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US prosecutors have recommended that the Department of Justice (DoJ) brings criminal charges against Boeing.

It follows a claim by the DoJ that the plane maker had violated a settlement related to two fatal crashes involving its 737 Max aircraft which killed 346 people.

Boeing declined to comment when contacted by the BBC but previously it has denied violating the deferred prosecution agreement.

The DoJ has until 7 July to make a final decision on whether to prosecute the company. The DoJ has been contacted for comment.

The recommendation is not a final decision and the details of any potential criminal action are not known, according to CBS, the BBC's US partner.

"This is a really critical decision that is coming up,” said Ed Pierson, who is the executive director of the Foundation for Aviation Safety and a former senior manager at Boeing.

Last year, representatives of New Mexico’s oil industry met behind closed doors with the very groups with which they typically clash — state regulators and environmentalists — in search of an answer to the more than 70,000 wells sitting unplugged across the state. Many leak oil, brine and toxic or explosive gasses, and more than 1,700 have already been left to the public to clean up.

The situation is so dire that oil companies agreed to help try to find a solution.

After months of negotiations, the state regulators who ran the meetings emerged with a proposal that they hoped would appease everyone in the room. The bill would instruct drillers to set aside more money to plug their wells, authorize regulators to block risky sales to companies that would be unlikely to afford to clean up their wells and implement a buffer zone between wells and hospitals, schools, homes and other buildings.

The industry, unhappy with the state’s final language, turned against the bill it helped shape.

The influential New Mexico Oil and Gas Association told its supporters that HB 133 was “a radical and dangerous approach designed to strangle the oil and gas industry” and asked them to send their elected representatives a form letter opposing it. If passed, the trade group proclaimed, the bill would “Destroy New Mexico.” The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, which represents small oil companies, called the bill “overzealous.”

Car dealerships in North America continue to wrestle with major disruptions that started last week with cyberattacks on a software company used widely in the auto retail sales sector.

CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the U.S. and Canada, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks Wednesday. That led to an outage that has continued to impact operations.

For prospective car buyers, that may mean delays at dealerships or vehicle orders written up by hand, with no immediate end in sight.

On Monday, Group 1 Automotive Inc., a $4 billion automotive retailers, said that it continued to use “alternative processes” to sell cars to its customers.

Last November, just weeks into the war in Gaza, Amichai Chikli, a brash, 42-year-old Likud minister in the Israeli government, was called into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to brief lawmakers on what could be done about rising anti-war protests from young people across the United States, especially at elite universities.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now, that I think we should, especially in the United States, be on the offensive,” argued Chikli.

Chikli has since led a targeted push to counter critics of Israel. The Guardian has uncovered evidence showing how Israel has relaunched a controversial entity as part of a broader public relations campaign to target US college campuses and redefine antisemitism in US law.

Seconds after a smoke alarm subsided during the hearing, Chikli assured the lawmakers that there was new money in the budget for a pushback campaign, which was separate from more traditional public relations and paid advertising content produced by the government. It included 80 programs already under way for advocacy efforts “to be done in the ‘Concert’ way”, he said.

Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, receiving about $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance.

Since the start of Israel's war with Hamas on October 7, 2023, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which includes $3.8 billion from a bill in March 2024 (in line with the current MOU) and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April 2024.

Most of the aid—approximately $3.3 billion a year—is provided as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services. In October, the Joe Biden administration said Israel had nearly six hundred active FMF cases, totalling around $24 billion. (...)

The U.S. Olympic team is one of a handful that will supply air conditioners for their athletes at the Paris Games in a move that undercuts organizers’ plans to cut carbon emissions.

U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland said Friday that while the U.S. team appreciates efforts aimed at sustainability, the federation would be supplying AC units for what is typically the largest contingent of athletes at the Summer Games.

“As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance,” Hirshland said. “In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada and Britain were among the other countries with plans to bring air conditioners to France.

There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.

…

America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.

According to a recent Agriculture Department estimate, the rural population did rebound by 0.25 percent from 2020 to 2022 as some families decamped from urban areas during the pandemic.

But demographers say they are still evaluating whether that trend will continue, and if so, where. Pennsylvania has been particularly afflicted. Job losses in the manufacturing and energy industries that began in the 1980s prompted many younger families to relocate to Sun Belt states. The relocations helped fuel population surges in places like Texas and Georgia. But here, two-thirds of the state’s 67 counties have experienced a drop in population in recent years.

Non-paywall link

Holy title, Batman!

This is the sober, clear-eyed proper reporting of the incident. The much more fun-to-read-one is over here.

TL;DR: far-right freedom-cockus nutjob state house member arrested at 3am chasing a stripper with a gun. Allegedly. No word yet if we can expect a ‘ten-commandments-in-schools’ bill from said nutjob.

More than 1,300 people died during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia as the faithful faced extreme high temperatures at Islamic holy sites in the desert kingdom, Saudi authorities announced Sunday.

Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdurrahman Al-Jalajel said that 83% of the 1,301 fatalities were unauthorized pilgrims who walked long distances in soaring temperatures to perform the Hajj rituals in and around the holy city of Mecca.

Speaking with the state-owned Al Ekhbariya TV, the minister said 95 pilgrims were being treated in hospitals, some of whom were airlifted for treatment in the capital, Riyadh. He said the identification process was delayed because there were no identification documents with many of the dead pilgrims.

He said the dead were buried in Mecca, without giving a breakdown.

Canada's ambassador to Beijing visited the region of Xinjiang last week and expressed concerns about human rights violations directly to local leaders, the Canadian foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

A 2022 report by the then U.N. human rights chief said China's treatment of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang, in the country's far west, could constitute crimes against humanity. Beijing denies the allegations.

Ambassador Jennifer May visited Xinjiang from June 19-22, the first such visit by a Canadian envoy in a decade. "(This) served as an opportunity to communicate Canadian concerns about the human rights situation directly to the leadership of Xinjiang," the ministry statement said.

"Ambassador May raised concerns over credible reports of systematic violations of human rights occurring in Xinjiang affecting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities, including those raised by U.N. experts," it continued.

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment. May visited Xinjiang a few weeks after Canada said it had warned China against meddling in its elections. In April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Beijing had tried to interfere in the last two national votes, a charge China dismissed.

Campaign groups on Saturday urged U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk to take more action over what they said were documented abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslims.

May also reiterated Canada's calls for China to allow U.N. independent experts unfettered access to all regions of China, the statement said. Canada, like the United States, has imposed sanctions on individuals and entities over alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang.