"Live from MPR News," I'm Giles Snyder.
Todd Blantz's confirmation to be a attorney general is on hold over the $1.8 billion
“fund for President Trump's allies, who say they've been victimized by the government.”
Blantz has a fund no longer exists, but two outgoing Republican senators are refusing to advance him until they get that in writing. Trump says he may try to wait them out as MPR's Eric McDaniel reports. Senator John Corden of Texas and Tom Tillis of North Carolina are using their leverage to make sure that the fund, which Trump has suggested, could be used to make payments
to capital writers, is "computed," as the Justice Department has claimed. In response, Trump posted, quote, "I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name if they do not do the right thing and putting him back after Corden and Tillis are out of office," end quote. Corden tweeted in reply that the president is mistaken if he believes concerns about the fund
are limited to himself and Senator Tillis, suggesting they're speaking on behalf of other Senate Republicans. Either way, Blantz, who was already confirmed to a lower DOJ post, can remain acting attorney general.
“Eric McDaniel and Pierre-News, the capital.”
President Trump says a deal has been reached to disarm Hamas. On social media, Trump called the deal reached in Cairo between mediators and Hamas leaders historic, saying disarvement would come in phases as Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza. It's not clear how long the process will take and Israeli support for the plan is uncertain.
New government data points to a slowdown and economic growth in PR's Scott Horsley on what the Commerce Department is saying. Gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of one and a half percent in the second quarter. That's a bit of a slowdown from the first three months the year and the growth was really
concentrated in some narrow categories. But as you say, the biggest driver of economic activity is consumer spending and that held up pretty well.
Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity had increased
at an annual rate of 3.2 percent. With wildfires flaring up in Europe, Empire's Eleanor Beards reports a tens of thousands forced to flee the fires that have ravaged France's Bordeaux region for being allowed to return home. "So fee broke us, the prefect of the year-owned regions says this is the first day they
are able to feel up to missing. Firefighters have been working day and night to extinguish the fires that have devoured more than 100,000 acres of giant exposition hall in Bordeaux as welcome thousands of people who've been evacuated a couple hundred are still here including 90-year-old Marilalana who is standing by her cot."
"We've let in such a panic that I left behind my teeth, my glasses and my hearing age," she says. But she says the welcome has been warm here. Many people have their dogs and cats with them, Eleanor Beardsley and Piano's Bordeaux. "And you're listening to in VR News."
Seattle Police Chief Sean Barnes's out-of-a-job may or Katie Wilson announced Barnes resignation Thursday amid criticism that the city was slow to release information about Sunday's shootout at a food festival near the Space Needle. Barnes was Seattle's second black police chief in an open-letter several community organizations at Barnes should.be made a scapegoat.
Ninety-eight teams representing all 50 states gathered in Boston to create a national policy to help Katie 12 schools know how to use AI in their classrooms and Pierce Cori Turner was there. The students were handpicked by their school leaders and gathered in an exact replica of the U.S. Senate where they decided schools should have to teach AI literacy and do it
early. Here's Bina Mejia Romero of Connecticut making her case to the full student Senate.
“We should be introduced to it when devices are introduced to our classrooms, right?”
If we're going to be using devices, we should know the dangers and the benefits that they have. For older students, the student senators backed a ban on the use of AI on graded tests and in the act of writing, though editing and studying with AI would be allowed after 8th grade. The recommendations will now be sent to more than 10,000 school leaders nationwide.
Cori Turner and Piano's Boston.
South Korea's benchmark stock index is bouncing back at gain more than 13 percent in early
Friday trading, as shares link to artificial intelligence rebound. After this week's sell off over worries about an AI bubble, most of the rest of the regional stock markets also gaining ground tracking Thursdays gains on Wall Street. This is in PR news. Just over a year, it'll Congress eliminated more than a billion dollars in funding for public
media. You have not backed down. When you donate to independent nonprofits that make up the NPR network, we hold the powerful to account together. It's the kind of journalism democracy requires that we the public need to protect.
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