State supreme court rules in case of two bishops who were silent about three children abused by Mormon parents
Clergy members in Arizona who learn of child abuse in the context of religious confession are not required to report it, the state’s supreme court has said in a ruling that protects what church leaders call the “seal of the confessional”.
The panel’s ruling ends a long-running case in which three children who were sexually abused by their parents sued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormon church, and two bishops who became aware of the crimes but remained silent.
The case has parallels in a short-lived 2025 law in Washington state that would have compelled clergy members there to report sexual abuse. That proposal was permanently withdrawn in October after legal action by the Catholic church.
In a statement, the LDS welcomed the unanimous ruling by the state supreme court on Thursday that exempts clergy members as “mandated reporters” if they learned of the abuse of minors in the confession booth or through other “confidential” methods.
Coverage for gender-affirming care is no longer covered by federal plans, and workers must pay out of pocket
US federal employees and their families are joining a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration for blocking insurance coverage of gender-affirming healthcare.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRCF) and the DC-based law firm Correia & Puth filed the lawsuit on Monday morning against the federal office of personnel management (OPM), arguing that the prohibition violates Title VII, which protects against sex discrimination.
The Trump administration had been “fixated” on ending gender-affirming care, said Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver, HRCF’s senior director of litigation.
Goodness, this is an incredible article. Here's the first paragraph - which I've purposely split into three to facilitate reading.
We give thanks this Sunday for a nifty little reminder that it only apparently takes thousands upon thousands of Americans screaming at a member of Congress for weeks at a time to make that congressman–a senator, in fact–publicly acknowledge the headlines about his own daughter’s (and granddaughter’s) claimed abuse at the hands of her former husband, who is naturally another Republican congressman.
We’re talking of course about junior Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, recently vying for the title of the most pathetic man in Congress, given that he spent several years pretending not to know anything about the fact that his daughter Emily Moreno had accused her congressman ex-husband, Ohio Rep. Max Miller, of repeated emotional and physical abuse of her and their two-year-old daughter.
Despite knowing all about this for at least the last two years by his own admission, Bernie Moreno intentionally went out of his way not to say a bad word about the fellow GOP congressman who was his former son-in-law, instead tacitly supporting his reelection in the upcoming November midterm elections, in a race that was until recently seen as a very safe one for Republicans. Not so much, now.
On a sunny morning last July, hundreds of heavily armed immigration agents in camouflage stormed a greenhouse complex in Camarillo, an hour north of Los Angeles. They came with face masks, guns, chemical munitions and armored tactical vehicles, blocking access along a road lined by produce fields.
What unfolded next would irreversibly transform the lives of many there that day.
It was after 10am when Santiago*, an undocumented farmworker from Mexico who had been working at the greenhouse for just three weeks, saw the agents flood in. As they pointed firearms at panicked, scattering workers, he thought they were army soldiers and felt raw fear.
“Fear of what could happen to me, and fear of leaving my daughters behind,” recalled the father of three US citizen girls.
‘Disturbing’ footage shared by California detainee surfaces amid wider complaints about conditions in ICE detention
Attorneys for a man detained in a California immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures.
The footage came from a video call with Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, north-east of LA.
Margaret Hellerstein, one of Parias’s attorneys, shared the footage with the Guardian on Thursday and said it was filmed this week. The clip is brief and grainy, but shows him holding up a plastic bottle filled with water, which appeared to have small pests of some kind swimming inside.
There's 3 fires burning around 7,000 acres and they are completely uncontained currently.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown described the situation as "the worst natural disaster our region has faced", adding that authorities were assessing the extent of the damage and were "still discussing the potential for lives to be lost".
No deaths or injuries have been confirmed.
The fires in Spokane are among a total number more than a dozen wildfires in the state including 10 large ones, according to the dashboard on the state's department of natural resources.
The National Weather Service (NWS) had warned of "extremely critical" fire weather over the weekend, with strong winds and unusually dry conditions helping the flames spread rapidly.
Scientists have said that human-induced climate change makes the warm, dry conditions that lead to wildfires more likely - as well as leading to more frequent and intense heatwaves, and potential summer droughts.
Court records reviewed by the Guardian show medical procedures included force-feeding, intravenous forced hydration and involuntary blood draws
Homeland security officials under the Trump administration have quietly attempted to subject at least 10 hunger strikers in US immigrant detention to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding, a Guardian investigation has found.
In 2025 and 2026, officials had definitely performed the procedures on at least three detained immigrants and likely subjected two more to the forced treatment – widely considered torture by human rights groups. The other five people gave in and broke their hunger strike at the last minute as force-feeding procedures loomed.
The government has not publicly acknowledged the practice of involuntary medical procedures on striking detainees, as the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increases nationwide.
Daphy Michel, from Haiti, was dropped off in Pittsburgh in 20F temperatures wearing summer clothes
The family of a Haitian immigrant who froze to death in early March at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh after she was dropped off in the city by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is poised to file a lawsuit this month against the United States and “multiple other governmental and non-governmental entities”, the Guardian has learned.
Daphy Michel, 31, had been in county jail for six months after a reported mental health crisis and street incident, and then was arrested by ICE before being released with a ankle monitor.
She was left to make her way home to Charleroi, a small community on the outskirts of Pittsburgh about 20 miles (32km) away, but was found dead three days later. In June, Pennsylvania officials said she died from hypothermia and ruled her death a homicide.
California governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state’s minimum wage will rise to $17.40 next year, a ay floor set to become the highest of any US state.
The pay bump will go into effect starting 1 January, Newsom announced on Friday. The state’s current minimum rate is $16.90. In a news release, Newsom touted the move as a salve for working families amid high living costs and took a jab at the Trump administration.
“For years, Donald Trump and Republicans have blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage while handing tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” Newsom said.
It turns out that Taylor Farms, the agricultural company widely believed to be behind the cyclospora outbreak currently raging throughout the US, is also heavily involved in modern-day forced labor.
In reporting from 2023 that was resurfaced this week on social media, the publication Prison Legal News revealed that Taylor Farms was contracting labor from the Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation, and Reentry for the low, low price of just $4.75 an hour — far below the cost of a non-incarcerated worker the federal minimum wage. (And to be clear, that’s not the hourly wage paid to the inmate, which is capped at $1.50 in Arizona.)
Despite a lawsuit from xAI, a Minnesota ban on apps that allow users to “nudify” images can move forward, according to NBC News.
U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank’s ruling focused as much on the timing of xAI’s lawsuit as on the substance of the law itself. Frank wrote that xAI filed its request for a temporary restraining order “on July 29, 2026, nearly three months after the law was signed, and only three days before the law is set to take effect” on August 1.
Russian satellite surveillance and signals intelligence are likely allowing Iran to better defend itself against U.S. airstrikes and refine its own aerial assaults, officials said.
Russia is providing electronic intelligence to Iran that is likely helping it pinpoint American forces in aerial attacks or jam American-made weapons, according to a U.S. and a European official with knowledge of the matter.