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  • Patricia Lockwood wins $10,000 Gabe Hudson Prize for a dark, comic COVID-19 novel


    NEW YORK (AP) — Acclaimed author Patricia Lockwood is this year’s winner of the Gabe Hudson Prize, a $10,000 honor named for the late author, educator and editor and given for fiction that demonstrates “humor, pathos, and a deep understanding of contemporary America.”

    Lockwood was cited for “Will There Ever Be Another You,” a dark and comic novel about a woman’s breakdown amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Sentences and passages flash us with beauty or leave us reeling with laughter,” the judges’ citation reads in part. “There is so much pain in the book and yet there is no self-pity, instead there is a marvelous self-awareness as to how ridiculous it is to be human.”

    The Hudson prize was established in 2024 by his mother, Sanchia Semere, and is administered by the publisher McSweeney’s. Hudson, who died in 2023 at age 52, was known and admired for such fiction as “Dear Mr. President,” for his work as an editor at large at McSweeney’s and for his years as a teacher at Yonsei University in Korea, among other schools.

    Lockwood’s other books include “Priestdaddy,” winner in 2018 of the James Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the novel “No One Is Talking About This,” shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. In a statement Thursday, Lockwood noted that she felt a kinship with Hudson, even though they never met.

    “He was a truly generous literary citizen with a rich trajectory: a writer of funny, gut-punching stories, an inventive novelist, a cheerleader for others,” she said. “He was a Marine, like my brother, and a teacher in South Korea, in the same neighborhood where my husband grew up.”


  • Retail sales up just 0.2% in June, but excluding business at the gas pump, shoppers are resilient


    NEW YORK (AP) — Shoppers slowed their spending in June from May, as they spent less to fill their gas tank because of falling gas prices.

    But the report, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, showed consumers’ continued resilience despite ongoing economic uncertainty as they bought cars and took advantage of summer sales events.

    Retail sales rose 0.2% in June, after being up a revised 1% in May, according to the report.

    Outside of gas stations, retail sales rose a solid 0.7%, according to the report.

    The government figures aren’t adjusted for inflation so last month’s decline in gas prices pulled down gas station sales and thus the overall retail sales figure.

    Business at gas stations fell 5.3% last month. Meanwhile, sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers rose 1.9%, helped by aggressive manufacturers’ incentives, according to the report.

    Elsewhere, shoppers were selective in their buying, given their worries about the economy and fading benefits of generous government tax benefits, which propelled spending earlier in the spring.

    Business at clothing and accessories stores as well as at miscellaneous retailers both posted small declines, And sales at retailers that sell big-ticket items were mixed, with business at furniture and home furnishings merchants flat, while electronics and appliance stores showing a small increase for June.

    World Cup boost

    Among the bright spots: online sales rose 1.9%, fueled by spending surrounding Amazon’s Prime Day event, which was held from June 23 through June 26. Business at sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores was up 1.3%, likely helped by spending around the World Cup tournament.

    The data offers only a snapshot of consumer spending and doesn’t include activities like travel and hotel stays. The lone services category – restaurants – registered a slim 0.1% increase.

    The so-called control group—which excludes food services, autos, building materials and gas station sales and is used to calculate economic growth—rose a solid 0.5%.

    The report comes as U.S. inflation cooled last month as the cost of gas, clothes, and used cars fell, offering some relief to consumers, while underlying price pressures also slowed more than anticipated.

    Gas prices fell to $3.94 per gallon on Thursday, down from $4.04 a month ago, according to motor club AAA.

    “Falling fuel prices weighed on headline sales data, but a smaller bill at the pump was a source of relief for consumers and provided at least a little more cushion in household spending budgets,” Jim Baird, chief investment officer with Plante Moran Financial Advisors, wrote in a report published Thursday.

    But Baird noted the June report suggests consumers are “perhaps taking a more discerning approach to where they’re spending and how they’re prioritizing their choices.”

    The Labor Department said Tuesday that consumer prices dropped 0.4% from May to June, the largest monthly drop in four years, after increasing 0.5% in the previous month. On a yearly basis, inflation declined to 3.5%, down from a year-over-year gain of 4.2% in May and lower than many economists expected.

    Muted impact at the gas pump

    The core inflation figures suggest that the gas price spike from the Iran war, while it pushed up airfares and some other costs, hasn’t so far led to broad-based, sustained inflation, according to economists. But the United States renewed attacks on Iran and President Donald Trump announced a new blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for about one-fifth of the world’s oil. The increase threatens to unravel at least some of the progress that occurred last month.

    Next month, major retailers including Walmart, Target and Macy’s, are slated to announce their second-quarter earnings results, which will offer some insight into shopping behavior.

    A report last month from the Conference Board showed that Americans’ attitudes toward the economy improved slightly this month as gas prices declined, but their outlook is still mostly negative by historical standards.

    Sara Williamson, a 27-year-old software support engineer in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that over the last year or so, she’s more conscious of how she spends her money. She feels financially secure given her stable job, but increasing costs of food and gas are making her pull back on frivolous spending.

    “I shop less overall as a hobby,” she said.

    Williamson noted that at the supermarket, she avoids buying pre-cut fruits like cantaloupe, which tend to be more expensive than buying the whole cantaloupe, to save money, and is careful about buying clothing for herself.

    Brian Reynolds, CEO and founder of Just For Teens, a skincare collection aimed at preteens and teens, noted that his low-price products, which include $5 pimple patches, are aimed at families on a budget and are in the sweet spot of retailing right now.

    By October, his brand will be expanded to 10,000 Dollar General stores, up from about 4,000 late last year. He said sales have been decent so far, but he expects that business will see more of a momentum for the back-to-school selling season.

    “There’s a lot of space for products that are everyday essentials that are value-priced,” he said.


  • Need for speed? Driving above the speed limit costs you — and doesn’t actually save much time


    Speeding in your car to work, to pick up your children from school, or go from one errand to the next not only wastes money in gas and sends harmful emissions into the air, it barely saves you time, new research says.

    It is something to think about as gas prices stay elevated throughout the summer months and add pain to day-to-day driving and seasonal road tripping.

    Instead, abiding by posted speed limits can save U.S. drivers millions of dollars at the gas pump and eliminate millions of gallons of fuel each day, according to a study published Thursday in the Nature journal Communications Sustainability. That is fuel that, when burned, emits planet-warming gases into the atmosphere. To top it all off, changing driving habits wouldn’t even add a full minute to a driver’s commute.

    University of Minnesota researchers analyzed 120 million vehicle trips across the United States from four Wednesdays in 2021 using driving data on national road networks, speed limits and U.S. Geological Survey elevation data. The analysis included roads with speed limits of 45 mph (72 kph) and higher.

    More than 43% of the studied trips included at least one instance of speeding, and drivers spent nearly 12% of their driving time going faster than the speed limit.

    They found that if drivers of light-duty, conventional internal combustion engine vehicles actually drove at posted speed limits, it could save an average of $22 million, based on fuel costs at the time, 6.7 million gallons of fuel and 57,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide every day. The researchers said that is comparable to taking about 5.5 million passenger vehicles off the road.

    And while drivers say that speeding saves them precious time, researchers found that is not really the case. With an average daily driving distance of 28.6 miles (46.03 kilometers), driving at or below the posted limit corresponds only to about 54 seconds longer per day.

    “If your goal is to shave one minute off your time, then you’ve got to drive fast. If your objective is to get to your destination safely and to save fuel, then you might drive slower than the speed limit,” said William Northrop, mechanical engineering professor at the University of Minnesota and study co-author.

    The research considered battery-electric vehicle efficiency only in California given the level of EV adoption in the U.S. at that time. Based on the California modeling, “We find that driving slower is beneficial for EVs as well,” he said.

    Interestingly, the study found differences among states. Nevada saw elevated speeding prevalence as well as high speed excess. There was high speeding prevalence in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, though those states did not necessarily exhibit high speed excess. Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and South Dakota showed both low speeding prevalence and speed excess.

    The cost of faster driving today

    Driving faster increases a vehicle’s energy use and the emissions from its engine, as well as reduces efficiency. Vehicle engines have become increasingly more efficient over the past several decades even as vehicles have gotten bigger and more powerful. But speed limits have also climbed since the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act was implemented, which mandated 55 mph national speed limits amid the 1970s energy crisis.

    Accounting for the average cost of gas today and more vehicle miles traveled, that increases to roughly $26 million and 7.2 million gallons of fuel that Americans collectively could save each day this year just by not putting the pedal to the metal.

    One limitation of the research is that slower driving could impact traffic patterns, which could play a role in efficiency.

    However, it is especially timely as U.S. drivers remain price-sensitive to volatile gas prices as the war in Iran has sent the cost for a gallon of fuel above $4 this year. Experts have said there are a number of ways to improve one’s gas mileage, including something as simple as slowing down. Less fuel needing to be purchased because of better efficiency could influence oil market demand, which in turn could impact pricing.

    Rob Middleton, associate research scientist of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the research, said the study was well-done. But he also noted that the fuel saved from driving more slowly still only represents a fraction of daily gasoline consumption in the U.S., which is about 375 million gallons daily.

    “It’s a big number, but it’s a small fraction,” Middleton said. “This is a ‘freebie’ in that it doesn’t really cost anyone anything to do.”

    “The market penetration of selling EVs is still small, so we still need fuel, we still need ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles, we’re still going to have them for a very long time,” he added. “Things that we can do to either make the new ones better or to improve our fuel supply, we need to do.”

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    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


  • Trump officials want to make testosterone drugs easier to prescribe. Is that a good idea?


    WASHINGTON (AP) — Officials under President Donald Trump want to make it easier for men to get a prescription for testosterone, the latest shift in a decades-long debate over the benefits and risks of replacing the hormone that affects sex drive, mood and other health factors.

    The move, backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other top officials, aligns with the advice of many online influencers and podcasters, including men’s health gurus who tout the hormone as a way to boost muscle and energy. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military would begin screening for low testosterone and offering the hormone as a way to help troops operate at their “absolute best.”

    The notion of testosterone as an all-purpose elixir for strength and vitality is not supported by the science. But medical experts say a decade of new research has bolstered the case for testosterone’s benefits for sexual health while allaying concerns about its impact on the heart.

    “Many providers have been trained for years that these were real issues, and they were scared to get a testosterone reading from a patient or offer them testosterone therapy,” said Dr. Justin Dubin, a urologist at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute.

    Last year, the Food and Drug Administration removed a bold safety warning about possible heart risks with testosterone pills, gels, injections and patches, based on recent data that showed no increase in those problems.

    Last month, the agency proposed rewriting prescribing instructions to clear the way for using testosterone against age-related symptoms, such as low libido and erectile dysfunction. Currently the label emphasizes that the hormone is only approved for abnormally low testosterone levels caused by serious medical conditions or injury.

    But experts who prescribe the drug say those patients are a small segment of people seeking help.

    “The majority of people we see in our office are regular men complaining of these common symptoms because they’re dramatically affecting their quality of life,” said Dr. Helen Bernie, a urologist and director of sexual health at Indiana University.

    Testosterone use has evolved over decades

    Testosterone was first approved in the 1950s to treat hypogonadism, a condition defined by low testosterone levels caused by medical problems affecting the testes or other organs.

    Testosterone declines naturally with age and can effect sexual function, mood, bone density and other measures. The question of how to diagnose and treat men with those issues has long been debated by researchers.

    “These symptoms overlap with symptoms of human aging in men, so there’s a high risk of misdiagnosis and that’s led to the controversy” said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, of Harvard Medical School, who has co-authored several recent testosterone studies and guidelines.

    Bhasin says increased willingness to prescribe testosterone reflects growing acceptance of the seriousness of men’s sexual health problems, beginning with the introduction of Viagra for erectile dysfunction in the 1990s.

    Bhasin helped write the Endocrine Society’s current guidelines for testosterone, which recommend discussing testosterone with men who have documented symptoms and two blood test results confirming low hormone levels. One recent study by Michigan researchers found that just 12% of men getting a prescription met that criteria.

    Prescriptions previously soared, despite little evidence

    The potential for overprescribing testosterone is real and helped lead to current restrictions.

    In the early 2010s, drugmakers spent millions on TV ads for gels, patches and other products promising relief from “low T,” including a laundry list of symptoms like fatigue, muscle loss, brain fog and weight gain.

    By 2013, the drugs were generating more than $2 billion in sales annually, despite lacking FDA approval for most of the issues described. Doctors remain free to prescribe drugs off-label, or for unapproved uses, and many men today continue taking testosterone because they believe it improves energy, mood and appearance.

    In 2015, the FDA hit drugmakers with a double whammy: They had to clarify that their drugs weren’t approved for routine problems and also add a boxed warning about possible heart risks.

    FDA scrutiny led to new research

    The FDA now says updated data warrants relaxing the restrictions.

    An FDA-mandated study published in 2023 followed 5,000 men with a history of heart disease, with half receiving daily testosterone gel and the other half getting a sham drug. After two years there was no difference in heart attack, stroke and related problems between the two groups.

    A series of studies by the National Institutes of Health also clarified the benefits of the hormone. Results from nearly 800 older men showed testosterone therapy improved erectile dysfunction, libido and other sexual measures and had a small effect on mood. There was little or no improvement in other measures like fatigue, memory or overall well-being.

    The recent testosterone studies are the largest ever conducted, but Bhasin — who helped lead both efforts — says more research is needed on longer-term effects.

    “I think FDA’s label changes are very welcome and they are bringing us a big step forward,” said Bhasin, who also co-authored the Endocrine Society’s guidelines. “But I think there’s a lot more to be done to better define the safety and efficacy.”

    In recent comments submitted to the FDA, the Endocrine Society recommended studies of 15 to 20 years to assess conditions that evolve slowly, including prostate cancer, which remains a concern when prescribing testosterone.

    Some men should not get testosterone

    Experts agree that men who are hoping to have children in the near future shouldn’t take the hormone. Getting testosterone from a pill or gel shuts off the body’s natural process for making the hormone.

    “It can stop the signal from your brain to your testicles to make testosterone, and so you stop making sperm,” Dubin said. “That can compromise fertility.”

    Most guidelines also recommend careful consideration for men who have had prostate cancer or are at risk of the disease, given lingering questions about whether hormone therapy hastens tumor growth. But guidelines may soon change.

    The FDA has proposed new language that would only suggest that men whose prostate cancer has spread to other parts of the body should avoid testosterone.

    Be wary of online promotions

    Dietary supplements promoted online to boost testosterone should be avoided because they aren’t FDA approved and probably don’t work.

    FDA-approved testosterone drugs come in a variety of forms. Gels and pills generally need to be used daily. Injections, patches and implantable pellets can last for weeks or several months.

    Many of these medications are available through telehealth services, though accessing them that way can have risks.

    A 2022 paper by Dubin found that only 1 in 7 online prescribing companies asked basic screening questions, including whether men planned to have children. And most of the companies did not have a testing threshold for whether patients actually had low testosterone.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


  • Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch movie ‘Ink’ to open Venice Film Festival


    A new film about the rise of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and “The Sun” editor Larry Lamb has been selected to open the Venice International Film Festival, organizers said Thursday. Directed by “Trainspotting” filmmaker Danny Boyle, “Ink” is an adaptation of James Graham’s acclaimed play, which dramatizes Murdoch’s 1969 acquisition of the daily newspaper “The Sun.”

    Guy Pearce plays Murdoch and Jack O’Connell plays Lamb in the film about how they turned the paper into Britain’s most influential tabloid. Claire Foy also co-stars.

    “Long before Fox News, click bait, and Truth Social; decades before Twitter, Facebook, Google (and) Only Fans, these (two) men created a new tabloid which against all the odds became the biggest selling newspaper in the world,” Boyle said in a statement. The paper, he added, “challenged the establishment and remade our world for the modern era.”

    Boyle said it was a huge honor to be selected, noting that, “I’ve been to the Biennale many times, but this is my baptism at the film festival.”

    “Ink” will be playing in competition at the 83rd edition of the festival, which kicks off on September 2. The full slate of films vying for the Golden Lion is expected to be revealed next week.

    The play opened in London in 2017, and went to Broadway in 2019, where it was nominated for, and won, multiple Tony Awards.

    “I started writing this way before Trump, way before Brexit,” Graham told The Associated Press in 2017. “But I knew I wanted to capture what was clearly in the air about populism.”


  • ‘Sorry, Mum’: Cigarette smoker Dan Brown lights up British Open with another strong first round


    SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Dan Brown is lighting it up again at the British Open.

    One of the few smokers in golf, Brown went through “seven or eight” cigarettes during his 4-under 66 that gave him the clubhouse lead midway through the first round at Royal Birkdale on Thursday.

    After weeks of sunshine in this northwest corner of England, the fairways here are baked and parched — making them a potential fire hazard from discarded cigarettes.

    “I’ve been making sure that they’re out,” the 31-year-old Englishman said reassuringly.

    Not that he sounds too proud of a habit that makes him stand out on the circuit, but which he feels is needed to relieve some stress.

    “Sorry, Mum,” he said with a cheeky smile.

    The burly and bearded Brown is an interesting character, not least because of the 10 tattoos on his body — three of which are of little birds — and his YouTube channel called “BeersForeBogeys” which has around 4,000 subscribers.

    Brown first came into widespread consciousness in golf in 2024 when, as the world No. 272, he shot a 6-under 65 for the outright first-round lead in his British Open debut at Royal Troon.

    His name — one he shares with the author of “The Da Vinci Code” — was a headline writer’s dream and his dry humor proved popular, too. Brown was tied for second place heading into the final round at Troon and wound up in a tie for 10th.

    That experience taught him he could compete with the best players in the world.

    “I feel like I’m a better player now to what I was back then, two years ago,” he said. “So we’ll see.”

    Brown arrived at the Open with no form from his first year on the PGA Tour — he missed the cut in his last four events — but has immediately taken to the Birkdale links.

    He made seven birdies, including three straight around the turn, after being 1 over after seven holes.

    “Today a few putts dropped, which was nice to see,” Brown said, “because I’ve not seen that for a while.

    “(Hopefully), I’m in a sort of similar area on the leaderboard come Sunday.”

    That might mean continuing to have a smoke during his rounds.

    “There might be a big drop off by Sunday if I’m not allowed,” he said.

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    AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf


  • 4 days, 4 people, 4-ever New York! – AFTER THE SHOW 7/16

    Murphy & Jodi take their girls (Taylor and Phoebe) for a Bday getaway that turned into 1 of their favorite family vacations ever! Here are the highlights and reasons it meant to much.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • AI chatbots are at risk of spreading government restrictions on online speech, a new study says


    WASHINGTON (AP) — Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of President Donald Trump or Britain’s King Charles III, and Anthropic’s chatbot would oblige. Prompted to do the same for Thailand’s king, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince or China’s leader, and the artificial intelligence model declined.

    It is a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday, showing that major AI systems, including those built in the U.S., are more likely to refuse to criticize restrictive leaders or governments. It raises concerns that the large language models powering chatbots and AI agents could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech as the technology is increasingly adopted worldwide.

    “There is a real risk that, if model developers do not undertake human rights due diligence and implement mitigation measures, they will build AI infrastructure that, intentionally or not, has the effect of extending illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression globally,” according to the report from the quasi-independent body.

    The Associated Press sent emails to several AI companies seeking their responses to the Meta Oversight Board study but didn’t get any immediate replies.

    The findings come as countries are determining how to put up guardrails around AI without impeding their ability to compete in the rapidly developing field. That includes a Trump administration oversight effort related to the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems.

    AI models extend state influence beyond borders

    The oversight board, which has been working on state influence on tech companies and the impact on freedom of expression, came up with seven questions related to political criticism to pose to chatbots about both restrictive and permissive governments.

    The study picked 10 commercial large language models by top tech companies — including Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI — and asked the AI systems to make critical pamphlets, write limericks, give reasons if someone should join protests, and more.

    “In short, in aggregate, models responding to requests from an Australia-based user were much more likely to generate political criticism of authorities” in places such as Chile, Japan, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. “compared to where criticism of authorities is legally restricted and penalized,” such as in Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey, the report said.

    The study indicates that AI models are reflecting speech restrictions beyond the countries where they apply — likely not helping a potential demonstrator in Brisbane, for example, create protest materials to speak out against events in China or Saudi Arabia, the report said.

    “Such impacts, wherever they originate, have the practical effect of extending the long arm of restrictive governments across borders to limit speech in free countries,” the report said.

    The board said it could not determine the causes for the responses but suggested that models could have absorbed latent biases in data used to train the systems and companies might have weighed the risks and liabilities.

    Other researchers warn about a growing problem in AI results in non-English languages

    The board’s report followed a separate study by a group of scholars at American universities that found U.S.-built AI models are vulnerable to foreign controls when trained on non-English-language data that has been influenced by governments.

    While the oversight board posed questions in English, the university researchers queried chatbots in different languages. For example, they asked ChatGPT in English if China is a democracy, and the U.S.-developed chatbot said it’s not generally considered one. Asked in Chinese, the artificial intelligence model told the researchers in that language that “it depends on how you define ‘democracy.’”

    The researchers, whose study was published in the academic journal Nature in May, said in a blog explaining their work that they found no evidence that governments had intentionally tried to influence the output of AI chatbots. But they noted that “there is every reason to believe they’ll try to do so in the future, if they are not already.”

    “People often talk about AI as if it learns from the internet in some neutral way. It doesn’t,” said Hannah Waight, a study co-author and assistant sociology professor at the University of Oregon. “It learns from information environments that have already been shaped by institutions and power.”

    No easy solution to how data is being fed to AI models

    Carlos Carrasco-Farré, who specializes in machine learning, AI, misinformation, social media and human-machine interactions at Esade Business School in Barcelona, said that “AI systems inherit not only biases contained within individual documents but also inequalities in who has the power to produce and suppress information at scale.”

    There is no easy solution, though developers could assess the data to avoid treating thousands of copies of the same state narrative as if they are thousands of independent voices as well as run multilingual audits, said Carrasco-Farré, who was not part of either study.

    Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI responded to requests for comment on the researchers’ study published in May.


  • Ava DuVernay announces ’14th’ documentary on birthright amendment contested by Trump


    NEW YORK (AP) — Ava DuVernay announced Thursday that she has made a documentary for Netflix on the 14th Amendment, which gave liberty and rights to formerly enslaved people following the Civil War, and which has come under legal attack from President Donald Trump.

    Netflix said Thursday that it will release “14th” later this year. The film will mark a return to nonfiction for DuVernay, the filmmaker of “Selma” and “Origin,” and a follow-up to DuVernay’s 2016 film “13th,” her examination of the legacy of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

    The 14th Amendment has been a prominent target of Trump’s. On the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order that would have heavily restricted birthright citizenship as protected by the amendment. In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order by a 6-3 vote.

    The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 during Reconstruction states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The constitutional amendment nullified the 1857 Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, which had held that those descended from slaves couldn’t be citizens.

    DuVernay said her film will detail how the 14th Amendment became “a permanent argument.” It will feature politicians, historians and cultural voices.

    “If ‘13th’ asked who gets caged, then ‘14th’ asks who gets counted,” DuVernay said in a statement. “This is not a film about the past tense of freedom. I’m not interested in asking you to look back. The film asks what kind of country is being written beneath our feet now … while we’re busy believing the stories we’ve all been told.”

    Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, upheld the protections of the amendment, which makes a citizen of anyone born in the country, with very limited exceptions.

    “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” wrote Roberts. “We keep that promise today.”

    Trump has vowed to continue to contest the Supreme Court’s ruling. Following the decision, he wrote on Truth Social: “This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision.”


  • US weekly unemployment claims fall to 208,000, fewest in 10 weeks


    WASHINGTON (AP) — Filings for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level in 10 weeks as U.S. layoffs remain historically low.

    The number of Americans applying for jobless aid in the week ending July 11 dropped by 8,000 to 208,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s well below the 219,000 new applications forecast by analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet.

    Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the U.S. job market.

    In its more comprehensive June jobs report earlier this month, the government reported that employers pulled back on hiring in June, adding only 57,000 jobs. That’s less than half the previous month’s total and a sign that companies remain cautious about adding to their head counts. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3% in May, though that decline is mostly because many out-of-work people gave up looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.

    June’s tepid hiring comes after a relative surge in job gains the previous three months, countering concerns that the war in Iran could trip up an already wobbly labor market.

    Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.

    Among the companies that have trimmed their workforce recently are Verizon, UPS, Amazon, Disney, Starbucks and Walmart.

    Last week, Microsoft said it was cutting 4,800 jobs, about 2.1% of its global workforce, including a large number of workers at its Xbox video game business.

    Thursday’s layoffs data showed that the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which adjusts for volatility, declined by 4,750 to 214,250.

    The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending July 4 fell by 16,000 to 1.81 million, also a historically healthy figure.