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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration apparently has backed away from a proposal to eliminate funding for Head Start, the early education program that serves some of the nation’s neediest preschoolers. Backers of the six-decade-old program, which educates more than half a million children from low-income and homeless families, had been fretting after a leaked Trump administration proposal suggested defunding it. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint drawn up by the Heritage Foundation and co-authored by President Donald Trump’s current budget chief, also called for cutting Head Start. But the budget summary released Friday, which outlined programs set to receive drastic…

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s police department provided federal immigration authorities with an internal record about a Palestinian woman who they arrested at a protest, which the Trump administration is now using as evidence in its bid to deport her, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.The report — shared by the NYPD in March — includes a summary of information in the department’s files about Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey resident who was arrested at a protest outside Columbia University last spring. It lists her home address, date of birth and an officer’s two-sentence account…

Australians are heading to the polls shortly in parliamentary elections which will decide if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left Labor government will return for a second term. Labor’s main rival is the country’s conservative coalition, led by opposition leader Peter Dutton, which came into the election campaign polling strongly but is now lagging slightly behind Labor. If Albanese does win, it could mean Australia is following in similar footsteps to Canada, where the Liberal party reversed its prospects in recent weeks, amid concerns about the effect of United States President Donald Trump’s policies on Canada’s economy. Amy Remeikis, chief political…

A recently released Google AI model scores worse on certain safety tests than its predecessor, according to the company’s internal benchmarking. In a technical report published this week, Google reveals that its Gemini 2.5 Flash model is more likely to generate text that violates its safety guidelines than Gemini 2.0 Flash. On two metrics, “text-to-text safety” and “image-to-text safety,” Gemini 2.5 Flash regresses 4.1% and 9.6%, respectively. Text-to-text safety measures how frequently a model violates Google’s guidelines given a prompt, while image-to-text safety evaluates how closely the model adheres to these boundaries when prompted using an image. Both tests are…

Democrats have called for an investigation into whether the US president is pressuring the IRS to strip Harvard’s status.United States President Donald Trump has renewed his threat to strip Harvard University of its tax exempt status, a move that could cost the Ivy League institution billions of dollars if implemented. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump wrote on Friday, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. The statement is the latest threat in a continuing feud between the Republican president and Harvard, the country’s oldest higher-education institution.…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Nashville high school student who fatally shot a classmate before killing himself in January was on probation after threatening a student with a box cutter months earlier, according to juvenile court files obtained through an open records request. Solomon Henderson, who was 17 at the time, was charged with carrying a weapon on school property with intent and reckless endangerment with a weapon after a confrontation on Oct. 24, 2024. The victim said she was walking to lunch with a group when she said “hey” to Solomon. When he did not respond, she said “hey”…

The United States economy has added 177,000 jobs in April, topping analysts’ expectations despite economic turmoil in the early months of Donald Trump’s second term as president. The data, released on Friday by the Labor Department, suggests the job market is holding steady despite uncertainty driven by Trump’s tariff campaign. The healthcare industry added 51,000 jobs, the highest total gain, but a sum that is consistent with the average monthly growth over the last 12 months. The transportation and warehousing sectors also increased significantly, gaining 29,000 jobs in April. But experts say that growth in those sectors in particular could be…

In a world where there are 25 minutes of previews before every movie, here’s why studios pay millions to secure a spot in front of summer’s biggest blockbusters. Anyone going to see Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* this weekend can expect to watch eight—perhaps even 10—movie trailers before the feature begins. Throw in an ad for popcorn and Nicole Kidman waxing poetic about the power of cinema, and the pre-show lineup can stretch to nearly a half-hour. Even if that can seem like a drag to an audience, those are highly valuable minutes to both the movie studios and the theater chains.…

Despite the chance of rain in the forecast, colorful plumed hats are again a fashion staple at Churchill Downs for the 151st running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky.The tradition of wearing hats to the Derby began with its first running in 1875. They began taking on a life of their own in the 1960s, growing larger and more ornate so the people wearing them could be spotted on television.The hats are just one of the features among the 150,000 fans jammed under the Twin Spires for a fashion show mixed with an all-day party that is heavy on…

OpenAI says it’ll make changes to the way it updates the AI models that power ChatGPT, following an incident that caused the platform to become overly sycophantic for many users. Last weekend, after OpenAI rolled out a tweaked GPT-4o — the default model powering ChatGPT — users on social media noted that ChatGPT began responding in an overly validating and agreeable way. It quickly became a meme. Users posted screenshots of ChatGPT applauding all sorts of problematic, dangerous decisions and ideas. In a post on X last Sunday, CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the problem and said that OpenAI would work on fixes “ASAP.” On Tuesday, Altman announced the GPT-4o…