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BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq has released more than 35,000 people from prisons and detention centers under a wide-reaching amnesty law passed earlier this year, the country’s Supreme Judicial Council said Monday.Another nearly 144,000 people, including defendants detained pre-trial and those who are out on bail or facing arrest warrants, are eligible for release or to avoid imprisonment under the law, the council said.It added that courts had recovered more than $34.4 million in restitution from people convicted of theft and corruption charges.The law passed in January has been touted as a means to relieve prison overcrowding. The country’s justice minister…

JERUSALEM (AP) — As talks got underway Monday to end the war in Gaza, the top Catholic leader in the Holy Land called on Christians in the region to be a bridge and help restore trust between Israelis and Palestinians.Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said Christians — who make up just 1% of the population in the birthplace of Christianity — are of “no threat” to any side of the conflict and therefore are uniquely positioned to help everyone work toward a shared and peaceful postwar future. Though he has no illusions that it will be easy.“In this moment, you have to…

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The immigration detainees sent to a notorious Louisiana prison last month are being punished for crimes for which they have already served time, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday in a lawsuit challenging the government’s decision to hold what it calls the “worst of the worst” there.The lawsuit accuses President Donald Trump’s administration of selecting the former slave plantation known as Angola for its “uniquely horrifying history” and intentionally subjecting immigrant detainees to inhumane conditions — including foul water and lacking basic necessities — in violation of the Double Jeopardy clause, which protects people…

Companies like Starbucks, Paramount and Microsoft are among the latest to issue new return-to-office requirements, but mass RTO has been a years-long push across Corporate America. Getting workers back in hasn’t been so easy.People are spending about 25% of their days working from home, and that share hasn’t budged since spring 2023, says Nick Bloom, a Stanford professor and leading researcher on remote work trends, and based on a recurring survey of 10,000 Americans from his team at WFH Research.Work-from-home rates have persisted, Bloom tells CNBC Make It, even as the labor market sours, people cling to their jobs and…

Instagram announced on Monday the launch of a new “Rings” award that will give 25 creators a literal gold ring and a matching badge on their profile, but no cash.Winners will be chosen by a panel including Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, filmmaker Spike Lee, designer Marc Jacobs and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.The move comes as Meta-owned Instagram has wound down its creator bonus program and brand deals are slowing across the industry, raising the question of why one of the world’s richest companies is offering jewelry and profile features instead of direct payouts.”It’s more about a special visibility and sort of…

Barcelona coach Pere Romeu said on Monday his team don’t fear Bayern Munich and are ready to “compete like animals” as they kick off their Champions League campaign against the German champions on TuesdayThree-time winners Barça welcome Bayern to the Estadi Johan Cruyff in one of the standout games of the first round of fixtures since the competition switched to the Swiss model league format, mirroring the men’s tournament.”We’re up against a top-level team,” Romeu said in the pregame news conference. “They were good last season. We played them a few years ago and you could see they’re a team…

Brockman shares some early OpenAI historyBrockman kicked off the session with a brief introduction, walking through some of OpenAI’s history, including a photo of a whiteboard that outlined some of its initial goals. In addition to solving reinforcement learning and unsupervised learning, one of the goals was to “gradually learn really complicated ‘things.'””We are so excited to shape the future of AI and software engineering together with you, and to share more about how we’re all investing in the future the developer tools that we’re building,” Brockman said.–Ashley CapootThe ‘Developer State of the Union’ is about to startThe “Developer State…

A man shops for shoes at a Nike outlet store in Los Angeles on April 10, 2025.Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty ImagesNearing the one-year mark in new Nike CEO Elliott Hill’s turnaround plan, and at a time of rising tariffs on retail goods made in Asia, the prices on products across core Nike apparel and footwear categories haven been rising.Across nearly 3,300 SKUs (stock keeping units) analyzed by DataWeave from online channels in the period from September 2024 to September 2025, footwear prices rose 17%, apparel rose 14%, and equipment and protection prices rose 18%.A month-by-month analysis shows…

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).Tom Williams | Michael A. McCoy | ReutersTop House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries challenged Speaker Mike Johnson to a live public debate about the government shutdown, which entered its sixth day on Monday with no off-ramp in sight.But the Republican leader quickly brushed off Jeffries’ request, accusing the New York lawmaker of making “desperate pleas for attention.”In a letter to Johnson, Jeffries told the Louisiana Republican that he is game to debate on the House floor “any day this week in primetime, broadcast live…

Nike’s turnaround plan is showing early signs of progress, but it will “take a while” for the company to return to profitable growth, CEO Elliott Hill said in an interview with CNBC’s Sara Eisen aired Monday.”When we come to work we think about three brands, and then multiple sports under each brand and then 190 countries that roll up to our four geographies,” Hill said in a sit-down interview from the company’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. “Each brand times sport, and each [geography] times country, they’re at different stages of the evolution.” When asked when investors can expect Nike to get…