Life from NPR News in Washington, I'm Winsor, Johnston.
Republican lawmakers in Alabama have approved plans for special primary elections.
“Kyle Gasett of Troy Public Radio reports the state attorney general is asking to have”
a legal embargo on the new maps overturned. A mid-process both outside and inside the state house from voting rights activists, Alabama's Republicans are proposing maps that weaken the power of two current black majority districts. Alabama has seven representatives and recently elected two Democratic and black representatives following a Supreme Court decision that the state's previous maps diluted the power of black
voters. With last week's Louisiana case ruling and a seeming reversal from the Supreme Court, Alabama's GOP wants both new maps and primary election plans in place before the midterm elections. Alabama's attorney general has filed an emergency motion seeking to overturn a ruling that kept the state from changing maps until 2030.
From PR News, I'm Kyle Gasett in Montgomery, Alabama. A group of protesters is suing the Department of Homeland Security to stop federal officers from taking the DNA of U.S. citizens arrested while protesting the agency's immigration
“enforcement tactics, and PR's Meganderson reports.”
The four people who brought the case say they were peacefully protesting outside an ice detention center near Chicago when they were arrested. Each was forced to give a DNA sample.
Two were never charged and the other two faced misdemeanor charges that were later dismissed.
But they say the government still has their genetic profile. DHS did not respond to a request for comment, but NPR has reported on similar cases in recent months across the country. In an earlier statement, DHS told NPR that federal law requires that to collect the DNA of people they arrest.
The lawsuit argues, however, that a 2013 Supreme Court case only allows the practice in the case of serious crimes. Meganderson and Pernus A Dutch cruise ship at the center of the hunt of Irish outbreak is heading toward the Canary Islands where passengers are expected to disembark and return home for monitoring.
19 Americans aboard the ship are expected to be treated at the University of Nebraska Medical Center during the quarantine period. During a press briefing on Friday, Dr. Angela Hewitt said staff are prepared to treat any passengers who develop symptoms. We have a trained team of healthcare workers, including everything from our nursing
team to physician team, including infectious disease, specialist, as well as critical care
physicians. And we are ready.
“Should one of these individuals develop symptoms concerning for hunt of ours?”
The CDC is now classifying the outbreak as level three emergency response. This is NPR News. The tech company, Cloud Fair, is the latest in a string of firms to cut jobs because of artificial intelligence and PR's John Ruich reports the company announced that it's eliminating about 20% of its workforce.
Cloud Flair runs services behind the scenes that aim to make a wide range of websites and apps more secure and faster. In a quarterly earnings call, it announced that it was cutting 1100 jobs. CEO Matthew Prince says it's not a cost cutting exercise.
Instead, he says the company is accelerating its evolution to quote an agentic AI-first operating
model. That means using AI that can perform tasks autonomously. With the cuts, Cloud Flair joins a wave of tech companies that have announced layoffs amid huge AI investments. Those include Coinbase, Amazon, and Meta.
Cloud Flair says it's usage of AI has left 600% in the last three months with teams across the organization using more and more AI agents to do work. It says the layoffs don't make for an easy day, but that it's the right decision as the company reimagines how it operates. John Ruich and PR News California will become the first state in the nation to provide
infants with hundreds of free diapers before they leave hospitals after birth. Officials say the goal is to ease the financial burden on families welcoming newborns. The state will provide 400 diapers to each baby through participating hospitals. The program in its first year will be limited to hospitals largely serving low-income patients and then it's expected to expand statewide.
I'm Windsor Johnston and PR News in Washington. On consider this NPR's afternoon news podcast, we cover everything from politics to the economy to the world, but every story starts with a question. In NPR, we stand for your right to be curious to make sense of the biggest story of the day and what it means for you.
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