California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a nationwide tax on billionaires as part of a broader “economic reset for America.”

Newsom, who is considered to be a 2028 presidential contender, also reiterated his opposition to a state-level wealth tax that Californians will vote on in November.

He also called for creating a “national public equity fund” to help “ensure every American owns a stake in the future being built by AI.”

A small aircraft appeared to have struck the tallest building in China’s capital on Friday afternoon, in a shocking incident in one of the world’s most fortified cities.

Dramatic footage from Beijing posted on social media showed debris falling from the 109-story CITIC Tower, also known as China Zun, as well as a tail section of the plane and a broken window of a taxicab on the ground.

A CNN journalist witnessed people evacuated from the skyscraper gathering on the streets near the entrance, along with firetrucks, police cars and an ambulance.

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to either unredact and release more records related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein or provide a detailed explanation for why the redactions remain necessary.

The order comes amid heightened scrutiny over the U.S. government's handling of millions of pages of investigative files related to the disgraced financier who was found dead in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting his sex-trafficking trial.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's order issued Thursday directs acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to justify the department's continued withholding of portions of the records after lawmakers and victims' advocates questioned whether some redactions exceed what is legally permitted.

Several months before blue strips started floating to the surface of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a company involved in its last renovation more than 15 years ago was approached with an opportunity to do this remodel as well. But the company said no.

Specifically, it balked at two requirements – the Trump administration wanted it done by July 4, and the pool bottom had to be blue, according to two employees with the New Jersey-based Sika Corporation, which provided the concrete construction and sealing products for a 2010 renovation project to the Reflecting Pool.

According to the two employees, who spoke to CNN on the condition they not be identified, both demands made the job “unfeasible.”

California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.

The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.

“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”

A judge temporarily ordered the Tennessee Department of Health not to give immigration authorities information about roughly 400 seriously sick and disabled immigrant children who are enrolled in a healthcare assistance program.

The restraining order was issued Wednesday at the request of three Nashville doctors who treat some of those children and who sued after state officials sent letters to providers and immigrant families saying a new law required them to share identifying information for those on the program after the end of June.

The law was part of a group of bills that Tennessee Republicans introduced this year to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

A report that Kennedy raised the possibility of an “agreement” that would benefit an Iowa Libertarian if he exited the race raises all kinds of red flags.

By all accounts, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not an especially popular figure in American politics, but the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist nevertheless has a public following. With this in mind, Kennedy recently started taking on electoral responsibilities, including headlining an event in Michigan last week with Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in one of the nation’s most competitive congressional districts.

As Politico noted, this was the latest in a series of events that included stops in Colorado, Wisconsin and Ohio. Technically, these events were not official campaign stops for the Cabinet secretary, but since Kennedy only visited competitive districts and appeared only alongside Republicans in closely watched races ahead of the midterm elections, the emerging pattern wasn’t exactly subtle.

But perhaps notable was the HHS secretary’s interest in Iowa.

A French student is accused of licking a straw at a juice vending machine before putting it back and posting the video online. He faces jail time if convicted in Singapore, a country famous for its tough laws.

Iran struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, forcing a pause on evacuations of stranded seafarers and demonstrating its continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States.

A US official told CNN the vessel was attacked by an Iranian drone, but did not provide further details.

While Iran has not claimed responsibility, Thursday’s attack came hours after its powerful revolutionary guards warned that vessels would only be given safe passage via Iranian routes, challenging the Trump administration’s claim that the strait is free and open once more.

OpenAI is considering holding off on its public debut until next year, the New York Times reported ‌on Thursday, citing three people involved in the company's deliberations.

The AI startup, which has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, Reuters has reported, adding Chief Financial ⁠Officer Sarah Friar has told some associates the company is aiming for a 2027 listing.

OpenAI's advisers presented company executives with the option of waiting until 2027 to go public with a $1 trillion valuation, or lower the targeted valuation for a quicker listing, NYT said. CEO Sam Altman responded that any change to the trillion-dollar valuation was a non-starter.

Lawmakers and advocates condemn ‘disastrous’ decisions that allow Trump officials to strip away migrant protections

Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system.

Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings.

“Today, Trump’s loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants’ internationally recognized human rights and advance an authoritarian, white-supremacist agenda at home,” said the Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a Democrat. “The supreme court’s decisions put more than 350,000 TPS holders at risk of deportation and countless more asylum seekers’ lives in danger.”

Although wildland firefighters are at high risk for smoke-related health issues, the U.S. Forest Service has been slow to offer protection. For decades, respirators weren’t allowed.

For the first time, federal firefighters will be encouraged to wear respirators to protect them against smoke-related hazards as they work to put out wildland blazes.

The Forest Service announced Wednesday that firefighters were authorized to use N95 respirators on the fire line, a major policy reversal as the agency for decades did not allow such protections, even as studies demonstrated the health harms of wildfire smoke.

“It’s long, long overdue,” said George Broyles, a longtime Forest Service firefighter who has researched wildfire exposure risks. “There’s no doubt that our men and women out there are at higher risk of cancer and heart disease.”

To Broyles, the policy change represents a long-awaited acknowledgment from the Forest Service that wildfire smoke is toxic and that the agency ought to find ways to reduce its workers’ risks.

Randy Smith’s resignation was part of plea deal after attack on podcaster Bobby Couvillion at a Madisonville restaurant

A suburban New Orleans sheriff who had held one of his community’s most prominent political offices for a decade has retired shortly after pleading guilty to battering a podcaster who often criticized him.

Randy Smith, 61, also agreed to serve more than a year of probation after admitting to a late May beating at a steakhouse where he had bought 18 alcoholic beverages on his tab on a Friday afternoon – which all but halted his four-decade policing career.

Smith had been sworn in as the elected sheriff of St Tammany parish, Louisiana, on 1 July 2016, succeeding a predecessor who eventually pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges and was separately convicted of serial child sexual molestation.

LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution

The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland, a report has found.

In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.

One of the first cases was filed in 2020 in Chile’s capital, Santiago, where Google was planning a huge datacentre in the Cerrillos area. A group of residents and the local council challenged permits given to Google, raising concerns about the impact of the development on the city’s already climate-stressed water supply.

Iran’s IRGC warns that any new Hormuz shipping route announced without Tehran’s coordination is unacceptable and dangerous.

All vessels must contact IRGC Navy on the designated channel before transiting, or face enforcement action, Iran says.

Shipping traffic has remained far below prewar levels despite the U.S.-Iran interim agreement.

At least 164 people have died and 971 were injured after a pair of powerful quakes rocked Venezuela, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said Thursday.

The acting president had said earlier that at least 32 people have died after Wednesday evening’s 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes, and that the toll was expected to rise.

The quakes were among the strongest to strike Venezuela in more than a century and could be felt throughout the region. Buildings were evacuated in places as far away as Brazil’s Amazon, about 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) from Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

Donald Trump’s campaign to rebrand the Pentagon as the Department of War won another victory on Wednesday when Republicans on the panel that controls military funding voted to formally endorse the renaming.

The House Appropriations Committee adopted the change during deliberations on its $1.1 trillion defense funding bill. The vote marks the third panel to agree to permanently ditch the existing nearly 80-year-old Department of Defense name.

Appropriators voted 32-25 along party lines to adopt a Republican-only slate of amendments to the Pentagon funding bill that also targeted diversity and inclusion efforts, abortion and other wedge issues that have spurred partisan rancor on the influential spending panel in recent years.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is going to have to smooth things over with congressional Democrats after backing several progressive candidates who ousted incumbents during Tuesday’s primary elections.

Asked if Mamdani’s endorsements were making him “enemies” with Democrats in Washington, D.C., Jeffries told CNN that he and Mamdani “strongly” disagreed over his primary picks ahead of Election Day.

Now, according to Jeffries, the mayor has serious “work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward.”

The Pentagon said Wednesday that boot camps for all the military services are once again requiring the flu vaccination for all recruits after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the shot optional for the military at the end of April.

The development, confirmed to The Associated Press by a Pentagon official, comes amid a growing, weekslong, flu outbreak at the U.S. Air Force’s boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base that has sickened nearly 300 people. However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not cleared for public release, maintained that the permission to mandate the vaccinations was unrelated to the outbreak.

When Hegseth first announced the repeal of the flu vaccine mandate in April, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom, he allowed the services to ask for exceptions — or permission to keep the vaccine mandatory — within 15 days of the rollout.