US deploys immigration agents to airports amid shutdown chaos

Kylian Mbappe moved to within one goal of equalling France's all-time scoring record with the opener in a 2-1 win over Brazil as two of the leading World Cup contenders faced off in a glamour friendly in the United States on Thursday.

Mbappe ran through to beat goalkeeper Ederson with a delightful chipped finish to give France the lead just after the half-hour mark at the Gillette Stadium near Boston, home of NFL side the New England Patriots.

France, World Cup winners in 2018 and runners-up in 2022, had defender Dayot Upamecano sent off early in the second half but shrugged that off to double their lead courtesy of Liverpool striker Hugo Ekitike on 65 minutes.

Carlo Ancelotti's Brazil did pull one back 12 minutes from time via a close-range finish by Juventus defender Gleison Bremer, but Les Bleus held on for a victory that will boost confidence two and a half months before the World Cup begins. They play Senegal, Norway and a play-off winner in the group stage.

The sight of captain Mbappe scoring in trademark lethal fashion is especially good news for coach Didier Deschamps, after the Real Madrid superstar returned from three weeks out with a knee injury just ahead of this international get-together.

The 27-year-old Mbappe has now scored 56 goals in 95 appearances for his country, leaving him just one goal away from equalling the France record of 57 goals held by the recently-retired Olivier Giroud.

Mbappe will have the chance to match, and perhaps surpass, that record when France play Colombia in the second friendly of this American tour, at the Northwest Stadium near Washington DC on Sunday.

There have been four encounters between these powerhouse nations at past World Cups, including the 1998 World Cup final won by France and the 2006 quarter-final in which Les Bleus also triumphed.

However, this was their first meeting of any sort since a friendly in Paris exactly 11 years ago, won 3-1 by Brazil.

The Brazilians go into this year's World Cup -- in which they will face Morocco, Scotland and Haiti in the group stage -- hoping the recent appointment as coach of the revered Ancelotti can make them serious contenders to claim a record-extending sixth title.

- Brazilian absences -

But this match will have reminded them of the standards required against the very best sides in the international game.

Brazil were admittedly missing a host of key players here, with goalkeeper Alisson Becker, defensive duo Gabriel Magalhaes and Eder Militao, midfielder Bruno Guimaraes and forwards Rodrygo and Estevao among those absent.

France, meanwhile, were without Arsenal centre-back William Saliba, but a fearsome attack included Mbappe, Bayern Munich's Michael Olise and Paris Saint-Germain's Ousmane Dembele, the reigning Ballon d'Or.

Dembele released Mbappe for the opener, and that separated the teams at the break.

Upamecano was sent off on 55 minutes after American referee Guido Gonzales upgraded a yellow card to red following a VAR review, ruling that the defender had denied Wesley a clear goal-scoring opportunity as he took down the full-back on the edge of the area.

Crystal Palace centre-back Maxence Lacroix, a late call-up to replace the injured Saliba, came on for Dembele to make his debut and bolster the French back line after that.

They then increased their lead as Olise supplied Ekitike in the area and the Liverpool striker clipped the ball beyond Ederson for his second international goal.

Mbappe and Ekitike were promptly removed, and Brazil were left with too much to do, even if Bremer converted from close range from Luiz Henrique's assist on 78 minutes to make it 2-1.

Ancelotti will now hope his team can bounce back when they take on Croatia in Orlando, Florida next Tuesday.

as/dmc

An oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico affecting hundreds of kilometers of coastline was caused by "illegal dumping" from a ship and exacerbated by seepage from natural sources, Mexican authorities said Thursday.

Large blotches of oil have been observed since early March along 600 kilometers (370 miles) of coast spanning three Mexican states, in what activists are calling an environmental disaster.

President Claudia Sheinbaum's government, which denies any "severe environmental damage" from the incident, says it has removed 128 tons of crude oil residue from the gulf.

Navy Secretary Raymundo Morales said state oil company Pemex had determined the oil came from "a ship that carried out illegal dumping" off the southern city of Coatzacoalcos, in Veracruz state.

Thirteen vessels were present in the area, and it was impossible to establish which was responsible, he said.

Seepage of naturally occurring fossil fuel from two sources contributed to the contamination, authorities said.

They added they had put marine barriers in place to limit the flow, and were investigating whether any oil rigs in the area had structural problems causing a leakage.

Mexico is the world's 11th-biggest oil producer, and the second-biggest in Latin America, after Brazil, according to Pemex figures.

bur/jhb/mlm

OpenAI has put plans for a sexually explicit chatbot on hold indefinitely, the company said Thursday, amid mounting concerns about the societal and reputational risks of releasing such a product.

The move, first reported by the Financial Times, comes as the artificial intelligence giant seeks to shed what executives have described as peripheral projects as it tries to maintain its lead in the AI market.

OpenAI told the newspaper it wanted to conduct long-term research into the effects of sexually explicit conversations and emotional attachments before making any product decision.

Asked for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson told AFP the company had "nothing further to add."

The explicit content feature, internally dubbed "Citron mode," had drawn pushback from both staff and investors, the FT reported.

Some employees questioned whether the product was compatible with OpenAI's stated mission of ensuring the technology benefits humanity, while investors raised concerns about the reputational risks relative to any commercial upside, according to the report.

OpenAI said last year it would relax restrictions on its ChatGPT chatbot, including allowing erotic content for verified adult users as part of what the company described as a principle to "treat adult users like adults."

The dropping of the plan comes the same week that OpenAI announced it was winding down its Sora video social media app, which has been accused of triggering a flood of low value-added AI content online.

The decisions come at a sensitive moment for the tech industry, with Meta and other social media companies facing a wave of lawsuits -- and regulations -- over the impact of their platforms on minors.

The US Federal Trade Commission has also launched an inquiry into several tech companies including OpenAI over how AI chatbots could negatively affect children and teenagers.

Elon Musk's rival AI venture xAI drew global condemnation last year after its Grok chatbot was used to generate fabricated sexual images of real people, including children.

OpenAI has also faced its own legal challenges from families of teenagers who say ChatGPT caused harm and even suicide among young people, prompting the company to introduce an age-verification system.

The company deployed a behavior-based age prediction technology that estimates whether a user is over or under 18 based on how they interact with ChatGPT.

arp/mlm

(The Center Square) – The California Senate unanimously passed a bill on Thursday that renames Cesar Chavez Day “Farmworkers Day.”

The vote follows the Assembly’s unanimous passage of the same bill on Monday. The legislation now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom to be signed. 

The Legislature moved to rename the day, originally in honor of late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, after a New York Times investigation published this month found that there were multiple allegations of sexual abuse and assault by Chavez against women and girls for years.

Chavez, who was president of United Farm Workers, died in 1993.

“For generations, farmworkers have labored under a relentless sun,” Sen. Maria Durazo, D-Los Angeles, said on the Senate floor on Thursday. “They built one of the most consequential labor movements in all of American history, not because of any one person, but because of their collective strength, their sacrifice and their refusal to be invisible.”

The legislation renaming the holiday was Assembly Bill 2156. It was introduced by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, and Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara.

State lawmakers in California also signaled support for female farmworkers this week by announcing legislation that would give women in fields, farms and other agricultural labor settings access to menstrual products for free. Women at a press conference held in the California Capitol on Tuesday said female relatives who worked in the fields often had to suffer in silence on their menstrual cycles, working in jobs that required hard physical labor while enduring cramps and not making enough money to afford menstrual products.

“There were times when she had to use rags, paper or even pieces of her own clothing because she had no access to menstrual products,” Perla Sanchez, the daughter of a migrant worker, said of her mother’s experience on Tuesday. “She could not afford them. There were no stores nearby, and she was too ashamed to ask for help.”

The California Legislature joins other governments across the country in removing Cesar Chavez’s name from parks, schools, streets and days honoring the U.S. farmworker movement, according to previous reporting from The Center Square. The Phoenix City Council on Wednesday voted to rename Cesar Chavez Day “Farmworkers Day," while the city of Seattle took Chavez’s name off of one of its parks in the South Park neighborhood.

In addition, an Arizona Senate committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill repealing Cesar Chavez Day statewide. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors followed the lead of the city of Los Angeles and renamed the holiday "Farmworkers Day." Likewise, the Los Angeles Unified School District board approved a motion Tuesday to remove Chavez's name and likenesses from wherever it appears in the nation's second-largest school district. That included renaming two schools.

Cesar Chavez Day is March 31, prompting action across the country to respond to the allegations made by women in the farm labor movement who, according to The New York Times, were assaulted by Chavez from the time they were children. Dolores Huerta, the farm labor movement’s most prominent female leader, also said in The New York Times investigation that she was raped by Chavez.

“When we talk about honoring farmworkers, this is not about one person,” Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, R-Lancaster and the daughter and granddaughter of farmworkers, said on the Senate floor on Thursday. “This is not about one narrative. It’s about honoring generations of sacrifice, resilience and hope. No one person owns this story.”

(The Center Square) – Meta and YouTube are appealing a $6 million-plus ruling that held them liable for social media addiction.

Meta Platforms Inc. is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. YouTube is a subsidiary of Google. YouTube and Google are owned by Alphabet Inc.

Attorneys for a 20-year-old California woman identified only as K.G.M. or "Kaley" argued the social media platforms “caused severe mental health harm” to her during her preteen and teenage years.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury agreed on Wednesday.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda does not see it that way.

"We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal,” Castañeda told The Center Square Thursday. “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

The verdict ordered Meta and Google to each pay more than $3 million in compensatory damages.

Meta did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment. However, the company has issued statements to news outlets saying that “teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.”

Mark Lanier, founder of The Lanier Law Firm and lead trial counsel representing K.G.M., said in a press release that the companies purposely “built digital spaces designed to negatively influence the brains of children.”

The Center Square reached out to the plaintiff's attorney for comment, but did not hear back by press time.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified, as did Instagram head Adam Mosseri and psychiatrist Kara Bagot.

“The evidence showed that Meta and YouTube knew their platforms were hooking children and harming their mental health, and instead of fixing the problem, they kept developing features to maximize the time kids spent on their apps,” said Lanier in a press release.

Snapchat and TikTok were originally defendants in the case, but they each settled claims with the plaintiff before trial. Terms were not disclosed.

Earlier this week, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million over child exploitation and user safety claims.

Both rulings have been labeled “historic" by experts observing the lawsuits.

(The Center Square) – U.S. House lawmakers Thursday discussed a proposed framework for reducing federal deficits and slowing the growth of the national debt.

The federal debt surpassed $39 trillion on March 17 and continues to climb. Over the past year, it has grown by an average of more than $7 billion per day or over $5 million per minute, and budget deficits are the primary driver of its staggering rise. Budget deficits occur when Congress authorizes spending that exceeds what the government brings in through taxes, fees and other revenue streams. 

A key part of reining in the national debt is curbing annual deficits. 

Chairman of the House Budget Committee Jodey Arrington, R‑TX, proposed that Congress commit to not authorizing spending that would cause the annual deficit to exceed 3% of GDP in any year over the next decade.

“This 3%-over-10-year goal has been endorsed by financial experts like Ray Dalio and Warren Buffet,” Arrington said Thursday. He noted that it has also been endorsed by former President Barack Obama.

Later, Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and one of the expert witnesses called to testify before the House committee, confirmed that multiple organizations also supported the plan, in addition to all of the nonprofit’s board members. Americans for Prosperity, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the National Taxpayers Union, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Progressive Policy Institute and Third Way have all endorsed a target 3% deficit-to-GDP as a path to a more sustainable fiscal future. 

“There's widespread, broad-based support [for this] at a time when we can agree on very little,” MacGuineas told the committee. “These are organizations that do not often agree, and they all do on the 3% target.”

MacGuineas echoed what others who advocated for the 3% target said, namely that it strikes the right balance between aspirational and achievable.

“We need a metric aggressive enough to reassure markets and lenders, but realistic enough that lawmakers will not just throw in the towel or resort to gimmicky workarounds. So, given its balance between meaningful and doable, we believe the 3% appears to be the closest thing to a ‘Goldilocks’ target that we have,” MacGuineas said.

Jonathan Burks, executive vice president for economic and health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former policy director for the House budget committee, testified about the importance of finding a target that both parties could get behind.

“There has to be a genuine political consensus on the benefits of keeping deficits to modest levels if the rules are to be honored,” Burks said, giving examples of other similar targets that were ultimately abandoned after just a few years.

The European Union, Burks mentioned, agreed to a Stability and Growth Pact in the late 1990s that limited member states’ government deficits to 3% of their GDP. But the pact has been breached so many times that last June, the EU had to reprimand nearly one-third of its members for violating the Pact’s deficit ceiling, Burks said. (The EU is comprised of 27 countries, and nine ran deficits beyond the 3% threshold, as Bloomberg reported.)

Similarly, in 1985, Congress enacted a law that “established a series of deficit targets with the goal of balancing the budget by 1991.”

“However, honoring [the] deficit targets would have required more aggressive fiscal tightening than was politically bearable,” Burks said, and so Congress abandoned that approach just five years later.

Jared Bernstein, the chair of former President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said that the 3% target was a “laudable goal,” but lawmakers that consistently endorse reducing spending as the means of getting there were simply unrealistic.

“No matter how often policymakers say they are displeased with the fiscal outlook, their actions — what economists call their ‘revealed preferences’ — show that our deficits are born of an unwillingness to raise the revenue we need to meet the spending policymakers believe is warranted,” Bernstein said. 

Though Bernstein opposes President Donald Trump’s tariffs because they act as “a regressive tax, hitting middle- and low-income households,” he used them to underscore that “we can raise new revenues.” 

The government should replace tariffs with “other revenue raisers that are not targeted at families with the least ability to absorb them,” Bernstein said.

(The Center Square) – Congress plans to renew a powerful surveillance tool of the National Security Agency, but a former CIA military imagery analyst is urging lawmakers to reconsider.

Now a civil liberties policy analyst at the Cato Institute, Patrick Eddington argues that the expiring Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violates Americans’ privacy rights.

On paper, FISA Section 702 allows federal intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on foreign nationals of suspicion. 

In practice, however, the electronic data of American citizens – including emails, text messages, and phone calls – are routinely collected as well. 

“Because of the nature of the global telecommunications system, if you make a call from, say, Michigan trying to talk to a source in London, that call is going to pass through a number of different points before it gets to its destination in London,” Eddington told The Center Square.

“And if the person you were calling in London was a target, both sides of your communications – the person you're calling, and your end of it – are going to get swept up automatically.”

NSA refers to this as “incidental inquiry collection,” but Eddington says there is “nothing incidental about it – it’s inevitable.”

“Because of the word games that folks at NSA play, what they basically said for decades is that this stuff gets acquired – that's their magic word, acquired – but it's not actually collected until an NSA analyst looks at it. Now that of course is a lie,” he added. “The minute that they've collected it and it's gone into a U.S. database, that itself is technically the Fourth Amendment-related violation. They're not supposed to be doing that.”

Not only can intelligence agencies store that data for up to five years, but intelligence agents can and do routinely search that data without obtaining a warrant, known as “backdoor searches.”

“Those of us in the privacy and civil liberties community have always believed that that's just a straight up Fourth Amendment violation,” Eddington said. “It is a separate search, especially if they're simply fishing around for information on somebody without necessarily having a criminal nexus involved in it.”

Declassified government documents and reports from agencies like the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board show that federal intelligence agencies have performed millions of “backdoor” searches over the span of decades, including 57,000 in 2023 alone.

In one of the most infamous known cases, FBI agents scoured the data of 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. 

Tens of thousands of American protestors or those simply suspected of “civil unrest” have also had their communications spied upon, and even some members of Congress had their data searched via Section 702, declassified documents show.

But while many U.S. lawmakers have recently expressed opposition to a clean extension of Section 702, congressional leaders in both parties and both chambers have historically been hesitant to implement reforms.

Eddington told The Center Square that this is because members of leadership have been “consistently co-opted by the intelligence community bureaucracy.”

“The intelligence community bureaucracy has allies in Congress on the committees that are supposed to be their overseers, and those committees have been completely subjected to de facto regulatory capture,” Eddington said. 

He pointed to multiple failed attempts by rank-and-file lawmakers across administrations to prevent warrantless searches of American data in the Section 702 database. 

Notable reformatory legislation like the Amash–Conyers Amendment in 2014 and Rep. Andy Biggs’, R-Ariz., bill in 2024 failed on the House floor after leadership opposition.

“I could go on and on and on, but I've watched this crap – pardon my French – play out over the course of the last quarter century. I went to the Hill to work on the House side in August of 2004. So I've been around for pretty much when all these fights took place,” Eddington said.

“I think at the end of the day – certainly in the pre-Trump era – but even now there's still at the rank-and-file member level an enormous amount of scrutiny, if not just gut level opposition to this particular program and programs like it. But they get kneecapped by leadership too often,” he added.

With the current U.S.-Iran conflict heightening, global tensions and domestic security risks, opponents of reforming Section 702 argue that foreign intelligence gathering is needed now more than ever. 

Section 702 was enacted in 2008 to retroactively justify NSA secretly gathering personal electronic communications between U.S. and Afghanistan individuals for years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Eddington, however, argues that “the notion that they're going to lose the ability to detect terrorist attacks, to find spies, all the rest of that, is a demonstrable lie.”

“Even If FISA section 702 were to lapse, the base FISA statute remains intact. The ability of NSA to go after purely foreign communication of any type remains intact. And any of the FISA court authorizations for existing FISA section 702 targets would remain valid for a year,” he explained.

“And as a former intelligence officer, I think I can state pretty definitively that you don't capture spies and you don't win wars with mass electronic surveillance,” Eddington added.

“You catch spies with very specific targeted intelligence on individuals or networks. And you win wars when you have really solid, critical, verified intelligence from multiple sources…So I think people should really take a deeply skeptical attitude about the effectiveness of these mass surveillance programs.”

New Zealand's Lydia Ko fired a 12-under par 60 to seize a one-stroke lead over South Korea's Kim Hyo-joo in Thursday's first round of the LPGA Ford Championship.

Three-time major winner Ko, a 28-year-old Seoul-born Kiwi, shot her career-low LPGA score at Whirlwind Golf Club's Cattail course in Phoenix, Arizona.

With 12 birdies in a bogey-free round, Ko delivered only the eighth 60 in LPGA history and just the third since 2010.

"I holed some putts that I didn't expect to go in and I got a few good breaks and also hit a few good shots. Just a combination where things were going well," Ko said.

"I really wasn't that nervous and nine and eight aren't just gimme birdies anyway, so to birdie those and just finish at 60, I'm excited I finished at that score rather than feeling disappointed that I didn't break 60."

The only lower 18-hole score in LPGA history was Annika Sorenstam's 13-under 59 in the second round of the Standard Register PING tournament in Phoenix in 2001 at Moon Valley Country Club.

"Annika is the only one that has shot 59, so any record that matches Annika's record is going to be pretty incredible," Ko said.

"I felt like I gave myself a good run at it and I didn't really feel that much pressure or extra nerves just because I was in that position.

"I think the number 59 did cross my mind by the time I holed my birdie putt on six, but it wasn't like I had a lot of pressure to like break 60. It was just more like oh, it's really cool to be in this position."

World number eight Ko began on the back nine and birdied her first four holes then added birdies at the 16th and par-five 17th and followed with birdies at the first and par-five second holes.

She closed with two more sets of back-to-back birdies, at the fifth and par-three sixth holes and the eighth and ninth to finish her round.

"I don't think I've ever actually started a round with four birdies, so it was nice to take advantage of the good start and continue that on my back nine as well," Ko said.

"I feel like I stayed patient and was rolling it really well. I actually put in a new putter this week. Like I've had my old putter for a really long time, like the same model, so it was kind of different just to have something else.

"Maybe it's a honeymoon phase. Who knows? But you take a more easy day like this on any occasion."

World number four Kim had nine birdies and an eagle in her bogey-free round, which also began off the 10th tee.

She birdied three holes in a row starting at the par-five 12th, then four in a row on holes one through four and then closed with birdies at the par-five seventh and ninth around her eagle at eight.

World number two Nelly Korda of the United States was third after firing a 63 with seven birdies and an eagle at the par-four 18th.

js/bb

(The Center Square) – An improvised explosive device was planted at MacDill Air Force Base, home of the headquarters for U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, according to the FBI.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the report, adding that a brother and sister “have now been indicted.” The suspects have been identified as Alen Zheng and Ann Mary Zheng.

“One is in custody for accessory and evidence tampering and the primary suspect is charged with explosives offenses and is currently in China,” according to a social media post from Patel.

Gregory Kehoe, U.S. attorney for Central Florida, confirmed the device did not detonate; however, minutes after it was planted at the Tampa, Fla., base, a 911 call was made indicating a device had been placed on the base.

“When that phone call came in, no location for that bomb was, in fact, given in that 911 call. The device was found on base six days later,” Kehoe explained.

The attorney added that no one was injured in connection with the case.

The announcement of the indictment comes more than a week after the FBI Tampa reported a “suspicious package” was found at the MacDill Air Force Base Visitors Center on March 16.

MacDill Air Force Base is located on a peninsula in South Tampa, surrounded by Tampa Bay. CENTCOM oversees Operation Epic Fury, now in its third week of strikes against Iran.

Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level ever recorded, statistically tying last year's record, a leading US climate observatory for this geopolitically significant region said on Thursday.

The ice is formed by seawater that freezes through the winter. It partially melts through the summer. However, the amount of reformation each winter is in decline, as rising temperatures due to climate change disproportionately affect the Arctic.

- Earlier and lower levels -

This year's maximum ice level was reached on March 15 -- a week earlier than last year.

The ice clocked in just below last year's level at 14.29 million square kilometers, a statistical tie with last year's all-time record low of 14.31 million square kilometers, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.

It is the lowest level observed in 48 years of satellite monitoring. Previous records were set in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

This year's weak ice formation "gives a head start to the spring and summer melt season," said NSIDC Senior Researcher Walt Meier.

Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) had a similar analysis in a recent conversation with AFP, saying it may trigger a "potentially faster and more extensive summer melt."

The weak ice growth was visible on satellite for weeks, as AFP reported earlier in March.

- Impacts on wildlife, geopolitics -

Unlike land-based ice -- such as glaciers or ice sheets -- melting sea ice does not directly raise sea levels. But it does cause wide-ranging climate impacts that threaten ecosystems.

Many species, including polar bears in the Arctic and emperor penguins in Antarctica, rely on sea ice to breed and feed.

Some effects can cascade.

"There are areas, for example, in the Beaufort Sea, near Canada or the Siberian seas of the ocean, that had never been exposed to the atmosphere," says Gilles Garric, a polar oceanographer at Mercator Ocean Toulouse. That exposure, in turn, could make these waters warmer in the summer.

The melt also has geopolitical consequences, as it opens new shipping routes and access to mineral resources. Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to take over Greenland.

"From a geopolitical perspective, the climate change-induced melting of sea ice is turning the Arctic into the new Mediterranean: a common shared maritime resource surrounded by competing states," Elizabeth Chalecki, an expert on climate change and security, told AFP.

ico/pnb/bgs