New York
Two men charged with creating AI-generated porn under new law
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged two men with using artificial intelligence to create nude videos and photos of female celebrities under a newly enacted law meant to halt the spread of deepfake pornography.
Cornelius Shannon, 51, and Arturo Hernandez, 20, were both arrested Tuesday for generating sexually explicit AI content that drew millions of views online, according to criminal complaints.
The men — who do not appear to be connected — are among the earliest defendants to face charges under the Take It Down Act, a law signed last year by President Donald Trump that adds stricter penalties for publishing AI-created deepfakes and “revenge porn.” The bill drew bipartisan support, as well as the public backing of first lady Melania Trump.
Under the new law, the men now face up to two years in prison.
Attorneys for Shannon and Hernandez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Joseph Nocella, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said the men had “used cutting-edge digital technology to create images that degraded and violated” dozens of women. “This case makes clear that posting deepfake pornography is not a victimless crime,” he added.
Shannon, a resident of New Jersey, published at least 240 albums of AI-generated pornography featuring female politicians, musicians and singers, according to the complaint.
The deepfakes published by Hernandez, of Texas, included both celebrities as well as private women, including recent high school graduates, prosecutors said.
The arrests come as increasingly sophisticated generative AI tools have raised alarm about the online spread of sexually explicit fakes, often depicting minors.
Last month, an Ohio man became the first person convicted under the Take It Down Act after pleading guilty to using AI to generate child sexual abuse material.
In March, two teenage boys received probation for creating explicit AI images of their classmates at an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania.
And in a separate case filed earlier this year, three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images.
The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.
Washington
Supreme Court dismisses bid to execute inmate with borderline intellectual disability
WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.
The court’s action leaves in place lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.
The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.
The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.
The justices had taken up the case to consider how courts should handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability. Arguments took place in December.
Rather than issue a decision, though, the high court dismissed the appeal, an unusuaI action that leaves the last lower-court ruling in place.
The three liberal justices along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett formed the majority to dismiss the case.
The other four conservative justices dissented, faulting the federal appeals court in Atlanta for improperly analyzing the case and complaining that their colleagues should have ordered the appeals court to reexamine Smith’s case.
The case is Hamm v. Smith, 24-872.
New York
Brooklyn mom who drowned 3 kids on Coney Island beach sentenced to 20 years to life
NEW YORK (AP) — A Brooklyn woman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison on last Wednesday for drowning her three young children in the ocean near Coney Island’s famed boardwalk.
Erin Merdy, 34, pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 killing of her 7-year-old son Zachary, her 4-year-old daughter Liliana and her 3-month-old son Oliver.
“No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby, or the grief their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. He added that the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
A message left with Merdy’s attorney was not returned.
The frantic search for the three children began in the early hours of Sept. 12, 2022, after New York City police received a call from Merdy’s relatives, concerned that she intended to harm her kids.
Officers first found the mother, barefoot and soaking wet, 2 miles (3 kilometers) down the boardwalk from the section of Coney Island where she lived. She repeatedly said that the children were gone and that she was sorry, according to prosecutors.
Hours later, the bodies of the children were recovered from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, steps from the boardwalk and about a dozen blocks from the stadium where the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team plays.
The city medical examiner’s office ruled their deaths homicides by drowning.
The evidence against Merdy included video showing her walking toward the ocean with the children just before 1 a.m., according to the criminal complaint.
At the time, relatives said she may have been going through postpartum depression.
Indiana
Joey Chestnut to defend hot dog eating title after pleading guilty to battery charge
NOBLESVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the reigning champion and 17-time winner of Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, will compete in the July 4 spectacle while on probation after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge.
Chestnut was accused of slapping a man on the face during a night out at an Indiana bar, his attorney, Mario Massillamany, said. He entered a guilty plea April 20 and was sentenced to 180 days of probation in Hamilton County.
A judge has granted him permission to travel outside the state, allowing Chestnut to defend his title and the signature Mustard Belt on Coney Island this summer.
When police questioned Chestnut, he said he was drunk and did not remember the altercation, according to Us Weekly. Massillamany said that was “taken out of context” and Chestnut was nervous when speaking to officers before he had an attorney.
Richard Shea, the co-founder and president of Major League Eating, which oversees the Nathan’s Famous contest, said the altercation did not affect Chestnut’s competition eligibility.
At the Nathan’s Famous contest last year, Chestnut took back the title by eating 70 1/2 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes after he missed the 2024 contest due to a competing sponsorship. Nathan’s had temporarily banned him from competing after he signed an endorsement deal with the plant-based meat company Impossible Foods.
Chestnut most recently won the 2026 Ultimate Bologna Showdown in Tennessee for the third straight year, consuming 16 pounds of sausage in 8 minutes to set a new world record.
Washington
Advocacy group sues Trump administration over near-ban on abortion for vets
An advocacy group has filed suit against the Trump administration over its decision to reinstate a near-ban on abortions for veterans and their family members who depend on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for healthcare.
The federal lawsuit filed Thursday says the rule finalized by the VA on Dec. 31 takes away limited abortion access that was “crucial for the health, autonomy, and equality of veterans and their family members.”
Attorneys for the group Minority Veterans of America want the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to throw out the rule. They say the VA adopted the change without citing medical evidence or other justifications, violating the Administrative Procedures Act that governs federal rulemaking.
The VA did not include abortion in its coverage until 2022. President Joe Biden’s administration added it months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and states’ abortion bans began taking effect.
Abortion access the VA provided under Biden was limited, applying only in cases when a pregnant woman’s life or health was at risk, or in cases of rape or incest.
The Biden change allowed the VA to provide abortion even in states where it was banned. And it brought the VA’s coverage into line with other federal healthcare plans — including Medicaid and TriCare coverage for active military members and their families — that allowed limited abortion access.
The VA announced its proposal to undo those changes last August, a few months after President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
The VA had said it will still provide abortions in cases where a pregnant woman’s life is threatened. That’s something state laws allow, even in places where bans are in place.
However, the VA no longer allows exceptions for abortions in cases of rape, incest or to protect a pregnant woman’s health. Abortion counseling is also no longer allowed.
A VA spokesperson declined to comment, noting the agency typically doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Minority Veterans of America says it represents more than 3,600 members across the U.S.
“Our community includes veterans with complex medical histories, those who have experienced pregnancy complications, and survivors of sexual violence and trauma, all of whom need access to abortion care and counseling to protect their health,” Lindsay Church, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
In publishing its final rule in December, the VA said it was restoring the agency’s longstanding position that abortions were not “needed” under federal law and that “this determination did not prohibit providing life-saving care to pregnant veterans.”
The lawsuit says one of Minority Veteran of America’s members is a military veteran who just learned she was pregnant in early May. She suffers from chronic pain that has been exacerbated by the pregnancy, placing her health “at substantial risk,” says the lawsuit, which withheld the woman’s name to protect her privacy.
The lawsuit says the VA won’t allow the unnamed veteran to receive an abortion “even if her health is at risk, unless a provider determines an abortion is necessary to save her life.”
Two men charged with creating AI-generated porn under new law
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged two men with using artificial intelligence to create nude videos and photos of female celebrities under a newly enacted law meant to halt the spread of deepfake pornography.
Cornelius Shannon, 51, and Arturo Hernandez, 20, were both arrested Tuesday for generating sexually explicit AI content that drew millions of views online, according to criminal complaints.
The men — who do not appear to be connected — are among the earliest defendants to face charges under the Take It Down Act, a law signed last year by President Donald Trump that adds stricter penalties for publishing AI-created deepfakes and “revenge porn.” The bill drew bipartisan support, as well as the public backing of first lady Melania Trump.
Under the new law, the men now face up to two years in prison.
Attorneys for Shannon and Hernandez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Joseph Nocella, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said the men had “used cutting-edge digital technology to create images that degraded and violated” dozens of women. “This case makes clear that posting deepfake pornography is not a victimless crime,” he added.
Shannon, a resident of New Jersey, published at least 240 albums of AI-generated pornography featuring female politicians, musicians and singers, according to the complaint.
The deepfakes published by Hernandez, of Texas, included both celebrities as well as private women, including recent high school graduates, prosecutors said.
The arrests come as increasingly sophisticated generative AI tools have raised alarm about the online spread of sexually explicit fakes, often depicting minors.
Last month, an Ohio man became the first person convicted under the Take It Down Act after pleading guilty to using AI to generate child sexual abuse material.
In March, two teenage boys received probation for creating explicit AI images of their classmates at an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania.
And in a separate case filed earlier this year, three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images.
The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.
Washington
Supreme Court dismisses bid to execute inmate with borderline intellectual disability
WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.
The court’s action leaves in place lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.
The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.
The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.
The justices had taken up the case to consider how courts should handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability. Arguments took place in December.
Rather than issue a decision, though, the high court dismissed the appeal, an unusuaI action that leaves the last lower-court ruling in place.
The three liberal justices along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett formed the majority to dismiss the case.
The other four conservative justices dissented, faulting the federal appeals court in Atlanta for improperly analyzing the case and complaining that their colleagues should have ordered the appeals court to reexamine Smith’s case.
The case is Hamm v. Smith, 24-872.
New York
Brooklyn mom who drowned 3 kids on Coney Island beach sentenced to 20 years to life
NEW YORK (AP) — A Brooklyn woman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison on last Wednesday for drowning her three young children in the ocean near Coney Island’s famed boardwalk.
Erin Merdy, 34, pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 killing of her 7-year-old son Zachary, her 4-year-old daughter Liliana and her 3-month-old son Oliver.
“No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby, or the grief their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. He added that the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
A message left with Merdy’s attorney was not returned.
The frantic search for the three children began in the early hours of Sept. 12, 2022, after New York City police received a call from Merdy’s relatives, concerned that she intended to harm her kids.
Officers first found the mother, barefoot and soaking wet, 2 miles (3 kilometers) down the boardwalk from the section of Coney Island where she lived. She repeatedly said that the children were gone and that she was sorry, according to prosecutors.
Hours later, the bodies of the children were recovered from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, steps from the boardwalk and about a dozen blocks from the stadium where the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team plays.
The city medical examiner’s office ruled their deaths homicides by drowning.
The evidence against Merdy included video showing her walking toward the ocean with the children just before 1 a.m., according to the criminal complaint.
At the time, relatives said she may have been going through postpartum depression.
Indiana
Joey Chestnut to defend hot dog eating title after pleading guilty to battery charge
NOBLESVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the reigning champion and 17-time winner of Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, will compete in the July 4 spectacle while on probation after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge.
Chestnut was accused of slapping a man on the face during a night out at an Indiana bar, his attorney, Mario Massillamany, said. He entered a guilty plea April 20 and was sentenced to 180 days of probation in Hamilton County.
A judge has granted him permission to travel outside the state, allowing Chestnut to defend his title and the signature Mustard Belt on Coney Island this summer.
When police questioned Chestnut, he said he was drunk and did not remember the altercation, according to Us Weekly. Massillamany said that was “taken out of context” and Chestnut was nervous when speaking to officers before he had an attorney.
Richard Shea, the co-founder and president of Major League Eating, which oversees the Nathan’s Famous contest, said the altercation did not affect Chestnut’s competition eligibility.
At the Nathan’s Famous contest last year, Chestnut took back the title by eating 70 1/2 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes after he missed the 2024 contest due to a competing sponsorship. Nathan’s had temporarily banned him from competing after he signed an endorsement deal with the plant-based meat company Impossible Foods.
Chestnut most recently won the 2026 Ultimate Bologna Showdown in Tennessee for the third straight year, consuming 16 pounds of sausage in 8 minutes to set a new world record.
Washington
Advocacy group sues Trump administration over near-ban on abortion for vets
An advocacy group has filed suit against the Trump administration over its decision to reinstate a near-ban on abortions for veterans and their family members who depend on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for healthcare.
The federal lawsuit filed Thursday says the rule finalized by the VA on Dec. 31 takes away limited abortion access that was “crucial for the health, autonomy, and equality of veterans and their family members.”
Attorneys for the group Minority Veterans of America want the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to throw out the rule. They say the VA adopted the change without citing medical evidence or other justifications, violating the Administrative Procedures Act that governs federal rulemaking.
The VA did not include abortion in its coverage until 2022. President Joe Biden’s administration added it months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and states’ abortion bans began taking effect.
Abortion access the VA provided under Biden was limited, applying only in cases when a pregnant woman’s life or health was at risk, or in cases of rape or incest.
The Biden change allowed the VA to provide abortion even in states where it was banned. And it brought the VA’s coverage into line with other federal healthcare plans — including Medicaid and TriCare coverage for active military members and their families — that allowed limited abortion access.
The VA announced its proposal to undo those changes last August, a few months after President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
The VA had said it will still provide abortions in cases where a pregnant woman’s life is threatened. That’s something state laws allow, even in places where bans are in place.
However, the VA no longer allows exceptions for abortions in cases of rape, incest or to protect a pregnant woman’s health. Abortion counseling is also no longer allowed.
A VA spokesperson declined to comment, noting the agency typically doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Minority Veterans of America says it represents more than 3,600 members across the U.S.
“Our community includes veterans with complex medical histories, those who have experienced pregnancy complications, and survivors of sexual violence and trauma, all of whom need access to abortion care and counseling to protect their health,” Lindsay Church, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
In publishing its final rule in December, the VA said it was restoring the agency’s longstanding position that abortions were not “needed” under federal law and that “this determination did not prohibit providing life-saving care to pregnant veterans.”
The lawsuit says one of Minority Veteran of America’s members is a military veteran who just learned she was pregnant in early May. She suffers from chronic pain that has been exacerbated by the pregnancy, placing her health “at substantial risk,” says the lawsuit, which withheld the woman’s name to protect her privacy.
The lawsuit says the VA won’t allow the unnamed veteran to receive an abortion “even if her health is at risk, unless a provider determines an abortion is necessary to save her life.”
