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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday announced an agreement with the University of Virginia to pause Trump administration civil rights investigations. The Charlottesville campus became a target of President Donald Trump’s administration in April when the Justice Department began reviewing the university’s admissions and financial aid processes. Officials accused its president of failing to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices Trump has called unlawful. The mounting pressure prompted James Ryan to announce his resignation as university president in June, saying the stakes were too high for others on campus if he opted to “fight the federal government…

RAND Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank highly dependent on federal government funding, shed more than 11% of its global workforce on Tuesday, Oct. 21, a spokesman for the nonprofit said late Monday. A third of the layoffs are effective Nov. 2 at the nonprofit’s headquarters, according to a filing with the state’s Employment Development Department. The layoffs were first mentioned publicly by RAND on career networking website LinkedIn. RAND spokesman Jeremy Rawitch confirmed 192 layoffs but did not provide a reason for them, or specify how many jobs were cut at specific global locations. According to RAND’s 2023 tax…

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon is staging a marathon speech on the Senate floor to protest President Donald Trump’s “tightening authoritarian grip on the country” amid the government shutdown. Merkley started speaking at 6:21 p.m. Tuesday evening and was still going more than 21 hours later Wednesday afternoon, pausing for increasingly lengthy questions from other Democratic senators. It was unclear how long he would go, or whether he could approach the record-breaking 25-hour speech by his colleague, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, in April. Booker was also protesting Trump. “I’m…

Here is a look at the top games involving Inland high school football teams playing Thursday, Oct. 23. Sites and times of games are subject to change. THURSDAY’S TOP GAMES BIG WEST CONFERENCE-NORTH DIVISION Centennial (7-1, 3-0) at Norco (6-2, 1-2), 7:30 p.m. IE Varsity info: Centennial dominated the second half last week, turning a tie game into 48-20 runaway victory over Murrieta Valley. Jaden Walk-Green and Jordan Kirkpatrick each returned an interception for a touchdown during the second half for the Huskies. Walk-Green has seven picks this season, four of which he has brought back for scores. Dominick Catalano…

After Governor Gavin Newsom pledged to complete his passion project of destroying California by tearing up the Golden State’s independently drawn congressional district lines, in favor of a heavily gerrymandered map meant to benefit congressional Democrats—AKA Proposition 50—former California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to campaign up and down the state against Newsom’s doctored-up map. And unlike his marriage vows, Arnold seems determined to keep this one. Schwarzenegger—who championed Proposition 11 in 2008, which created the California Citizens Redistricting Commission to draw state legislative boundaries, and Proposition 20, in 2010, which added the state’s congressional districts to the commission’s duties—is commonly…

HBO Max is raising all subscription costs to the max — effective immediately. The streamer, which returned to its original name earlier this year, announced Tuesday that it will immediately hike prices for new subscriptions. The recently rebranded platform’s monthly plans will now be $10.99 for HBO Max Basic With Ads, $18.49 for HBO Max Standard, and $22.99 for HBO Max Premium. Annual plans will now sit at $109.99 for HBO Max Basic With Ads, $184.99 for HBO Max Standard, and $229.99 for HBO Max Premium. Those who were already subscribed prior to Oct. 21 will get a 30-day notice…

By Tim Henderson, Stateline.org As the federal shutdown continues, states have been forced to fall back on their own resources to spot disease outbreaks — just as respiratory illness season begins. The shutdown has halted dashboards and expert analysis from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which monitors indicators such as wastewater to provide early warnings of the spread of COVID-19, influenza, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and other infectious diseases. The pause leaves states with less early warning on disease outbreaks, potentially endangering lives even as child vaccination rates drop amid increased exemptions and hesitancy fed by misinformation. State and…

By STEPHEN WHYNO, Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The NFL is not considering dropping Bad Bunny as its Super Bowl halftime headline performer, Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday, reaffirming a decision to put the Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist on the league’s biggest stage that led to criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his supporters. Goodell addressed the Bad Bunny controversy at his news conference following the annual fall owners meeting. It is the first time he has commented on the move announced in late September that garnered worldwide attention, including an increase in streams of Bad…

By MATT O’BRIEN, Associated Press Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI and three other entities on Wednesday, alleging their involvement in an “industrial-scale, unlawful” economy to “scrape” the comments of millions of Reddit users for commercial gain. Reddit’s lawsuit in a New York federal court takes aim at San Francisco-based Perplexity, maker of an AI chatbot and “answer engine” that competes with Google, ChatGPT and others in online search. Also named in the lawsuit are Lithuanian data-scraping company Oxylabs UAB, a web domain called AWMProxy that Reddit describes as a “former Russian botnet,” and Texas-based…

Claire Healy and Syra Ortiz-Blanes, Miami Herald The Trump administration is quietly sending hundreds of Cubans and other immigrants with significant criminal records in buses across the border to Mexico, in an expansion of third-country deportations. Although Cuba accepts deportation flights from the U.S., its longtime practice has been to reject deportees who have been convicted of certain crimes. That has left many of the island’s immigrants in limbo for years — unable to return to the island but stripped of their legal status to stay in the United States. But without legal documentation in Mexico, they are now in…