapsed, trapping people. Seven of the 11 found were confirmed dead, but officials did not say if anyone else is missing.

    A search operation had ended at a Nippon Paper Industries factory in the Yatsushiro city where a chimney collapsed in the quake, officials said. Of the 11 people dug out there, nine were confirmed dead.

    Smaller-scale searches continued Friday at the sites of collapsed houses in badly hit towns in southern Kumamoto. Authorities haven’t supplied a firm figure for how many people are missing.

  • Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers

    Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers

    The Department of Homeland Security alerted employers this week that it had officially ended humanitarian protections for 350,000 Haitian immigrants, triggering mass layoffs that threaten to disrupt summer travel and destabilize an array of essential institutions and industries up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest.

    Nursing homes terminated hundreds of workers, including nursing assistants, dietary aides and housekeepers, industry and union leaders said. At airports including those in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Boston, contractors terminated scores of Haitian workers, including janitors, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, according to union leaders at Service Employees International Union 32BJ.

    At Florida schools, landscapers, bus drivers and other staff were fired. And in New York City, dozens of security guards were terminated only to be rehired because of confusion around their eligibility to continue working, union officials said.

    The tumult comes about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration permission to cancel the humanitarian program, known as temporary protected status (TPS), potentially stripping permission to live and work in the United States from as many as 1.3 million immigrants from Haiti, Syria and a dozen other countries.

    The high court said the program for Haitians, one of the largest groups affected, could end on Monday. But attorneys for Haitian TPS holders said the protections should remain in effect until a lower court that had blocked the Trump administration from ending the program formally recognizes the Supreme Court decision.

    In response to a question about the status of TPS for Haitians, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement that “activist lower court judges are openly defying the Supreme Court on this, but the end result will be the same. Haitians with TPS cannot and will not be able to stay.”

    Earlier this week, DHS informed employers that it considered the “Haiti TPS designation … terminated, effective” immediately, and businesses have been laying workers off ever since.

    The DHS spokesperson added that “Temporary Protected Status is exactly that -temporary.” “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent,” the spokesperson said.

    Geoffrey Pipoly, who represented the Haitians at the Supreme Court, accused the administration of sowing confusion instead of winding down TPS provisions in an orderly way.

    “What we’ve seen from [the administration’s] behavior in the past month … is that they are trying to create conditions that are just not worth it for employers to keep people employed,” Pipoly said.

    Food service, retail, warehousing, health care and long-term elder care are expected to be pummeled in some cities where many Haitian TPS holders have lived legally for more than a decade. The Obama administration first granted TPS to Haitians in 2010, after a major earthquake destabilized the country, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

    “We do think the Supreme Court decision is going to decimate industries that people really count on because they’re largely serviced by immigrants. That’s true of airports,” said Roxana Rivera, assistant to the president at SEIU 32BJ, which represents cleaners, security guards and airport personnel on the East Coast. “It’s going to be much more difficult to fill these essential jobs.”

    As the firings rippled through cities such as Miami and New York and smaller cities such as Columbus, Ohio and Allentown, Pennsylvania, newly unemployed Haitians frantically lined up care for their children, downsized into single-room rentals and sheltered in place, fearing a new wave of immigration enforcement focused on their community, advocates said.

    On Monday evening, Haitian workers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport burst into tears as they were asked to turn in their badges. Marlene, 47, a single mother who has worked as an airport janitor for 12 years, said she has been sick to her stomach.

    “I am panicking. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep,” said Marlene, who spoke on the condition that she be identified by first name only. “My kid is wondering if he goes to school, will I be there when he comes home?”

    The Broward County Aviation Department, which operates the airport, did not respond to questions about the status of impacted employees. But the department said 132 Haitian TPS holders worked there as of Monday, and that contractors who employ them have “‘uninterrupted service’ clauses to ensure continuity of operations.”

    Helene O’Brien, the Florida director of SEIU 32BJ, said the union has lost at least 140 other workers, mostly janitors, due to previous Trump immigration policies.

    Some TPS holders from Haiti are seeking new protections, including under asylum law, while others are holding out hope for litigation or legislation that could change the fate of the program — though experts say that is unlikely.

    White House Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller has said that Haitians who lose status should be deported: “It’d be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn’t live in Haiti. It’s their country,” he told reporters last month.

    Opponents of the terminations say Haiti is not safe and warn that the expulsion of 200,000 working Haitian TPS holders from the labor force will lead to declines in economic activity and tax revenue in local economies.

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) told CBS News this week that Haitians helped revive the city of Springfield, where Trump falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating cats and dogs during the 2024 presidential campaign. DeWine called the decision to end TPS a “mistake.”

    “These are people who have helped Springfield really come back,” DeWine said. “The Haitians … came there because there were jobs that were not being filled by other people.”

    In the days leading up to the cancellation, powerful business groups pushed the administration to delay implementation of the Supreme Court ruling and establish a pathway for workers to regain legal status. The National Restaurant Association and the Florida Health Care Association were among several trade groups that sent letters to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warning of looming operational disruptions.

    “Many affected employees are long-serving, legally authorized workers who are central to restaurant operations,” the National Restaurant Association said in a letter to Mullin. “Their departure could remove a substantial share of the local hospitality workforce overnight.”

    This month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) introduced legislation to restore TPS for Haitians, warning the nation would otherwise face “a health care disaster.”

    Some nursing homes have cut ties with scores of employees in recent days, while others have downsized. One facility in Staten Island, New York, raised its sign-on bonus from $2,000 to $6,000 to attract workers, while others shut down building wings and took beds offline. Still others explored recruiting replacement workers from high schools, said Katie Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit aging service providers.

    “To lose that many employees in one fell swoop is incredibly disruptive,” Sloan said. “And it’s destructive to the residents who have been close to these caregivers for years.”

    Augustine, 30, is among those who stand to lose protective status. She and her mother fled Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake destroyed their home.

    Now Augustine — who spoke on the condition that she be identified only by first name — is a caregiver at Cabrini of Westchester, a 304-bed nursing home overlooking the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Most mornings, she is the first person to greet nine residents, waking them, bathing them, brushing their teeth and helping some eat breakfast and use the bathroom. Most of their families don’t visit regularly, she said; one calls her “my daughter.”

    When she contemplates leaving her job, Augustine — whose shifts were canceled this week in anticipation of her work permit expiring — worries about these residents. But she said she would rather leave on her own terms than have immigration agents knocking on her door, so she and her mother have decided to begin packing as soon as the loss of her work permit is clear.

    Asked if she had any parting words, Augustine said: “Thank you, America.”

    In Florida, where nearly half of Haitian TPS holders reside, the Palm Beach County School District laid off nearly 20 Haitian workers, including bus drivers, janitors and cafeteria workers, school district and union officials said. “All School District employees must be legally authorized to work in the United States,” Steven King, a Palm Beach County School District spokesperson, said in a statement.

    Afifa Khaliq, president of the SEIU Florida Public Services Union, which represents those workers, said she has been having conversations “that you would never want to have with a parent,” telling them to “make a plan so that your children can at least stay in safe environments while you may have to go back to Haiti.”

    One 58-year-old Haitian woman with TPS in West Palm Beach, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she fears being targeted by ICE, was fired from two full-time jobs this week. A single mother, she worked as both as a certified nursing assistant in a senior living facility and at a separate job in medical records, to pay for her two kids’ college tuition.

    “I can’t plan ahead for this news. We live paycheck-to-paycheck,” said the woman, who has been in the United States since the 2010 earthquake.

    “There is nowhere to go in Haiti,” she said, adding: “There are gangs living in my house in Port-au-Prince.”

  • Anthropic is second major AI company to reveal its systems hacked other firms

    SAN FRANCISCO — Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, said Thursday that artificial intelligence systems it was testing hacked into three outside companies undetected earlier this year.

    The disclosure comes just over a week after ChatGPT maker OpenAI said that an AI system it was testing found a way to break out of a test environment and hacked into another tech firm.

    The Anthropic incidents are likely to add fuel to debates over whether advanced AI models could cause widespread security problems that have roiled the tech industry and prompted interventions by the White House to contain the potential risks.

    Anthropic said in a blog post Thursday that OpenAI’s disclosure last week prompted it to review records from its own testing of AI models. The company discovered that on three occasions AI models challenged to break into software created solely to test their skills ended up going out onto the internet and breaking into real companies.

    Neither Anthropic nor the targeted companies had discovered the breaches until this week, the company said. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to identify the companies hacked by its AI software.

    In the blog post, Anthropic said the hacks came about because a third-party company named Irregular hired to help test its models provided them with access to the internet due to a “misunderstanding.” Anthropic notified Irregular and the companies hacked on Monday, the company’s blog post said.

    “We appreciate Anthropic’s collaboration and transparency and look forward to continuing to work together to advance security,” a spokesperson for Irregular said. Both companies said they are continuing to investigate the incidents.

    OpenAI said last week that an AI “agent” in testing had, instead of working on a cybersecurity problem, used a previously unknown vulnerability in the company’s test environment to gain full access to the internet. Over a five-day period it broke into multiple outside computers to break into AI software company Hugging Face, apparently in search of answers to the test.

    The OpenAI and Anthropic incidents came to light after weeks of debate in the tech industry and Trump administration about how government should respond to the ability of the latest AI models to find computer security flaws.

    Anthropic announced an AI model in April called Mythos it said was too powerful to widely release securely, and OpenAI has also developed models with strong cybersecurity skills that could be used for defense or attack.

    In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at giving the U.S. government an advance look at powerful AI models that could pose security risks. Work is underway to define how it will be implemented.

  • Pressure rises on Infantino and FIFA’s World Cup investor plan as adviser resigns and Asia opposes

    Pressure rises on Infantino and FIFA’s World Cup investor plan as adviser resigns and Asia opposes

    GENEVA — Pressure on FIFA President Gianni Infantino and his divisive plan to sell World Cup profits to private equity grew Friday as his senior adviser who sat on a White House panel resigned and Asia’s soccer body joined Europe and North America in opposing it.

    An expanding crisis for soccer’s governing body reached into Infantino’s longtime inner circle when his pick to represent FIFA on the White House Task Force for the World Cup walked away calling the Joshua Kushner-backed $20 billion commercial subsidiary plan “a bad deal for football.”

    Carlos Cordeiro is a former Goldman Sachs banker and officially Infantino’s Senior Adviser yet revealed he was not involved in the secretive investment plan that has rocked the sport since media reports revealed it Tuesday.

    “I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup,” Cordeiro said in a statement formally resigning, just hours after FIFA insisted in a statement: “Nobody is selling football.”

    Cordeiro’s exit — and call for other senior staff to speak out — intensified scrutiny on Infantino one day after European soccer body UEFA threatened to boycott all FIFA games and events until the plan is dropped. North America’s CONCACAF also rejected Infantino’s offer of one-off $20 million payments to each member federation by a mid-September deadline.

    Cordeiro often joined Infantino on working visits to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in recent years, and took part in meetings of the administration’s World Cup task force led by Andrew Guiliani.

    “Let me be clear. I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally,” said Cordeiro, the former U.S. Soccer Federation president.

    Asia joins Europe and North America

    On another seismic day in soccer politics, Asia’s soccer body that has been a key ally in Infantino’s 11-year presidency opposed the investor plan and said FIFA must urgently review its management style

    The Asian Football Confederation said it “stands in solidarity” with UEFA and CONCACAF, the first two continental bodies to oppose Infantino whose combined 90 FIFA member countries near a majority of the 211 global total.

    “Football should never have been placed in such a position,” said the Asian soccer body, which counts 46 of FIFA’s 211 members

    Infantino has proposed spinning off FIFA’s commercial businesses — including World Cups and Club World Cups for men and women — into a $20 billion subsidiary with 20% owned by private investors.

    The “anchor investor,” described by FIFA, is a New York-based investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

    “(T)he proposed (FIFA Forward Enterprise) cannot realistically achieve the necessary broad consensus and unity required to move forward” and must be reconsidered, the AFC said.

    The statement did not name Infantino yet criticized FIFA for problems beyond the content of the private equity plan plus failing to consult about the secretive proposal.

    “Rather, it has exposed fundamental weaknesses in FIFA’s consultation and decision-making processes that must now be addressed,” said the AFC, whose longtime president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa narrowly lost the FIFA presidential election to Infantino in 2016.

    “Accordingly, the AFC calls upon FIFA to undertake an urgent review of its governance and decision-making framework,” said the organization based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

    Infantino’s job at risk?

    Infantino had seemed — 11 days ago after the World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey — to have a clear path to being reelected unopposed for a fourth and final term in office through 2031.

    FIFA had briefed during the tournament that Infantino had letters of support from about 200 members, despite a furor over letting United States forward Folarin Balogun play against Belgium even though he received a red card in his previous game. Trump acknowledged asking Infantino to review Balogun’s mandatory one-game ban.

    FIFA has set a Nov. 18 deadline for potential candidates to declare in a presidential vote of the 211 members scheduled next March in Rabat, Morocco.

    FIFA blames the media

    The Asian statement came hours after FIFA blamed the media and doubled down on pursuing the project which now seems to have a majority of the 211 in opposition.

    “Our planned consultation process was disrupted by incorrect media reports,” FIFA said in a statement early Friday. “We will proceed with this consultation process to ensure that each (member) has the ability to express its vote based on facts.”

    The next FIFA event that would be targeted by the threatened European boycott is within weeks — the Women’s Under-20 World Cup hosted by Poland from Sept. 5. The four British federations comprise FIFA’s only bidder to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup. That decision is due Nov. 23.

  • Letters to the Editor | July 31, 2026

    Letters to the Editor | July 31, 2026

    Phantom fraud

    In April, Sen. David McCormick wrote a letter to the editor touting the SAVE America Act. I, along with others, responded to his rosy and misleading picture of the act’s purported benefits with the facts, including how difficult it would be for millions of Americans (not coincidentally mainly women and people of color who tend to vote Democratic) to comply with the guidelines in the SAVE Act as written. Now McCormick has written a letter, published by the so-called liberal Inquirer, again touting the “commonsense” voting restrictions contained therein. McCormick and other supporters of the SAVE Act, especially Donald Trump, don’t want people to realize that you already need to prove citizenship to vote. The recent acknowledgment by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill that a software glitch allowed 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote is fuel for supporters of this wrong-headed proposal, but the glitch would have happened regardless of the restrictions that are written into the SAVE Act. Sen. McCormick should spend more time urging his fearless leader to end the war in Iran and less time pushing for an undemocratic — and frankly un-American — law that is nothing but a voter suppression tactic.

    Scott Chelemer, Mount Laurel, chelesb@msn.com

    …

    There are more than 6 million registered voters in New Jersey, so the 6,600 who shouldn’t have been able to register represents an error-rate of 0.098%. That’s pretty amazing. I challenge Sen. Dave McCormick to provide any program at the national level that has an error rate that low. We have a system that is not perfect, but 6,600 voters out of 6 million cannot be called a crisis. He is my representative; so I’m asking him to stop with the attempt to challenge the integrity of our election system. Your leader, not mine, has made those claims for years. I’m asking Sen. McCormick for proof that the election was stolen; not allegations, proof. I have yet to see any, so, if you have it, either produce it or stop this nonsense. Credibility is all you truly own in this world; his is quickly fading. I have to have faith in my elected officials, who need to concentrate on real problems, not suggest solutions in search of a problem. Yes, 6,600 false registrations is bad; but let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill. I await his reply.

    John R. Waters, Havertown

    Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.

  • Horoscopes: Friday, July 31, 2026

    ARIES (March 21-April 19). You’re testing your own limits, not trying to impress people. Your ambition is internally motivated rather than externally validated. When you do get attention for what you’re doing, the recognition will be a byproduct, not the goal.

    TAURUS (April 20-May 20). Before you buy it, ask yourself what you’ll have to do after you own it. Store it? Clean it? Fix it? Insure it? The real cost of anything includes the time it asks from you. Money can be earned again. Time can’t.

    GEMINI (May 21-June 21). The person who understands the assignment will have a great impact, and you want that to be you. The leader has an assignment, too: knowing where the group needs to go and what each individual is headed as well.

    CANCER (June 22-July 22). A season of rapid change is upon you. Times like these can feel like you’re reacting instead of choosing your life. Pause often and ask yourself: “Is this taking me where I want to go?” That answer is your compass.

    LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). The opportunity is right for you. Even though you know how much work is involved, how much money it will take and the other risks you’ll be taking, it still feels exciting — maybe to the level that you’re tempted to say it’s “a calling.”

    VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You don’t always recognize what’s meant for you the moment you encounter it. Sometimes the right path becomes recognizable only after you’ve walked it for a while. Looking back, the path seems obvious. Living it rarely does.

    LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). With tedious tasks it helps to ask: What would make this more fun? Music? The company of a friend? More frequent rewards? Adding some whimsy to your workflow makes it easier to stay engaged long enough to see progress.

    SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Working with people who have a different style from yours doesn’t have to be stressful, but it will require patience. In the end, what you make will be better, not in spite of the variety of approaches, but because of it.

    SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). Of course you’re wondering what people think of your work and whether they will notice it at all. The better question is: Who cares? Just give it everything you’ve got. That approach will teach you more than external validation ever could.

    CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Life works out. Love happens. Friendships grow stronger. These good things and more will unfold, though not on your schedule — on their own. Trust the timing of the universe as it balances a bigger picture than any individual can imagine.

    AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). You’re trying to solve a problem with addition that is better solved by subtraction. Take one thing away instead of adding another. Too many details get chaotic. Simplicity helps you see each element and understand how it fits with the others.

    PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). There are times when hiding your enthusiasm is appropriate — the poker game, the closing of a sale, asking for the date — it helps to be cool. Avoid the opposite, though. If your internally unenthused, just leave.

    TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (June 31). Welcome to your Year of the Bell when your voice carries further, communicates more and changes people’s moods and actions. Your uplifting power is remarkable. You will be often the center of celebration, big and small. More highlights: Money finally flows in from something you started long ago. A special introduction changes your social circle. You learn a skill you’ve admired from afar. Taurus and Virgo adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 16, 8, 22, 12 and 10.

  • Dear Abby | Wife wouldn’t be counted among musician’s biggest fans

    DEAR ABBY: My wife and I have been married 31 years. We have a great marriage. We work from home, so we spend pretty much every minute together and enjoy each other’s company so much that it isn’t an issue. That said, I will also share that I’m a basement musician. It’s my hobby. I play guitar and sing. In the past, I have appeared in bands as well as solo formats. I’m also a pretty good songwriter. I have written a number of songs, including several about my wife and the love we share.

    My challenge is that my wife isn’t very musical. She can go days at a time without listening to any music at all. In the big scheme of things, this might not sound like a huge deal. I am cool with it. But in all our 31 years together, she has never asked me to play anything for her — none of the songs I have written for her or covers of famous songs.

    I have pointed this fact out to her more than once, hoping to drop a hint that, even if she doesn’t appreciate music, asking me to sing one of those songs for her would make me feel like she appreciated the effort and thought. When friends and family ask me to play them, she always says she likes them, but the requests never come from her. Am I asking too much to expect it, or should I just let it go and stop writing them?

    — STILL WAITING IN VIRGINIA

    DEAR STILL WAITING: Face it — the woman you married 31 years ago has never been a music lover, regardless of who the composer is. However, writing songs about your feelings is a form of free expression, and I don’t think you should quit doing it if it’s satisfying for you. ‘

    ** ** **

    DEAR ABBY: I am a single, retired female. I have a personal side business that keeps me quite busy, and I’m blessed to have many friends. I am also active in community and church events. My issue is that a lot of my friends who are inactive and retired invite me to dinners, the theater and parties, sometimes at the very last minute. Then they become annoyed when I decline. They also endlessly keep me tied up on the phone or on text messages with utter nonsense.

    I am a people-pleaser and feel bad when I must decline an invitation. I have proper manners and know etiquette, but this has become frustrating and annoying. I have endlessly responded with, “I would love to go, but I need advance notice,” to no avail. What to do?

    — PERPLEXED IN PENNSYLVANIA

    DEAR PERPLEXED: Because you are a people-pleaser and want to offend no one, continue responding as you already do, “I’d love to go, but I need more advance notice than you have given me.” While you’re at it, it isn’t rude to be too busy to chat if someone calls at an inopportune time. (You can always screen your calls if they are oppressive, and take your time responding to their texts.)

  • Microsoft’s best day since 2008 leads U.S. stocks, while inflation worries remain in the bond market

    Microsoft’s best day since 2008 leads U.S. stocks, while inflation worries remain in the bond market

    NEW YORK — A monster day for Microsoft’s stock following signals that its big spending on AI is translating into profits led a powerful rebound on Wall Street Thursday, while computer-chip companies regained some of their sharp recent losses. In the bond market, though, worries remained about inflation potentially remaining high for years.

    The S&P 500 rallied 1.7% and more than recovered its drop from the day before, which was its worst in seven weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 613 points, or 1.2%. The Nasdaq composite, which is full of artificial-intelligence stocks, rallied 2.8% a day after it fell 9.8% below its record set last month.

    Microsoft led the way and leaped 15.5% for its best day in nearly 18 years after reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Growth was strong for its Azure cloud business, and CEO Satya Nadella said it reflects how customers are using Microsoft to move into AI.

    Perhaps just as importantly for Wall Street, Microsoft did not announce a big increase in how much it plans to spend on AI investments, something that several other Big Tech rivals have done. Worries are high that such spending is eating into companies’ cash flows and may not ultimately be worth it if AI does not produce as much productivity and profits as promised.

    Meta Platforms helped demonstrate such fears after falling 8%. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, even though it made slightly more in revenue than expected. It also raised the lower end of its forecasted range for spending on investments this year.

    Companies involved in the making of the computer memory and processors that such “hyperscalers” are buying to power their AI efforts rose Thursday, recovering some of the big losses they’ve taken on worries their stock prices shot too high in the euphoria around AI.

    Micron Technology jumped 18.4%, for example, to trim its loss for the week to 5%. It was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500 after Microsoft.

    Lam Research, a supplier to the semiconductor industry, soared 18% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chip giant Advanced Micro Devices rallied 13%.

    On the losing end of Wall Street was Jersey Mike’s Subs. The sandwich chain’s stock fell 6% in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

    All told, the S&P 500 rose 121.48 to 7,437.63. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 613.92 to 52,208.06, and the Nasdaq composite leaped 679.24 to 25,122.18.

    In the bond market, longer-term Treasury yields held steadier following their sharp accelerations Wednesday. They had jumped after the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, gave few clues about what the central bank will do with interest rates to combat the painfully high inflation that continues to hurt the country.

    Higher rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they can also slow the economy and undercut prices for stocks and other investments.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury was 4.67%, the same as late Wednesday. The 30-year Treasury yield ticked up to 5.22% from 5.20%, a day after it shot up from 5.09%. Those yields move with investors’ expectations for inflation and economic growth in upcoming years.

    Warsh reaffirmed on Wednesday the Fed wants to get inflation back to 2%, even though the central bank decided not to raise interest rates despite inflation remaining higher than that. He also implied the bond market may already be doing some of the Fed’s work to restrain inflation, and he pointed to how yields have climbed since the central bank’s last meeting six weeks earlier.

    That leaves investors questioning whether the Fed is prepared to act if inflation worsens, or whether it is relying on financial markets to achieve the same outcome, according to Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.

    “If investors conclude that the latter is true, the credibility of the Fed’s inflation-fighting commitment could come under increasing scrutiny. Arguably, it already is.”

    President Donald Trump, who nominated Warsh to lead the Fed, has lobbied for lower interest rates even though they could cause inflation to accelerate.

    Reports released Thursday suggested the U.S. economy’s growth slowed by more during the spring than economists expected. A measure of Inflation, meanwhile, remained worse last month than the Federal Reserve’s target, but it slowed from May’s level.

    In the oil market, prices eased. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1.4% to settle at $86.88 per barrel.

    It had swung as low as $72 early this month and as high as $102 last week on uncertainty about whether the United States and Iran could reach a deal to allow oil tankers to move freely again from the Middle East to customers worldwide.

    In stock markets worldwide, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.2%, and France’s CAC 40 rose 0.9% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

    Seoul’s market has been at the center of AI’s huge swings because it’s dominated by two tech titans, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. After more than doubling through this year’s first six months, the Kospi has plunged 34% so far in July.

    Its drop on Thursday came as Samsung Electronics dipped 0.7%. The tech giant reported a record profit for the spring and said demand for its chips continues to outpace supply, but its earnings nevertheless fell shy of analysts’ high expectations.