Bill Gates is calling out fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk over cuts made to US government spending under his watch through the Department of Government Efficiency, saying the gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) would lead to millions of deaths around the world. The warning comes after the Trump administration took steps to dismantle USAID and halt its foreign assistance mission, with Musk bragging about feeding the agency to the “woodchipper.” In the weeks since, many non-profits have grappled with canceled contracts or sporadic payments, although some have since been restored amid warnings from aid organizations about the potentially deadly consequences of cutting the funding. “When Elon went into government, if his thing really was about efficiency or using AI, you know, of course we need to make the government more efficient. If that’s what it had been, then it’s a praiseworthy thing to put his time and expertise (into),” Gates said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Friday. “The fact that it turned into slashing these people, I didn’t expect that and some of that should be put back in place.” Gates added that the world is in a “global health emergency” because of spending cuts to health programs by the US and European governments. The full interview will air on Fareed Zakaria GPS on Sunday at 10 a.m. ET and 1 p.m. ET. The Microsoft cofounder’s comments come after he announced on Thursday plans to give away $200 billion — including “virtually all” of his personal wealth — through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years before closing the organization, an acceleration of his previous spending plans. The decision was motivated in part, he said, by concerns that progress on improving global health is stagnating or even reversing. “I think if you show up and say, in two months, you can cut $2 trillion out of a $7 trillion budget, you’re not going to succeed,” Gates said. “So you go for the softest things and things that are overseas, that you can mischaracterize… people that he hasn’t spent any time with.” Gates criticized, for example, Musk’s false claim in February that the US government was spending $50 billion on condoms for Gaza, which Musk later admitted was incorrect. He also denounced Musk’s negative characterizations of USAID workers, whom Musk has previously called “radical lunatics” and “anti-American.” Gates called them “heroes.” “Other than the military, these are about as honorable and, you know, they’re the face of America to people who we want to be alive with us, and we want their health systems to be tracking potential pandemics,” Gates said. “Demonizing them is deeply unfair.” The Gates Foundation has spent more than $100 billion since its founding in 2000, partnering with government agencies and other nonprofits globally to tackle major health challenges. The organization’s work has included developing new vaccines, diagnostic tools and treatment delivery mechanisms to fight disease around the world. Gates said that while Musk is “a genius in some domains … in global health, it hasn’t been a focus.” He added: “If it was a modest cut and a challenge to be more efficient… I’m fine with that. But 80%, that’s going to be millions of deaths and it’s a mistake.” The comments followed an interview Gates gave to the Financial Times earlier this week, during which he accused Musk of “killing the world’s poorest children” with the government spending cuts. A representative for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But it’s not the first time Musk and Gates have feuded over philanthropy. In 2022, Gates visited Musk in an effort to convince the Tesla CEO to increase his giving, but the meeting went sideways and afterwards Musk called Gates an “a-hole,” according to the Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, for which he spoke to both billionaires. In the interview with Zakaria, Gates also raised concerns about other White House actions, including President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. The widespread tariffs threaten to raise costs for US consumers and upend operations for American businesses, just as AI is already expected to shake up the job market and economy. “The big concern I have is we’ve created a lot of uncertainty,” Gates said. “If you’re going to build a new factory, you need to understand the policies for the next 20 years, not just the next two days or even four years.”

Jeanine Pirro’s absence from “The Five” on Thursday was a tell. Minutes after the Fox News show wrapped, President Trump confirmed that Pirro will become the interim US attorney in Washington, DC, one of the top prosecutor jobs in the country. Don’t tune into “The Five” expecting a Pirro send-off show; her exit was effective immediately, according to a Fox spokesperson. This means that one of the most coveted seats in right-wing media is suddenly up for grabs. “The Five” often ranks as the top-rated show across all of cable news and is a proven launchpad for MAGA media superstardom. It is also an important plank of Fox’s profits since the high ratings for the 5pm talk show help propel viewership for the rest of the evening. Fox News says it will rely on a rotation of Fox personalities to fill the seat until a new co-host is named. Numerous Fox hosts and contributors have filled in for Pirro in the past, including Katie Pavlich, Kayleigh McEnany and Kellyanne Conway. Fox contributor Joey Jones sat in Pirro’s usual seat on Thursday. Of all the Fox figures Trump has tapped to fill out his administration this year — by one count, he’s approaching two dozen — Pirro is one of the most bellicose. Trump and Pirro have had a friendly relationship for decades. (She was hanging out at Mar-a-Lago long before Trump even ran for president.) One of her books, titled “Don’t Lie to Me,” was even dedicated to Trump. Pirro’s staunch defense of Trump and derision of his critics made her a favorite of the network’s Trump-aligned fan base. And Trump was a regular (and fawning) guest when Pirro hosted a weekend evening show called “Justice with Judge Jeanine.” In 2020, however, her Trump loyalty wound up angering her bosses and wounding Fox’s parent company when she promoted his voter fraud lies. Pirro’s name came up repeatedly in Dominion Voting Systems’ blockbuster lawsuit against Fox News. Documents obtained by Dominion during the legal battle showed that her own executive producer, Jerry Andrews, wrote to a colleague in 2020 that one of Pirro’s proposed monologues was “rife with conspiracy theories and BS and is yet another example why this woman should never be on live television.” During one internal argument over Pirro’s conspiratorial pro-Trump commentary, Andrews called her a “reckless maniac.” In 2022, she was moved onto “The Five.” Pirro’s Fox persona has been ripe for “SNL” impersonation over the years. Her Fox colleagues truly respect her, though, specifically for her legal background, including her time as DA of Westchester County, New York. While her law-enforcement work ended 20 years ago, she is recognized as a trailblazer and still brings a lawyerly mindset to TV segments, Fox staffers said. In a statement on Thursday, the network said, “Jeanine Pirro has been a wonderful addition to The Five over the last three years and a longtime beloved host across FOX News Media who contributed greatly to our success throughout her 14-year tenure. We wish her all the best in her new role in Washington.” Pirro is replacing archconservative activist Ed Martin, whose conduct in the US attorney job was so aberrant that even some Republican lawmakers spoke out against him. Fox News has barely covered any of the many Martin controversies, so Pirro’s viewers may be unfamiliar with the reasons why she is, as The New York Times put it, ditching “a lucrative TV career, on short notice,” to bail Trump out of “an embarrassing jam.” But her willingness to do so is certainly not surprising. “We should respect her experience” as a former elected official and prosecutor, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams said on “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” Thursday night. However, he continued, “if you look at the 20 years since then, she has demonstrated a willingness to step out for the President of the United States in a role” — U.S. attorney for the nation’s capital — “that really ought to be independent of the White House.” “We have to remember, these are very important management roles,” Williams said. “This is the biggest U.S. Attorney’s Office in the country.” He said Trump picking Pirro is “quite frankly, an affront to the office.”

In 2023, sewage plants in Maryland started to make a troubling discovery. Harmful “forever chemicals” were contaminating the state’s sewage, much of which is turned into fertilizer and spread on farmland. To protect its food and drinking water, Maryland has started restricting the use of fertilizer made from sewage sludge. At the same time, a major sludge-fertilizer maker, Synagro, has been applying for permits to use more of it across the state border, on farms in Virginia. A coalition of environmentalists, fishing groups and some farmers are fighting that effort. They say the contamination threatens to poison farmland and vulnerable waterways that feed the Potomac River. These sewage sludge fertilizers “aren’t safe enough for farms in Maryland, so they’re coming to Virginia,” said Dean Naujoks of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, which advocates for clean water. “That’s wrong.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Virginia finds itself at the receiving end of a pattern that is emerging across the country as states scramble to address a growing farmland contamination crisis: States with weaker regulations are at risk of becoming dumping grounds for contaminated sludge. In Virginia, Synagro, one of the nation’s leading providers of sludge for use as fertilizer, has sought permission to apply more sludge in rural Virginia, according to local filings. Synagro is controlled by a Goldman Sachs investment fund. Kip Cleverley, the chief sustainability officer at Synagro, said in a statement that the fact that the fertilizer “may contain trace levels of PFAS does not mean that they are contaminated.” He said that Synagro continually adds new farms to its fertilizer program and that its decision to seek additional permits in Virginia was independent of any Maryland guidelines. The fertilizer industry says more than 2 million dry tons of sewage sludge were used on 4.6 million acres of farmland in 2018. And it estimates that farmers have obtained permits to use sewage sludge on nearly 70 million acres, or about a fifth of all U.S. agricultural land. But a growing body of research shows that this black sludge, also known as biosolids and made from sewage that flows from homes and factories, can contain heavy concentrations of harmful chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Those chemicals are thought to increase the risk of some cancers and to cause birth defects and developmental delays in children. For people in regions like Virginia’s Northern Neck, the “Garden of Virginia” that is the birthplace of George Washington, the threat feels doubly unfair: Much of the biosolids moving across state lines come from big industrial cities like Baltimore. The contamination, locals fear, will wash off the farmland and into the region’s rivers and creeks, and will hurt the farmers and watermen who live side by side. “The water just runs off from the farmland into the water,” said Lee Deihl, a seventh-generation waterman who owns the Northern Neck Oyster Company, as he maneuvered an oyster boat through a winding tributary of the Potomac. “And we get some pretty big rains this time of year.” His concerns are not unfounded. New research published in the scientific journal Nature found that PFAS in sludge applied as fertilizer can contaminate both farms and surrounding rivers and streams. “That stream might be the headwaters to your drinking water, further downstream, or the chemicals might be bioaccumulating in fish,” said Diana Oviedo Vargas, a researcher at the nonpartisan Stroud Water Research Center, who led the federally funded study. “There’s a lot we don’t know. But these contaminants are definitely reaching our surface water.” It is a tricky problem. Fertilizer made from sewage sludge has benefits. The sludge is rich in nutrients. And spreading it on fields cuts down on the need to incinerate it or put it in landfills. It also reduces the use of synthetic fertilizers made from fossil fuels. But the sludge can be contaminated with pathogens as well as chemicals like PFAS, research has shown. Synthetic PFAS chemicals are widely used in everyday items like nonstick cookware and stain-resistant carpets, and are linked to a range of illnesses. The E.P.A. regulates some pathogens and heavy metals in sludge used as fertilizer, but it does not regulate PFAS. This year, for the first time, the E.P.A. warned of the health risks of PFAS in fertilizer made from sewage sludge. The Biden administration last year also set the first federal PFAS drinking water standards, saying there was virtually no safe level of the chemicals. The lack of federal rules on PFAS in sludge has left states in charge, leading to a hodgepodge of regulations and the diversion of contaminated sludge to states with weaker regulations. Maine banned the use of sludge fertilizer in 2022. Since then, some of its sewage sludge has been shipped out of state because local landfills can’t accommodate it, local officials have said. Maryland temporarily halted new permits for the use of sludge as fertilizer. The Maryland Department of the Environment also ordered PFAS testing at sewage treatment plants across the state. It found contamination in the wastewater and sludge, even after the treatment process, and now has adopted guidelines, albeit voluntary, that say sludge with high levels of PFAS should be reported and disposed of. In Virginia, the groups opposed to Maryland’s sewage imports are urging the state to start regulating PFAS in sludge. But in the meantime, tens of thousands of tons of Maryland sludge are already heading to Virginia, according to data from Virginia. Biosolids from 22 wastewater treatment plants in Maryland have been approved for use as fertilizer in Virginia, and all 22 of those plants have reported PFAS contamination in their biosolids, according to an analysis by the Potomac Riverkeeper Network. In Westmoreland, a rural county in the Northern Neck, Synagro has reported applying sludge from 16 wastewater treatment plants in Maryland, all from facilities that have reported PFAS contamination. In December, Synagro applied for a permit expansion that would allow it to apply sludge on 2,000 additional acres of agricultural land in Westmoreland, more than doubling the total. After comments filed by local residents prompted a public hearing, Synagro withdrew its application, though it has told Virginia regulators it intends to reapply. In neighboring Essex County, Synagro is seeking to apply sludge to an additional 6,000 acres, increasing the acreage by nearly a third, according to its permit application. Mr. Cleverley of Synagro said the biosolids the company applied in Virginia met Maryland’s PFAS guidelines. Irina Calos, spokeswoman for Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality, said her state had yet to see a significant increase in the amount of Maryland biosolids being applied in Virginia. She said the state was still reviewing Synagro’s applications to increase its acreage in Virginia. Ms. Calos also said Virginia was not aware of any Maryland biosolids with levels of PFAS higher than what was recommended in Maryland. Environmental groups have countered that it is difficult to verify. Jay Apperson, a spokesman for Maryland, said the state’s guidelines and testing requirements aimed to protect public health while also supporting utilities and farmers.

Fifteen states sued the Trump administration over its declaration of an “energy emergency,” arguing that there is no emergency and that the order instructs regulators to illegally bypass reviews of fossil fuel projects, potentially damaging the environment. The president’s Jan. 20 executive order, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” directed federal agencies to speed up energy projects like drilling for oil and natural gas and mining for coal, although it excluded wind and solar energy. It stated that energy production was not meeting the nation’s needs, even though U.S. production has been at record highs. The Friday lawsuit, filed in federal court for the Western District of Washington State, argued that President Trump’s declaration meant that reviews required by environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Historic National Preservation Act were being shortened or skipped. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Traditionally, the lawsuit said, emergency procedures were employed only in the aftermath of major disasters. “But now, prodded onto the shakiest of limbs by the President’s unsupported and unlawful executive order, multiple federal agencies now seek to broadly employ these emergency procedures in nonemergency situations,” the complaint said. The suit asked the court to declare the directive illegal and to stop agencies from issuing expedited permits under the order. It was filed by the attorneys general of Washington, California, Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, all of whom are Democrats. “The president’s attempt to bypass important environmental protections is illegal and would cause immense harm to Washingtonians,” Attorney General Nick Brown of Washington said. “This won’t lower prices, increase our energy supply, or make our country safer.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, Taylor Rogers, said that the president alone “has the authority to determine what is a national emergency, not state attorneys or the courts.” She said Mr. Trump “recognizes that unleashing American energy is crucial to both our economic and national security.” In addition to Mr. Trump, the lawsuit names Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and the heads of the Army Corps of Engineers and a federal agency called the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. An Army spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit said that invoking emergency powers was reserved “for actual emergencies — not changes in presidential policy,” and that the changes would result in harm to the states’ interests, including clean drinking water, wildlife habitats and historic and cultural resources.

Long-delayed next Air Force One jets from Boeing might now be delivered by 2027 — in time for President Donald Trump to use them, according to a top Air Force official. While that’s still years behind the original delivery date of 2022, it’s one to two years earlier than Boeing had most recently predicted. Trump has expressed anger at the delays, and he reportedly had been looking at buying a different jet to use on an interim basis. News of the potential 2027 delivery came Wednesday from Darlene Costello, the Air Force’s acting acquisitions chief, who testified before the House Armed Service Committee about recent negotiations between the Air Force and Boeing. “I would not necessarily guarantee that date, but they are proposing to bring it in ’27, if we can come to agreement on the requirement changes,” Costello said. She was referring to contract requirements that are being loosened to get to that earlier date – such as the Air Force “relieving” Boeing of some of the top-clearance security requirements for workers performing work on the aircraft, which has been blamed for some of the delays. Boeing said it had no comment on Costello’s testimony. Keeping Trump and the Air Force happy is critical for Boeing, which gets 42% of its revenue from US government contracts, according to its most recent filing. Boeing’s $3.9 billion contract to replace the two Air Force One jets has become an expensive and embarrassing albatross. Boeing has reported losses totaling $2.5 billion already on the program, known as VC-25B, since it agreed to be responsible for what has become soaring cost overruns. There are multiple reasons for the delay in delivery. After signing the original contract in 2017, Boeing began refurbishing two 747 jets in February 2020 that it had built for another customer but never delivered because of that customer’s bankruptcy — a process that in hindsight probably was more expensive and time consuming than if it had built from scratch. And the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which started just weeks after Boeing began refurbishing the planes, caused significant additional delays. Current jets used by six different presidents The two jets now in use, which have the code letters VC-25A and carry the Air Force One designation when the president is on board, have been in service for nearly 35 years, starting during the term of President George H.W. Bush. Replacing the planes has long been a priority for Trump. “I’m not happy with the fact that it’s taken so long,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in February. “There’s no excuse for it.” He said he wouldn’t turn to Boeing’s European rival Airbus, but would consider buying a used 747 and having a different company refurbish it for use as Air Force One. Soon after those comments Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told investors that he is “all in” on trying to speed up the delivery and praised suggestions made by Elon Musk, who visited the Texas facility where the work is being done in December on Trump’s behalf. “The president is clearly not happy with the delivery timing,” Ortberg said at that time. “He’s made that well known. Elon Musk is actually helping us a lot in working through the requirements… to try to help us get the things that are non-value-added constraints out of the way, so we can move faster and the president those airplanes.” Even before Trump took office for the first time in 2017, he complained about the cost of the Boeing contract and threatened to cancel an existing deal. In February 2018 he negotiated the current contract for two of the jets, which saved the Air Force $1.4 billion over the previous deal, the White House said at the time. He had requested that the aircraft be delivered by 2021. The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, reported last week that the government has commissioned defense contractor L3Harris to overhaul a Boeing 747 formerly used by the Qatari government, with the aim to have it in service by this fall as an Air Force One jet. But that contract has not been announced by the government, and Costello was not asked about it during the hearing. The challenge is not the basic jet, but what it takes to turn a run-of-the-mill Boeing 747 into the flying communications and command post fit for the president of the United States, said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consulting firm. They are supposed to be able to fly and protect its occupants from missile attack or even the shock waves of a nuclear blast. “You can have a jet anytime,” he said. “But it takes a great deal of work to have encrypted communications and manage the military and federal government from anywhere around the world in any circumstance.”

The Federal Reserve is holding interest rates steady as it navigates uncertainty kicked up by a president who keeps haranguing the central bank to lower them. “‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell is a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue,” President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Friday morning, renewing a long-running barrage of insults against the central bank chair. “Other than that, I like him very much!” he added. The president’s public pressure campaign on the Fed comes as the central bank faces an ironic, whiplash-inducing reversal. Just months ago, it was on the verge of a rare feat — wrestling down a historic run-up of inflation without triggering mass layoffs, known as a “soft landing” — and preparing to keep cutting borrowing costs. But Trump’s rapid upending of global trade has pushed the Fed and its leader into a difficult position, in which they feel a wait-and-see approach may be their best strategy for now. “The Fed has been plunged into an almost impossible situation whereby its two mandates will likely move in opposite directions,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, referring to the Fed’s dual mission of keeping employment high and inflation low. “But government policy — which is incredibly uncertain itself — will dictate both the timing and magnitudes of those moves,” she wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. The concern is that an economy damaged by tariffs will force the Fed to cut interest rates to stave off job losses, at the risk of driving inflation higher. After having peaked above 9% in mid-2022, the annual inflation rate has been hovering just north of the central bank’s 2% target for nearly a year. Powell said Wednesday that holding pat on rates allows the Fed to “wait and see” how the economy unfolds. But policymakers warned in their statement Wednesday that “the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen,” renewing concerns about “stagflation” — a situation in which job losses and price hikes both mount even as the economy lags. “The tariff shock will reduce real GDP growth and raise prices at the same time, putting the Fed on the horns of a dilemma,” Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings, warned in a note Wednesday afternoon. “The policy move necessary to maintain full employment is the opposite of that necessary to contain inflation. Moving one policy lever to hit two conflicting targets is problematic.” Politics are adding to the difficulty. Trump has broken long-standing norms against political influence over monetary policy by repeatedly bashing Powell, whom he appointed in 2018. The president’s fresh criticism Friday follows weeks of escalating attacks. “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” he wrote on Truth Social on April 4. Two weeks later, he posted again, nicknaming Powell “Too Late” and saying his “termination cannot come fast enough!” In yet another post a week later, Trump called Powell a “major loser.” Powell told reporters Wednesday that Trump’s comments had no impact. “It really doesn’t affect either our job or the way we do it,” he said, adding that neither has he asked for a meeting with Trump nor has the president requested one. President Joe Biden reappointed Powell in 2022, and despite the recent barrage of criticism, Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker last week that he wouldn’t seek to remove him before his term ends in May 2026. “Why would I do that? I get to replace the person in another short period of time,” he said. The challenges of recent months mark the second time Powell has weighed how to handle economic fallout from Trump’s trade policies. In 2019, Trump was similarly threatening higher duties on China. Powell, who faced similar jabs from Trump through a barrage of Twitter posts at the time, wound up cutting interest rates three times to pre-emptively cushion the U.S. economy from the blow of higher duties. Powell signaled Wednesday that this time is different. The Fed was less worried in 2019 about the inflationary impacts of lower rates, he indicated, because prices were rising more slowly at a slower pace than they are now. Core personal consumption expenditures, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, showed prices rising at an annual rate of 2.6% in March, whereas the same measure clocked in beneath 2% for all of 2019. “It’s not a situation where we can be pre-emptive, because we actually don’t know what the right response to the data will be until we see more data,” Powell said. Although markets expect the Fed to cut interest rates three times by the end of the year, some analysts aren’t so sure. Bank of America researchers said Wednesday, “If our base case of a steady labor market and rising inflation is correct, we don’t see a path to cuts in 2025.” In the meantime, Powell has avoided committing to future moves given the widespread uncertainty Trump’s tariffs have generated for corporate bosses, small-business owners and consumers alike. “There are cases in which it would be appropriate for us to cut rates this year. There are cases in which it wouldn’t,” he told reporters Wednesday. “We just don’t know.

A new documentary about the 2022 killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh claims to have identified the Israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot. Additionally, the film alleges that while the Biden administration had initially concluded an Israeli soldier intentionally shot at Abu Akleh, despite the fact she was identifiable as media, it publicly declared that there was “no reason to believe” her killing was “intentional.” The documentary, produced by independent news outlet Zeteo and titled “Who Killed Shireen?,” follows former Wall Street Journal Middle East reporter Dion Nissenbaum and longtime foreign correspondent Conor Powell as they and fellow journalists seek to figure out who killed Abu Akleh and how the Biden administration handled the investigation into her killing. Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist with US citizenship, was a well-known and respected correspondent for Al Jazeera. She was shot while covering an Israeli military operation targeting militants in Jenin in May 2022. When she was killed, she was wearing protective gear identifying her as a member of the press. In the immediate aftermath of her death, Israeli officials suggested crossfire from Palestinian militants fighting with Israeli soldiers nearby could have been to blame. Shortly thereafter, however, investigations by CNN and other outlets found that the only militants in the area could not have reached Abu Akleh from where they stood when she was killed.  CNN further concluded that she was killed in a targeted attack, based on eyewitness statements and analysis from audio forensic and explosive weapons experts. The Israel Defense Forces eventually said there was a “high possibility” Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire, but said they would not charge any soldiers as there “was no suspicion that a bullet was fired deliberately” at anyone identified as a journalist and the soldier thought he was shooting at militants who were firing upon him. An Israeli military spokesperson later apologized for the journalist’s death and said the soldier responsible “did not do this on purpose.” But one subject interviewed for the documentary, identified only as a “key Biden administration official,” says that based on where the soldiers and the reporters were located at the time, “it was an indication that it was an intentional killing” and that the soldier would have been able to clearly see Abu Akleh was a noncombatant. “Whether or not they knew it was her or not, can very well be debated, but they would have absolutely known that it was a media person or a noncombatant at a minimum,” the anonymous Biden administration official states. “Absolutely knew that it was non-combatant, and every indication was that it was media. It was clear within all optics from that distance and location and the visual capabilities of that day.” The documentary does not detail how the official knows this information, although a source close to the documentary told CNN the official had “direct knowledge” of the Biden administration’s internal assessments of Abu Akleh’s death. As for who fired the fatal shots, an unidentified Israeli soldier interviewed in the documentary, who said he served alongside the soldier responsible for the slaying, identified the soldier by name and said he was a member of an elite commando unit called Duvdevan. (Because CNN has not been able to verify the reporting, we are not naming the soldier.) “When you open the corner and you have this second to take a decision, to take a shot and you see someone who hold a camera or something that, you know, point at you, you don’t need more than that to shoot the bullet,” the anonymous soldier says in the documentary. The soldier identified as Abu Akleh’s killer “wasn’t happy” to discover he killed a journalist, the fellow soldier says, but “he wasn’t like, you know, eating himself from the inside, like thinking about, ‘Oh, what have I done,’ or something like that.” Abu Akleh’s alleged shooter was later killed by an explosive device buried in the road during a June 2024 military operation in Jenin, the documentary notes. His family has said in interviews with Israeli media that he died while rescuing military medics, who’d been injured by a separate explosion allegedly planted by Palestinian militants. Reached for comment, the IDF said “Zeteo has decided to publish the name of the IDF soldier who fell during an operational activity, despite the family’s request not to publish the name, and even though they were told that there is no definitive determination regarding the identity of the individual responsible for the shooting that caused the journalist’s death. The IDF shares in the family’s grief and continues to support them.” A State Department investigation into Abu Akleh’s death, released in July 2022, found that the IDF was “likely responsible” for the shooting, but that there was “no reason to believe” the soldier intentionally targeted her. However, the unidentified Biden administration official alleges in the documentary that despite those findings, the administration’s assessment was ultimately publicly presented as the shooting having been “a tragic accident versus being an intentional killing of the individual.” He alleges the alteration was made because of “pressure within the administration to not try and anger the government of Israel too much by trying to force their hand at saying that they’d intentionally killed a US citizen.” The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Justice, which was reportedly working on its own investigation, declined to comment. Since Abu Akleh’s death, the situation on the ground in the region for reporters has changed dramatically. In May 2024, Al Jazeera was officially banned from Israel and the West Bank, with its offices in Ramallah at one point sealed shut by the IDF. In Gaza, press watchdog groups say at least 175 reporters, photographers, producers and other journalists have been killed since Israel began its military campaign following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. In some cases, Israel has claimed that the journalists killed were working with militant groups. Nevertheless, the war in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict on record for members of the media. In the documentary, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who has long advocated for more accountability following Abu Akleh’s death, said he believes “if the US had been more effective and more forceful in insisting that the rules of engagement changed after the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh,” then further civilian deaths could have been avoided. Abu Akleh’s family echoed that sentiment in a statement to CNN: “Our calls for justice have never been about one individual soldier, but rather for the entire chain of command—those who gave the orders, those who covered it up, and those who continue to deny responsibility — be held to account for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022 . Only then can there be any hope for real closure, not just for Shireen, but for every journalist and family seeking truth. “Regardless if the soldier’s identity is known or whether he is dead or alive doesn’t change the fact that Shireen was intentionally targeted and killed, and that happened within a system that enables impunity.”

The Trump administration has moved to end federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a showy grouse with the misfortune of inhabiting southern and central grasslands long sought-after for agriculture and energy development. In a court filing on Wednesday, officials said the Fish and Wildlife Service had erred in a Biden-era decision that placed the bird on the endangered species list. It’s the latest in a blur of actions by the White House seeking to weaken or eliminate environmental regulations that constrain President Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda. And it’s the latest twist for a species whose fate has been fought over for three decades. Lesser prairie chickens — known for the males’ quirky courtship displays of stamping, fanning their tail feathers and “flutter jumping” — have declined from historic estimates of hundreds of thousands or even millions to only about 30,000 today. Habitat loss is the main culprit. “President Trump will always fight to end burdensome regulations on America’s agriculture industry, especially as many ranchers participate in voluntary protections of the lesser prairie chicken’s habitat,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said. The filing, in United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, said the Fish and Wildlife Service expected to re-evaluate the bird’s status by Nov. 30, 2026. Although the species would lack federal protections under the Endangered Species Act in the interim, the motion stated that “at least sixteen different conservation efforts and programs administered by state, federal, and private entities exist that benefit the lesser prairie chicken.” But conservationists said the service would be under no obligation to reconsider the species on that timeline and predicted that they would have to sue to make it happen. “The Trump administration is again capitulating to the fossil fuel industry, ignoring sound science and common sense, and dooming an imperiled species to extinction,” Jason Rylander, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Removing Endangered Species Act protections is a purely political act that won’t stand up in court,” he continued. His group has intervened in the case. As far back as 1998, federal wildlife officials found that the lesser prairie chicken merited protection, but initially said other species were a higher priority. Later, the bird bounced on and then off the list of threatened and endangered species, caught up in lawsuits. In 2022, under President Biden, lesser prairie chickens were again protected. That decision divided the species into two distinct populations, categorizing the southern one (in eastern New Mexico and Southwest Texas) as endangered and the northern one (in central and western Kansas, central Oklahoma and the northeast panhandle of Texas) as threatened, a less imperiled finding that still affords some protections. The petroleum and ranching industries sued in 2023, as did the states of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Editors’ Picks In Her Follow-Up to ‘American Dirt,’ Jeanine Cummins Turns to Puerto Rico Is All of This Self-Monitoring Making Us Paranoid? What Travelers Should Know About This Messy Memorial Day Weekend Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Now the Trump Administration is arguing that the Fish and Wildlife Service was mistaken in assessing the species as distinct populations, and that doing so “taints the very foundation” of the decision to list it. The leading global scientific authority on the status of species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, classifies the lesser prairie chicken as vulnerable, akin to the U.S. listing of threatened. Mr. Rylander with the Center for Biological Diversity said he planned to file an opposition to the federal motion in the coming days. The fight over the lesser prairie chicken is taking place as scientists warn that the planet is facing levels of biodiversity loss that are unprecedented in human history. Temperate grasslands are among the world’s most imperiled ecosystems.

The top U.S. watchdog monitoring child exploitation online says that a sharp drop in reports from tech companies is primarily due to Meta and its embrace of end-to-end encryption. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s annual report, released Tuesday, said the organization received about 29.2 million reports of suspected exploitation in 2024 — a drop of roughly 19% compared with the year before. In total, the organization received 7 million fewer reports. It’s the largest drop in the organization’s history, and only the second on record. “When I saw the number my question was, ‘Did somebody stop reporting altogether? Did somebody go out of business or merge?’” said Yiota Souras, the center's chief legal officer. “There wasn’t anything like that.” Meta accounted for almost the entire decline, reporting 6.9 million fewer incidents than in 2023, according to the report. The company has been the top incident reporter to the center since at least 2019, and this year still made up over 67% of the center's total reports. Meta’s Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, and its WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger all rank in the top 10 largest social tech platforms by monthly active users. In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “We’ll continue working with NCMEC to make our reports as valuable as possible and we expect to continue to report more than any of our peers.” Meta said that it increased the number of reports involving direct contact with minors, and noted that even in its encrypted environments, it provides users with reporting tools. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is tasked by the federal government (through the PROTECT Act of 2003) to receive, process and analyze reports of online child exploitation made by tech companies and the public. Their annual report is widely viewed by child safety experts as an authoritative snapshot of what is believed to be the escalating problem of child exploitation online. Since the reports began being collected by tech companies in 1998, the numbers have increased sharply, going from fewer than a million total per year to 36.2 million in 2023. NCMEC has said that the increasing number of reports reflects a ballooning issue, but also better reporting practices. Souras said that NCMEC’s analytics suggest that Meta’s drop in reports was almost entirely due to instituting end-to-end encryption on Facebook and Messenger. Meta has said that it embraced end-to-end encryption on the platforms to provide more safety, security and privacy for its users. The company has also stressed that it built safety measures to combat abuse and made changes to its age policies. End-to-end encryption is a security protocol that limits platforms’ ability to analyze the contents of messages. Security advocates have praised the proliferation of the technology, but many law enforcement and child safety advocates have said that widespread use of end-to-end encryption will severely handicap the ability of law enforcement and tech companies to detect crime on their platforms. “There is no visibility into incidents in the same way, regardless of what companies may say that they’re doing it as alternative measures,” she said. “We feel like this is the year that we were seeing what happens when companies default encrypt on social media platforms where there are kids and offenders — we lose reports.” In 2024, Meta piloted a new program with NCMEC, allowing the platform to “bundle” reports, which resulted in an even lower number of total reports. NCMEC and Meta celebrated the rollout of the bundling feature, which they said reduces redundancy and streamlines operations. "We partnered with NCMEC to streamline our reporting process by grouping duplicate viral or meme content into a single cybertip. This contributed significantly to the drop in cybertips last year, and allowed NCMEC and law enforcement to more easily manage and prioritize them," a Meta spokesperson said. NCMEC said when the bundled reports were unbundled, allowing for a count of every incident, there was still a disparity of 7 million reports between years. Meta wasn’t alone in reducing its reporting numbers in 2024. NCMEC also noted that Google, X, Discord, Microsoft and the cloud software company Synchronoss all submitted at least 20% fewer reports than in 2023.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday it would stop tracking the cost of the country’s most expensive disasters, those which cause at least $1 billion in damage. The move would leave insurance companies, researchers and government policymakers without information to help understand the patterns of major disasters like hurricanes, drought or wildfires, and their economic consequences, starting this year. Those events are becoming more frequent or severe as the planet grows hotter, although not all disasters are linked to climate change. It’s the latest effort from the Trump administration to restrict or eliminate climate research. In recent weeks the administration has dismissed the authors working on the nation’s biggest climate assessment, planned to eliminate National Parks grants focused on climate change, and released a budget plan that would cut significantly climate science from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy and Defense departments. Researchers and lawmakers criticized Thursday’s decision. Jesse M. Keenan, associate professor and director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University in New Orleans, said ending the data collection would cripple efforts by federal and state governments to set budgets or make decisions on investment in infrastructure. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It defies logic,” he said. Without the database, “the U.S. government’s flying blind as to the cost of extreme weather and climate change.” In a comment on Bluesky, Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, wrote “It’s anti-science, anti-safety, and anti-American.” Few institutions can duplicate the kind of information provided by the database, said Virginia Iglesias, a climate researcher at the University of Colorado. “It’s one of the most consistent and trusted records of climate-related economic loss in the country,” she said. “The power of the database lies in its credibility.” So-called billion-dollar disasters — those with costs that balloon to 10 figures or more — have been increasing over time. In the 1980s, when the record begins, there were just over three per year, on average, when adjusted for inflation. For the period from 2020 to 2024, the average was 23 per year. In total, at least 403 such events have occurred in the United States since 1980. Last year there were 27, a tally second only to 2023 (which had 28). Editors’ Picks In Her Follow-Up to ‘American Dirt,’ Jeanine Cummins Turns to Puerto Rico Is All of This Self-Monitoring Making Us Paranoid? What Travelers Should Know About This Messy Memorial Day Weekend Last year’s disasters included hurricanes Helene and Milton, which together caused about $113 billion in damages and more than 250 deaths, a severe hailstorm in Colorado that caused about $3 billion in damages and a yearlong drought across much of the country that caused $5 billion in damages and claimed the lives of more than 100 people from heat exposure. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information plans to stop tracking these billion-dollar disasters in response to “evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes,” the agency said in an email. When asked, the agency did not say whether another branch of NOAA or federal agency would continue tracking and publicly reporting the price tag of such disasters. The announcement said the agency would make archived data from 1980 to 2024 available. But the dollar amount of disasters from 2025 on, such as the Los Angeles wildfires and their estimated billions of dollars of damage, would not be tracked and reported to the public. “You can’t fix what you don’t measure,” said Erin Sikorsky, the director of The Center for Climate and Security. “If we lose this information about the costs of these disasters, the American people and Congress won’t know what risks climate is posing to our country.” Other institutions or agencies would likely be unable to duplicate the data collection because it includes proprietary insurance information that companies are cautious to share, Ms. Sikorsky said. “It’s a pretty unique contribution.”